U.S. President Donald Trump's administration on Thursday dealt what advocates fear could be a fatal blow to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by moving to fire 90% of its workforce, gutting an agency that has returned tens of billions of dollars to Americans defrauded by corporate abusers.
With no advance notice, roughly 1,500 CFPB employees received news Thursday afternoon that they're being fired, a major step toward billionaire Trump lieutenant Elon Musk's stated goal of deleting the bureau. The mass terminations, if upheld, would leave the CFPB with a "skeleton crew" of around 200 staffers.
"This is another assault on consumers and our democracy by Trump's lawless administration," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a key driving force behind the creation of the CFPB in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. "We will fight back with everything we've got."
The so-called reduction-in-force (RIF) notices came days after a federal court issued an order requiring the CFPB—currently headed by far-right Project 2025 architect Russell Vought—to conduct a "particularized assessment" for employees it wants to terminate.
"Today's RIF notice is not just an attack on the hardworking professionals who serve as our financial advocates, it is an assault on the financial prosperity of the American people."
The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents CFPB staffers, said Thursday that it appears likely the bureau's leadership did not comply with the court order.
"Today's RIF notice is not just an attack on the hardworking professionals who serve as our financial advocates, it is an assault on the financial prosperity of the American people," said NTEU president Doreen Greenwald. "Make no mistake, the impacts of having less supervision of financial institutions will signal economic insecurity for many across this nation—and that’s exactly what this administration wants."
In a court filing on Thursday, NTEU argued it is "unfathomable that cutting the bureau's staff by 90% in just 24 hours, with no notice
to people to prepare for that elimination, would not 'interfere with the performance' of its statutory duties, to say nothing of the implausibility of the defendants having made a 'particularized assessment' of each employee's role in the three-and-a-half business days since the court of appeals imposed that requirement."
A federal court hearing on the RIF, which one journalist called "a victory for scammers," is scheduled for 11:00 ET on Friday.
The American Prospect's David Dayen noted Thursday that "there are at least 87 legal responsibilities under the purview of CFPB in the U.S. code, 13 of which require specific offices."
"The RIF leaves around 200 employees in place to carry out those 87 responsibilities, which stretches credulity," Dayen wrote.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, corporate power director at Demand Progress Education Fund, said in a statement Thursday that the Trump administration is "systematically gutting all efforts to protect service members, and all Americans, from fraud and scams while simultaneously letting Wall Street, Big Banks, and Big Tech off the hook."
"If the administration actually cared about them," said Peterson-Cassin, "they wouldn't have fired most of the people responsible for protecting them."