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A Coup D’état by the World's Richest, Most Sinister Men
The billionaire plotters did not bring guns, but they have entered the buildings. They are here.
Feb 11, 2025
A classic coup d’état has guns. Uniformed men run wild seizing government agencies and claiming control over what government does and who government serves.
But in our new cyber age, the Yale historian Timothy Snyder reflected this past week, a coup can unfold without any armed overthrow. We can have “a couple dozen young men go from government office to government office, dressed in civilian clothes and armed only with zip drives.”
These young men, operating upon “vague references to orders from on high,” can gain access to basic computer systems and “proceed to grant their Supreme Leader” effective power over just about everything that government does.
The historian Snyder is, of course, describing America’s current reality. He’s calling this reality a coup — and so are countless other defenders of America’s democratic faith.
We aren’t living through “a coup with tanks in the streets and mobs overrunning government offices,” charges former U.S. attorney and current Brennan Center senior fellow Joyce Vance. We’ve living through “a quieter coup, a billionaires’ coup.”
“The richest man on Earth is attempting to seize physical control of government payment systems and use them to shut down federal funding to any recipient he personally dislikes,” adds in the University of Minnesota Law School’s Will Stancil. “Elon Musk is directly usurping Congress’s most important authority, the power of the purse.”
The Musk legions now hacking their way through the nation’s capital, the New York Timesreports, have already “inserted themselves” into the databases of 17 federal agencies. These legions include fervent Musk admirers like Akash Bobba, a software engineer less than three years out of high school who once interned with a tech firm chaired by fellow Musk billionaire Peter Thiel.
One by one, the federal agencies that keep our nation running have been falling — with the full backing and blessings of Donald Trump — under Musk’s effective control. Trump, meanwhile, is making headlines about taking over Gaza and Panama, in the process, notes Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut, “distracting everyone from the real story — the billionaires seizing government to steal from regular people.”
The Trumpsters, agrees Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont, are moving us “into an oligarchic form of society where extraordinary power rests in the hands of a small number of unelected multi-billionaires.”
Elected officials and progressive activists are pushing back in the courts against the Musk putsch and scoring some initial victories. One federal judge, for instance, has just blocked Musk’s access to the Treasury Department’s computer payments system. That access, the judge ruled, threatens “irreparable harm” to the personal and financial data of millions of Americans.
But lower-level court rulings may not pass muster with higher-level Trump-appointed judges. Stopping the Musk coup will require a broader popular mobilization, and that push back is indeed building, with protests drawing thousands in locales ranging from downtown Washington to a host of state capitols nationwide.
Our single best hope to counter the Musk coup’s billionaire corporate backers — “and their boundless options” to shape “our elections, legislation, and judicial appointments”? That may well be intensified trade union action, suggests a new analysis from long-time labor activist Michael Podhorzer — and that action is also building.
Labor’s national voice, the AFL-CIO, has just launched a new campaign, the Department of People Who Work for a Living, to challenge Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency.”
“Government can work for billionaires,” points out AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler, “or it can work for working people — but not both.”
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The 'More Sinister' Reason Behind Musk's Attack on Consumer Agency
Recent days have seen a full-frontal assault on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Trump's favorite billionaire has much to gain personally if the agency no longer has the ability to operate effectively on behalf of the American people.
Feb 09, 2025
The Trump administration's multi-pronged attack on the CFPB continues.
President Donald Trump's new acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Russell Vought, told the agency to cease nearly all its operations in a series of orders on Saturday night and the move is not just a gift to the broader financial industry and large Wall Street banks, say critical observers, but also a major potential gift to billionaire Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest person, who has a major vested interest in the agency's demise.
Vought, the right-wing architect of the anti-government Project 2025 who also now heads the powerful Office of Management and Budget, confirmed Saturday night he had taken control of the agency in an email to staff that called on them to halt most of their work.
"Musk wants to use the government to put more in his pockets. This is a blatant conflict of interest." —Sen. Ed. Markey
According to reporting by NBC News, which obtained a copy of the email,
Employees were instructed to "cease all supervision and examination activity," "cease all stakeholder engagement," pause all pending investigations, not issue any public communications and pause "enforcement actions."
Vought also told employees not to "approve or issue any proposed or final rules or formal or informal guidance" and to "suspend the effective dates of all final rules that have been issued or published but that have not yet become effective," among other directives listed in the email.
