I am a lawyer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. My colleagues and I work tirelessly to protect the American public from predatory, unfair, and illegal practices by bad actors in the market for consumer financial products, like credit cards, mortgages, and student loans. We are a relatively small group of government employees who enforce federal financial laws, including by bringing cases against those who violate them. Since the CFPB’s creation in the wake of the Great Recession, we’ve returned over $21 billion to the pockets of hardworking Americans—money that was taken from them by businesses flouting the law. We’ve also proposed rules that keep our economy fair for everybody, like eliminating pointless junk fees. My colleagues and I are dedicated civil servants—working people who have pledged to work on behalf of other working people—and we love what we do.
But all our activities have come to an abrupt halt in the past few days. Last Thursday, the Senate confirmed Russell Vought—an avowed Christian nationalist and architect of Project 2025—to be head of the Office of Management and Budget. Within a day, Donald Trump appointed him to simultaneously be the acting director of the CFPB. As this was unfolding, the administration permitted billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency underlings to enter the CFPB headquarters, where they reportedly accessed internal systems including personnel rolls and financial records. Musk, it’s worth remembering, has previously said he wanted to “delete CFPB,” which is the regulator that would have oversight of his reported plans to turn X into a digital wallet app.
Since the DOGE takeover, and in the past 72 hours, Vought and Musk have worked hand in hand and with unnerving speed to strip the CFPB for parts and bring its work to a screeching halt. On Saturday night, Vought sent an email to all CFPB employees, building on guidance that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent issued during his four-day tenure as acting director of the CFPB earlier in the week. Vought directed all CFPB employees to immediately cease issuing rules or guidance, suspend all effective dates of all final rules that have not yet come into effect, not open new investigations, stop all supervision activities, halt enforcement actions, and not issue public communications of any type. Soon afterward, Vought posted on X to proclaim that he would not be requesting the next draw of CFPB’s funding from the Federal Reserve, effectively eliminating CFPB’s customary budget. On Sunday afternoon, CFPB employees were informed by email that headquarters would be closed for the week but that “employees and contractors are to work remotely.”
Despite these unnerving developments, my colleagues and I remained committed to doing our jobs. So it came as a shock when, a few minutes after we logged on to telework on Monday morning, we received yet another directive from Vought, now repeatedly ordering all employees to “not perform any work tasks” and to “stand down from performing any work task.”
As a result, the CFPB now stands as an ineffective watchdog—chained, muzzled, and left to starve in its kennel so that it can no longer guard the public. This is profoundly sad for the employees like me who have worked zealously to protect the American public from frauds and scams, day in and day out. Now, nobody is allowed to respond to consumer complaints that come in, let alone investigate them. This has all been extremely frustrating, confusing, and shocking. My colleagues and I are complying with the fiat handed down by Vought while trying to wrap our heads around these unprecedented actions happening in real time. But we’d really rather just get back to the work we are so proud of doing.
But what is most upsetting is that this is all blatantly illegal. The CFPB was created by Congress in the Dodd-Frank Act, which was passed in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis—the worst economic crash since the Great Depression. Congress enacted the Dodd-Frank Act to carry out the mandate of the American people to ensure that such a catastrophe never happened again. By starving the CFPB until it becomes a skeleton that can no longer carry out its mandatory duties under the law, Trump, his appointees, and their billionaire cronies are violating the law, subverting the will of Congress, and undermining the mandate of the American people.
I remember the misery that the Great Recession inflicted on American consumers. I am worried for what may happen now that the CFPB can no longer guard against the next crisis, thanks to Vought, Musk, and their unaccountable wrecking crew. But most of all, I’m worried about how the Trump administration and their unelected billionaire co-conspirators continue to flout the law to dismantle yet another public institution before our eyes.
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