In 2017, the federal government was poised to give low-income consumers a respite from the myriad abuses and rip-offs visited on them by the payday lending industry.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created in 2010 as part of the banking reforms enacted after the 2008 financial meltdown, had completed a five-year project to finalize a rule that would prevent payday and installment lenders from predatory practices such as enticing borrowers into loans they couldn’t afford while extracting a vigorish that would make a Mafia loan shark blush.

Then Donald Trump happened. As president, he installed Mick Mulvaney, his budget director and a former Republican congressman from North Carolina, as the bureau’s acting director. Mulvaney effectively canceled the new rule on Jan. 16, 2018, the day it was to go into effect.

Two days later, Mulvaney withdrew a lawsuit in Kansas state court that had charged four lenders with saddling borrowers with annual interest rates as high as 950%. And he closed an investigation into a lender that had contributed to his political campaign.

In the words of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — who had pushed for the creation of the CFPB — these actions “unwound years of careful CFPB work — all to benefit an industry that has close ties to Mr. Mulvaney and that has contributed more than $60,000 to his political campaigns.”

Mulvaney, absurdly, redirected the agency away from its purpose of consumer protection: “We work for the people,” he told its employees. “And that means everyone: those who use credit cards, and those who provide those cards; those who take loans, and those who make them; those who buy cars, and those who sell them.”

In other words, the CFPB would be protecting not only consumers but those who take advantage of consumers.

It now looks as if the cop is back on the beat. On July 18, the bureau proposed a new rule making clear that payday advances are loans within the definition of the federal Truth in Lending Act, meaning that companies have to fully disclose all the costs and fees to borrowers — before the borrowers sign any loan documents.

“When interest rates and fees on these loans are high, this can lead to a treadmill of debt that keeps getting faster and faster,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in announcing the new rule.

The bureau also has returned to court. On May 17, it sued L.A.-based lending marketplace SoLo Funds in federal court in Los Angeles, asserting that the firm’s “advertising and disclosures … falsely tout no-interest loans when, in fact, consumers are routinely subject to fees that result in an exorbitant total cost of credit.” When the fees are toted up, the agency says, the true annualized interest rate on the loans can be more than 300%.

SoLo hasn’t yet responded to the allegations in court and didn’t reply to my emailed request for comment.

The bureau has been energized in part by a Supreme Court decision that lifted a shadow over its future. This was a lawsuit brought by some of the targeted lenders contending that the bureau was unconstitutional because it was funded by the Federal Reserve System rather than through congressional appropriations.

Several pending CFPB cases had been placed on hold while the Supreme Court pondered the appropriations issue. But the court ruled in the CFPB’s favor on May 16 in a 7-2 decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas.

Among those cases was a federal lawsuit the bureau filed in July 2022 against Texas-based ACE Cash Express, which then operated out of nearly 1,000 storefronts in 22 states, including California. The CFPB charged that when ACE borrowers said they were unable to pay back their existing loans, ACE offered them repayment plans bearing new fees but sometimes didn’t tell them a no-fee option was available in some states.

ACE already was subject to a 2014 consent order in which it agreed to pay a $5-million penalty and $5 million in customer restitution, and pledged to offer customers a refinancing of their loans as well as the free option. “ACE has not done as it pledged,” the CFPB charged in its lawsuit.

ACE responded to the lawsuit by citing the case then headed to the Supreme Court. “The days of the Bureau’s unchecked administrative agency power … are, hopefully, over,” its lawyers wrote. “Because the CFPB itself is unconstitutional,” the case should be dismissed, they argued. The trial court put the case on hold, but with the Supreme Court ruling, the case is back on the docket, with briefs due at the trial court over the next two months.

The Supreme Court ruling was long overdue. In the years since Mulvaney tore up the CFPB’s project against payday and installment lenders, that industry underwent a troubling transformation.

Once operating out of storefronts where customers could cash their paychecks for a fee, it had grown more sophisticated. Customers could now take loans as advances on their paychecks but typically had to provide the lenders with links to their bank accounts so that repayments could be drawn directly from those accounts.

The industry now styled its products as “earned wage access” providers. The firms today have innocuous, homely names such as Dave.com and Brigit; their websites are adorned with stock photos of young people and families evidently basking in the relief of a short-term financial crisis averted. Some claim to charge zero interest on their short-term loans, but that’s misleading.

