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russell vought
'This Is Your Money': Trump Assault on CFPB Has Cost Consumers $19 Billion
"When you're counting the way that costs have gone up for American families over the last year, be sure to include the cost of getting cheated," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Feb 10, 2026
The Trump administration's ongoing effort to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cost Americans nearly $20 billion in just a year, according to a report released Monday as Democratic lawmakers and campaigners marked the anniversary of the White House's hostile takeover and gutting of the CFPB.
The new report was assembled by Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), an architect and champion of the CFPB. Citing bureau documents, publicly available data, and federal analyses, the report estimates that the Trump administration's mass dismissal of enforcement actions against abusive corporations, failure to distribute settlement payments, rescission of CFPB rules and guidance, and attack on the bureau's Consumer Complaint Program have collectively cost US consumers $19 billion over the past year.
That figure, the report emphasizes, "does not even begin to cover costs Americans could have been scammed out of due to a sidelined CFPB."
“Donald Trump promised to lower costs for Americans ‘On Day One.’ Instead, he is trying to shut down an agency that protects Americans from getting scammed out of their money by big banks and giant corporations,” Warren said in a statement. “As a result, Trump’s attempt to sideline the CFPB has cost families billions of dollars over the last year alone. We're going to keep fighting for the CFPB and against the billionaires who want to get rid of it.”
The report was released to mark one year since Russell Vought, the White House budget chief and acting CFPB director, ordered the bureau to effectively shut down its operations, including rulemaking and investigations into corporate wrongdoing.
Lawmakers have not confirmed Vought—a Project 2025 architect who has been explicit about his desire to kill the CFPB—as bureau chief, but he has remained in the acting director role thanks to White House legal maneuvers. In recent months, Vought has tried to starve the CFPB of funding—an effort that, for now, has been stymied in court.
"We want to put it out," Vought said in an interview late last year, boasting about mass firings that have left the consumer agency skeletal. "We will be successful probably within the next two or three months."
Another ridiculous price tag that Trump is forcing you to pay.
This is YOUR money.
You deserve a government that works for you, not against you and your financial interests. https://t.co/yd6hpYriXw
— Senator Andy Kim (@SenatorAndyKim) February 9, 2026
Prior to the start of President Donald Trump's second White House term, the CFPB had returned around $21 billion to US consumers scammed by banks and other corporations since the bureau's creation in the wake of the Great Recession.
"When you're counting the way that costs have gone up for American families over the last year, be sure to include the cost of getting cheated, because Donald Trump has driven that cost through the roof," Warren said during a rally with fellow Democratic lawmakers and advocates in Washington, DC on Monday.
"We are here today to remind Donald Trump and to remind all those Republicans who support him and enable him, to remind every one of them that they can kick this agency, they can try to hold this agency down, they can try to starve this agency, they can try to tie up the people who work at this agency, but at the end of the day, they will not kill this agency," said Warren. "We will stay in this fight, and we will win."
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'Blatantly Illegal': Trump Admin Orders Review of Federal Funds to Democratic-Led States
"This is a blatant and dangerous abuse of power," said a Democratic senator representing one of the targeted states. "Trump does not care how many people he hurts to score cheap political points."
Jan 23, 2026
The Trump White House has reportedly ordered federal agencies to conduct a sweeping review of funding to more than a dozen states carried by former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, a move that lawmakers from the targeted states condemned as unlawful political retaliation.
The review, first reported by RealClearPolitics, was outlined in a data request that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sent out on Tuesday. Every federal department and agency was included in the request except for the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state, and Washington, DC are the jurisdictions targeted by the OMB.
The OMB memo, according to the Washington Post, "requests agencies provide detailed information on all funds to those states, including money routed for state and local governments, nonprofit organizations, and higher education institutions." OMB claims it is trying to root out fraud.
"This is authoritarianism, plain and simple," said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), whose state is the only one on the list with a Republican governor.
"The Trump administration is targeting states that didn’t vote for him—including my home state of Vermont," Sanders added. "Using federal power to punish political opponents is anti-democratic and blatantly illegal."
US Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) similarly condemned the funding investigation as "more political retribution from Trump, the authoritarian strongman, and his crony Russ Vought," the head of OMB.
"This is a blatant and dangerous abuse of power," Merkley wrote on social media. "Trump does not care how many people he hurts to score cheap political points."
The OMB data request is just the latest instance of the Trump administration specifically targeting federal funds to Democratic-led states.
The White House budget office previously tried to cut off clean energy funds to Democratic-run states before being blocked in court. Earlier this month, the Trump administration froze $10 billion in childcare and social services funding for low-income families in five Democratic-led states, claiming fraud.
Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the administration's new funding investigation "follows a clear pattern" and marks "a harmful and shameful escalation of the administration's corrupt politicization of basic governance."
"Withholding federal funding can have grave consequences," said Parrott. "Just take the five-state freeze on childcare. In just those states, those funds are used to provide care to nearly 340,000 children. Without funding, childcare providers close, kids don’t get care, and parents can’t go to work."
