The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau stopped performing its oversight duties as soon as Trump appointed Scott Bessent as acting head, fulfilling the wishes of the country’s most powerful civilian, billionaire Elon Musk.
Bessent, who also serves as Treasury secretary, sent a mass email to CFPB staff instructing them to stop all regulatory work, stop enforcing any rules, and stop conducting investigations due to the need to “promote consistency” and align politically with the rest of the Trump administration, according to The Washington Post. The agency has also halted all public communications.
After Trump’s re-election, Musk called for lawmakers to “delete” the CFPB, stating that there were “too many duplicative regulatory agencies.” Republicans have long taken aim at the CFPB, with Cruz recently introducing a bill to defund what he called an “unelected, unaccountable bureaucratic agency.”
The CFPB took initiative against predatory lending and hidden fees under its previous head Rohit Chopra, and also increased its surveillance of large tech companies like Apple and Google. But with Chopra out and Bessent in, those days are over.
“Shutting down CFPB enforcement actions that are on the verge of delivering money into the pockets of working people is at odds with President Trump’s claim that he wants to lower costs for families — which he has done next to nothing on so far,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, who played a key role in creating the CFPB in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
The actions Warren mentioned are now essentially null and void, as Trump’s mass deregulation efforts continue.
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