Jelena McWilliams, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the lone Republican on the agencys board, is blocking a review of bank merger regulations sought by the agencys three Democratic board members as part of President Joe Biden s antitrust agenda.

The escalating feud between McWilliams and the other three board members of the independent agency that regulates and insures financial institutions Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Rohit Chopra, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) acting Director Michael Hsu, and former FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg is over whether the chair or board of directors has the authority to order a review of and update regulations governing bank mergers.

Behind the question of who controls the agenda of the FDIC the chair or the board is the larger issue of the ongoing consolidation of the banking industry and the enforcement of Bidens policy of stopping and reversing consolidation across the economy.

On July 9, the president ordered government agencies to review and update regulations and rules to combat corporate consolidation and anticompetitive behavior in the industries they regulate. To enforce this order, Biden appointed a new generation of regulators focused on reversing the regulatory failures that led to the 2008 financial crisis and the decadeslong trend of corporate consolidation.