A national nonprofit that aims to "empower young changemakers" on Monday called out U.S. President Donald Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk for attacking a federal consumer financial watchdog as "part of a broader, dangerous effort to privatize and dismantle the civil service, eroding the government's ability to protect working people from corporate exploitation."

"Musk, an unelected billionaire with no constitutional authority to restructure federal agencies, is wielding his influence in the Trump administration to gut consumer protections—just as he moves to expand his own financial empire through X Money," the nonprofit, Future Coalition, said in a statement about the assault on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

"Musk, through his leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has taken it upon himself to reshape federal agencies to suit his personal financial interests," the group continued. "The move to eliminate the CFPB is a glaring example of this corrupt power grab, where billionaires rewrite the rules to benefit themselves at the expense of everyday Americans."

"If Musk and his allies succeed in gutting this agency, it will be open season on young consumers with no one left to protect them."

Although the White House created confusion on Monday evening by stating in a declaration to a federal judge overseeing another case that Musk "is a senior adviser to the president" and "is not the U.S. DOGE service administrator," the world's richest billionaire is widely understood to be overseeing the Trump administration's attempts to gut the federal government.

At the CFPB specifically, that effort is currently at a standstill due to a legal challenge. A fight in federal court on Friday halted mass firings there and under the agreement, the agency and its temporary leader, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, must retain "vast troves" of data and refrain from defunding the bureau while the case proceeds.

Still, there are signs that Trump and his allies will keep working to shutter the CFPB, including a "404: Page not found" message displayed on the homepage of the agency's website as of Tuesday afternoon. The message has been there for more than 10 days.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's hompage displayed a "404: Page not found" message on February 18, 2025. (Photo: CFPB/screen grab)

Critics of Trump, Musk, and DOGE continue to warn about how the "unprecedented corporate coup" targeting the CFPB would help the billionaire and various fraudsters while harming Americans. As Future Coalition highlighted Monday, anticipated consequences of ending the agency include the weakening of protections for student loan borrowers, the removal of protections against junk fees, and increases in predatory lending and financial fraud—from cryptocurrency schemes to mobile payment scams.

"Young people today are drowning in student debt, struggling to afford housing, and navigating a financial system rigged against them—yet conservative forces and big business have spent over a decade trying to dismantle the one agency designed to protect them," said Corryn G. Freeman, executive director of Future Coalition. "The CFPB is not the problem—corporate greed is."

"The same billionaires trying to kill the CFPB are the ones who profit off predatory loans, sky-high fees, and financial scams that target young people," Freeman added. "The CFPB should be strengthened, not eliminated. If Musk and his allies succeed in gutting this agency, it will be open season on young consumers with no one left to protect them."

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a former Harvard Law School professor who proposed and helped craft the CFPB before joining Congress, has delivered a similar message in recent days.

As The New Yorker's John Cassidy reported Monday:

A week ago, Elon Musk tweeted, "CFPB RIP." In short order, the Trump administration has shuttered the headquarters of the agency, halted most of its operations, and laid off some of its staff. Since Musk’s démarche, Warren—who was elected to the Senate as a Democrat from Massachusetts in 2013, and is now in her third term—has led the effort to save the CFPB, speaking at a rally outside its offices, tearing into the Tesla CEO in television interviews, and, in a Senate hearing, pressing Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, to confirm that without the CFPB there is no government agency to insure that financial companies obey consumer-protection laws.

When I caught up with Warren on the phone, late last week, she recalled that prior to the creation of the CFPB, responsibility for enforcing these laws was split between six regulatory agencies. "It was nobody's first job, and nothing got done," she remarked. The founding of the CFPB brought consumer protection—regulation, supervision, and enforcement—under one roof. "For a dozen years, the CFPB has been the financial cop on the beat," Warren went on. "It has found more than $21 billion in fraud and scams, and scooped up that money and returned it directly to the people who were cheated. Now Elon Musk comes in and says, 'Let's fire the cops.' What could possibly go wrong?"

If the Trump administration succeeds in dismantling the agency, "it's open season on everyone who has a credit card, a mortgage, a car loan, a payday loan, a student loan, or uses an online financial app," Warren warned. The senator also offered a reason why the agency has faced attacks from Republicans since long before Musk decided to help Trump return to the White House.

"The CFPB is living, breathing proof, every day, that we can make government work for regular people," she said. "That we can use government to level the playing field, so that students don't get cheated on their education loans, or a family can take out a mortgage to buy a house without worrying there's a trick back on page 36 that means they are going to lose the house in two years. That's government working the way it should, and it really gets under the skins of the most extremist Republicans."