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Drew Bush, 202/429-7441, drew_bush@tws.org
Our public lands represent a heritage
that belongs to all Americans, one that is critical to safeguarding clean water
and air and reducing carbon emissions. The Bush administration has treated
these lands as if they belong to industry. And they're not done
yet.
With almost three months left in office,
the administration will be pushing hard to accomplish as much of its agenda as
possible. Political appointees are likely to be finalizing land management
plans, regulations, and policy changes that could severely damage our
nation's public lands for decades to come. Yet few Americans are aware of
these threats. On some of these issues there may still be time to hold off the
irreparable harm if citizens learn about them and take action.
1. Administration Rolling Back Protections for Pristine Roadless Lands
The Bush administration has circumvented
the Roadless Area Conservation Rule by adopting an Idaho-specific version that
opens up millions of acres of roadless national forest land to more road building
and logging than was possible under the earlier rule. Idaho
has more roadless national forest lands than any other state in the lower 48
and, thanks to the Bush administration, Idaho
now has weaker protection for its roadless lands than any other state. Of
immediate concern is the Smoky Canyon Phosphate Mine near Yellowstone
National Park, which is already a
designated Superfund clean-up site due to selenium pollution that threatens
streams and Yellowstone cutthroat trout
populations. The mine expansion would entail road construction within the
pristine Sage Creek and Meade
Peak roadless areas. In
rushing to complete this project, the Bush administration is also pressuring
agency officials to convert biological assessments from "likely to
adversely affect" certain animals to an opinion that the mine expansion
is "not likely to adversely affect" listed species.
[Craig Gehrke,
208/343-8153,
craig_gehrke@tws.org]
2. Commercial Oil Shale Leasing Plans Finalized
Without Opportunity for Protest, Appeals
We expect the Bush administration to
finalize commercial oil shale leasing and development regulations while
also amending 12 Bureau of Land Management (BLM) resource management
plans. They will become final over objections from the Environmental
Protection Agency, governors and local elected officials, who are concerned
about inadequate environmental analysis. BLM seems deaf to admissions from the
oil shale industry that a safe and efficient technology for squeezing oil from
shale won't exist for years or even decades. Without knowing which oil
shale technologies will prove viable and what the associated costs and impacts
will be, it is impossible to develop regulations that contain appropriate
protections for the environment, appropriate royalty rates to ensure a fair
return to taxpayers, and a financial safety net for affected communities. In
coming weeks, the record of decision on the plans will be signed by
Assistant Secretary Stephen Allred, a highly unusual act that effectively cuts
off opportunity for the public to file formal appeals with the Interior Board of
Land Appeals.
[Chase Huntley,
202/429-7431, chase_huntley@tws.org]
3.
Unilateral Proposal Strips Congressional Committees of Power to Protect Lands
Neither Congress nor future secretaries
of the interior would be able to protect public lands from mineral activities
in cases of emergency, if Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne succeeds in
unilaterally repealing a federal statute enacted under the Federal Land Policy
and Management Act. Responding to the threat that thousands of uranium mining
claims pose to Grand Canyon
National Park, the House
Natural Resources Committee passed a resolution last summer asking Kempthorne
to exclude areas of public land surrounding the park from mining. Instead, the
administration unilaterally issued a proposal to withdraw such power from the
House Natural Resources Committee, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee, and future interior secretaries. The proposal provided only a 15-day
public comment period (which closed on October 27), and it is expected to be
finalized before the Bush administration leaves office.
[Dave Alberswerth, 202/429-2695, dave_alberswerth@tws.org]
4. Concealed
Weapons to Be Allowed in Our National Parks and Wildlife Refuges
A new rule, to be finalized by the end of
the year despite immense opposition, would dramatically change the character of
our national parks and national wildlife refuges by overturning a
long-standing, functional firearm policy. Recognizing that parks and refuges
represent unique American landscapes, conserve critical habitat for wildlife,
and welcome millions of visitors each year, the Department of the Interior
prohibited loaded, assembled firearms on these public lands in the 1980s in
order to prevent wildlife poaching and protect cultural resources and
visitors. The recent proposal to allow loaded, concealed weapons would
not only be contrary to established rules, but would change the culture of our
national icons. A survey of present and retired park and refuge personnel
indicates that over 75 percent believe that the proposed rule would reduce the agencies'
ability to accomplish their conservation missions.
