A federal judge in Washington, DC, ordered an immediate stop to the planned layoffs of almost 1,500 employees in the Office of Financial Protection of the consumer, and is ordering the Trump administration to deliver communications and ask the senior officials available for the testimony to determine if they deliberately violated one of their judicial orders.
District Judge Amy Berman Jackson told government lawyers that he was “deeply concerned” about the apparently hasty efforts to implement a reduction of force or RIF, of approximately 1483 employees in the CFPB, which would enter into force at 6 pm tonight.
Jackson said the CFPB leadership movements, including the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought and the general advisor of the OMB Mark Paoletta, in an apparent coordination with a member of the staff of the Operation Dux of Elon Musk, Gavin Kiger, can be in direct rape of a preliminary lesion that had established in its place It rose in part. This court order required that the terminations in the agency be carried out only after “particularized evaluations” of the performance of individual employees.
She told the lawyers of the Department of Justice that the current reductions “were not going to happen in the meantime” and ordered them to advise the agency leadership to clarify it to employees that they had been informed that they would be expelled. Many of those employees sat in their courtroom on Friday, and several cried after the hearing.
Jackson also ordered an audience for April 28, where he said that Paoletta should be prepared to testify under oath, and Kiger should also plan to attend to provide potential testimony. He also said that the government should retain and be prepared to provide any communication between Paoletta, Vought and Kiger before the audience to help her determine if her preliminary mandate was deliberately raped.
The supporters of the concentration of the Office of Financial Protection of the Consumer, after acting, the director of the Office of Financial Protection of the consumer, Russell Vought, told the staff to all the staff of the agency who remained away from the office and did not work outside the CFPB in Washington, DC, February 10, 2025.
Craig Hudson/Reuters, file
The Trump Administration had begun the process this week to fire 1,474 employees at the Consumer Finance Protection Office, according to a affidavit of Paoletta, legal director of the agency.
The Administration plans to direct the agency with a staff of 206 people, according to judicial presentations on Friday morning, a strong decrease of the 1,680 employees who previously worked for the consumer protection agency. According to Paoletta, some departments within the CFPB were completely cut or reduced to a single employee.
“An agency of approximately 200 people allows the office to fulfill its legal duties and aligns better with the priorities and philosophy of management of the new leadership,” Paoletta wrote.
According to Paoletta, the agency’s leadership carried out a “particularized evaluation” of each department to determine how to execute the CFPB with the “smaller and more efficient operation.”
“Leadership has discovered many cases in which office activities have pushed much beyond the limits of the law,” he wrote.
A security officer works within the headquarters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Building building on Monday, February 10, 2025 in Washington.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP, file
The CFPB, created by Congress to safeguard Americans against unfair commercial practices following the financial crisis of 2008, has been the object of elimination by President Donald Trump as part of his efforts to reduce the federal government.
Trump has said that the CFPB is “very important to get rid of” and that the organization was “prepared to destroy some very good people.”
Its supervision is applied to everything, from mortgages to credit cards, bank rates, student loans and data collection. By law, the CFPB has the rare capacity to issue new rules and impose fines against companies that break them.
From its establishment in 2011 until last June, The CFPB said it has recovered $ 20.7 billion for US consumers.
