How America's chief consumer-protection agency came into the Trump administration's crosshairs
When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau made an appearance in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint, the conservative group’s plan was simple: Abolish it entirely.
When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau made an appearance in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint, the conservative group’s plan was simple: Abolish it entirely.
Now, with a Project 2025 co-author in charge of the bureau, that idea looks like a real possibility.
Over the weekend, Russ Vought, President Donald Trump’s pick to head the powerful Office of Management and Budget, took over as de facto head of the agency and subsequently ordered all nonessential work there to stop. Vought is one of more than 30 co-authors of Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint for the Trump administration’s agenda, though he did not write the section on the CFPB.
“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is arguably the most powerful and unaccountable regulatory agency in existence,” the report states.
Whether the bureau is rendered toothless by its new leadership or abolished by congressional action, its emergence as a target for conservative ire has been years in the making, boosted most recently by technology executives including Elon Musk and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. Created by Democrats, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, in the wake of the Great Recession, the CFPB lodged steady but largely unglamorous wins for consumers.
Rating: 5