[Kristen
Brengel, 202/429-2694, kristen_brengel@tws.org]
5. Major
Fishery of Bristol Bay, Alaska Threatened by Oil and Gas Drilling
Bristol Bay has the world's largest
wild run of sockeye salmon, provides 40 percent of the U.S. fish catch, and generates nearly
$500 million in yearly fishing revenue. Yet the Interior Department's
Minerals
Management Service included this area in its proposed 2007-2012 plan for Outer
Continental Shelf oil and gas drilling without properly examining the
environmental impacts of such activity. President Bush set the stage for
drilling in Bristol Bay in 2007 when he lifted
an executive withdrawal put in place by his father to protect this significant
resource. The draft plan calls for two lease sales in the North
Aleutian Basin,
which includes the federal offshore waters of Bristol Bay and the eastern Bering Sea, in 2010 and 2012. Because of the potential for catastrophic damage, the
government should conduct extensive scientific studies to fully understand the
ecosystem and anticipate the potential consequences of development. Oil and gas
development in a region already compromised by climate change would jeopardize
habitat vital to wild salmon, polar bears, walrus, and other wildlife.
[Eleanor
Huffines, 907/272-9453x103, eleanor_huffines@tws.org]
6.
New Forest Service Directive Allows Timber
Harvesting on Potential Wilderness
The Forest Service has proposed changes
to its directive guiding vegetation management in forest plans. As a result,
there could be much more timber harvesting than has been permitted under
existing plans, particularly on lands once deemed unsuitable for timber
harvest. Under the Bush administration, the Forest Service has attempted to
make these rules changes for several years-with a federal court throwing
them out in 2007 after a lawsuit. The interim directive (ID_1909.12-2008-1 in
the Forest Service Handbook) could affect citizen-proposed wilderness and
roadless areas, depending on the outcome of legal challenges. It also allows
forest managers to allow logging without any intent to reforest the land,
jeopardizing these forest ecosystems. In an attempt to push its goals, the
administration has broken larger proposals like this into smaller pieces in an
attempt to escape notice in the final days of the administration.
[Mary Krueger,
978/342-2159, mary_krueger@tws.org]
7. Reagan-Era
Rule Protecting Steams From Coal Mine Waste to be Rescinded
We expect the Bush administration to
rescind a 1983 regulation adopted during the Reagan administration that
protects streams from the dumping of wastes from coal strip mining. The
current Office of Surface Mining rule prohibits wastes from coal mines from
being deposited in streams. The Bush administration proposal would
rescind this protection for streams, allowing for the further expansion of a
coal mining technique known as "mountain-top removal," where mining
companies literally blow up the tops of mountains to reach coal seams and
dispose of the waste rock in stream valleys.
[Dave Alberswerth, 202/429-2695, dave_alberswerth@tws.org]
8. Finalized
Transmission Corridor Plans Lock in Dirty Fuel Future
Corridors designated for power lines and
separate avenues for oil, gas and hydrogen pipelines prioritize dirty fuel sources
such as coal at the expense of renewable energies. They also threaten places
such as Arches National
Park in Utah
and the Havasu National Wildlife Refuge on the Arizona/California border. The Department
of Energy wants to finalize parts of the corridors designation under sections
368 and 1221 of Energy Policy Act of 2005 despite agencies' inability to
coordinate transmission and pipeline corridor designations. Corridor
designations should be limited to reasonable sizes, and should balance
protection of wildlands and ecological values with the need for additional
energy transmission capacity. Most also need to be revisited to ensure that they
include renewable sources of energy. The rush to judgment will preclude
adequate consideration of these issues.
