What happened
The Trump White House Sunday told all 1,700 employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that the Washington, D.C., headquarters was closed for the week, and employees who went to the office to retrieve their laptops or other belongings were reportedly turned away. President Donald Trump on Friday named Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought acting head of the CFPB.
On Saturday, Voght ordered “all employees at the consumer watchdog to stop virtually all work — including fighting financial abuse,” CNN said, and said he would eliminate its budget.
Who said what
The CFPB, created as an independent agency in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse, has “clawed back $21 billion for consumers,” transformed mortgage lending rules, “slashed overdraft fees” and “forced banks and money transmitters to compensate fraud victims,” The New York Times said. All that has “made it a lightning rod for criticism from banks and Republican lawmakers,” including Trump and his allies.
Elon Musk tweeted “CFPB RIP” on Friday, hours after his “Department of Government Efficiency” operatives gained access to the bureau’s headquarters and computer systems. Vought’s Project 2025 called for the bureau’s elimination. As acting director, he can sharply curtail its activity, but “since the CFPB is a creation of Congress, it would require a separate act of Congress to formally eliminate it,” The Associated Press said.
DOGE has already gutted USAID, without assent from Congress, but going after the CFPB “highlights the tensions between Trump’s more populist promises to lower costs for working-class families and his pledge to reduce government regulation,” the AP said. The CFPB, for example, had already started work on how to implement Trump’s campaign proposal to cap credit card interest rates at 10%.
What next?
The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents CFPB employees, filed lawsuits Sunday night seeking to prevent Vought from freezing its congressionally mandated work and bar DOGE employees from accessing employee records.