Gutting the consumer-finance watchdog

Judge Amy Berman Jackson's March 28, 2025 preliminary injunction kept the bureau operating. A divided D.C. Circuit panel vacated it on August 15, 2025, and the bureau then issued a reduction in force terminating about 90 percent of its employees. The full D.C. Circuit granted rehearing on December 17, 2025; the district court blocked the termination of 1,483 employees and, on December 30, held that the bureau's refusal to seek funding conflicts with the injunction.

In February 2025, acting CFPB director Russell Vought told staff not to come in and 'Please do not perform any work tasks,' including work on proposed rules and open investigations. Officials said the bureau would not take its next payment from the Federal Reserve, and its offices were closed from February 10 to 14. Vought said he would seek no new funding for the bureau, which had cash reserves of over $700 million, and Elon Musk posted 'CFPB RIP.' The CFPB is the post-2008 watchdog that supervises banks, mortgage and consumer lenders, and increasingly digital-payment and crypto products.

The bureau began shutting down on February 10 and continued despite a February 14 consent order barring layoffs and self-defunding. On March 28, 2025, Judge Amy Berman Jackson granted a preliminary injunction keeping it operating. On August 15, 2025 a divided D.C. Circuit panel vacated the injunction on jurisdictional grounds, and the bureau issued a reduction in force terminating about 90 percent of its employees. The full D.C. Circuit granted rehearing on December 17, 2025; Judge Jackson blocked the termination of 1,483 employees and, on December 30, clarified that the bureau's refusal to seek funding conflicts with her injunction.

The government denies any intent to shut the bureau down, and the appeals panel agreed there was 'no reviewable decision to shut down the CFPB,' while recording that the bureau had terminated employees, cancelled contracts, declined additional funding and moved to smaller headquarters to promote the president's deregulatory agenda. Shutting down the bureau removed a regulator whose reach extends to the family's USD1 stablecoin (CRY-05) and its firm's bank-charter bid (CRY-19), consistent with the FCPA pause (OVR-05) and the crypto-enforcement stand-down (OVR-07).

Documented

In litigation (shutdown efforts partly blocked by courts; en banc rehearing granted 2025-12-17)

Work halted 2025-02-10; preliminary injunction 2025-03-28; vacated 2025-08-15; en banc rehearing granted 2025-12-17