Unelected billionaire Elon Musk continues to swing his illegal wrecking ball through government agencies, disrupting a range of essential services—all, transparently, to harvest private civilian data and eliminate consumer protections. Since Friday, Musk and DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) have set their sights on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal watchdog that investigates, regulates, and fines corporations and large financial institutions for predatory practices. The agency says that its enforcement actions have delivered roughly $20 billion in consumer relief since its inception in 2008, which came as a response to the 2008 financial crash. All of that vital work is now under imminent threat.
The CFPB’s acting director, Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought, over the weekend directed CFPB employees to “cease all supervision and examination activity,” “all stakeholder engagement,” and pause ongoing investigations, among other orders that effectively shutter the agency. Vought also issued a pause on any additional funding for the CFPB. On Friday, DOGE-affiliated staffers breached CFPB headquarters, gaining access to highly sensitive data, including bank examination and enforcement methods; Musk appeared to celebrate by tweeting, “RIP CFPB” alongside a tombstone.
The fallout of losing the CFPB’s protections and services will likely be severe. For nearly two decades, the agency has responded to consumer complaints about credit card bills, medical debt, vehicle loans, mortgages, online payment platforms, internet scams, and, ah, yes, virtual currencies, like fraudulent memecoins, which Trump and his family members and allies have spent the last several months shilling. The New York Times reported over the weekend that the recent crash of the $TRUMP coin caused more than 810,000 crypto wallets to lose $2 billion combined, while Trump and his family have concurrently raked in approximately $100 million in $TRUMP-related trading fees alone. In other words, Trump and Musk are teeing up their own supporters to get scammed by their banks and other institutions, or any MAGA World influencer who starts shilling a memecoin.
The gutting of CFPB will be devastating for all of us, and render everyone in the country more vulnerable to predatory business practices. But anyone who was gullible enough to believe that a notorious real estate conman and South African-born billionaire waist-deep in labor complaints from his own employees truly want to help them is pretty ripe for scamming, in general. And now, they’re even more likely to be scammed without the CFPB’s vital guardrails on corporations or aggressive approaches to securing consumer relief.
A federal workers’ union representing CFPB employees filed two lawsuits on Monday, asking a court to recognize Vought’s orders as unlawful, and arguing that DOGE staffers gaining access to the CFPB’s internal communications data is also unlawful. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who was instrumental to creating the CFPB and has publicly recognized it as one of her children, criticized Vought’s directions for “giving big banks and giant corporations the green light to scam families.” Of course, even if a judge sides with the CFPB employees, the Trump administration has increasingly made clear that it’s willing to defy judge’s orders in what legal experts say poses a looming constitutional crisis. So, there’s that, too!
If anything, despite Musk’s eye roll-inducing claims that CFPB is one of “too many duplicative regulatory agencies,” the agency’s work has become more necessary than ever since 2008. The rise and fall of the $TRUMP coin is a glaring example of this. Under the Biden administration, CFPB expanded its oversight of Apple, Google, and other Big Tech behemoths as digital payment platforms grow more popular; the Biden-led CFPB issued new rules to rein in predatory lending, alleviate medical debt, and protect borrowers from exorbitant late fees on credit card bills. Now, the world’s richest man and his motley crew of 20-year-old interns are lighting all of that progress—and probably the bank accounts of their own supporters—on fire. Welcome to the era of getting scammed by your bank to own the libs.
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