Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Monday slammed the Trump administration’s reported efforts to shutter the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) as “another scam.”
“If you have a bank account, or a credit card, or a mortgage, or a student loan — this is a code red,” Warren said in a video posted on the social platform X. “I am ringing the alarm bell.”
“Elon Musk and the guy who wrote Project 2025, [Office of Management and Budget Director] Russ Vought, are trying to kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” she continued.
“If they succeed, CEOs on Wall Street will once again be free to trick, trap, and cheat you.”
Warren, who helped establish the CFPB before joining Congress, criticized a series of steps taken over the weekend that have left the agency largely nonfunctional.
Trump appointed Vought as acting CFPB director Friday, shortly after he was confirmed as director of the Office of Management and Budget. He took the place of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who had similarly issued a stop-work order during his brief stint in charge of the agency.
Vought ordered employees to “cease all supervision and examination activity” on Saturday, according to The Washington Post. That same day, he announced the CFPB would not be taking its next drawdown of funding from the Federal Reserve.
The CFPB’s chief operating officer, Adam Martinez, reportedly told employees Sunday that the agency’s headquarters would be closed through Friday. On Monday, Vought ordered staff “not to perform any work tasks this week,” according to Business Insider.
Employees affiliated with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have also gained access to the CFPB’s data, according to Bloomberg.
“So why are these two guys trying to gut the CFPB?” Warren asked Monday. “It’s not rocket science: Trump campaigned on helping working people, but now that he’s in charge, this is the payoff to the rich guys who invested in his campaign and who want to cheat families — and not have anybody around to stop them.”
“After the 2008 financial crash and the big bank bailout, Congress created the CFPB to protect people from getting swindled,” she added. “For years, Republicans have tried and tried again to repeal it in Congress — and they have failed every single time. Congress built the CFPB, and no one other than Congress — not the president, not Musk, not Vought — can shut it down.”
Republicans have opposed the CFPB since its creation, suing the agency on numerous occasions in an effort to declare it unconstitutional. It has so far survived, with the Supreme Court rejecting yet another challenge over the CFPB’s funding structure last May.