One should respect the financial tightrope walked by many low-wage households living paycheck to paycheck. The CFPB knows this market; its proposed rule acknowledges that “a significant driver of demand for consumer credit … derives from the mismatch between when a family receives income and when a family must make payments for expenses.” Meanwhile, “employers have a strong incentive to delay the payment of compensation to workers, which drives demand for short-term credit.”

When the true cost of that credit is hidden from the borrowers or they’re forced to refinance, incurring multiple fees, that’s a problem the CFPB was born to address.

“A payday advance that is repaid on payday is a payday loan, and fintech cash advance apps that call themselves ‘earned wage access’ are just high-cost lending in disguise,” Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center, says on the center’s website. “The CFPB has seen through fintech payday lenders’ new clothes.”

Some firms have made deals with employers such as Walmart, Amazon, Uber, Lyft and Kroger to provide advances to workers to be repaid from their next paycheck. In 2022, the CFPB says, more than 7 million workers accessed about $22 billion via these employer-lender partnerships. According to a survey cited by the bureau, most users of paycheck advance services fall below the federal poverty line and more than 80% are hourly or gig workers.

The chief constant tying the new system to the old is fees. About 90% of workers paid a fee for the advances in 2022, averaging about $3.18 per transaction. Since most took out repeated advances, the average annual cost was almost $69.

The CFPB found that among the fees most prevalent in the wage-advance sector are those charged for “expedited” access to cash — which after all is the goal of resorting to paycheck advances in the first place.

But new kinds of fees have appeared. One is often described by the finance firms as “tips” — solicited from borrowers in acknowledgment of the service they’re being provided or to defray the cost the firms ostensibly incur by lending out at 0%.

Those are among the issues in the CFPB’s lawsuit against SoLo. The firm functions as a sort of loan broker — needy customers apply for loans, and other customers provide the loans after judging an applicant’s creditworthiness. (“Earn money with your money,” SoLo tells these small-money lenders on its website. “You lend money to other members to help them replace a tire, cover a bill or for any other reason. They pay you back and add a voluntary tip as a sign of appreciation.”)

The maximum loan is $575. Borrowers can set a repayment date that is less than a month away; if repayment isn’t made after 35 days, the bureau says, SoLo charges a late fee.

The CFPB says the tips aren’t really “voluntary” at all; lenders tend to judge loan applications based on the size of the “tip” being offered, as SoLo suggests. SoLo also prompts applicants to select among three default “donation” fees that go directly to the firm.

None of the defaults is for $0, and borrowers can’t click to the next page without making a choice. Customers can opt for a $0 donation, but only by finding the option in another part of SoLo’s mobile app as though by accident.

“Virtually all consumers who receive loans incur a Lender tip fee, a Solo donation fee, or both,” the CFPB alleges.

It’s proper to note that this isn’t SoLo’s first rodeo. Last year, the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation reached a consent agreement with the firm over some of the same practices targeted by the CFPB; SoLo paid a penalty of $50,000 and committed to reimbursing its California customers for their “donations.”

Also last year the District of Columbia settled its own case against SoLo, in which it alleged that despite advertising no-interest, no-fee loans, the firm compelled “nearly all borrowers to provide monetary ‘tips’ and ‘donations’” that effectively drove up the annualized interest rates to more than 500%, well beyond the district’s 24% usury limit. SoLo paid a $30,000 penalty and pledged that lenders would no longer be able to know that a borrower had offered a tip or how much it would be.

And in 2022, Connecticut authorities imposed a $100,000 penalty on SoLo and required it to reimburse Connecticut customers for all “tips,” “donations,” late fees and other charges. SoLo was barred from the lending business in that state without obtaining any required license.

The battle against predatory lending to small borrowers isn’t over. Project 2025, the right-wing document designed as a manifesto of the Trump presidential campaign, has targeted the CFPB for extermination, calling it “a highly politicized, damaging, and utterly unaccountable federal agency.” The manifesto says “the next conservative President should order the immediate dissolution of the agency.”

(The document was written before the Supreme Court ruled in the CFPB’s favor, so it takes the agency’s unconstitutionality as gospel.)

The specter of rampant Mulvaneyism still lurks on the horizon in a Republican administration: taking government off the backs of the people, so predatory businesses can again saddle up.

Harmony has been restored to the “happiest place on Earth.”

Thousands of workers at Disneyland voted Monday to ratify a deal that averted what could have been the first strike at the Anaheim theme park in 40 years. Employees at Disney California Adventure, Downtown Disney and the Disneyland Resort hotels also approved new contracts with the company. The union bargaining committee did not disclose the ratification vote totals.

