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Russell Vought, Donald Trump’s newly installed acting head of the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, announced on Saturday he had cut off the agency’s budget and reportedly instructed staff to suspend all activities including the supervision of companies overseen by the agency.
Reuters and NBC News reported that Vought wrote a memo to employees saying he had taken on the role of acting head of the agency, an independent watchdog that was founded in 2011 as an arm of the Federal Reserve to promote fairness in the financial sector.
Vought, who was confirmed on a party line vote last week to lead the office of management and budget, also announced on Saturday evening on Elon Musk’s social media platform X that he was zeroing out the CFPB’s funding for the next fiscal quarter, saying the more than $700m in cash on hand was sufficient.
In his Saturday missive, Vought ordered staff to “cease all supervision and examination activity”, going a step further than a directive issued last week by the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, whom Trump had briefly put in charge after firing Rohit Chopra.
The CFPB, which Congress created in the wake of the 2008 financial crash, supervises consumer-facing financial companies like banks, title lenders, mortgage originators and cash transfer services to prevent unfair, deceptive and abusive practices and other predatory conduct.
Vought’s order leaves much of that business activity without federal government oversight.
The weekend moves continued a lighting advance by Trump and billionaire Elon Musk to remake the federal government that drew protests from agency workers on Saturday morning and condemnation from top Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Musk, whose platform X is seeking to enter the consumer financial marketplace, has said in the past he would “delete” the agency responsible for consumer protection. Representatives of his “department of government efficiency” have been granted administrative-level access to all of the agency’s IT systems, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Union officials said on Friday that Musk was effectively seeking to seize control of his own regulator.
In a statement, Dennis Kelleher, head of Better Markets, which advocates for stricter government oversight of the financial sector, accused Trump of throwing his own voters “to the financial wolves.”.
“This latest attempt to kill the consumer bureau is another slap in the face for all Americans who depend on basic financial products and services, but especially for those in the multi-racial working-class coalition of Americans that helped elect President Trump,” Kelleher said.
