CFPB’s Union Sues Russell Vought, Alleging Campaign To ‘Purge’ Agency’s Workforce

Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought was hit with two union lawsuits on Sunday after he issued directives freezing much of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) work.

Why it matters: The CFPB has become the latest target of President Trump‘s Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), threatening a critical oversight agency that safeguards consumers from unfair business practices.

• Vought, who is the acting head of the CFPB, directed employees in a weekend email to halt much of their work, including issuing rules and conducting investigations, multiple outletsreported.
• Employees were also informed the agency’s headquarters would be closed this week, a move that mirrors how DOGE shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) headquarters last week.
• CFPB employed some 1,600 people in fiscal year 2023.

Driving the news: The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents CFPB employees, filed two lawsuits against Vought in D.C. District Court on Sunday.

• One seeks to block DOGE’s access to CFPB employee information, alleging three staffers affiliated with the unofficial office were given access to internal systems.
• The second alleges that Vought’s directive halting work at the bureau and his refusal to receive its next disbursement of funding “reflects an unlawful attempt to thwart Congress’s decision to create the CFPB to protect American consumers.”
• The DOGE lawsuit alleges that the same day Vought instructed CFPB staff to grant Musk’s team access to all non-classified bureau systems, the billionaire tech mogul posted, “CFPB RIP.”

Zoom in: As of Monday morning, the bureau’s website and its official X page were inaccessible.

• Amid the DOGE takeover at the U.S. Agency for International Development, the website for the federal agency similarly went dark.

Flashback: Trump fired the prior CFPB head Rohit Chopra, whose term was not supposed to end until next year, in the early weeks of Trump’s second term.

Zoom out: Unions and Democratic officials have turned to the courts amid the unprecedented blitz through federal agencies.

• A federal judge last week temporarily restricted DOGE representatives’ access to sensitive Treasury payment system information.
• Soon after, another federal judge blocked DOGE from accessing Treasury records with sensitive personal data in response to a lawsuit from 19 Democratic attorneys general.
• And the administration’s plan to put thousands of USAID employees on administrative leave also hit a roadblock when a federal judge temporarily halted the order.

Our thought bubble, via Axios’ managing editor for business and markets Ben Berkowitz: The CFPB, which conducted a flurry of activity late in the Biden administration targeting banks and data brokers, was always expected to be a prime target for Trump, given that its elimination was a clear goal of Project 2025.

• But the CFPB has also championed efforts to stop Americans from being de-banked, which has been a focus of early Republican legislative efforts.

Go deeper: Musk’s “move fast, break things” ethos threatens U.S. security