By Allison Preiss and Erin Witte | April 8, 2025
This week marks two months since President Trump’s hand-picked OMB Director—and Project 2025 henchman—Russell Vought assumed control of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Since taking over, Vought has illegally fired staff, halted the Bureau’s critical work, and pardoned corporate lawbreakers and repeat offenders, creating chaos in the marketplace and sending the message that it is open season for fraudsters to cheat Americans.
If a neutered CFPB wasn’t bad enough—and as Trump’s typical recklessness threatens to throw the entire U.S. economy in a tailspin—this week the U.S. House of Representatives is preparing to follow in the footsteps of the U.S. Senate and overturn two CFPB actions that are squarely aimed at protecting Americans from fraud on Big Tech payment platforms and save them billions in overdraft fees.
Here’s what Trump’s CFPB has and hasn’t done in the last two months:
What Trump’s CFPB Hasn’t Done
- Examined a single large financial institution—banks and other depository institutions with total assets of more than $10 billion—for compliance with federal consumer financial protection laws.
- Examined a single nonbank entity, which includes “nondepository mortgage originators and servicers, payday lenders, and private student lenders of all sizes,” and “larger participants of other consumer financial markets as defined by CFPB rules. To date, this includes larger participants in the following markets: consumer reporting, consumer debt collection, student loan servicing, international money transfer, and automobile financing.”
- Enforced the law in a way that actually helps consumers:
- Since Acting Director Vought took control of the CFPB, the agency has not announced a single settlement that would deliver monetary or other relief to Americans.
- In early February, Acting Director Vought issued a stop-work order telling staff to stop work on pending enforcement actions and refrain from opening new ones. It is unclear whether CFPB enforcement staff have been allowed to resume any substantive work investigating lawbreaking—work that has so far has returned nearly $20 billion to Americans.
- On average, the CFPB has returned $4.24 million to Americans every day since opening its doors, meaning that the CFPB could have returned more than $260 million to consumers since Russell Vought took over. Instead, it has returned $0.
- It is unclear whether the CFPB is monitoring defendants in enforcement settlements for compliance with their court orders.
- It is unclear whether the CFPB is shielding Americans from cyclical lawbreaking by repeat offenders.
- Ensured that Americans harmed by unscrupulous actors received the restitution they are legally entitled to in a timely manner–including $100 million to borrowers harmed by Navient and $4.24 million to students harmed by Prehired, which appears to have relaunched as the same scam under the name FastTrack.
- Provided educational resources to empower military families about financial products and services. Recent reporting revealed that the CFPB’s Office of Servicemember Affairs (OSA) representatives did not show up to a prescheduled financial education event for soldiers and their families, and that OSA employees are receiving conflicting directions about whether they are permitted to do their work to help military families.
What Trump’s CFPB Has Done
- Handed out corporate pardons worth more than $3 billion to corporations facing damning evidence that they violated the law and cheated consumers. Of the 11 cases that were permanently dismissed without holding the defendants accountable to consumers—including Moneygram, which the CFPB withdrew from just yesterday—eight involved repeat offenders. Repeat offenders are companies that have a history of violating the law and that have already paid almost $7 billion as a result of prior enforcement actions from the CFPB and other regulators.
- Created a backlog of more than 16,000 consumer complaints, including urgent foreclosure cases, by sidelining the CFPB’s consumer response team.
- Sanctioned redlining conduct by taking steps to undo a consent order against Chicago mortgage lender Townstone for discouraging Black applicants from applying for credit. Trump’s CFPB is now attempting to give money back to Townstone rather than penalize its illegal conduct.
- Opened the CFPB’s heavily safeguarded and sensitive data systems to members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team without requiring background checks, ethics vetting, or security clearances.
- Tried to eviscerate the CFPB by illegally firing staff, then raced to implement an expedited Reduction in Force for the majority of remaining staff in order to preempt a court-ordered injunction against the mass firings.
- Gave payday lenders an open-ended free pass to violate laws that protect borrowers from abusive payday lending debt traps. Trump’s CFPB announced in an unsigned blog that it does not intend to enforce the Payday Lending Rule, part of which took effect on March 30.
- Signaled the CFPB’s intent to walk back a rule that would save consumers $10 billion per year in credit card penalty fees.
- Broke the CFPB homepage for weeks and deleted the CFPB’s official Twitter/X account.
The Trump-led CFPB’s refusal to comply with the law and perform its Congressionally-mandated duties, combined with the steps that Washington leadership is taking to actively harm consumers and reward wealthy billionaires, are a dangerous combination that should be immediately reversed to avoid another economic meltdown.
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Allison Preiss is a senior fellow at the Student Borrower Protection Center. Erin Witte is the director of consumer protection at Consumer Federation of America.