“By ratifying these contracts, Disney cast members have secured historic raises and policies and protections that reflect their role as magic makers in the Disney parks,” the union bargaining committee said in a statement.

“For months hard-working cast members have stood together at the bargaining table and in the parks to ensure Disney recognized what they bring to the theme park experience, and these contracts are a concrete and direct result of this tireless work.”

The Master Services Council, an alliance of labor unions representing some 14,000 Disneyland Resort employees, and Walt Disney Co. reached tentative deals last Wednesday — just days after Disneyland workers voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike.

According to the Master Services Council, the three-year agreements contain pay increases amounting to $6.10 an hour over the life of the contract, a higher minimum wage of $24 an hour in 2024, additional compensation bumps for senior employees and a more flexible attendance policy for custodians, ride operators, candy makers, merchandise clerks and other workers who keep Disneyland running.

“We are pleased that our cast members approved the new agreements, which, along with all we offer as part of our employment experience, demonstrate how much we value them and our profound commitment to their overall well-being,” Disneyland Resort spokesperson Jessica Good said in a statement.

Earlier this month, the Master Services Council scheduled a strike authorization vote — which gives union leaders the option to call a walkout if a deal can’t be reached — after filing unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board. The group accused Disney of threatening to discipline hundreds of resort employees for wearing union buttons to work.

The unions maintain that wearing the buttons depicting Mickey Mouse’s raised fist is a protected form of collective action by workers, while the company says the pins violate the staff dress code. Disney has said that only “a handful” of repeat incidents led to disciplinary action, starting with a verbal warning.

The buttons functioned as a symbol of solidarity among Disneyland Resort staffers, who had been bargaining for new contracts with Walt Disney Co. since late April.

The old Disneyland employee contract ended June 16, while the Disney California Adventure and Downtown Disney agreements were set to expire Sept. 30.

“Together by wearing buttons, attending rallies and telling their stories to the public, cast members fought for a more promising future for themselves, their fellow cast members, and their families,” the union bargaining committee said in a statement.

“These contracts are historic for Disney cast members and we’re pleased cast members’ lives will improve as a result.”

It was peak 1990s when Cher Horowitz, the fashionable teen queen in the hit film “Clueless,” needed her “most capable-looking outfit” to take her driving test at the DMV.

“Lucy!” she bellowed from her Beverly Hills bedroom, a mound of discarded designer clothes at her feet. “Where’s my white collarless shirt from Fred Segal?”

The beloved Los Angeles boutique retailer got another shoutout in the 2001 rom-com “Legally Blonde”: “Two weeks ago, I saw Cameron Diaz at Fred Segal,” Reese Witherspoon’s Elle Woods said, “and I talked her out of buying this truly heinous angora sweater.”

For more than six decades, Fred Segal was a fixture of L.A.’s retail landscape and a pop culture touchstone. Locals and tourists alike flocked to its ivy-covered walls for upscale but laid-back looks that epitomized effortless Southern California style. It was also one of the city’s most reliable hot spots for A-list celebrity sightings, from the Beatles in the 1960s to, more recently, stars including Britney Spears, Kendall Jenner, David Beckham and Jennifer Aniston.

That all but came to an end Tuesday, when Fred Segal shut its two remaining L.A.-area clothing stores: its West Hollywood flagship on Sunset Boulevard and its Malibu location. (A Fred Segal Home showroom in Culver City remains open.) The retailer — which once had nine locations in California and outposts in Switzerland and Taiwan — blamed the lingering financial effects of the pandemic and the challenges of running a multi-brand company that carried nearly 200 labels.

“Things were really going great until COVID hit,” owner Jeff Lotman, who bought Fred Segal in 2019, told The Times in an interview announcing the closures.

Industry watchers and rivals said the brand’s downfall was the result of several missteps. Once at the forefront of cutting-edge L.A. style, Fred Segal had become stagnant and lacked newness, they said. A lack of product differentiation, stiff competition and the shift to e-commerce also contributed to the chain’s demise.

“One of the challenges for us was that 90% of the brands that we carried were available elsewhere online,” Lotman said in a follow-up conversation Thursday. “Margins became very thin.”

In a city where retail stores flame out quickly, Fred Segal for years was able to stay on top of the latest trends — and set many of them, thanks to its visionary founder.

