Despite being the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) since February, Russell Vought has no intention of parlaying it into a long-term gig.
In fact, he envisions the CFPB not existing at all in 2026.
Vought, who also heads the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said during an appearance on “The Charlie Kirk Show” podcast Wednesday that he believes the administration will successfully close the consumer watchdog agency “probably within the next two or three months.”
“We don’t have anyone working there except our Republican appointees and a few [career employees] that are doing statutory responsibilities while we close down the agency,” Vought said.
He went on to claim that the agency wants to “weaponize the tools of financial laws against basically small mom-and-pop lenders and other small financial institutions,” saying the CFPB has “the DNA of Elizabeth Warren.”
Warren, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, was the primary architect of the CFPB, which was established by Congress and began operation in 2011 amid the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis. The agency has wide supervisory jurisdiction over banks, mortgage originators and servicers, and other lenders and financial companies.
In a social media post Wednesday, Warren responded to media reports of Vought’s podcast comments.
“Americans have gotten more than $21 billion back in their bank accounts after being cheated and scammed by big corporations, thanks to the CFPB,” Warren wrote. “But Trump and his Administration love grifters and scammers. So they’re trying to kill the agency holding them accountable.”
The CFPB did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding if steps have already been taken to wind down operations at the bureau.
Previous legal challenges
Any attempt to formally close the CFPB would almost certainly be met with legal challenges.
In February, Vought and the CFPB were sued by a labor union representing bureau employees after the acting director temporarily shuttered the agency shortly after taking office. The plaintiffs claimed in the complaint that “neither the President nor the head of the CFPB has the power to dismantle an agency that Congress established.”
Then, in April, 1,483 of the CFPB’s 1,690 employees received notice that they were being placed on administrative leave as part of a reduction in force (RIF) action. A federal judge stepped in to block those mass layoffs, but an appeals court threw out the lower court’s ruling in August, arguing at the time that the plaintiffs lacked a legal basis to challenge what they alleged was an overarching decision to shut down the CFPB.
Vought’s comments this week appear to undercut that ruling, which was predicated on the assumption that the CFPB would continue operating with a scaled-down workforce.
“If the plaintiffs’ theory were viable, it would become the task of the judiciary, rather than the executive branch, to determine what resources an agency needs to perform its broad statutory functions,” U.S. Circuit Judge Gregory Katsas wrote in the majority opinion.
Shutdown RIFs
The OMB that Vought leads was hit with an unfavorable court ruling this week related to the Trump administration’s federal workforce reductions during the ongoing government shutdown.
Ruling from the bench Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston labeled the RIF notices impacting thousands of federal workers at more than 30 agencies “arbitrary and capricious” and called the administration’s actions “both illegal and in excess of authority.”
Vought appeared undeterred during his podcast appearance, saying, “We’re going to keep those RIFs rolling throughout this shutdown.”
“We want to be very aggressive where we can be in shuttering the bureaucracy — not just the funding, but the bureaucracy — that we now have an opportunity to do that, and that’s where we’re going to be looking for our opportunities,” Vought stated.
When asked how many federal employees he thinks will receive pink slips, he replied that it would likely be “north of 10,000.”
