The law says that the agency’s deputy director takes over when the director resigns. Nothing administration lawyers have said changes that.
.. If Trump manages to put Mulvaney in the director’s chair before a court can rule, it’ll mean that the president has usurped the prerogatives of Congress on the way to installing his own loyalist to kneecap an agency created to protect main street from the excesses of giant banks and credit card companies. It would be an executive-branch power grab; one that gives foul new meaning to the notion of what it means to “occupy” Wall Street.