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Democracy Watchdog Exposes 'Heartbreaking Catalog of DOGE's Depredations'
"Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s attacks on the federal government will have long-standing effects on the American public," said the group's research director.
Jan 20, 2026
Exactly a year after President Donald Trump returned to office and swiftly signed an executive order establishing the Department of Government Efficiency, the Revolving Door Project on Tuesday released a report detailing all the damage that DOGE has done.
"Under the banner of the so-called 'Department of Government Efficiency' (DOGE), Elon Musk and Russell Vought have eagerly shred political, professional, and legal precedent in their effort to dismantle the essential functions of the federal government—and most importantly, democracy at large," says the report, DOGE: From Meme to Government Erosion Machine.
In addition to being the richest person on Earth, Musk was DOGE's de facto leader until he left the administration at the end of May, on bad terms with Trump—a falling out addressed in the report. Meanwhile, Project 2025 architect Vought remains both director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
CFPB is among the 20 "agencies targeted by DOGE" that have their own sections in the report. Each section features a timeline of attacks, outlines impacts on capacity and material harms, and lists notable names of ousted leadership and DOGE agents.
"We hope that this report will show the public how dangerous a madman Elon Musk is, and why corrupt billionaires, with zero experience in governance, have no place making decisions for career officials."
"After Musk's exit, DOGE, filled with his lackeys, remained a feature in the federal government," the report states. "In fact, the guiding principles of DOGE—traumatizing federal workers, decimating government capacity, and slashing funding for people and places in need—were rejuvenated, albeit with a new, more effective and more discreet standard bearer."
Vought, the publication explains, "began firming up DOGE's legacy behind the scenes, using the power of his office to embed DOGE personnel in federal agencies as full time staff and institutionalize funding cuts through illegal use of the Impoundment Control Act."
Elon Musk may have left government, but DOGE's guiding principles still remain under the guidance of OMB Director Russel Vought. If anything, Vought will carry out the decimation of government capacity with an efficiency and ideological ruthlessness that Musk never possessed.
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— Revolving Door Project (@revolvingdoordc.bsky.social) January 20, 2026 at 11:23 AM
As OMB director, "Vought can review and reshape federal budget proposals according to his own ideological priorities, even if the agency leaders disagree," the document notes. "A supposed hyper-originalist and self-described Christian nationalist, Vought has used this leverage to reshape the federal government from the top down."
"The CFPB was a prime example of Vought’s vision of dismantling federal agencies that do not serve his interest," the report highlights, pointing to attack on personnel, agency funding, abandonment of key cases, and related legal battles. "The CFPB saga serves as a template of things to come with Vought at the helm of the DOGE mission."
Other targeted federal agencies include the Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, General Services Administration, Internal Revenue Service, Office of Personnel Management, United States Agency for International Development, US Institute of Peace, and US Postal Service.
As the report lays out, DOGE has also gone after the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, the Treasury, and Veterans Affairs.
Our report breaks down DOGE’s activity at individual agencies in narrative order with timelines of the incursions, DOGE’s impact on workforce capacity, the material harms that DOGE’s cuts generated, and the names of ousted agency leadership.
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— Revolving Door Project (@revolvingdoordc.bsky.social) January 20, 2026 at 11:23 AM
"DOGE agents—a cohort of unelected, unqualified, and unaccountable goons recruited from Elon Musk and Peter Thiel's orbit—have been given unfettered access to the internal machinery of federal agencies," the report says, naming another Big Tech billionaire. "From seizing control of the nation's payment system at the Treasury Department to orchestrating mass purges of the experts who ensure our food is safe, these actors bypassed traditional oversight to strip agencies of their ability to serve the American public."
Revolving Door Project deputy research director Christopher Lewis warned in a Tuesday statement that "Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s attacks on the federal government will have long-standing effects on the American public. From the cuts to the National Weather Service to the axing of fraud agents at the Federal Student Aid Office, every single American has and will continue to feel the effects of this administration's illegal and corrupt actions."
"We hope that this report will show the public how dangerous a madman Elon Musk is, and why corrupt billionaires, with zero experience in governance, have no place making decisions for career officials," he continued. "Our feckless Congress, especially Trump's enablers on the Hill, should be ashamed of themselves and what they have wrought."
"Our feckless Congress, especially Trump's enablers on the Hill, should be ashamed of themselves and what they have wrought."
Various recent analyses have exposed how US billionaires have benefited from Trump's second term and the Republican-controlled Congress while working-class Americans face an intensifying affordability crisis, struggling to afford everything from rent and groceries to soaring health insurance premiums.
"If anyone needed evidence that getting rich doesn't require brains or judgment, or that the private sector's supposed superiority over public servants was a myth, this heartbreaking catalog of DOGE's depredations should more than suffice," said Revolving Door Project executive director Jeff Hauser.
"The main lesson to be learned from Musk and DOGE," he added, "is that the next administration should pay careful attention to what DOGE did and proceed to do the exact opposite."
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