Trump Administration Orders CFPB to Stop Work

On February 10, 2025, Russell Vought, serving simultaneously as acting CFPB director and OMB director, ordered all Consumer Financial Protection Bureau employees to halt supervision, investigations, enforcement, rulemaking and outreach activities, and closed the agency's Washington headquarters for the following week. The stop-work order effectively froze the bureau's operations days after Rohit Chopra had already been removed as director.

The CFPB, created after the 2008 financial crisis to police predatory lending, deceptive fees and abusive debt collection, saw its pending cases and rulemaking put on indefinite hold, leaving banks and lenders temporarily free of active oversight from the agency.

A federal judge intervened on February 14, 2025, issuing a temporary restraining order barring the administration from deleting CFPB data, terminating employees without cause, or reducing the agency's reserve funding while litigation proceeded. The episode marked an early and consequential test of how far the administration could go in unilaterally shutting down a congressionally created independent agency.