At the headquarters of the Financial Consumer Protection Office, the light shadows above the entrance are all that remain from the letters that once wrote the name of the organization.
In the widespread dismay of the federal government by Trump’s administration, the Consumer Office was one of the first fall organizations, its offices were closed and all 1,700 employees sent home. “CFPB Rip,” Elon Musk wrote in social within February 7.
But the consumer office refused to die.
Last week, the organization’s response team was called back to work to face a delay in 16,000 complaints, including dozens of homeowners facing imminent seizures. The borrowing office of the Bureau reiterated the preparation of his annual report in Congress. And the first page of the Agency’s website, which had created a 404 error message that begins on the day that Trump’s officials arrived at the office, works again.
The Consumer Office emerges as a test case for the limits of President Trump’s power to unilaterally hit government agencies. For almost a month, the Bureau of the Bureau and other teams have tackled Trump’s administration in federal courts in Washington and Maryland, arguing that only Congress can officially close the office, which was created after the 2008 financial crisis.
A consent and a series of short -term agreements have been temporarily stopped and in some areas have been reversed, what Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the US District Court on the Columbia District described as “shooting first and asking questions” by Trump’s officials.
However, Judge Jackson has not yet ruled on the greatest question of whether Trump’s administration can actually terminate the office with the hollow of its activities, even if it is technically open.
Restored functions are only a small fraction of the body’s overall workload, but consumer supporters and workers see these judicial orders as significant victories in the wider attempt to resist the disassembly of Federal Services by Mr Trump.
Trump officials have made similar sweeping moves at the Ministry of International Development of the United States and, more recently, in the Department of Education.
For years, the financial sector has complained that the Consumer Office, which regulates a number of credit cards from mortgages to credit cards, was overly aggressive, binding companies to differences and bureaucracy and preventing the credit from flowing to consumers.
Now, the battle to save the bureau has created some curious bedfellows. Mortgage lenders, who have historically been one of the teams running on the bureau, have also pressed the organization, at least without careful planning, according to three people familiar with internal discussions in the office.
The past month has played as a game of cat and mice among Trump officials who are seeking to kill the office and workers trying to perform the legal duties of the Agency, according to the revision of the internal agencies and the internal office, Sensitive information of the service.
Trump’s administration began moving against the Bureau on Friday, February 7th. That night, Russell T. Vought – a writer of the work 2025 who stated in 2023 that he wanted to close the organizations and let their employees were “influenced by trauma” – named Bureau Director.
In the following days, Mr Vought ordered the employees to “stop from the execution of any work” And he ordered the termination of nearly 200 contracts with sellers providing vital pieces of the Agency’s infrastructure, such as the software to monitor legal affairs as well as the contract with the staffing agency that employed the entire customer service agents who responded to the phone line.
But almost immediately, Mr Vought’s attempt at a complete finish ran to a barricade associated with a noisy feature of the mortgage industry.
The Consumer Bureau is responsible for drawing up a key interest rate loan interest rates released each week. Because lenders need this interest rate to certify that their loans are complying with secure lending rules, the purchase of mortgages will freeze if the office has stopped publishing it abruptly.
And so the organization’s new leaders allowed employees to restart this function.
It was an early lesson for Trump’s administration that the closure of an organization that is deeply woven in the infrastructure of the US financial industry is a difficult task.
When Congress created the Consumer Office in 2011, its legislators commissioned more than 80 specific duties. They include a response to consumer complaints, the execution of special offices to serve military members and student borrowers, and the enforcement of federal laws governing mortgages, fair access to credit and other consumer protections.
Because they could not legally close the office, Trump’s officials focused on launching. Employees told them the new leaders that the bureau would survive “only in name”, many said in court deposits. A senior executive referred to the deposit saying that the office would be reduced to “five men and a phone” stuck in a room somewhere in Washington.
On Thursday, February 13, the new bureau leaders asked the Personnel Management Bureau to resign from the usual 60 -day warning required for government redundancies.
The Personnel Office had never granted this kind of exception, office officials who participated in the proceedings submitted to the court. But just 10 minutes after the request was sent, the Personnel Office approved its plan to reduce about 1,175 employees – the overwhelming majority of its employees.
The cleaning would have eliminated each employee in various departments, including supervision, enforcement and service research.
Knowing that the Agency was in a fight against the clock, Deepak Gupta, a lawyer for the office of the office, called for a restrictive order to the federal court to prevent workers’ terminals.
At 2 pm On Friday, February 14, Judge Jackson was scheduled to hear about Mr Gupta’s request. Fifteen minutes before the start of the hearing, Trump’s officials sent an urgent request for the final bureaucracy required to execute the redundancies.
In the court in the afternoon, Mr Gupta pressured the judge to freeze the mass termination.
“I don’t want to leave the court without any assurance,” he said. “I ask that the entire agency do not shoot tonight.”
Judge Jackson approved a consent order to stop the redundancies. Since then, he has been watching whether Trump’s officials were targeting Congress of 80 tasks that had been explicitly entrusted to the Bureau.
At times, Judge Jackson called Mr Trump’s officials to send contradictory messages.
One employee described that he received an email from Mr Vought’s team that directs employees to continue to “be required by the Law Law” – then receive a text message from its manager on his personal phone, saying: “Stand up to younger”.
“We cannot have decrees that have been issued with the fingers of the people who are crossing behind their backs,” said Judge Jackson, who hosts these exchanges, listening to March 3.
Each week, dozens of bureau workers have packaged by Jackson’s court court to monitor the proceedings, occupying any available bench and accumulating in a overflow room. Some notes under the Scripble so they can relay the latest developments to colleagues following group talks.
“We were there to testify,” said Catherine Farman, a web developer in the office and the president of the organization’s staff.
Judge Jackson could eventually lift the temporary freezing to mass fires, reversing many of the restarted functions. The next deadline for expanding or ending the pause is scheduled for March 28.
Trump officials are preparing if Judge Jackson rules to their advantage.
Adam Martinez, an officer in the office that conducted Mr Vought’s orders, told the court on Tuesday that the attitude order and plans for mass layoffs had not been canceled. The Purge Purge Planning Meetings, another office employee, were filed just on March 6th.
