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With CFPB Purge, Trump Set to Deliver 'Corrupt Bounty' to Wall Street—and Elon Musk
"No move could more clearly show whose side Trump and Musk are on—and who they are willing to exploit," said Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman.
Feb 14, 2025
The only U.S. agency tasked solely with protecting consumers from predatory corporations was hit particularly hard this week by the Trump administration's sweeping purge of the federal workforce, a gift to financial institutions that prey on working-class Americans with exorbitant fees and other abusive practices—and a potential boon for Elon Musk's personal business empire.
Employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), currently run in an acting capacity by Project 2025 architect and White House budget chief Russell Vought, reportedly began receiving termination emails Tuesday night, with the agency's enforcement division bearing the brunt of the firings.
Contractors and workers who were hired within the past one or two years were the primary targets of the latest round of terminations, Wiredreported.
The outlet noted that the wave of terminations followed "a tumultuous few days at the CFPB" as Musk's lieutenants at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) "shut down a portion of the agency's homepage after a day of struggling to obtain access" to bureau systems last Friday.
That same night, Trump installed Vought at the helm of the CFPB, a move critics warned was a step toward Musk's stated goal of destroying the bureau.
Vought, a far-right ideologue, moved swiftly to halt virtually all of the agency's work, and even set up a "tip line" inviting corporations to file a report if they are "being pursued by CFPB enforcement or supervision staff, in violation of Acting Director Russ Vought's stand down order."
Robert Weissman of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said in a statement Thursday that "with their illegal and unconstitutional move to eliminate the CFPB, co-presidents Elon Musk and Donald Trump aim to deliver a corrupt bounty to Big Banks, predatory lenders, and other financial corporations."
"The CFPB has eliminated junk fees, capped credit card late charges, stopped the weaponization of medical debt, sued giant corporations, handled tens of thousands of individual complaints and provided relief to consumers of more than $21 billion—of course Big Banks, payday lenders, and financial scam artists want to eliminate it," Weissman added.
"This is a free pass for financial institutions to take advantage of consumers."
The Public Citizen co-president also put the spotlight on another potential motivation behind the Trump administration's zealous assault on the CFPB: Musk's foray into financial services, building off his existing control of X with a partnership with Visa that would allow peer-to-peer payments on the social media platform and beyond.
"Musk has a direct interest in eliminating the agency, which would be a regulator of X if it proceeds with well-reported plans to provide money transfer services," said Weissman. "No move could more clearly show whose side Trump and Musk are on—and who they are willing to exploit."
The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) noted in a statement Sunday that "if the CFPB can't do its job, no federal regulator will be able to prevent Elon Musk from building a financial services company."
More broadly, CFA pointed out that if the Trump administration shuts down or neuters the CFPB, no other agency will be able to assume the unique consumer protection role it played without a specific act of Congress.
"The CFPB was created after excessive risk-taking by financial companies, many of whom were not supervised by a federal regulator, crashed our economy," said Adam Rust, CFA's director of financial services. "It was created to protect people, not empower Elon Musk. If this administration chooses to cover its eyes from the facts, people will be put in harm’s way. This is a free pass for financial institutions to take advantage of consumers."
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Taking Axe to 'Human Needs Budget', Trump and Musk Nowhere to Be Found at 'Slash the Pentagon' Event
"While the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has been on a rampage to root out 'waste, fraud, and abuse,' they've been ignoring the biggest money pit in the entire federal government," said Rep. Summer Lee.
Feb 12, 2025
As billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency makes its way through federal agencies with the aim of cutting spending that goes toward protecting workers' rights, providing disaster assistance and healthcare in the Global South, and defending Americans from corporate greed, Democratic lawmakers are demanding to know why Republicans are pushing to increase the already bloated Pentagon budget.
"While American families struggle with skyrocketing healthcare costs and grocery bills, Republicans are gearing up to fork over another $150 billion to the military-industrial complex," said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) at a press conference titled "Slash the Pentagon" with government watchdog Public Citizen on Tuesday.
The event was held as the Senate Budget Committee prepared to begin a markup Wednesday of Senate Republicans' budget blueprint that was recently released, which could add $150 billion to the Department of Defense (DOD) budget.
The spending would be focused on improving "military readiness," expanding the U.S. Navy, building an air and missile defense system the Trump administration has called the "Iron Dome for America," and investing in nuclear defenses.
The senator said adding to the Pentagon's budget—which already stands at nearly $900 billion—won't make Americans safer, because "the doomsday that Americans fear in the 21st century isn't being vaporized by a nuclear bomb."