[Nada Culver,
303/650-5818x117, nada_culver@tws.org]
9. Yellowstone National
Park's Winter Plan Falls Short, Endangers Park
Resources
The number of
snowmobiles allowed into Yellowstone
National Park under a new
proposal by the Bush administration continues to ignore the Park
Service's scientific findings. The Bush administration this week put
forward a new temporary plan to guide winter access, following a court decision
that its 2007 authorization of continued snowmobile use failed to protect Yellowstone's air quality, quiet, and wildlife. The
new plan ensures that Yellowstone's
winter season will begin on time and points the park in a better direction than
the administration's previous plan. These are encouraging developments-for
the short-term. For the long-term, however, the daily ceiling of 318
snowmobiles still exceeds the daily average of the past five winters and will lead
to damage of Yellowstone's resources. Every
scientific study has demonstrated that the Park Service can do a better job
protecting Yellowstone by increasing public
use of snowcoaches. Such an approach has been recommended by every Park Service
director who has served over the past 44 years.
[Kristen
Brengel, 202/429-2694, kristen_brengel@tws.org]
10.
Wilderness-quality Eastern Forests to be Leased to Oil and Gas Companies
Even though oil and gas companies already
hold undeveloped leases on millions of acres, the Bush administration has
continued to sell hundreds of thousands of acres of leases on sensitive Western
lands that are inappropriate for development. (For example, on December 19, the
Utah office of the Bureau of Land Management
(BLM) will sell leases ringing Arches and Canyonlands
National Parks while we expect similar
leasing in Colorado.)
A new twist, however, is the expanded leasing of eastern lands including
those proposed for wilderness designation. The BLM recently attempted to lease
a tract of land in West Virginia that is included in the Wild Monongahela Act
(now part of the omnibus lands bill pending in Congress), and The Wilderness
Society anticipates an increasing number of similar lease sales in the near
future.
[Mary Krueger 978/342-2159, mary_krueger@tws.org and Suzanne
Jones, 303/650-5818x102, suzanne_jones@tws.org]
11. Endangered
Species Act to Ignore Possible Extinctions Caused by Global Warming
The Bush administration
proposed new rules that would undermine the Endangered Species Act by changing
it to ensure that the potential effects of global warming will rarely, if ever,
be considered. These rule changes also would allow federal agencies to
make land management decisions or take other actions without consulting the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service about
the impacts their actions might have on a particular species. These changes
have been proposed despite findings by the International Panel on Climate
Change that 30 percent of species alive today could become extinct if global
warming continues unabated.
[David Moulton, 202/429-2681, david_moulton@tws.org]
12. "Threatened" Polar Bears
Endangered by Accelerated Offshore Arctic Leasing
America's polar bear, listed just this year as "threatened"
under the Endangered Species Act, faces further endangerment from already
completed oil and gas lease sales in its primary hunting habitats of the frozen
Chukchi and Beaufort Seas of Alaska.
Major oil companies have begun seismic testing on lands they purchased last February
when the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS)
held the first of several planned lease sales on nearly 30 million acres of the
Chukchi-an area the size of Pennsylvania. The
administration's five-year plan proposes moving forward aggressively on
further leasing in the Chukchi and Beaufort, while a new expedited nationwide
offshore leasing and drilling plan could mean the opening of more areas in
these seas as well as in Bristol Bay. These Arctic waters are
also rich in marine life such as whales, seals and walrus, and are important
for indigenous peoples, who hunt seals and bowhead whales. Impacts from seismic
testing, marine traffic, and pollution threaten to irreparably harm these areas,
which are already vulnerable and changing due to global warming. MMS
documents insufficiently presented the cumulative impacts of oil leasing,
exploration, and development, and the effects of climate change on wildlife and
other values because most were based on outdated research for a region that
isn't well understood.
