‘there Will Continue To Be A Cfpb’: Trump Administration Says It Won't Shut Bureau

The Trump administration intends to keep the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau operating, although in a more streamlined form, according to a new court filing.

“The predicate to running a ‘more streamlined and efficient bureau’ is that there will continue to be a CFPB,” consumer bureau Acting Director Russ Vought said in a motion filed late Monday in federal court in Washington.

The bureau — long a big target of Republicans and financial institutions — is at the center of the Trump administration’s effort to slash the federal bureaucracy. Advisers from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency embedded with the agency in early February, and Vought, directed staff to stand down from all work. The headquarters are shuttered and probationary employees have already been culled, sparking concerns that the bureau would be shut down.

The motion was filed in response to the CFPB union, which sued the Trump administration earlier this month over what it said were plans to “dismantle” the agency after Vought ordered staff to stop working. The court has issued a preliminary injunction pausing firings at the agency until a hearing next Monday.

“Incoming Presidents of both parties have routinely issued directives that pause policy-related decision-making to allow the reevaluation of those policies that were under consideration or under development but not finalized by the prior administration,” Vought, who is also the White House budget director, argued in the motion.

The only reason the bureau’s headquarters were shut down — employees were told not to report to work starting Feb. 10 — was the “disruptive protests involving the CFPB’s own staff” outside the building, Vought said.

“Remarkably, the CFPB employee groups and other Plaintiffs now spin these actions and others as being part of a “coordinated campaign by the new administration to eliminate” the CFPB, he said.

“Because the public has an interest in ensuring that an agency can carry out its statutory duties in line with the policy priorities of the democratically elected administration, the public interest and balance of the equities tip in Defendants’ favor,” the motion states.