Project 2025 Kingpin Ends Oversight Of Big Banks

CNN reports:

Russell Vought, the newly installed acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, sent an email Saturday night ordering all employees at the consumer watchdog to stop virtually all work – including fighting financial abuse.

“Effective immediately, unless expressly approved by the Acting Director or required by law, all employees, contractors and other personnel of the bureau shall…cease all supervision and examination activity,” Vought wrote in the email, a copy of which was viewed by CNN.

In practice, this means that the nation’s top consumer financial watchdog has effectively been pulled off the street, prevented from providing oversight over big banks, payday lenders and other financial institutions that could be hurting consumers.

The New York Times reports:

In a Saturday evening post on X, Mr. Vought, an author of Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for radically remaking the federal government, wrote that he had notified the Federal Reserve that the finance bureau “will not be taking its next draw of unappropriated funding because it is not ‘reasonably necessary’ to carry out its duties.”

On Saturday, some members of the union representing the consumer protection bureau’s employees protested outside the agency’s Washington building with signs mocking Elon Musk, whose government efficiency effort has wreaked havoc across various federal agencies.

Several members of Mr. Musk’s team arrived at the agency on Friday morning and gained access to its headquarters and computer systems.

Since its inception, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has returned billions recovered from banks who had illegally charged fees and opened accounts without the knowledge of customers.