The legal advocacy group seeking to stop the Trump administration from making ICE raids in houses of worship now seeks to stop the White House from dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Democracy Forward, based in Washington, D.C., filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland Feb. 12 for an injunction against Russell Vought’s plan to starve and shutter the agency, which was created by an act of Congress in 2011.
Russell Vought (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)
Vought, architect of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, last week was confirmed by the Senate as director of the White House Office of Budget and Management. He has made clear both before and after his nomination that he intended to shut down CFPB as soon as he had the chance.
Conservative Republicans have hated the agency since its birth and have sought unsuccessfully to kill it through the courts and Congressional action. Although Jewish and Christian Scriptures are replete with commands to protect the vulnerable from predatory financial practices, evangelical Christians have joined the Republican fight against the CFPB.
The New York Times explained the role the agency has played in the past 13 years: “It has clawed back $21 billion for consumers. It slashed overdraft fees, reformed the student loan servicing market, transformed mortgage lending rules and forced banks and money transmitters to compensate fraud victims.”
Democracy Forward brought its case against Vought and the CFPB — Vought made himself acting director — on behalf of the mayor and City Council of Baltimore and the Economic Action Maryland Fund.
As with other Trump efforts to slash the federal government, Vought’s gambit to cease funding for the CFPB and then dismantle it faces legal hurdles because the agency was created by Congress, not by a presidential executive order.
“Since Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the agency’s opponents have tried repeatedly to abolish it through legislation in Congress and legal challenges in the courts,” the complaint states. “The Trump administration — acting through defendants CFPB and its acting director, Russell Vought — now seeks to do by fiat what opponents of the CFPB were unable to do in Congress or the courts. Specifically, defendants seek to use the CFPB’s statutory funding mechanism, by which it draws funds directly from the Federal Reserve System of which it is a part, to effectively defund the CFPB and leave it unable to carry out its congressionally mandated mission and specific statutory responsibilities.”
What Vought intends to do requires no speculation. He has said clearly what his intent is, and Project 2025 plainly states the plan as well.
“The Trump administration in general and defendant Acting Director Vought in particular have made no secret of their desire to dissolve the CFPB,” the lawsuit states. The document quotes Project 2025 as saying the agency is “highly politicized, damaging and utterly unaccountable.”
Within eight hours of becoming acting director of the agency, Vought ordered all employees to stand down and not do any work. On Feb. 9, he said the CFPB has been “a woke and weaponized agency against disfavored industries and individuals for a long time.”
Big business has complained about the agency from its inception because of the financial accountability the agency created.
Trump said this week he intends to close the bureau, which he claimed was created “to destroy some very good people.” Trump also said the CFPB is “very important to get rid of.”
“Many people of faith and conscience fought diligently for the consumer bureau.”
The lawsuit points out the Congressional mandate that created the bureau is full of the word “shall,” creating dictates on things the agency and its leaders are required by law to do. Defunding the CFPB will render the entity unable to perform its Congressionally mandated tasks, the suit says.
This is yet another instance where a potential crisis could arise between the branches of government because the president seeks to override Congress by fiat and has indicated he may not follow any court rulings against him.
When the CFPB was created in 2011, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, said the faith community played a role in it becoming reality.
“Many people of faith and conscience fought diligently for the consumer bureau because they saw that the attitudes and practices that caused the financial crisis did not reflect our common values. Enacting the new CFPB was a David-versus-Goliath fight, but, in the end, American families triumphed,” she said.
Skye Perryman
“We also know that religious leaders across the country are wrestling with the moral dimensions of the financial crisis of 2008,” Warren stated. “The crisis revealed how the financial system permitted lenders to hide the true costs and risks of mortgages and to steer those who trusted them into products they did not understand. While some people profited from this business model, across the country, millions more suffered through foreclosures, crippling debt or bankruptcy. Personal gain for a few came at the expense of all, as risky and complicated mortgage products brought the entire economy to its knees.”
Now, Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman says her organization wants to ensure these financial protections continue.
“Russ Vought has revealed his plan to defund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a critical defender of American consumers that Congress and the courts have protected,” she said. “The Trump administration must be stopped from unlawfully defunding a federal agency that protects millions of Americans from financial harm.”
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Remember that time Wheaton College congratulated Russell Vought?