This week, ~1,000 people—employees and supporters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—stood in the cold at a rally to protest the attempted ransacking of the agency. In the middle of the supportive speeches, agency employees broke out into chants: “Let. Us. Work,” demanding that they be allowed to continue to protect the American public from financial fraud and deception.
Here are a few letters, articles, posts from this week commenting on the financial regulator under siege:
- “The CFPB is one of the American people’s best defenses against waste, fraud, and abuse. Demolishing it will, of course, lead to more waste, fraud, and abuse.” – Pete Buttigieg, in a Bluesky post.
- “We beat back all prior efforts to gut this agency, and we will fight this latest attack in Congress, the courts, and the public. It will fail.” – A letter from nearly 200 lawmakers led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren to the bureau’s acting director and the secretary of the Department of the Treasury.
- “It was clear then [during the financial crisis] — as it’s clear to me now — that many consumers don’t stand a chance when there isn’t a consumer cop on the beat with the power to address violations in financial laws, including shoddy practices, fraud, and hidden fees.” – Susan Tompor, columnist, Detroit Free Press.
- “While you may have preconceived notions about the operations of the CFPB, this rushed request appears to violate the Administrative Procedures Act for being arbitrary and capricious and seems designed to unlawfully fulfill the recommendation from the Project 2025 report that “Congress should abolish the CFPB.” – A letter from Rep. Maxine Waters, opposing the acting director’s request to the Federal Reserve for the Fed to provide the CFPB with $0 for the third quarter of Fiscal Year 2025.
- “Warren’s insight was that protecting consumers required creating a separate agency with its own institutional imperatives. And she was right: By any reasonable standard, CFPB has been an outstanding success story. Why, then, rush to shutter the agency? By the way, this action, like much of what the Trump administration is doing, is almost surely illegal.” – Paul Krugman, Springtime for Scammers.
- “Furthermore, DOGE recently infiltrated the CFPB, seeking access to sensitive data held by the Bureau, including PII and CSI. This data could meaningfully benefit Elon Musk’s commercial companies, like X, which has plans to be expanded into a payment app that would compete with bank and credit union payment offerings. Given the sensitive data each of your agencies maintain as well as the critical payment infrastructure that the Federal Reserve operates, we urge that you and your staff do not aid and abet this kind of unconstitutional and unlawful conduct should you receive any request to do so by DOGE or other officials.” – Letter from Sen. Warren and Rep. Waters to financial regulators.
