Trump’s New Budget Chief Orders Federal Financial Watchdog To Halt Operations

The Project 2025 architect has effectively frozen the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, now allowing big banks and giant corporations to prey on consumers.

The lead architect of Project 2025 and recently appointed acting director for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has told the agency’s employees to essentially halt all operations ― the Trump administration’s latest move to roll back consumer protections against corporate giants.

In a Saturday email obtained by several news outlets, Russell Vought ordered the federal financial industry watchdog’s staff to “cease all supervision and examination activity,” stop issuing regulatory guidance, halt pending investigations while refraining to open new ones, and no longer “make or approve filings or appearances by the Bureau in any litigation, other than to seek a pause in proceedings.”

“As acting director, I am committed to implementing the president’s policies, consistent with the law, and acting as a faithful steward of the bureau’s resources,” wrote Vought, whom the Senate on Thursday confirmed to lead the Office of Management and Budget. One day later, President Donald Trump appointed Vought to also serve as the CFPB’s acting director.

The CFPB was created in 2011 by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) as a response to the regulatory failures of the 2008 financial crisis. The watchdog agency targets big banks and corporations engaging in unfair and deceptive practices that end up financially harming consumers.

Vought’s message is a more severe iteration of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s order earlier this month, which essentially told CFPB staff to stop doing their job. On top of Bessent’s order, the new acting director added supervision to the freeze.