Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought’s Announcement Sparks Concern
When Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought posted to X last Friday that “the RIFs” – shorthand for reductions in force – “have begun,” observers may well have felt a callback to a February Friday when former Trump adviser Elon Musk wrote “CFPB RIP” and punctuated it with a tombstone emoji.
Uncertainty Surrounds Reductions in Force
In the ensuing hours last week, news gatherers looked for concrete numbers – how many employees would be affected and at which agencies. Treasury Department staff working on the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund saw a mass layoff. But the fallout at other finance-focused agencies felt limited. News about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in particular, seemed nowhere to be found.
Speculation on the Future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
A week earlier, President Donald Trump posted to Truth Social that he would meet with Vought to determine which “Democrat Agencies” should be cut as funding dries up amid the government shutdown. Vought, in addition to running OMB, is the CFPB’s acting chief. So it would track that the CFPB, the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, would be at or near the top of the hit list.
However, maybe the reason the CFPB seemingly didn’t get much RIF attention last week is that Vought already considers it dead.
Challenges Faced by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Trump administration officials, of course, have tried at least twice this year to institute decimating cuts to the CFPB – first in February (halted by a preliminary injunction, and then again in April, after an appeals court order allowed some firings.
Current Status and Future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Not much in the power struggle has been public, though, since the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in August vacated the injunction preventing the firings – although a federal district court judge on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration from implementing any new or existing layoffs in relation to the shutdown.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, in fact, appeared to be under the impression, as recently as Sept. 30, that the CFPB had a working staff. Waters, the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, warned Vought in a letter not to use the impending government shutdown as an excuse to furlough CFPB employees.
Challenges Faced by the CFPB Under Vought’s Leadership
On the conservative-tinged show Wednesday, Vought invoked the name of the CFPB’s architect to illustrate policy dissonance with current leadership.
“You come into OMB and, our career staff, they want to do what the president wants them to do. They’re used to working for different presidents,” Vought said Wednesday. “This agency [the CFPB] – all they want to do is weaponize the tools of financial laws against small mom-and-pop lenders and other small financial institutions.”
Vought specifically called out the CFPB’s enforcement action against Chicago-based lender Townstone Financial. The bureau accused Townstone of discouraging residents living in majority-Black neighborhoods from applying for mortgages after analysis of comments made by the lender’s CEO, Barry Sturner, on a radio show and podcast in 2016. On the broadcast, Sturner described Chicago’s South Side between Friday and Monday as “hoodlum weekend” and suggested that police are the only barrier preventing it from becoming a “real war zone.”
Recent Developments and Legal Challenges Faced by the CFPB
“[The CFPB] weaponized disparate impact to go after [Townstone] – and there [were] never any complaints against lending that was racially motivated … and they ruined [Sturner]’s life for seven years,” Vought said Wednesday.
The CFPB, under Vought, asked a federal judge in March to vacate a settlement with Townstone and return $105,000 to the mortgage firm. The judge in the case denied the CFPB’s move in June, saying that dismissing the redlining order would “erode public confidence in the finality of judgments.”
Call for Action and Funding Challenges Faced by the CFPB
For its part, the National Treasury Employees Union, which sued Vought in February to stop mass layoffs at the CFPB, said Tuesday in a post on Bluesky that its CFPB employee branch “stands in solidarity with the thousands of federal employees illegally fired during the Trump-Vought Government Shutdown.” The post links to a nongovernmental organization, 5 Calls, which advocates communicating with legislators to restore CFPB funding.
Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” passed in July, slashes the bureau’s annual funding by roughly 45%. The 5 Calls call to action asserts the CFPB “faces a shutdown as soon as October.”
Conclusion
As uncertainty looms over the future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the recent announcements and legal battles indicate a challenging road ahead for the agency. With funding cuts and ongoing disputes, the fate of the CFPB remains uncertain. Stay tuned for further developments.
