As an employees union pursues a lawsuit against Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) leadership over an ordered halt to enforcement work and a one-week closure of its headquarters, the agency’s website, despite scattered reports to the contrary, remains online – at least for the time being.
Russell Vought, nominated by President Donald Trump (R) and recently confirmed by the Senate as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), reportedly has been named acting director of the consumer bureau, replacing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Reports said that Vought over the weekend instructed staff to cease all supervision and enforcement work, told staff that the agency’s headquarters would be closed for a week, and said he won’t be drawing on any additional funding (which is provided by the Federal Reserve).
A suit filed Sunday by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) calls Vought’s actions unlawful and seeks to stop further efforts to halt the bureau’s supervision and enforcement work. The NTEU said it represents “over 1,000 frontline” employees at the bureau.
The weekend brought a few reports of the CFPB’s website “going dark,” but while the home page includes the message “404: Page not found,” all the information available previously appears to remain. The latest press release shown is from Feb. 3, regarding Bessent’s designation Jan. 31 as the bureau’s acting director (nothing there yet about Vought). Meanwhile, no new enforcements have been published since the bureau’s consent order Jan. 30 for a $2.025 million civil money penalty against Wise US, Inc., a nonbank remittance transfer provider headquartered in New York, N.Y., and ordering $450,000 in consumer redress. (The bureau said Wise violated the Consumer Financial Protection Act’s prohibition on deceptive acts and practices and violated the Electronic Fund Transfer Act and its implementing Regulation E, including the Prepaid Rule and the Remittance Transfer Rule.)
Other developments since the agency’s transition to new leadership include cancellations of a previously scheduled meeting of the bureau’s Consumer Advisory Board (CAB) and joint meeting of the CFPB Community Bank Advisory Council (CBAC) and Credit Union Advisory Council (CUAC). The two public meetings had been set for Feb. 11 and 12, respectively.
CFPB enforcement action (Wise US Inc.)
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