"It's the doomsday diagnosis of cancer, it's medical debt, it's housing payments or loan payments, it's grocery bills and heating bills," said Markey. "Let's finally put the people before the Pentagon."
As progressive organizers have noted in recent weeks, despite the fact that President Donald Trump campaigned as a populist—and won the support of a majority of working-class voters while high earners swung toward former Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election—the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has spent the early days of Trump's second term seizing data and pushing for the shutdown of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Education, attempting to take control of a major payment systemat the Department of the Treasury, and looking to cut spending at the Department of Labor.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon—which has failed seven consecutive audits, unable to account for its spending even as it swallows up 14% of the federal budget—has barely registered as a target of DOGE.
"While the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has been on a rampage to root out 'waste, fraud, and abuse,' they've been ignoring the biggest money pit in the entire federal government: the Department of Defense," said Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.). "The people want a more efficient government, quality healthcare, housing costs that don't skyrocket, and affordable eggs and groceries—not a bloated military budget that doesn't make us any safer. Maybe DOGE should take a look at that."
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) added that DOGE's actions so far will leave students with disabilities without resources and threaten senior citizens who rely on Social Security.
"We don't have clean drinking water in our country, but we always have the money for war," said Tlaib. "I'm sick of it. If our government has endless money to bomb people, they have money for clean air and water, guaranteeing healthcare as a human right, and making sure no child goes hungry. Our elected officials are choosing to spend money on endless war instead of the American people."
Trump and Musk have begun answering some questions from the press about whether DOGE will address DOD spending, with the president saying Sunday that DOGE will likely find "hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse."
Musk has criticized the Pentagon's $12 billion F-35 program as "obsolete," and some lawmakers have drawn attention to exorbitant spending at the department on luxury meals, toilet seats, and soap dispensers.
But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday expressed hope that spending cuts would focus on climate programs, saying the Pentagon "is not in the business of climate change, solving the global thermostat. We're in the business of deterring and winning wars."
The DOD is the "single largest institutional producer of greenhouse gases in the world," as the Costs of War project at Brown University said in a 2019 report, and Trump's former defense secretary, Jim Mattis, acknowledged that the DOD must "pay attention to potential adverse impacts" of the climate crisis, related to national security.
On Tuesday, Musk was also questioned about DOGE's priorities at the Pentagon, with a reporter asking whether he has a conflict of interest in examining the DOD's spending, given his role of CEO at SpaceX, an aerospace company that receives about $22 billion in defense contracts from the department.
Musk shrugged off the concern, telling the reporter that he isn't personally "the one filing the contract, it's the people at SpaceX," and adding that defense contracts received by his company are "by far the best value for money for the taxpayer."
SpaceX was handed a new $38.85 million contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on Monday.
Meanwhile, said Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman, as Republicans head toward the budget reconciliation process, "money for the Pentagon will come directly cutting spending on human needs. The money that will go to Lockheed Martin or Palantir will come directly from Medicaid and food stamps and other programs for the poor and vulnerable."
"But with the plundering of the human needs budget made plain," he said, "the American people are not going to stand for—and will defeat—the Republicans' Pentagon boondoggle proposal."
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The Law Is Catching Up to Musk and DOGE
With their many mistakes, Musk and his team have left themselves vulnerable to the sorts of lawsuits being filed by public-interest groups and state attorneys general.
Feb 12, 2025
On February 10, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, filed suit for damages against the Trump-Musk-DOGE cartel. The lawsuit, which EPIC filed before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, calls for damages on behalf of tens of millions of government workers and Americans resulting from the administration’s illegal breach of personal privacy and its threat to national security.
“These basic security failures have resulted in the unlawful disclosure of personal data—including social security numbers and tax information,” reads the complaint.
EPIC is claiming the data incursion—among many other violations—is illegal under the Privacy Act of 1974. “Plaintiffs have a constitutional right to the privacy of their information… Defendants have violated and continue to violate that right by unlawfully disclosing extremely personal information about plaintiffs and millions of others to unchecked actors in violation of law,” the complaint states.
The courts (and hopefully Congress) are catching up to public opinion, which has taken a drastic turn since Musk began violating the privacy rights of millions of people.
EPIC urges the court to compel defendants to “delete all unlawfully obtained, disclosed, or accessed personally identifiable information from systems or devices on which they were not present on January 19, 2025.” It calls on the court to award plaintiffs statutory and punitive damages “in the amount of $1,000 per each act of unauthorized inspection and disclosure.” That’s a sum that could add up to trillions of dollars in damages given the scope of DOGE’s breach.
The law is catching up to Elon Musk. The EPIC suit is just one of many that have been filed since U.S. President Donald Trump was sworn in and Musk and his DOGE crew infiltrated several key federal agencies and their extensive public records.
