People behind Consumer Protection Bureau firings 'also going to fire themselves': court filings
Politico legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney reports employees responsible for conducting Trump’s mass layoffs at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) are now "also going to fire themselves," per new emails released in court.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has already ordered nearly 1,500 employees fired from CFPB. This leaves only about 200 employees protecting consumers from unlawful digital theft and home-owners from being wrongfully ousted from their homes by disreputable loan practices.
Now what jobs still remain are cannibalizing themselves, according to filings.
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“We are three positions off, but we are reconciling it,” read an email from CFPB COO Adam Martinez. “My team doing all of the number/name crunching are running on low fuel and have not slept for a couple of days. They also happen to be RIFing themselves.”
“RIFing,” reports The New Republic, refers to “reduction in force,” a government term for layoffs.
Up until the DOGE eviscerations, the CFPB was the American consumer’s strongest ally. Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed the agency in 2007 in response to the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown and the subsequent worldwide financial crisis. It is an independent bureau within the Federal Reserve that intervenes on behalf of U.S. consumers.
Prior to DODGE, if enough alerts against a lending agency piled up at CFPB, the agency could launch its own investigation and scrutinize the company’s history and practices. In 2022, the CFPB whacked Wells Fargo with a $3.7 billion fine after discovering Wells Fargo had illegally assessed fees and interest charges on consumers’ loans, wrongly repossessed their properties, misapplied bank loans and hit consumers with unlawful surprise overdraft fees and other “incorrect charges.”
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Notches in CFPB’s belt also included ordering Navy Federal Credit Union to pay more than $95 million over illegal surprise overdraft fees charged to military servicemembers, veterans and consumers, despite customers’ bank accounts having sufficient funds at the time of purchases. Some college graduates may also recognize the name “Navient,” and be thankful CFPB banned Navient from servicing federal student loans after slapping the company with a $120 million fine for widespread student lending failures.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is known also for ordering lending company Mr. Cooper to cough up more than $70 million for wrongfully foreclosing on homeowners during reviews and impermissibly raising homeowners’ monthly payments and failing to honor mortgage payment arrangements.
Now gutted by DOGE, TNR reports the agency will no longer focus on protecting consumers making digital payments, people with medical debt, or those using peer-to-peer payday lending platforms.
Read the full TNR report here.
