CFPB staves off furloughs after receiving funding, but still pushes to shut itself down and squeeze staff

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has received $145 million to carry out its functions over the next few months, staving off concerns that a Trump administration effort to defund the agency would force it to furlough large swaths of its staff without pay. 

The Federal Reserve, the entity from which CFPB receives its funding, authorized the allocation this week after the bureau made a request for the money in order to comply with a court order. Still, the agency is taking unilateral action to limit employees pay and benefits and is still actively fighting for the authority to lay off nearly all of its workers. 

Russ Vought, the acting head of CFPB, announced the agency would no longer draw funds from the Federal Reserve starting Jan. 1, but a federal judge rejected the effort. That decision came as part of ongoing litigation regarding previous Trump administration efforts to lay off virtually all CFPB employees and essentially close the agency, which have been held up in federal court for most of the last year.

The Justice Department informed the Washington, D.C.-based district court on Thursday that it was in receipt of the funds, which will last through March, the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2026. 

Justice in September stood up an Enforcement and Affirmative Litigation Branch within its Civil Division, and officials in CFPB’s enforcement division told staff their work would transfer there in 2026. Much of the bureau’s workforce would be subject to unpaid furloughs due to the planned lack of funding, the official said. 

Employees have not yet heard any update from the agency, multiple staffers said, but none of the casework has yet transferred over. With funding secure, the furlough threat has also been set aside. 

The existential threat to CFPB remains, however. After the district court last April paused mass reduction-in-force efforts, an appeals court subsequently ruled that the RIFs could proceed. The court delayed their implementation while a union sought an en banc hearing before the entire appellate panel, however, and that panel last month threw out that decision while it plans to hear oral arguments on the case in late February. 

Employees, who are still working, though with diminished workloads, are hoping the case before the appellate court drags on as long as possible while their fates hang in the balance, one worker said. The fear remains that the en banc panel or, if the administration appeals further, the Supreme Court, will eventually greenlight their RIFs and the dismantling of the agency. 

The bureau has already lost around 25% of the employees it had on board before Trump took office. While it cannot yet force any others to leave, the administration is taking steps to worsen the working conditions for staff. 

After unilaterally altering its collective bargaining agreement and compensation agreement with its union, CFPB has cut off its workforce’s supplemental benefits, including dental and vision insurance and term-life insurance. It has also curbed performance bonuses and effectively issued pay cuts by altering the use of locality pay. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents CFPB employees, has filed complaints seeking to reverse the changes. 

“Vought’s union busting is designed to traumatize workers into quitting so he can eliminate the CFPB without us standing in his way,” said Cat Forman, head of the CFPB union. “But as we showed throughout 2025, federal workers aren’t so easily intimidated.”