Government Watchdog Takes Up Senators Kim, Warren Call to Investigate Trump Admin’s Mass Firings at CFPB; Kim Joins 40 Senators Pressing on Impact for American Consumers

WASHINGTON, D.C. –New today, legislative watchdog agency the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is taking up the call fromSenators Andy Kim (D-N.J.)andElizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, to investigate the Trump Administration’s actions to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), including attempted firings, stop-work orders, and recent announcements of dropped lawsuits to hold big corporations responsible for ripping off Americans. The GAO will investigate whether the CFPB is able to fulfill its congressionally mandated functions.

Text of GAO Announcement (PDF)

Also today, Senator Kim joined Ranking Member Warren and 40 Democratic Senators in a letter to CFPB Acting Director Russell Vought outlining more than 80 congressionally mandated functions of the CFPB and pressing for answers on how the agency would be able to fulfill them after firing almost the entire staff. Signers of the letter include every Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee.

Text of Full Letter (PDF)

In today’s letter to Vought,the Senators wrote:“You tried to fire nearly all of the agency’s remaining 1,700 employees—the staff responsible for fulfilling the CFPB’s mission and statutory requirements to prevent Americans from getting scammed by big banks and giant corporations. Your hasty and unjustified mass firings are an illegal shutdown of the CFPB that will leave it unable to conduct agency actions that are required by law.”

The Senators continued:“You directed the gutting of entire divisions—including departments created by Congress to protect servicemembers and older Americans—attempting to leave a shell of only 200 employees to supervise and examine large financial institutions across the country, respond to millions of consumer complaints, answer the phone for hundreds of thousands of people seeking help, monitor emergency financial risks, and run all of the agency’s other operations.”

The Senators laid out in detail the impact the mass layoffs would have on specific functions of the CFPB––including firing all but one employee helping victims of scams in the offices focused on our nation’s two million servicemembers and tens of millions of older Americans.

The Senators concluded:“We request that you provide—by April 30, 2025—a detailed accounting of each of the more than 80 statutory obligations of the CFPB, the number of employees assigned to each of those functions as of December 2024, the number of employees who would be assigned to each function if your rushed reduction in force were to go into effect, the immediate impact of such a reduction on the agency’s ability to perform each function consistent with federal law and federal court orders, and copies of any individualized or particularized analysis of those planned reductions on the agency’s work.”

Through this letter, Senator Kim continues on efforts to protect American consumers from Trump’s assault on the CFPB. He previouslyled a series of letters with Ranking Member Warrenrequesting an investigation and comprehensive overview of the Trump administration’s actions to dismantle CFPB and ensure the agency is still able to fulfill its statutorily required functions and mission.

Senator Kim serves as the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. He is a member of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP); the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; and the Special Committee on Aging.

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