In 1961, the Chicago-born, Los Angeles-raised Fred Segal opened his first store, a 300-square-foot space on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. Segal had already been embellishing denim with rhinestones, elevating them from everyday closet staples into something one-off and bespoke, and pioneered an in-store “jeans bar,” a concept that would be copied by rivals around the world.

“When Fred Segal the man opened Fred Segal, it was a truly unique place,” Lotman said. “He invented the fashion jean, pop-up shops and experiential shopping. Also he had brands that were not sold anywhere. It was truly one of a kind. He was the original curator of cool.”

In 1965, having outgrown the original space, Segal relocated to the corner of Melrose Avenue and Crescent Heights Boulevard. By buying up other properties in the area, he cobbled together what would eventually be a 29,000-square-foot complex that kick-started the transformation of that stretch of Melrose into the designer-filled destination it is today.

Segal began to experiment with the then-novel shop-in-shop concept, first tapping employees to take charge of different areas within the store, and later recruiting other retail innovators to fill the warren of disparate spaces, making sure each complemented the others.

“They were influencers before there were influencers, before there was social media,” said Nicole Craig, a professor at the Arizona State University Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. “One of the reasons why they were successful is that they curated a lot of really cool, up-and-coming brands.”

Among them: Kate Spade, Juicy Couture, J Brand and Hard Candy, all fledgling businesses when Fred Segal granted them coveted floor and shelf space.

But in recent years, amid the 2019 ownership change, the pandemic and a challenging retail environment that has led to a rash of store closures for brands big and small, Fred Segal struggled.

“It’s much harder to stand out than it used to be,” Craig said. “That’s where Fred Segal lost its way a little bit. They didn’t have enough of that fresh product that you couldn’t get elsewhere.”

Shelda Hartwell, a vice president at the retail and fashion consultancy Doneger Group, said that although consumers value heritage brands with history and name recognition, Fred Segal needed to do more to keep the excitement going.

“They stayed too much in the sameness for too long,” she said. “You had other retailers that were coming in and opening up their first brick-and-mortar stores that were just offering much more of an experience.”

The experiential aspect is even more important nowadays because so much shopping can be done online, said Mac Hadar, buyer and director of operations for H.Lorenzo, a competing boutique retailer with a store a couple of blocks away from the now-shuttered Fred Segal flagship.

“The retail stores that have continued to do well are the ones that are continuing to push the boundaries and push the limits,” Hadar said. “With the rise of online, you can find almost anything, so you have to have a very original point of view and be pretty daring with what you choose to bring into the store.”

Fraser Ross, owner of Kitson, one of Fred Segal’s biggest rivals, called retail “a very hard beast right now.” Successful brands need to figure out how to evolve quickly, he said.

“People aren’t shopping the way they did,” he said. “In the days when you didn’t have Instagram and the web, you could open lots of stores in every neighborhood in L.A. But now, you’ve got to be specific in trying to get the traffic through your door.”

One change that Kitson made is that “we’re not really chasing the hottest brands anymore,” Ross said, because those brands can easily be found online.

Instead, Kitson, which was founded in 2000 and now has four L.A.-area stores, has leaned more heavily into exclusive merchandise and SoCal-inspired products and brands that appeal to tourists, such as Aviator Nation, FreeCity and Sol Angeles. Fred Segal, he said, didn’t embrace that lifestyle aesthetic as much.

Fred Segal also failed to amplify its online presence, which hurt the brand’s relevance, said Ilse Metchek, an industry analyst and former president of the California Fashion Assn. She said the company did a poor job of advertising on social media and through fashion influencers, who now play an outsize role in the industry.

“The idea of legacy brands doesn’t appeal as much anymore,” Metchek said. “You’d rather look at something new that Instagram or TikTok is showing you.”

Lotman, who is chief executive of licensing company Global Icons, bought Fred Segal with ambitious plans to open roughly 20 new shops in major cities around the world and oversee a move into home decor and accessories. Before the pandemic, he had pending deals to open stores in Dubai, Canada and Japan.

Now, the future of the storied brand is unclear.

The Segal family owns the Fred Segal trademark, Lotman said, and any decision about whether to open new stores or begin selling online again would be up to them. Two Fred Segal shops at Resorts World in Las Vegas, which Lotman is not involved with, are still operating.

Larry Russ, the family’s attorney, said this is not the end of the road for the brand but could not share more details.

“We are going to be looking for a new operator to open up more stores in the future,” he said.