A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ground to a halt over the weekend.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Under President Biden, the agency issued and enforced rules to cap overdraft fees and to remove medical bills from credit reports. Now employees have been told to stay home this week.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR personal finance correspondent Laurel Wamsley has been following this. So, Laurel, if the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cannot do its work, what does that mean for Americans?
LAUREL WAMSLEY, BYLINE: Well, it's quite troubling because the bureau is the country's consumer finance watchdog, and it's an enforcement agency. I've talked with several CFPB staff and former staff in recent days, and they named a few big concerns. One is that a new stop-work order from its new acting director halts the agency's supervision work. They said the agency has hundreds and hundreds of employees who go across the country, who go into companies and make sure they're following important consumer protections. As Julie Margetta Morgan, who was CFPB's associate director of research and monitoring till she left the agency last month, put it...
JULIE MARGETTA MORGAN: They're shutting down literally the cops on the beat.
WAMSLEY: They make sure your student loan company is actually processing your payments and that mortgage companies follow the rules put in place after the Great Recession. And there's a second big concern, which is that all of this is happening under Elon Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla and has talked about wanting his X company to be a whole commerce and payments platform. And now it looks like he has access to all of CFPB's records, including companies' proprietary information. That'd be a huge competitive advantage to someone like Musk. And, of course, there are worries that that sensitive information will be mishandled.
MARTÍNEZ: I mean, it's been a mile a minute with news out of the CFPB. What's the latest?
WAMSLEY: Yeah, it's been a tumultuous few days. On Friday, staff from Elon Musk's government efficiency team were seen at CFPB headquarters, and they've gained access to those key internal systems. Then, over the weekend, Trump tapped Russell Vought as the new acting director. Vought was an architect of the conservative policy agenda, Project 2025, and he sent an all-staff email ordering a halt to virtually all of their work.
Shortly thereafter, Vought posted on X that he would not be drawing the agency's next round of funding from the Federal Reserve. And then, just yesterday, an email was sent to all staff and contractors, saying that CFPB's D.C. headquarters would be closed for the week and that they have to work remotely.
MARTÍNEZ: All of this kind of sounds like what we've been seeing happening with USAID.
WAMSLEY: Totally. It appears to be the same playbook.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
WAMSLEY: I mean, both are independent agencies that this current administration appears to be trying to dismantle. Republicans have targeted the consumer protection agency for years, though. They've often accused its regulators of overreach. And then, on Friday, Musk tweeted, CFPB RIP.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, I saw that tweet. All right. So what happens now?
WAMSLEY: Well, staffers are just bracing themselves for whatever comes next. One told me that they went to the D.C. headquarters yesterday just to grab some personal items before the building closed for the week, and they weren't allowed in. And, you know, at USAID, the vast majority of staff were put on administrative leave before a federal judge put a hold on that. And last night, CFPB's union filed a lawsuit against Vought, the agency's new head.
In terms of that funding being slashed at CFPB, we actually saw the same thing happen during Trump's first term. But then, later on, they went back to taking the money. And the thing is that if this whole thing is being done for government efficiency, CFPB isn't really where you'd start. It has a relatively small budget, and since its launch in 2011, it's delivered more than $20 billion back to Americans.
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Laurel Wamsley. Thanks.
WAMSLEY: You're welcome.
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