A new acting director. Freezes on any rulemaking, enforcement, or supervisory activities. Attempts to dismantle the department from within. In the span of a short forty-eight hours, the CFPB has faced possibly the greatest threat to its continued existence. What remains to be seen is what Congress does, if anything, to either protect the Bureau or dismantle it completely. Here’s what has happened in a busy week at the CFPB and what, potentially, comes next.
Another New Acting Director
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s time as acting director of the CFPB was short lived, as Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought assumed the acting director title late on Friday. Acting Director Vought is one of the architects of Project 2025, which has called for the abolishment of the Bureau itself:
Congress should abolish the CFPB and reverse Dodd–Frank Section 1061, thus returning the consumer protection function of the CFPB to banking regulators and the Federal Trade Commission. Provided the Supreme Court affirms the Fifth Circuit holding in Community Financial Services Association of America, the next conservative President should order the immediate dissolution of the agency—pull down its prior rules, regulations and guidance, return its staff to their prior agencies and its building to the General Services Administration.
Until this can be accomplished, however, Congress should… require that no CFPB funds are spent on enforcement actions that are not based on a rulemaking that complies with the Administrative Procedure Act.
While only Congress can abolish a federal agency, Acting Director Vought has various tools at his disposal to hamstring the Bureau internally should he so choose, some of which he has already utilized. For instance, less than one day on the job, Acting Director Vought requested a budget of $0 for the Bureau for the third quarter of 2025, (something then Acting Director Mick Mulvaney tried to do a few years ago), saying that the Bureau currently has over $700 million in the bank, and additional funding is not “reasonably necessary” to carry out its duties. Acting Director Vought also closed the CFPB headquarters and decreed that all CFPB employees work remotely this upcoming week; an interesting development given the Trump Administration’s return to office mandates for most of the rest of the federal government workforce.
He also continued the across-the-board freeze first implemented by prior Acting Director Bessent which would inhibit all rulemaking and enforcement activity at the Bureau for the foreseeable future (although at least one career appointment at the Bureau interpreted this freeze as permitting continued discovery in pending actions). This freeze has started to spill over into active litigation as well. For instance, the Bureau recently agreed to pause the effective date of its Final Rule on medical debt reporting.
DOGE: A Potential End-Around Congress?
Not only does the Bureau now have an acting director who is hostile to the Bureau’s continued existence, but Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team has taken control of the Bureau’s systems and gone to work dismantling certain aspects of the Bureau from within. Musk, a critic of the Bureau itself, made his intentions clear when he tweeted “CFPB RIP” with a tombstone emoji on X on Friday. Numerous critics have complained that Musk has various conflicts of interest with his various businesses and enterprises and overseeing the consumer watchdog, but the Trump Administration previously indicated that Musk would self-determine when and where a potential conflict existed.
Regardless, once inside the CFPB, the DOGE team quickly went to work. For instance, the Bureau’s homepage no longer exists (although other pages on the Bureau’s website still work). The DOGE team likewise deleted the CFPB’s X account. While the DOGE team purportedly only has read-only access to the Bureau’s systems, it is clear they are looking to dismantle as much of the Bureau as fast as they can, following in the footsteps of their actions at other agencies. While the DOGE team’s actions at other agencies have been temporarily placed on hold pending various lawsuits, expect similar challenges to its actions at the CFPB.
Don’t Expect Congress to Save the Bureau.
Only Congress, not the Executive branch, has the power to abolish a federal agency. But the President can propose a “reorganization plan” for Congress to consider. Indeed, pursuant to federal law, “[t]he President shall from time to time examine the organization of all agencies and shall determine what changes in such organization are necessary to carry out any policy… .” Even then, however, it most likely would take a filibuster-proof vote to approve any reorganization of the CFPB.
However, Congress does not have to take any action with respect to Acting Director Vought or the DOGE team’s actions at the Bureau. And given that Congress is currently controlled by the Republican Party, it’s a fair bet that Congress looks the other way regarding any actions taken internally to hamstring or limit the Bureau’s actions and goals.
Instead, Congress appears to be looking to limit the CFPB as well, recently announcing legislation designed to bring the Bureau to the traditional congressional appropriations process, and thus controlling how much funding the Bureau receives in a given year (as opposed to its current funding structure where it receives a set amount annually through the Fed).
With little help from Congress expected, CFPB employees have taken matters into their own hands, as the National Treasury Employees Union filed two lawsuits against Acting Director Vought. The first lawsuit challenges Acting Director Vought’s takeover of the CFPB, alleging that his actions to halt all work at the Bureau constitutes executive branch overreach. The second lawsuit challenges DOGE’s access to potentially sensitive data maintained by the Bureau.
Most people assumed the CFPB would look vastly different under a second Trump Administration compared to the aggressive oversight and activities it undertook during the Chopra era. And that has come to fruition in dramatic, rapid fashion as the Bureau attempts to weather both internal and external threats to its very existence.