\n<\/p>\n
A federal judge has ordered that the Trump administration must allow funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to continue.<\/p>\n
The watchdog, which supporters say protects US consumers from financial harm by powerful banks, lenders and corporations, is at risk of collapsing after Donald Trump vowed to shutter it since he returned to office this year.<\/p>\n
The agency\u2019s acting director, Russell Vought, said that since the Federal Reserve has been operating at a loss, it is unable to fund the CFPB.<\/p>\n
In a 32-page decision, DC district judge Amy Berman Jackson said that this novel workaround by the Trump administration to \u201cstarve\u201d the agency of funding was \u201cmanufactured by the defendants\u201d and based solely on an office of legal counsel memo, which said that there were no \u201ccombined earnings\u201d available from the Fed for the CFPB \u2013 since the agency doesn\u2019t receive its appropriations from Congress.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents the workers at the CFPB, sued Vought, and ultimately secured an order from Jackson that stopped the administration from dismantling the consumer watchdog, and blocked mass firings. Today, she added that Vought\u2019s argument is \u201cnot a valid justification for the agency\u2019s unilateral decision to abandon its obligations under the injunction\u201d.<\/p>\n
She added that funding for the agency has continued \u201cseamlessly\u201d since the bureau was established in 2011, \u201ceven in the years since 2022 when the Federal Reserve\u2019s interest expenses have exceeded its earnings\u201d.<\/p>\n
The US court of appeals for the DC circuit upheld Jackson\u2019s earlier injunction and is set to hear the case on the administration\u2019s wider attempt to dismantle the entire CFPB in February 2026. \u201cThe only new circumstance is the administration\u2019s determination to eliminate an agency created by Congress with the stroke of pen, even while the matter is before the Court of Appeals,\u201d Jackson wrote in today\u2019s order, describing it as \u201cyet another attempt to achieve the very end the Court\u2019s injunction was put in place to prevent\u201d.<\/p>\n
Jackson\u2019s ruling comes just days before the agency was set to run out of the funding necessary to pay employees. In response, Elizabeth Warren \u2013 the top Democrat on the Senate banking committee \u2013 praised Tuesday\u2019s decision. \u201cIf courts continue to uphold the law, they\u2019ll keep blocking Russ Vought\u2019s illegal attempts to \u2018close down\u2019 the agency that has returned $21bn directly to Americans who were cheated by big banks and giant corporations,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, following Jackson\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A federal judge has ordered that the Trump administration must allow funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to continue. The watchdog, which supporters say protects US consumers from financial harm by powerful banks, lenders and corporations, is at risk of collapsing after Donald Trump vowed to shutter it since he returned to office<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[794,5550,2638,116,675,81,2019],"class_list":{"0":"post-39693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-consumer","10":"tag-continue","11":"tag-funding","12":"tag-judge","13":"tag-trump","14":"tag-watchdog"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}