US consumer finance watchdog chief tells all staff to cease work
Business
US consumer finance watchdog chief tells all staff to cease work
(Reuters) - President Donald Trump's newly installed chief of the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau told all of the agency's staff on Monday to stay away from the office and do no work, according to an email reviewed by Reuters.
The move followed a weekend decision to shutter the CFPB's Washington headquarters, idling a federal agency of nearly 2,000 workers tasked with enforcing consumer financial laws.
"Employees should not come into the office," acting CFPB Director Russell Vought said in an email to all staff. "Please do not perform any work tasks."
Vought, a longtime budget hawk, took control of the agency on Friday. He is architect of the right-wing policy manifesto known as Project 2025, which called for the CFPB's abolition.
Efforts by President Donald Trump's administration to neutralize the agency escalated over the weekend as billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency gained full access to CFPB computer systems. Vought ordered a stop to all oversight of consumer financial companies.
Musk has vowed to destroy the CFPB and on Friday posted "CFPB RIP" on his social media platform X. The agency would be responsible for regulating his planned business venture with payments giant Visa.
The White House said in a statement the CFPB has long functioned as another "woke, weaponized arm of the bureaucracy that leverages its power against certain industries and individuals disfavored by so-called elites."
The statement added, "the weaponization ends right now."
CONFRONTATIONS
Confrontations with staff, Democratic lawmakers and progressive organizations were set to continue on Monday, with a rally planned for outside the agency's headquarters near the White House.
Meanwhile, in a federal lawsuit filed Sunday, the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents CFPB staff, argued that Vought's actions violated the Constitution by undercutting Congress' power to set and fund the agency's mission.
The CFPB was created as part of the sweeping 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, part of an effort to ensure a sole agency was charged with monitoring the financial wellbeing of consumers.
The agency does not receive direct funding from Congress, but rather requests its budget from the Federal Reserve. Vought has already said he intends to seek no new funding for the CFPB, which currently has cash reserves of over $700 million.
US Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee who first proposed and helped launch the agency, posted a video on Monday in which she said she was "ringing the alarm bell."
The Trump-Musk effort to kill the CFPB was a "payoff" to campaign donors who wanted to be rid of government oversight, Warren said.
She and US Representative Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, will meet in front of the CFPB's headquarters on Monday to demand answers regarding Musk's "takeover of the agency," according to a statement from Waters' office.
