The Trump administration is all but eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), firing nearly 90% of its employees, according to several reports.
About 1,500 of the agency’s 1,700 workers will be let go, Fox Business (FOXA) reported. Employees started receiving layoff notices on Thursday.
“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau identified your position being eliminated and your employment is subject to termination in accordance with reduction-in-force (RIF) procedures,” said an email to a CFPB employee obtained by the Associated Press.
The CFPB, a watchdog agency meant to protect U.S. consumers from financial fraud and abuse, was created in the wake of the 2008-2009 financial crisis. It has helped consumers obtain $20 billion in financial relief in the form of canceled debts, compensation, and reduced loans.
On Wednesday, the CFPB’s chief legal officer sent a letter to its employees explaining that the agency would be reallocating resources from enforcement that can be done by the states, according to a Wall Street Journal reporter.
The move is the latest by Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to cut federal spending by eliminating jobs. The administration has already eliminated or is in the process of eliminating tens of thousands of roles, including 10,000 jobs in the Department of Health and Human Services, 1,300 roles in the Department of Education, 10,000 positions in the U.S. Postal Service, and 80,000 jobs in the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The National Treasury Employees Union asked a federal judge to stop the CFPB layoffs in a letter on Thursday.
“It is unfathomable that cutting the Bureau’s staff by 90 percent 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,” the union wrote.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who helped form the CFPB, said in a statement that Trump was preventing the agency from doing “its job of helping Americans who get scammed by big banks and giant corporations.” She referred to the move as “yet another assault on consumers and our democracy by this lawless administration,” adding “we will fight back with everything we’ve got.”
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