The lead architect of Project 2025 and recently appointed acting director for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has told the agency’s employees to essentially halt all operations ― the Trump administration’s latest move to roll back consumer protections against corporate giants.
In a Saturday email obtained by several news outlets, Russell Vought ordered the federal financial industry watchdog’s staff to “cease all supervision and examination activity,” stop issuing regulatory guidance, halt pending investigations while refraining to open new ones, and no longer “make or approve filings or appearances by the Bureau in any litigation, other than to seek a pause in proceedings.”
“As acting director, I am committed to implementing the president’s policies, consistent with the law, and acting as a faithful steward of the bureau’s resources,” wrote Vought, whom the Senate on Thursday confirmed to lead the Office of Management and Budget. One day later, President Donald Trump appointed Vought to also serve as the CFPB’s acting director.
The CFPB was created in 2011 by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) as a response to the regulatory failures of the 2008 financial crisis. The watchdog agency targets big banks and corporations engaging in unfair and deceptive practices that end up financially harming consumers.
Vought’s message is a more severe iteration of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s order earlier this month, which essentially told CFPB staff to stop doing their job. On top of Bessent’s order, the new acting director added supervision to the freeze.
The bureau’s ceased operations mean that those financial institutions can rip off consumers essentially without any kind of oversight and enforced regulation. Consumers would no longer be protected from predatory financial practices, under the guise of cutting wasteful spending.
“Vought is giving big banks and giant corporations the green light to scam families,” Warren posted Saturday night on X. “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has returned over $21 billion to families cheated by Wall Street. Republicans have failed to gut it in Congress and in the courts. They will fail again.”
The senator is likely referring to a 2023 vote in which the House defeated right-wing efforts to defund the CFPB, with 78 Republicans joining all Democrats in opposing the measure. Still, Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee applauded Vought’s decision to gut the bureau.
“Accountability at the CFPB is long overdue. From [former Director Rohit] Chopra’s regulation by blog post to repeatedly ignoring the Chairman’s calls to stop rule makings after the election,” the committee said on X. “Acting Dir. Vought will bring responsibility back to the CFPB & refocus its mission to serve the American people.”
The CFPB has faced criticism for getting its funding directly from the Federal Reserve instead of through the congressional appropriations process, making quarterly requests to the Fed that are “reasonably necessary” so that it can carry out its duties. Despite anger from the right, the Supreme Court ruled last year that the watchdog group’s funding structure is constitutional.
On Saturday, Vought sent a letter to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell about the third quarter of Fiscal Year 2025. The letter, obtained by RealClearPolitics, included a startling development: that the CFPB is requesting $0.
“I have determined that no additional funds are necessary to carry out the authorities of the Bureau for Fiscal Year 2025,” said Vought, calling the agency’s balance of $711.6 million “excessive.” The acting director reiterated his explanation on social media.
Vought’s decision is just the latest in an avalanche of dangerous moves by the Trump administration to shrink the federal government and consolidate power ― goals that were cited in Project 2025, the disturbing conservative blueprint to overhaul the federal government that was chiefly led by Vought himself.
After his confirmation vote on Thursday, Vought is now also in charge of the Office of Management and Budget where he’s expected to continue carrying out the blueprint with the help of Elon Musk, who is not a government worker, and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is not a government agency.
On Friday, DOGE officials were granted administrative access to CFPB’s headquarters and systems, according to CNNand The New York Times.
“When a bunch of billionaires tell you they know what’s best for you, hang onto your wallet. Over the past few weeks, Republican politicians and billionaires have come out swinging with lies about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, hoping they can pave the way to ‘delete’ the agency,” Warren said in a Dec. 11 op-ed in The Boston Globe.
“But if you have a checking account, credit card, mortgage or student loan, you might want to know what it could mean for you if the CFPB disappears,” she continued. “That’s the dangerous promise of Project 2025.”
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On X, Musk posted “CFPB RIP” with an emoji of a gravestone, hours after DOGE officials reportedly gained access to the agency’s building. As of Sunday, the CFPB’s account on X is no longer available, and the homepage of the agency’s website says, “404: Page not found.”