Some employees from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were dismissed following a court decision that paved the way for layoffs. Here, the members and supporters of the CFPB union gather outside the headquarters of the CFPB last month in Washington, DC
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Alex Wong / Getty Images / Getty Images North America
Employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have started to receive dismissal notices, the Trump’s last attempt to reduce the office and reduce the scope of their work.
“This RIF action is necessary to restructure the operations of the office to better reflect the priorities and the mission of the agency,” read one of the opinions observed by NPR, referring to strength reduction actions.
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Laurel Wamsley covers what’s going on at the CFPB. If you have a tip, you can contact her safely on signal at Laurel.96.
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Staff members began to receive the force reduction notices Thursday afternoon. It was not immediately clear how many employees of the agency received the opinions.
The reduction of force opinions comes after a recent court decision of a federal appeal committee has paved the way for layoffs. The panel of three judges said that office managers could send a force reduction notice to employees they had determined to be useless to exercise statutory functions of the CFPB.
The panel has otherwise left intact a separate injunction of the federal judge which prevents the agency from being dismantled – including that its data cannot be deleted or destroyed, and that employees must have a workspace or tools to work remotely.
The CFPB did not answer NPR questions as to whether the layoffs had started.
New direction for the CFPB
The layoffs come after after the agency -chief legal advisor sent a note to CFPB employees on Wednesday evening which establishes a new management for the office.
In the memo, considered by the NPR, the legal director Mark Paoletta said that the office would be based on states to carry out application and supervision activities, arguing that this would allow the agency to “focus on tangible damage to consumers”.
Paoletta also said that the office would return to banks and deposit institutions such as credit cooperatives and commercial banks.
He added that the office would “depress” a number of areas that it has regulated in recent years, including medical debt, peer-to-peer platforms and digital payments.
The latest article is remarkable because Elon Musk, who tweeted “CFPB RIP”, built a digital payment platform-a platform that would be ostensibly under the supervision of CFPB. In February, the team of the Musk Government Department (DOGE) entered the headquarters of the Washington office and took control of key systems.
The CFPB, which was founded following the 2008 financial crisis, became a target of the Trump administration as well as some in Silicon Valley and Wall Street, which say it was exaggerated in its regulations.
Consumer organizations have criticized the reorientation of the office as described in the Paoletta note, saying that it has marked a significant dismissal in its mission.
“The CFPB cannot simply shake up the responsibilities of consumer protection that Congress has given it and expect the states to apply federal law,” said Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center.
