The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the agency created to serve as a watchdog for American consumers against predatory business practices, said on Thursday it planned to dismiss as much as 90% of its remaining workforce, resuming mass firings less than a week after a federal court ruling granted the Trump administration leeway in setting staff levels.
Multiple agency sources said staff members had begun receiving formal notices on Thursday afternoon. A CFPB spokesperson confirmed the agency was moving to fire roughly 1,500 people across core divisions, including enforcement and supervision, leaving only 200 staff. Fox Business had earlier reported those numbers.
The workforce action comes in the middle of legal action brought by an employee union and consumer advocates working to prevent what they said was the agency’s illegal destruction.
In an emergency motion filed Thursday evening, lawyers for an employee union and consumer advocates told a federal judge the CFPB was flouting court orders requiring a “particularized assessment” prior to any such workforce reductions and that the agency retain enough staff to perform functions required by law.
“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,” they said in the motion.
According to one official notice seen by Reuters, the agency said the recipient’s dismissal would take effect in 60 days but that access to internal email systems and IT systems would be cut off on Friday evening.
President Donald Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk called earlier this year for the CFPB’s elimination, accusing it of politicized enforcement, and with a court hearing showing the administration’s initial goal was to shut the agency down entirely.
However, administration officials subsequently said the CFPB would continue to exist in some form, noting that Trump has nominated a new director.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Created after the 2008 financial crisis, the CFPB is the sole federal agency with power to enforce consumer financial laws at nonbank institutions such as mortgage originators and payment services. The agency, long criticized by conservatives, has been facing an onslaught of firings and changes under President Donald Trump.
An appeals court last week partially reversed a decision handed down by a district court that ordered the administration to halt efforts to fire workers, scrap contracts and close offices.
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who championed the creation of the CFPB, earlier this year said no one other than Congress could dismantle the agency and criticized Republican attempts to weaken the agency that has paid $21 billion in financial restitution to thousands of Americans.
In a statement, Warren called the mass firings “yet another assault on consumers and our democracy by this lawless Administration.”
(Additional reporting and writing by Pete Schroeder)
—Douglas Gillison and Tim Reid, Reuters