The fight over “debanking” has come to a head — and President Donald Trump has now thrown down a marker with his executive order, Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans.
The order bans banks from denying services to individuals or organizations based on political or religious beliefs, stripping away the controversial use of “reputational risk” as a pretext for exclusion.
For years, critics warned that federal regulators had blurred the line between financial oversight and political enforcement. Operation Choke Point, launched under the Obama administration, notoriously pressured banks to label entire industries — including firearm sales — as “high risk.”
Trump ended the program in 2017, but executives now say its shadow lingered into Biden’s presidency, reemerging in what watchdogs dubbed “Choke Point 2.0.” Crypto firms, conservative nonprofits, even the Trumps themselves reported being cut off from services without warning.
Behind closed doors, bank leaders are candid. “Those pressures were very, very real,” one senior executive told Fox News Digital. “When your regulator gives you a suggestion, it’s not a suggestion, it’s an order.”
Another described a system where negative press coverage of conservatives, amplified by government preferences, became a convenient excuse to deny accounts: “It’s all kind of set up … and it all ends up focusing on Republicans and conservatives.”
Even First Lady Melania Trump revealed that both she and her son Barron were debanked, calling the move “rooted in political discrimination.” Former Kansas senator Sam Brownback experienced the same with his nonprofit, the National Committee for Religious Freedom, which JPMorgan shut down before later codifying a policy against political and religious discrimination.
Industry insiders confirm that “reputational risk” became a catch-all tool. It allowed banks to avoid clients regulators might frown upon, even without explicit orders. Filing “suspicious activity reports” became routine, and institutions learned it was safer to preemptively cut ties than risk drawing scrutiny.
Now, under Trump’s executive order, that era may be ending. Major banks, including JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, and PNC, have all moved to reassure customers they do not discriminate based on politics or religion. As Inspire Investing’s Tim Schwarzenberger put it, the order represents “a breakthrough moment.”
