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CFPB lawsuits with crucial Monday hearing [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-01

This shouldn't be happening. There are two lawsuits against the Trump administration that should be halting this.

The first one is National Treasury Employees Union v. Russell Vought. The second is Mayor and City Council of Baltimore et. al. v. CFPB.

The planned mass firings of 1700 employees has been known for weeks, leaving a skeleton crew to handle doing nothing. The Treasury Employees case has a hearing on Monday.

Alex Doe, a pseudonym, said that the firings would be in three stages. First to go are the probationary employees, which I'm surprised are still there, and term employees. Then layoff 1200 employees, leaving just a few hundred.

"Finally the Bureau would 'reduce altogether' within 60-90 days by terminating most of the remaining staff."

The CFPB has been a prime target for Musk and DOGE. Last year, Musk, along with Zuckerberg, tried to shut down the agency by having it declared unconstitutional due to its funding coming from the Federal Reserve instead of Congressional appropriations. The whole point of that arrangement was to insulate it from political tides.

Now Musk doesn't have to deal with that avenue of attack since Russell Vought is in charge and is actively dismantling it by first, stopping all enforcement actions, stopping any new regulations from being created, and stopping supervision of entities found having broken the rules. Then employees were told they couldn't talk to the outside world.

Another anonymous employee said, "CFPB leadership has also been apparently lying to us that it will allow us to follow the law and our statutory obligations to protect consumers. Those of us employed at the CFPB will not stop fighting for our right to get back to the work of protecting consumers that Congress has required of us."

In a 40 page motion Vought filed last Monday, he contended that he was not shuttering the Bureau, but merely streamlining it. Leaving 10% to do job of 100% is not "streamlining." You are asking the impossible, unless you are trying to neuter it's ability to function.

There's a section in Project 2025 called Financial Regulatory Agencies.You can read it here. It's got three pages of how to shut the CFPB down and a criticism of money that they have saved consumers at a cost to fraudulent businesses. Businesses to them are always the good guys, consumers are the bad guys. They want you to be vulnerable to being ripped off.

The plan is to reduce the force down to the statutorially required five employees, and they would be in an office with a phone, possibly housed in another agency.

In all of Trump's executive orders there is always this codicl that says that all the things we're doing, is to get rid of it, except where required by law. That's the five employees in this case.

On the 27th, there was a nomination hearing for a new head of the CFPB, Jonathan McKernan. He is a former board member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, FDIC. It did not go well for him. Sen. Reed from Rhode Island said that he had a sinking feeling that McKernan was departing from Liverpool on the Titanic.

Senator Elizabeth Warren rolled off all the enforcement actions that had been stopped. Capital One is now going to get away with $2 billion it was going to have to pay back to consumers scammed by their saving deposit scheme. Rocket Homes in a illegal kickback scheme to real estate agents. Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency was collecting money on student loans that they did not owe and for reporting false information to credit reporting agencies. There's a lot more.

Here's a list of the enforcement actions that you won't find on the CFPB website. It's hidden.

The City of Baltimore is suing about the fact that Russell Vought told the Federal Reserve not to send the CFPB any more money, essentially defunding the agency. The suit says that the federally mandated functions of the Bureau can't be met without funding. Pretty simple.

Yesterday, Judge Matthew J. Maddox put a restraining order to stop any further actions in place until March 14th. Now we see what happens if Musk and DOGE don't follow a court order. CFPB cannot refuse funding.

The Treasury employees' case lays out the whole operation of the CFPB and the illegal things Vought has done since he took over. Their immediate need is to stop the firings.

There was an enormous amount of documentation filed yesterday including statements by employees and amicus briefs.

The Monday hearing on the Treasury case will be important to fight the firings in other departments, agencies and bureaus. If they win, we all win. Let's hope they get a permanent restraining order.

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