‘CFPB RIP’: Elon Musk is already descending on his next target

Elon Musk has found his next target: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Musk’s team on Friday entered the headquarters of the CFPB, an agency that the billionaire Donald Trump adviser has personally targeted, according to three people familiar with their actions. Musk’s allies sought access to information technology systems and communicated with staff at CFPB, the people said, alarming employees who are worried about them getting ahold of protected personal information. Three Musk allies, some of whom are tied to his Department of Government Efficiency, have now embedded with the consumer bureau, according to the CFPB’s employees union. Musk posted “CFPB RIP” with a tombstone emoji on his social media site X a few hours later, raising the prospect that the consumer protection agency could be the next U.S. Agency for International Development, which he has said should “die.” The CFPB polices a wide array of financial institutions and nonbank companies. It was conceived by then-law professor Elizabeth Warren and established in the 2010 Dodd Frank law that overhauled the financial system in the wake of the Great Recession. Conservatives and financial institutions have long criticized the bureau as an unaccountable regulator with too broad a reach. CFPB staff are "mad as hell" about the DOGE team’s incursion into the agency, said one person familiar with the situation. Some House Democrats on Friday decried DOGE descending on the CFPB. "The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has saved American consumers over $20 billion. No wonder the billionaires running the Trump White House want to eliminate it," Rep. Brendan Boyle posted on X. As Musk’s team landed at CFPB, consumer protection advocates and progressives raised alarm about Musk’s potential conflicts of interest. One example: His site X announced last month that it was teaming up with Visa to offer a real-time payments system on the platform, a move that could land it in the CFPB’s crosshairs under a rule cracking down on technology firms with consumer payment platforms. That rule was finalized in November; that same month, Musk called for the abolishment of the agency: “Delete CFPB,” he posted on X. “There are enormous conflicts of interest at play here,” said Aaron Stephens, senior legislative strategist at the progressive group P Street. “His closest allies — billionaires in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street who spent millions getting Donald Trump elected — want to see the CFPB gone, ensuring there's no one standing in the way when they rip people off and cheat them." Multiple people cited in this story were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Spokespeople for the CFPB and DOGE did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Erin Witte, director of consumer protection for the consumer advocacy group Consumer Federation of America, said “DOGE’s continued aggressive movement into the CFPB is an obvious targeted attempt by Musk to assert control over the agency that he perceives as an obstacle to moving his beloved X into the payments space.” Trump previously said that when Musk has a conflict of interest, "we won't let him get near it." White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt added that "if Elon Musk comes across a conflict of interest with the contracts and the funding that DOGE is overseeing, that Elon will excuse himself from those contracts, and he has, again, abided by all applicable laws.” Republicans, meanwhile, were delighted at the prospect of Musk taking a sledgehammer to CFPB. “My popcorn is definitely out. It is an agency that is seen as the most political and ideological and least balanced out of any of the regulatory ones,” said Josh Novotney, a GOP lobbyist who represents clients in the finance industry. “There's been a lot of thought given to how to alter its direction permanently.” Musk was tapped by Trump to slash and burn the federal bureaucracy and has spent the last two weeks mounting an assault on government agencies and bureaucrats. He and his allies in recent days have moved to hobble the U.S. Agency for International Development and obtain access to payments systems at the Treasury Department. That has left workers at other agencies bracing for Musk and his DOGE team to turn their attention to them. On Thursday night, the CFPB employees union, NTEU 335, said Chris Young, Nikhil Rajpal and Gavin Kliger’s names were added to the CFPB’s internal staff directory. They are listed as “senior advisers,” according to a person in the bureau who was granted anonymity to speak without authorization. The union said in a scathing statement on Friday that “CFPB Union members welcome our newest colleagues and look forward to the smell of Axe Body Spray in our elevators.” Treasury Secretary and Acting CFPB Director Scott Bessent, the union added, “allows Musk's operatives to bypass cybersecurity policies and wreak havoc with their amateur code skills inside CFPB's once-secure systems.” Bessent had already begun changing the agency soon after being appointed its interim head last Friday, even before Musk turned his attention to it. Bessent on Monday directed staff to halt a wide array of activities, including rulemaking and public communications. Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee praised the move in a letter to Trump on Tuesday. “A transformation in leadership at the CFPB is overdue, and we are eager for positive, lasting change at the CFPB,” they wrote. The next CFPB chief will have wide latitude to make changes to the agency, even up to zeroing out its budget entirely. The agency draws its funding from the Federal Reserve at a level determined by the director. As word spread Friday afternoon of DOGE’s arrival at CFPB’s headquarters, a handful of protesters gathered outside the building to back the agency, wielding a banner reading, “Democracy Died in Complacency.” “DOGE is not a legitimate agency. They haven’t been authorized by Congress,” said Nadine Seiler, a home organizer who has a client who works at the agency. “As a citizen whose information may be in here, because this has stuff to do with banking … there shouldn't be 19-year-olds with no security clearance, and a private citizen whose interest is to make more money for himself, shutting down the regulations for banking,” she said.

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