Musk team's blitz on Consumer Financial agency unsettles Trump allies

From the moment the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau opened its doors in the summer of 2011, powerful critics have wanted to rein it in — and the regulator was one of the very first targets of Elon Musk's scorched-earth overhaul of the US government.

Since Musk vowed to "delete" the agency, hundreds of its workers have lost their jobs. Enforcement activity has ground to a halt. President Donald Trump boasted that his administration had "virtually shut down CFPB."

Yet some Trump aides and advisers fear that Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is moving too fast and breaking too many things. 

Trump allies including Russell Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget and acting director of the CFPB, were seen as concerned that DOGE's lack of discipline could undermine efforts to neuter the agency, according to three people briefed on the situation who weren't authorized to speak publicly. The worry is that the Musk team's haphazard actions could be challenged in court — and allow a muscular CFPB to live on.

"You can't just close an agency Congress created," said Norbert Michel, who leads the policy group on financial regulation at the libertarian Cato Institute, in regard to Musk's effort to permanently eliminate the agency. "You won't win that fight in the end."

A spokesperson for Vought denied any tensions exist, stating, "this story is false and another ax-to-grind story against DOGE."

Musk's team has been engaged in a rapid-fire reshaping of the US government since Trump's inauguration. DOGE workers have fanned out across the federal bureaucracy, firing thousands of workers, terminating contracts and pulling the plug on programs that they say are out of step with the president's agenda.

The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, a conservative roadmap laid out before the presidential election, called for Congress to abolish the agency, though DOGE's chaotic takeover has cut out lawmakers.

Working out of the basement of CFPB headquarters in Washington, DOGE employees have spent the past two weeks combing through the agency's contracts, asking a handful of CFPB employees which are required by congressional statute, as they seek to cut costs and then publicize those efforts, according to people familiar with the effort.

When DOGE employees showed up at CFPB, they left staffers with the impression that they weren't sure what the agency did, according to people familiar with the matter. The DOGE team has questioned whether CFPB needs to keep its office leases, including for its headquarters down the street from the White House. The CFPB signage is now gone from that building.

"Defunding the police that watches over Wall Street and Big Tech will cost consumers billions of dollars," said former CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. "The only ones who benefit from shutting down the CFPB are companies that break the law."

Work Stopped

So far, Musk's team has fired roughly 200 of the CFPB's 1,700 employees, according to people familiar with the agency. Vought instructed remaining staff not to do any work unless cleared through a lawyer for the Office of Management and Budget, according to emails included in court filings by the National Treasury Employees Union.

The CFPB has paused all litigation and enforcement actions. Recently, the agency's consumer call line, which fields more than 1 million complaints a year, was offline briefly as DOGE started to dig more into the bureau, according to people familiar with the agency.

"There are no cops on the beat now," said Julie Morgan, a former associate director of research, monitoring, and regulations at the agency who resigned last month. "From where I sit, consumers are left completely unprotected."

On Feb. 11, shortly after Vought took over, three top CFPB officials were placed on administrative leave and ordered to halt work: Deputy Director Zixta Martinez; Lorelei Salas, assistant director for supervision policy; and Eric Halperin, assistant director for the Office of Enforcement. Salas and Halperin subsequently resigned.

CFPB workers have been left with the impression that the Trump administration's goal is to turn CFPB into a shell of itself, with only a handful of officials left as required by law, according to people familiar with DOGE's work at the agency.

On Feb. 13, the bureau eliminated a team of roughly two dozen market and policy fellows, many recruited from Wall Street firms and fintech companies, including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Credit Karma Inc. Several of the former employees said they often worked directly with CEOs and other top executives to maintain transparency and design policies to avoid unnecessary complications. 

"The bureau was designed with the idea that a modern regulatory agency needs to be financially literate and savvy about markets," said Doug Simons, a former managing director at UBS and Credit Suisse who served as a senior markets and policy fellow at the CFPB and was among those terminated from the agency last week. "We spent a lot of time talking to executives, understanding how their products and businesses worked."

CFPB officials who left after Trump's election say the summary dismissal of the private-sector market experts could also have negative effects for small and mid-sized businesses.

"A core part of their work was doing outreach with industry to discuss market developments, areas where industry wanted more guidance, and to hear about challenges small and nascent firms were experiencing," said Jan Singelmann, Chopra's former chief of staff.

In Limbo

Musk, the world's richest man and CEO of automaker Tesla Inc., has indicated that he plans to offer digital payments through his social media platform, X, and he has repeatedly criticized the CFPB, which oversees payment firms, for interfering with private-sector companies. 

The CFPB, which was the brainchild of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, flexed its muscles under Biden, pursuing cases against major companies ranging from retailer Walmart Inc. to credit-card giant Capital One Financial Corp. Now, the bureau and its remaining staff are in limbo. 

Following Vought's stop-work order, the agency's supervision division — which oversees consumer financial activities at the country's biggest banks and financial technology companies — was told to stand down. Much of the CFPB's research has also been put on hold, including analysis of the credit-card industry and work on the housing market and risky mortgages. 

The CFPB's former chief technologist alleged in a legal filing that the Trump administration is on the verge of deleting a database with sensitive financial information. A judge temporarily blocked the deletion of any files, and also barred the administration from dismissing any additional workers until early March. 

Warren, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, plans to hold a hearing on Tuesday to highlight the agency's consumer protection work. She has invited Musk to attend the hearing and learn about the agency's accomplishments. By Friday evening, he had not RSVP'd.