President Donald Trump’s administration is cutting the vast majority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s workforce, according to a person familiar with the matter, reviving a push to overhaul the watchdog agency.
More than 1,500 staffers at the CFPB are expected to be hit by the reduction-in-force effort, which kicked off Thursday, said the person, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about a personnel matter. The CFPB had roughly 1,700 employees late last year. In a notice to affected employees, which was seen by POLITICO, acting CFPB Director Russ Vought wrote that the cuts are “necessary to restructure the Bureau’s operations to better reflect the agency’s priorities and mission.”
A CFPB official whose job was cut and was granted anonymity to discuss the layoffs said that as of late Thursday afternoon the notices appeared to still be going out.
“People are dropping like flies,” the official said.
The bureau has become a leading front in Trump’s crusade to shrink the federal government. Shortly after he took back the White House, the administration moved to shutter the CFPB — a brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that was set up in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Republicans, Wall Street titans and Elon Musk have long criticized the agency for what they say is its overly aggressive oversight of big banks, lenders and financial technology firms.
The administration’s efforts were stymied last month by a federal judge, who ordered that CFPB employees be reinstated and that the administration could not conduct a reduction in force. Yet on Friday, a federal appeals court lifted the prohibition on mass layoffs.
Employees who were affected by the cuts will have access to their work systems until Friday evening, Vought wrote in the notice. He added that they will officially be “separated” from their job at the agency in mid-June.
The cuts come as the agency begins shaking up its operations. In a memo Wednesday, CFPB Chief Legal Officer Mark Paoletta said the agency would be moving away from “enforcement and supervision that can be done by the States.”
Spokespeople for the CFPB and the agency’s employee union did not immediately respond to requests for comment. FOX Business earlier reported on the reduction-in-force effort.
