Senate approves president’s nominee for watchdog agency

WASHINGTON — In a party-line vote, the Senate approved President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday, ending a sixmonth battle over the fate of the consumer watchdog agency.

The vote was 50-49 in favor of approving Kathy Kraninger, who worked as a mid-level official in the White House’s budget office, to a five-year term. Kraninger has zero experience in financial services and had never run a federal agency, a criticism that made Democrats hostile to her nomination.

The CPFB was created as part of the Dodd-Frank Act, the law that rewrote the financial rules and regulations governing banks after the 2008 financial crisis. The CFPB has been a target of Republicans who have vowed to abolish it.