Trump picks Russ Vought as acting CFPB director

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that President Donald Trump has named Russell Vought as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, expanding the portfolio of the recently-confirmed head of the Office of Management and a key architect of Project 2025 to include an agency squarely in the administration’s crosshairs. 

On Friday, Vought reportedly sent an email to top staff at the agency saying he was now the acting director, according to the Wall Street Journal. Vought was confirmed on Thursday by the Senate in a party-line vote of 53-47 to lead the Office of Management and Budget, where he served in the first Trump administration as a director, acting director and deputy director. 

Vought has been a key architect of Project 2025, a policy blueprint from the conservative Heritage Foundation for overhauling the federal government. Trump repeatedly denied during his campaign having any association with Project 2025 but has gone on to install many of its authors in the government.

Vought replaced Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who held the job of acting CFPB director for five days, starting on Monday. Bessent immediately issued a stop-work order to halt most of the agency’s functions. 

The Trump takeover of the CFPB began in earnest on Friday when at least three staffers with the Department of Government Efficiency — a newly-created office headed by billionaire entrepreneur and close Trump ally Elon Musk — arrived at the agency’s Washington D.C. headquarters with laptops. Their arrival, first reported on the website of the National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 335, caused further fear and confusion among the bureau’s staff, which has been thrown into turmoil by the administration’s pressure to resign and accept deferred resignation offers. A district judge gave unions and federal workers until Monday to respond to the offers.

The banking industry has opposed a number of rules and proposals put forward under former CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, including rules limiting credit card late fees to $8, limiting overdrafts to $5 in most cases and rules governing the portability of consumers’ financial data. Musk has called for the CFPB to be eliminated, though only Congress has the authority to eliminate a federal agency, banking and legal experts say.

On Friday, Musk posted on X: “RIP CFPB.“

Vought is expected to drop all litigation and freeze existing rules and enforcement actions, while also halting and seeking to rescind all nonbinding interpretive rules, guidance and proposals. Bessent had already instructed staff to halt all rules and enforcement actions.

In a chapter in Project 2025, Vought wrote that Trump’s appointees should have the “boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will.” He also wrote that the OMB’s budget team plays a key role “in executing policy across the executive branch, including at many agencies wrongly regarded as ‘independent,'” including the CFPB. 

The Trump administration appeared to be waiting for Vought to be confirmed by the Senate before naming him acting director due to a requirement of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. Temporary heads of agencies can only be chosen from Senate-confirmed appointees or from top managers at the agency, which gave Republicans a very short list from which to choose. Bessent took over the agency on Jan. 31, shortly after being confirmed as Treasury Secretary on Jan. 27.  

As of Friday night the CFPB’s Twitter account was deleted and its landing page showed a 404 message next to an unplugged plug.