Although the Justice Department has ended its controversial "Operation Choke Point" initiative, the House tonight overwhelmingly passed a bill that would prevent it from being resurrected.

The House Financial Services Committee today advanced eight ABA-backed regulatory reform bills, including several that ABA and the state bankers associations have long championed as part of ABA’s Blueprint for Growth.

In advance of the House Financial Services Committee’s plans to vote on several regulatory reform bills tomorrow and Friday, ABA today sent a memo to committee members outlining the association’s support for 10 bills on the agenda.

In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) yesterday, a Department of Justice official formally confirmed that the agency has ended the controversial Operation Choke Point initiative, which under the Obama administration sought to curtail legal but politically disfavored businesses by working through bank regulators to pressure financial institutions to end customer relationships with those businesses.

A group of Republican lawmakers wrote to the heads of the Department of Justice, Federal Reserve and OCC today asking them to clarify their position on the DOJ’s Operation Choke Point, an Obama-era policy that seeks to curtail disfavored businesses by working through regulators to pressure banks to end customer relationships.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) today released the latest legislative text of his Financial Choice Act, a 600-page bill aimed at rolling back and reforming parts of the Dodd-Frank Act’s extensive supervisory regime, as well as providing regulatory relief for banks of all sizes.

In a letter to the OCC yesterday, Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.) took the agency to task for its continued involvement in the Department of Justice’s Operation Choke Point, which seeks to curtail disfavored businesses by working through regulators to pressure financial institutions to end customer relationships.

The FDIC’s proposed supervisory changes to expand banks’ exam appeals options are positive but not nearly enough to address exam fairness problems, ABA said in a comment letter today.

Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) yesterday introduced an ABA-supported bill intended to rein in the Justice Department’s Operation Choke Point, which sought to curtail disfavored businesses by working through regulators to pressure financial institutions to end customer relationships with these businesses.

In supervising banks that made tax refund anticipation loans, the FDIC made “aggressive and unprecedented” use of its supervisory powers and imposed “high costs” on institutions offering the legal products, according to a review issued today by the FDIC’s inspector general.