Save the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau!
Every day, the dedicated employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) work to protect American consumers from predatory financial practices and ensure a fair marketplace. Now, as Elon Musk and his allies gain unprecedented access to sensitive CFPB data and call for the agency’s elimination, we’re standing together to protect our vital mission. We have returned over $19 billion to consumers at a cost of $0 to taxpayers. We’re united in our mission to serve the public, and we won’t let wealthy special interests compromise the consumer protections Americans count on. Join us as we stand strong for the CFPB and its essential mission of consumer protection. Your voice matters in this fight.
Don’t let Musk and his DOGE lackeys shut us down.
11 am - 1 pm, outside CFPB headquarters
1700 G St NW
Washington, DC
In an email early Friday morning, CFPB staff were told that several people from DOGE—including Nikhil Rajpal and Gavin Kliger (along with Chris Young, who has been described as a Republican political adviser connected with Elon Musk)—entered the agency building Thursday evening. The email stated that they would require access to CFPB data, systems, and equipment, following a message sent Thursday by CFPB chief operating officer Adam Martinez confirming that the DOGE employees were to receive “read-only” access.
Earlier this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was confirmed as CFPB’s acting director following the firing of former head Rohit Chopra. When Bessent took over earlier this week, staff members were told to stop all of the agency’s work “unless expressly approved by the Acting Director or required by law,” according to an internal email shared with NPR.
Russell Vought took over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Friday night, adding another twist at the banking watchdog that has landed in the crosshairs of Republicans and Elon Musk. Vought, who Thursday was confirmed by the Senate as the head of the Office of Management and Budget, is now the acting director of the CFPB, he emailed to top staff at the agency. The new leader comes days after Trump fired the Biden-era leader and put in place Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who immediately froze the agency’s work. Musk earlier Friday had posted “CFPB RIP” on his X social-media platform with an emoji of a tombstone. The Friday evening email from Vought ordered the DOGE officials to be granted access to all “non-classified” CFPB systems.
CFPB union NTEU 355 issued an initial, fiery statement that was replaced by a more sobering one:
CFPB Union NTEU 335 Members are alarmed about the implications of these reports for the CFPB’s sensitive, nonpublic data. For example, the CFPB has gathered a wealth of proprietary information from big tech payment platforms that could be exploited by someone with a conflict of interest to corner the payments industry. A potential breach could also have serious ramifications for banks and other CFPB-supervised institutions that incur significant costs to both safeguard their customer’s personally identifiable information (PII) and meet their obligations under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) and other consumer financial laws.