He said in the email that the directives are effective immediately, unless he approves an exception or a certain activity is required by law.
The agency has been a target for Republicans for years and the party has contested in court its source of funding, which unlike most other agencies is funded by the Federal Reserve as opposed to regular appropriations by Congress. That mechanism, however, was established by Congress when the CFPB was created—an approach that was designed to shield it from political interference—and has withstood all legal challenges, including one before the U.S. Supreme Court last year.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), credited with bringing the CFPB to life, said the orders from Vought make clear the Trump administrations intentions.
"Vought is giving big banks and giant corporations the green light to scam families," Warren said Saturday. "The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has returned over $21 billion to families cheated by Wall Street. Republicans have failed to gut it in Congress and in the courts. They will fail again."
Vought, in his online post, said he also informed Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on Saturday that the agency would be requesting $0 for the upcoming draw period, claiming that no additional funds were needed to fulfill its work.
"The Bureau's current balance of $711.6 million is in fact excessive in the current fiscal environment," Vought claimed. "This spigot, long contributing to CFPB's unaccountability, is now being turned off."
Critics point out that Musk, who has been appointed by Trump to head the Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE), has serious conflicts when it comes to the Trump administration's targeting of the CFPB.
DOGE is not a real department but has claimed sweeping authority to access the sensitive workings of federal agencies—triggering an avalanche of legal challenges as a result. In addition to Vought's statements, the previous CFPB acting director, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, last week issued an internal stop work order that was challenged by Democratic lawmakers.
On Friday, as Common Dreamsreported, Musk himself posted "CFPB RIP" on social media next to a picture of a gravestone and his detractors have argued his antagonism is not based solely on his ideological opposition to an agency that has returned over $20 billion to consumers over recent years from bad financial actors.
In an appearance Saturday on MSNBC, Lindsay Owens, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Groundwork Collective, explained that while Vought's targeting of CFPB can be explained by well-documented fealty to various corporate interests—and a desire "to destroy the government from the inside out"—Musk's motivations are likely "more sinister" and closer to home.
Elon Musk and Russ Vought have taken over the CFPB. That’s bad news for consumers.
Vought’s aim is to destroy govt from the inside out, and Musk's motive is more sinister. As he partners with Visa on a payment app, he has an interest in ensuring the CFPB doesn't get in his way. pic.twitter.com/C7FAFfG0xI
— Groundwork Collaborative (@Groundwork) February 8, 2025
Diminishing CFPB's ability to operate as well as getting a look at its trove of files, including the inner workings of those institutions it has been tasked with holding to account, said Owens, is a for Musk to "grease the skids for his new business interest."
"We know that Elon Musk is interested in starting his own payment app—he's partnered with Visa to do that," she explained, "and so he has a real interest in ensuring that the CFPB isn't blocking an effort like that."
Owens said that Musk's interest in the agency goes beyond that as well, because the CFPB has "trade secrets from enforcement actions against some of his likely future competitors."
On Friday, The American Prospect's David Dayen reported on the little-noticed Feb. 3 order that Bessent sent out to CFPB staffers which specifically halted new designation of non-bank entities, including "nondepository institutions," by the agency—a policy that could directly impact Musk's peer-to-peer payment venture he hopes to launch on X in partnership with Visa.
According to Dayen:
By stalling designation of nondepository institutions, Bessent ensures that X will not be designated for CFPB supervision, at least in the near term.
The more innocent explanation for the last-minute change is that Bessent was likely uninformed about what the CFPB does, and hastily added supervision later. But the inserted directive specifically bars designation of non-banks in the supervisory process, as a not-so-thinly-veiled shield for Big Tech payment app firms, and in particular the company run by special government employee Elon Musk.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) expressed concerns along these grounds on Saturday night.
"Elon wants the CFPB gone so tech billionaires can profit from apps, like X, that offer bank-like services but don't follow financial laws that keep people’s money safe," charged Markey. "Musk wants to use the government to put more in his pockets. This is a blatant conflict of interest."
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'So Much for Lowering Costs': Fury Over Musk's Death Wish for CFPB That Returned Over $20 Billion to Consumers
"The richest man in the world wants to shut down an agency that keeps people like him from ripping off the rest of us."
