The Corresponding Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Light of a New Circuit Court Judge’s Injunction and a Reorientation

Employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have begun receiving layoff notices, the latest attempt by the Trump Administration to shrink the bureau and reduce the scope of its work.

The Bureau’s operations should be restructured so that they better reflect the agency’s priorities and mission, according to one of the notices seen by NPR.

The court ruling cleared the way for layoffs and resulted in a reduction in force notices. The three-judge panel said the bureau’s leaders can send a reduction in force notice to employees they have determined to be unnecessary to carry out CFPB’s statutory duties.

The panel otherwise left intact a separate federal judge’s injunction that prevents the agency from being dismantled — including that its data cannot be deleted or destroyed, and that employees must be given workspace or the tools to work remotely.

In the memo, which was seen by NPR, Mark Paoletta, chief legal officer for the Bureau, said that it would allow it to focus more on harms to consumers by carrying out more supervision and enforcement activities.

He stated that the bureau would not allow medical debt, peer-to-Peer platforms, and digital payments to be regulated in the foreseeable future.

A platform with oversight from the bureau is what Musk is building, as well as the last item. In February, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency took control of key systems at the Washington headquarters.

The CFPB, which was founded in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, has become a target of the Trump administration as well as some in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, who say it overreaches in its regulation.

Consumer organizations criticized the bureau’s reorientation as described in Paoletta’s memo, saying it marked a significant retrenchment in its mission.

CFPB can’t stand the fight: the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) is frustrated by the Trump Administration’s Supreme Court ruling

“The National Consumer Law Center doesn’t agree with the stance of the CFPB in shirking the consumer protection responsibilities Congress gave it and expect states to enforce federal law,” she said.

is a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform.

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration not to Terminate any employee except for cause related to their performance or conduct and not to issue a notice of reduction in force. The partial stay of that portion, ordered this month by an appeals court, is for the purpose of preventing the bureau from issuing a RIF after a particularized assessment.

The union that brought the original complaint to stop the agency from being gutted filed a motion late Thursday asking the court to require the government to explain how the mass terminations don’t violate its preliminary injunction. The filing says that the offices, which are mandated by law, could be eliminated or reduced to a single person. It is not believable that the Bureau would not interfere with the performance of its statutory duties if it was cut in a single day.

The agency was attacked by this Administration, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said they would fight back.