Following the 2008 global financial crisis, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was established by Congress to reign in the subprime lending schemes and other bad practices that spurred the market implosion. Now, President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Russ Vought—who was confirmed as director of the Office of Management and Budget but also appointed by Trump as the acting head of CFPB—are attempting to dismember the financial watchdog.
Wired reported that dozens of CFPB employees were fired with generic emails Tuesday night and that DOGE’s assessment of CFPB’s internal systems is well underway. The remaining employees have been directed to cease all “enforcement actions.”
“RIP CFPB,” Musk posted on X last week, alongside a tombstone emoji.
Even before being elected as senator from Massachusetts, while she was still a Harvard Law School professor, Elizabeth Warren pitched the idea of the financial-protection bureau. Since its inception, the CFPB has enforced the accuracy of credit scores, penalized banks for junk fees, and restricted credit reporting agencies from including medical debt on credit reports, among other things. Warren’s advocacy of the enforcement agency helped her ascend in national politics to the Senate seat in 2012 that she now holds.
Amid a deluge of Wednesday reports about CFPB firings, I reached out to Sen. Warren about the stakes of the new administration’s dismantling of CFPB, their motivation, and what can be done to save it.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What prompted you to pitch the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?
We had plenty of consumer protection laws, but nobody to enforce them, and the consequence was that more lenders figured out how to cheat people. They ultimately triggered a financial crash and a meltdown that cost 10 million families their homes, and millions of people lost their savings and their jobs. The CFPB is the cop on the beat to make sure that giant banks and sleazy fly-by-night lenders
don’t cheat American families.
“The CFPB is the cop on the beat to make sure that giant banks and sleazy fly-by-night lenders
don’t cheat American families.”
Can you tell me about the CFPB’s successes?
This little agency has uncovered more than $21 billion in scams that big banks and other lenders have used to cheat American families, and when it found those scams, it made those banks return the money directly to the people they cheated. That has put $21 billion back into the pockets of American families. In addition to that, it has handled more than 6 million complaints and given consumers who’ve been tricked on a car loan or cheated on by a credit card company someone on their side to help them get their money back. This little agency has proven that we can make government work, not just for the rich and powerful, but we can make it work for all people.
Who benefits from DOGE’s attempt to destroy the CFPB?
Giant banks hated this agency from the first time I ever talked about it, and the reason is pretty straightforward: it bites into the profits they would make from cheating people. So getting rid of it looks like another profit opportunity for them. But there’s another reason that Republicans in particular have fought against the CFPB: It’s living proof that we can make government work. They want to make the argument every day that the government is bad, and if it just goes away, the whole country will run better. The CFPB shows we can put the government on the side of people and it can help level the playing field so that people can build some real economic security.
What do you think is motivating Musk and Trump to prioritize dismantling it?
One possibility is that they’re looking for a way to distract Americans from their real plans, which are not what they promised, [which was] cutting costs for American families. Instead, [they are] trying to ram through a big bill that would cut taxes for billionaires.
Musk has lost money hand over fist on X. So he has this idea of X [becoming] a big money platform where he would get everyone’s personal financial data. He faces one obstacle: the CFPB—the financial cops that make sure that he’s not cheating people and that he’s not sucking up their personal data that he’s not legally entitled to. He is moving to get the CFPB out of the way just before he launches his money platform. It’s a little like a bank robber managing to fire the cops just before he strolls into the lobby of the institution.
What recourse will working-class Americans have if lenders mistreat them and CFPB is gone?
Yesterday, the head of the Federal Reserve said [that] without the CFPB cops on the beat, there is no one making sure these scammers follow the law. That’s pretty scary. What Musk has done is illegal. The CFPB was created by Congress, and Congress—not Elon Musk, not Donald Trump—is the only one that can shut it down.
While running for president in 2020, you were known as the I-have-a-plan-for-that candidate. I’m curious if you have any plans to help save the CFPB now?
Yes, I have a plan, and it’s already the law. The CFPB cannot be shut down by Elon Musk, so we’re in the courts to make sure that Elon Musk and Donald Trump follow the law. The CFPB is still the law. It’s still funded. It’s still ready to go. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are illegally blocking it, and they need to get out of the way. The courts will enforce the law.
