More than 1,400 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) workers were terminated Thursday due to a wider government agency of independent government agencies, sources told Wired. CFPB has a total of approximately 1,700 employees.
Massive reduction or massive reduction of RIF for a month after federal judges issued temporary restraining orders, banning the Trump administration from dismissing probation employees at the CFPB and other agencies. On Friday, the Court of Appeal ruled that the CFPB could start termination again as long as it was conducted for each terminated employee. About 200 employees will remain at the CFPB, effectively covering up the agency that Elon Musk previously said should be “deleted”.
CFPB chief legal officer Mark Paoletta announced in an email to CFPB employees that the agency will shift its focus from the supervisory role to “real harm to consumers.” Medical debt, student loans, consumer data and digital payments are all identified as subjects of CFPB’s “deprived”. The document says.
“It affects every office to a certain extent to my knowledge, at least some of them have been completely wiped out,” said a terminated CFPB worker. “My guess is that by the end there will be only a few leadership positions as well as skeleton staff, obviously a function required by the bureau’s legally.
The CFPB was established by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, a broad legislation that implemented regulatory reforms with consequences after the 2008 financial crisis. The agency was created to protect consumers from unfair or deceptive financial practices and claimed to be responsible for $19.7 billion in consumer relief and $5 billion in civil penalties since its inception
“They didn’t follow the CBA [collective bargaining agreement]did not follow Dodd-Frank, nor did he provide enough notice to anyone.
Musk and other conservatives have called for the destruction of the CFPB for some time. The 2025 project’s chapter on financial regulators describes it as a “highly politicized, harmful and totally irresponsible federal agency” and calls for the abolition of it. In February, Musk wrote “RIP CFPB” in his tombstone emoji in X post. In November, he published “Delete CFPB”.
In February, Wired reported that three gatekeeper agents, including Gavin Kliger and Nikhil Rajpal, gained access to CFPB’s human resources, procurement and financial infrastructure. Bloomberg reported that on Friday, the Governor’s workers were subsequently granted access to all systems of the agency, including bank exams and law enforcement records. Further requests for Doge Access throughout the month.
“Don’t focus on their comments on CFPB, but pay attention to what they do,” Emily Peterson-Cassin, corporate power director at Demand Progress Education Fund, said in response to the cuts on Thursday. “What they are doing is systematically covering up all efforts to protect service members and all Americans from fraud and scams while making Wall Street, big banks and big technology stand out.”