[Eleanor Huffines, 907/272-9453x103, eleanor_huffines@tws.org]
13. Utah's Canyon
Country Sacrificed in Favor of One Last Gift for Oil and Gas
After dismissing or resolving 87 protests
in less than a month, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will implement five
of six resource management plans that would manage more than 10.5 million acres
of Utah's public lands in the Moab, Price, Vernal, Richfield, Monticello,
and Kanab areas. The Monticello
plan will be released pending approval by state officials. The BLM prioritized
energy development and off-road vehicle access on nearly 5 million of these
acres that hold wilderness characteristics, making these plans the ribbon that
decorates the massive gift package that the Bush administration has already
delivered to the oil and gas industry over the last eight years.
[Nada Culver,
303/650-5818x117, nada_culver@tws.org]
14. Forest
Service Land
Managers Prevented From Making Air Quality Comments
In order to stymie recognition of air
quality problems by Forest Service land managers, the administration
issued a directive that decisions finding adverse air quality impacts must be
reviewed the chief of the Forest Service and then be passed on to the deputy
undersecretary for forests for a final decision. Among other problems,
this process ensures that air quality determinations will be made by Washington political
appointees rather than Forest Service land managers actually working in the
field. Specifically, the directive outlines an additional 30 days for this
political level of decision-making. This drawn-out timeline can
effectively derail meaningful comment by the agency, due to failure to meet
National Environmental Policy Act (and other process) comment deadlines.
[Stephanie Kessler, 307/332-3462, stephanie_kessler@tws.org]
15. Fish
and Wildlife Service to Issue National Wildlife Refuge Wilderness Policy
Without Public Review
Sound wilderness management practices not
only protect the resource, but also ensure that visitors to National Wildlife Refuge
System wilderness areas see the landscape and wildlife in a natural condition.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last offered a draft wilderness stewardship
policy for public comment under the Clinton
administration in 2001. That draft, which contained important protections for
wilderness, was never finalized. We expect that the Bush administration will
release guidelines on wilderness management without time for public review.
Given that wildlife refuges have faced a number of challenges, such as global
warming, in the seven years that have elapsed since the last version of the
draft was released in 2001, the need for public review of and comment on the
policy is critical.
[Maribeth Oakes,
202/429-2674, maribeth_oakes@tws.org]
Other Rollbacks:
Since 1935, The Wilderness Society has led the conservation movement in wilderness protection, writing and passing the landmark Wilderness Act and winning lasting protection for 107 million acres of Wilderness, including 56 million acres of spectacular lands in Alaska, eight million acres of fragile desert lands in California and millions more throughout the nation.
"There's no reason to build this in Guantánamo unless you want to do things you don't think you could get away with on the U.S. mainland. It's easy to put tents in Florida. But they're putting them in Cuba. Ask yourself why."
Fears are growing that the offshore U.S. detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba are an ominous sign for what President Donald Trump has in store as he further disregards the rule of law and normalizes actions that previously would have been unthinkable or faced immediate, bipartisan opposition in Congress.
After the first pictures emerged Saturday of still unidentified persons transferred to the island from the U.S. mainland by immigration officials, progressive journalist Nathan Robinson was among those raising the alarm, accusing Trump of "building a concentration camp and deliberately putting it where it is hardest to monitor or enforce the law."
The New York Times, alongside pictures of newly-erected tents taken by photojournalist Doug Mills, reported Saturday that the administration had already "moved more than 30 people described as Venezuelan gang members to the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, as U.S. forces and homeland security staff prepare a tent city for potentially thousands of migrants." Mills was traveling Friday with Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, as she made her first visit to the offshore site.
According to the outlet:
Ms. Noem visited the nascent tent camp, where the administration has suggested that thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of migrants who pose lesser threats could be housed. She watched Marines rehearse how to move migrants to the future tent city, and she was shown a tent with cots and a display of basic items to be provided each new arrival — T-shirt, shorts, underwear and a towel — and then got an aerial view of the mission from a Chinook helicopter.
"The Trump administration," the Times reported, "has not released any of their identities, though they are believed to all be men, nor has it said how long they might be held at the island outpost."
According to critics like Robinson, "There's no reason to build this in Guantánamo unless you want to do things you don't think you could get away with on the U.S. mainland. It's easy to put tents in Florida. But they're putting them in Cuba. Ask yourself why."
