whether Mulvaney can be so-named under the FVRA or whether a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act controls, which would make the deputy director, Leandra English, acting director of the CFPB instead. This led to a court battle, English v. Trump. On November 28, 2017, U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly denied English's motion for a preliminary injunction and allowed Mulvaney to begin serving as CFPB Acting Director. Tenure According to an April 2019 review of Mulvaney's tenure as CFPB head by The New York Times, Mulvaney had undermined the enforcement and regulatory powers of the bureau. What was "perhaps Washington's most feared financial regulator" had through "strategic neglect and bureaucratic self-sabotage" begun to work against the very interests it was created to defend. Mulvaney immediately stopped hiring at the CFPB, stopped collecting fines, suspended rulemaking, and ordered all active investigations reviewed. Mulvaney also sharply reduced agency personnel's access to bank data, arguing that it posed a security risk. On January 18, 2018, Mulvaney submitted a quarterly budget request for the CFPB to the Federal Reserve for $0. In January 2018, Mulvaney canceled an investigation into a South Carolina payday lender who had previously donated to his congressional campaigns. He also dropped a lawsuit the CFPB was pursuing against an online lender the bureau had found was charging 950% interest. Mulvaney suspended a short-term payday loan regulation. In addition to payday lenders, Mulvaney also scaled back efforts to go after auto lenders and others accused of preying on vulnerable consumers. By April 2018, more than four months after taking charge of the CFPB, Mulvaney had not undertaken a single enforcement action against finance companies; the previous CFPB director, Richard Cordray, averaged two to four enforcement actions per month. Mulvaney accepted nearly $63,000 in donations by payday lenders while he was a congressman. In April 2018, Mulvaney submitted the CFPB's annual report to Congress, in which he recommended the bureau's funding should be made to require congressional appropriations, that its future rulemaking should require legislative approval, and that he, the director, should be made removable without cause by the President. The Community Financial Services Association of America, a trade association representing the payday lending industry, praised Mulvaney's approach, calling it "relatively passive". In April 2018, it was reported that Mulvaney had given some of his political appointees at the CFPB raises. Mulvaney hired at least eight appointees after he took over the