The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s acting director issued an email to staffers on Saturday night ordering them to stop all work after the agency saw multiple changes throughout the week.
“Effective immediately, unless expressly approved by the Acting Director or required by law, all employees, contractors and other personnel of the bureau shall cease all supervision and examination activity,” the agency’s acting director, Russell Vought, wrote in an email reported by CNN and The New York Times.
Vought, who joined the Office of Management and Budget in January after President Donald Trump took office for the second time, claimed that he reduced funding for the agency that protects American consumers.
“I have notified the Federal Reserve that CFPB will not be taking its next draw of unappropriated funding because it is not ‘reasonably necessary’ to carry out its duties,” Vought wrote in a piece for X.
Here’s what you should know about the CFPB:
What is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?
The CFPB is an agency that protects “consumers from unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices and [takes] action against companies that break the law,” according to its website. “We arm people with the information, steps, and tools they need to make smart financial decisions.”
The bureau was established after Congress and President Barack Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, also known as the Dodd-Frank Act, in July 2010, according to its website.
According to the CFPB website, it was established to “increase government accountability by consolidating consumer financial protection authorities that had previously been spread across seven different federal agencies into one.” It was established in the aftermath of the recent recession, the longest since World War II, according to Federal Reserve History, which lasted from December 2007 to June 2009.
According to the CFPB, the agency has provided more than $21 billion in consumer relief in the form of monetary compensation, principal reductions, debt cancellations, and other benefits to over 205 million consumers or consumer accounts since its inception.
According to the Consumer Federation of America, during former President Joe Biden’s administration, the agency returned more than $6 billion to consumers while imposing $3.2 billion in fines.
Who is Russell Vought?
Vought is the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The announcement of reduced funding for the bureau comes after Trump fired the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Biden appointee Rohit Chopra, at the end of January.
This is not Vought’s first time working with Trump.
During Trump’s first presidency, Vought assumed the same role as the director and was in charge of the following:
- Overseeing the president’s budget
- Reviewing federal regulations
- Setting funding priorities for executive agencies
Vought is also a former vice president of Heritage Action for America, the Heritage Foundation’s sister organization that created the policy blueprint Project 2025.
Vought is credited with writing the chapter on executive power, which contends that the president’s powers are limited by a “sprawling federal bureaucracy” that implements “its own policy plans and preferences.”
Vought “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government, and he will help us return Self Governance to the People,” Trump said in November, when he appointed him to the position.
CFPB RIP 🪦
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 7, 2025
Elon Musk, lawmakers react to CFPB work stoppage
“Vought is giving big banks and giant corporations the green light to scam families,” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who was instrumental in establishing the CFPB, wrote in a post on X. “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has returned more than $21 billion to families defrauded by Wall Street.” Republicans have failed to repeal it in Congress and the courts. “They’ll fail again.”
Elon Musk, who was named a “special government employee” and now heads the Department of Governmental Efficiency, DOGE, has also written about the CFPB on X, his social media platform.