Feb 08, 2025
Defenders of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that has returned tens of billions of dollars to duped and defrauded U.S. consumers expressed outrage overnight and into Saturday after the independent agency was declared deceased by billionaire Elon Musk and its operations were handed over to the chief architect of the far-right Project 2025 Russell Vought.
Vought, who earlier this week was confirmed as head of the Office of Management and Budget by Senate Republicans, was named acting director of the CFPB by President Donald Trump, according to various reports.
The appointment of the far-right ideologue came less than a day after reports emerged that members of the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) were granted access to key CFPB systems and Musk himself posted to his online social media X that the agency should "RIP," suggesting it was in the process of being dismantled or, in his mind, already killed.
"Since its creation, the Bureau has returned $21 billion to people's wallets by fighting against illegal financial charges, junk fees, debts, and fraud," said Mike Calhoun, president of the nonpartisan Center for Responsible Lending, in a statement on Saturday. Now, when people are already struggling to pay higher prices for necessities like eggs and milk, the Trump administration appears to have decided to deepen the pain by directly taking aim at the agency that helps keep our money safe."
"When people are already struggling to pay higher prices for necessities like eggs and milk, the Trump administration appears to have decided to deepen the pain by directly taking aim at the agency that helps keep our money safe."
"'Let them eat debt' is not a strategy for making America great again," Calhoun added, "and weakening the CFPB certainly isn't the way to keep working families, our financial markets, or our economy strong."
Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which challenges corporate encroachment on the common good, said, "Obviously this isn't about 'efficiency.' It's about dismantling law enforcement that protects Americans from corporate power."
Congressional Democrats also reacted with contempt to Musk's message and the news that the agency's systems—like those of other agencies DOGE has put its hands on—were under threat.
"Here is the richest man in the world bragging about eliminating an agency that has delivered $21 billion back to working-class families since its inception," said Democrats on the House Committee on Financial Services, led by Ranking Member Maxine Waters of California. "Even most Republicans want the CFPB to continue protecting them from being ripped off by abusive big banks and predatory lenders."
"Here are the FACTS: 81% of voters, both Republicans and Democrats, support the CFPB and want the agency to continue its work," said Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.), also a member of the committee. "Even so, Trump has moved to freeze the CFPB to take money out of YOUR pocket to line those of his billionaire friends."
In a letter sent to the CFPB on Friday—addressed to the previous acting director, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whose first act of business was reportedly to order a halt of "all meaningful work"—Waters, Vargas, and 79 other Democratic members of the House said they were "deeply alarmed and troubled that you appear to be launching the Trump Administration's plan to contravene the will of Congress and unlawfully 'delete' this popular consumer watchdog that enjoys the broad bipartisan support of four out of five Americans."
According to the letter:
... we understand that you have ordered staff to halt all meaningful work of the CFPB, including ordering staff to stop investigating violations of consumer financial protection laws or settling enforcement actions, basically letting bad actors off the hook. We also understand that you have arbitrarily ordered the suspension of all CFPB rules that have yet to take effect, which would delay billions of dollars in savings and credit opportunities for consumers, if not rob them entirely.
We urge you to immediately rescind what appears to be an illegal stop work order and allow the public servants at the CFPB to get back to work for the American people as required by law.
As of this writing, the CFPB's homepage (www.consumerfinance.gov) prominently displayed a 404 error message, though portions of the site appeared to be active.
In a Saturday statement, the Democrats on the House Finance Committee said the 404 image on the CFPB website was intentionally "deceptive," calling it "a brazen attempt to fool consumers and the public about the status" of the agency.
"As of this moment, links and pages are still up and functional on the website," the statement said, "including the Consumer Complaint portal and database and Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) database. Various aspects of the CFPB's web content is required by statute to be published and available on the CFPB's website."
"Let's be clear: the people cheering this the loudest are scammers and people who don't want you to keep your hard-earned dollars. So much for lowering costs."
Nadine Chabrier, counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, said the "deeply troubling" developments at the agency will "undermine the CFPB's mission to protect consumers from financial misconduct" of various kinds.
"CFPB has returned more than $20,000,000,000 to consumers since it was founded," said Rep. Gabe Amo (D-R.I.) on Friday evening in response to Musk's tweet. "Let's be clear: the people cheering this the loudest are scammers and people who don't want you to keep your hard-earned dollars. So much for lowering costs."
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