On February 7, a federal judge issued an emergency temporary restraining order (TRO) against DOGE after 19 state attorneys general filed a complaint also alleging that DOGE had violated the Privacy Act of 1974 and other laws. The TRO blocks Musk et al. from accessing Treasury systems and requires they destroy any material downloaded.
On filing their case for the TRO, New York State Attorney General Letitia James said: “President Trump does not have the power to give away Americans’ private information to anyone he chooses, and he cannot cut federal payments approved by Congress. Musk and DOGE have no authority to access Americans’ private information and some of our country’s most sensitive data.”
The largest data breach in U.S. history
During a Free Press webinar held prior to EPIC’s filing, the organization’s chief litigator, John Davisson, called the DOGE incursion into federal agencies like the Department of Treasury “the largest and most consequential breach of personal information in U.S. history.” To make matters worse, Davisson noted, “it’s being led by malign, unaccountable forces from both without and within the government.”
Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert led the very first suit against Trump’s second administration. Since then, the organization has filed several other suits against the Trump White House and its operatives, with most focused on pushing back against the DOGE power grab. “What really stands out is the corruption implicit in Musk being at the helm,” Gilbert said during the Free Press webinar. A Public Citizen report from October found that three of Musk’s businesses—SpaceX, Tesla, and X—face at least 11 criminal and civil investigations at the federal level.
“The biggest risk of all is the risk to democratic governance,” said Davisson. “The folks involved here—these bandits, these hijackers—have correctly assessed that the systems in federal agencies are critical levers for how they carry out the functions Congress has assigned.” Davisson added that the massive DOGE data breach empowers Musk’s unaccountable team “to exert all sorts of pressure on federal employees and people at large on people they disagree with politically and that is something we should be very, very worried about.”
The groundbreaking reporting of WIRED’s Vittoria Elliott has exposed the relatively inexperienced team of techies that has accompanied Musk into these federal agencies to access massive troves of personal data. “One of the biggest issues is the lack of transparency,” she said during the webinar. “We don’t know what systems they’re accessing. We’re not given transparency about their roles… The consequences of [Musk’s team] getting it wrong are so dire for so many people.”
Sowing the Seeds of DOGE’s Downfall
One of the things that stands out to Davisson is just how many mistakes DOGE has made since it began its work. Musk and his team have left themselves vulnerable to the sorts of lawsuits being filed by EPIC, Public Citizen, and state attorneys general, he said. “They’ve aggravated a lot of stakeholders; they’re in the process of aggravating the courts. They’ve embarrassed themselves in many ways; they’ve drawn the eye of the public. I think in many ways they have already sown the seeds of their downfall.”
Congress has reportedly been inundated with calls from people who are deeply unhappy about Musk’s raid on government agencies. “It is a deluge on DOGE,” Sen. Tina Smith (D–Minn.) told The Washington Post. “Truly our office has gotten more phone calls on Elon Musk and what the heck he’s doing mucking around in federal government than I think anything we’ve gotten in years… People are really angry.”
People must share their concerns with their lawmakers and call on Congress to act against the incursions. But that’s just a start.
“There is broad public dislike for Musk,” Davisson said during Monday’s webinar. “And we should continue to find ways to leverage that... This is going to require many small—sometimes unsatisfying—actions by a lot of different people in a lot of different places. This assault on democracy is vulnerable to that.”
Turning Anger About Musk Into Action
There are productive places to channel outrage, said Gilbert. “There have been some really effective engagements and protests and people are ginning up for the next phase of resistance... There are some places where we can win things,” she added, pointing to the upcoming budget fight in Congress.
“There’s a battle to be had, where everyone's senators and members matter,” she said. “Knowing that and knowing that there are places where constituents can weigh in hopefully changes the calculus a little bit when folks are feeling like there’s nothing they can do.”
And indeed Musk may be popular among the extremist MAGA crowd, but voters in general aren’t on board with the DOGE team’s privacy violations. A new Hart Research survey indicates that his popularity is in rapid decline as people learn more about his efforts to compromise our data.
The Economist/YouGov conducted a poll finding that the billionaire is falling out of favor with voters, including Republicans, who say in increasing numbers that they want him to have little-to-no influence over the way the government conducts its business.
The wins against DOGE are just the beginning, Davisson said. The legal strategy is “going to be important for staying grounded through what is going to be a very long and difficult fight. So I encourage everyone to celebrate the wins when they come.”
The courts (and hopefully Congress) are catching up to public opinion, which has taken a drastic turn since Musk began violating the privacy rights of millions of people. With continued public pressure and legal challenges, it’s possible DOGE’s days may be numbered.
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