On Friday, a coalition of more than a dozen rights groups—including the ACLU, National Immigration Law Center, and others—sent a letter today to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Defense (DoD), and the U.S. State Department demanding Trump officials provide immediate access to those who have been transferred out of the country to the offshore facility.
In addition, the groups demanded to know:
"Sending immigrants from the U.S. to Guantánamo and holding them incommunicado without access to counsel or the outside world opens a new shameful chapter in the history of this notorious prison," said ACLU deputy director of immigrant rights Lee Gelernt. "It is unlawful for our government to use Guantánamo as a legal black hole, yet that is exactly what the Trump administration is doing."
Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director of Detention Watch Network, said Friday that expansion of operations at Guantánamo "is especially alarming given its remote location and the decades-long documented history of abuse and torture there, which will only be exacerbated by the well-documented abuse inherent to the ICE detention system, including abuse, unsanitary conditions, and medical neglect. In no uncertain terms—lives are in jeopardy."
While previous administrations have exploited the land seized by the U.S. in Cuba to detain and process asylum seekers and migrants in the past, those were individuals interdicted at sea or prior to having ever set foot on American soil. The facilities have not been used to hold noncitizens deported from the U.S. mainland.
Last week, Slate's Mary Harris interviewed journalist Andrea Pitzer, author of "One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps," who acknowledged that while many immediately think of Nazi Germany's death camps under Adolf Hitler when they hear the term "concentration camp," it is not wrong to describe the U.S. prison facilities at Guantánamo that way and for important reasons.
In her questioning, Harris posed to Pitzer how the existence of Guantánamo "doesn’t mean it’s going to become Auschwitz" necessarily, but that it does make "the road to Auschwitz more possible."
And Pitzer responded:
That's exactly right. And so what it means is even to do the most horrible things that humans have done takes time. It takes sort of a space and imagination and tools and resources. And the more of those kinds of tools and resources we line up in one place, the more room there is for the obscene or the perverted imagination to work. And even Auschwitz—keep in mind that it was 1933 when Hitler came to power and they started with concentration camps right out of the gate. So within the first weeks, Dakau is opened, though not quite in its final form, but it is already a camp and it takes almost a decade to get to even this final solution. And so, yes, absolutely, the Holocaust as we know it, as we remember it, has never been repeated. Nothing has come close to that. But you do not get to the death camps without having several years of Auschwitz, of Buchenwalds, of those beforehand.
"And right now," Pitzer said of Gitmo's legacy and the new purpose that Trump is giving it, "we have a place where there has been torture, we have a place where there has been riots, we have a place where there have been people held without trial for more than 20 years. And those are some of the most dangerous seeds that humanity can plant."
"The Holocaust as we know it, as we remember it, has never been repeated. Nothing has come close to that. But you do not get to the death camps without having several years of Auschwitz, of Buchenwalds, of those beforehand."
In a weekend column, the Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch warned that even as much of the Trump administration's targeting of immigrants and refugees thus far should be seen as a "propaganda" exercise designed to titillate his base and antagonize his liberal opponents, the danger present by the Gitmo policy and others are very real.
"The bigger worry, " writes Bunch, "is that just because the cruelty of mass deportation is largely performative doesn’t mean these performances won’t scale up dramatically in the months ahead. Trump reportedly is already badgering his border czar, Tom Homan, and ICE to meet ambitious arrest targets, which would probably require crueler and more legally dubious measures that would fill those empty tents at Gitmo. If the president needs his phony war against a nonexistent border invasion to distract the American heartland from the coming evisceration of government services, the cruelty will become a bigger and bigger point."
Referencing the great Russian playwright's famous quote about the introduction of a gun onstage, Bunch opined that Trump's performative brand of governance does not mean the threat isn't real.
"You don't need Anton Chekhov," noted Bunch, "to understand that you don't build empty tents at Gitmo in Act One of your presidency unless you plan to fill them in Act Three."
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.
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."
"The richest man in the world wants to shut down an agency that keeps people like him from ripping off the rest of us."
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."