Trump officials plan to fire 95% of CFPB staff, cancel its lease, union lawsuit says

The Trump administration is planning to hollow out the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) by firing 95% of its staff while canceling the lease on its Washington, D.C., headquarters, according to a federal lawsuit aimed at stopping the moves.

If successful, the mass layoffs would leave behind only the skeleton of an agency charged with policing the way large banks and other financial services companies like payday lenders and credit bureaus handle customers.

The CFPB is currently shuttered after acting Director Russell Vought ordered staff to halt all work and stay home from the office this week. It has also begun laying off dozens of staff and canceling contracts with vendors and expert witnesses.

Administration officials have been open about their goal of eliminating the agency: After members of his DOGE team arrived at its headquarters last week, billionaire Elon Musk tweeted “RIP CFPB,” while President Donald Trump told reporters on Tuesday that it was “very important to get rid of.”

“It was also a waste,” he said. “There was a bad group of people running it. … That was a vicious group of people. They destroyed a lot of people.”

The new lawsuit, filed on Thursday in Washington by a federal employees union as well as nonprofits that work with CFPB, is seeking to reverse Vought’s stop work orders and any additional firings. It argues that the mass layoffs will leave the bureau unable to perform its basic functions required by law.

“Trump and Vought’s actions to disable the CFPB have already caused mass confusion and imposed significant and irreparable harm on consumers across the country,” the lawsuit states. “Absent immediate relief, the defendants will continue to upend the lives of countless civil servants.”

Among other tasks required by statute, the CFPB has paused all of its supervision over banks and other lenders, the lawsuit notes. The agency’s portal for consumer complaints has also been “severely disrupted.” The agency typically receives hundreds of thousands of complaints each month.

According to the suit, Vought is also planning to return the CFPB’s operating reserves back to the Federal Reserve, which funds the agency. Over the weekend, he informed the Fed that the consumer watchdog would not require any new funding for the coming quarter because he planned to spend down its reserves.

The lawsuit does not cite a source about the mass firings, but rumors have swirled among current and former staffers that mass firings may be imminent. It states that Trump officials have “reportedly informed the General Services Administration that they are terminating the lease of the CFPB’s headquarters.”