NEW YORK (AP) — A year after the Trump administration took control of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the consumer watchdog has largely stepped back from enforcement and regulatory work, changes that consumer advocates and Democrats estimate have cost Americans at least $19 billion in financial relief.
In a report provided to The Associated Press by Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s office before its release Monday, the authors said the CFPB harmed consumers by abandoning key consumer protections, stalling investigations and dismissing many cases.
“Trump’s efforts to shore up the CFPB have cost families billions of dollars in the last year alone,” said Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, as well as one of the bureau’s fiercest defenders in Congress.
The administration and congressional Republicans have argued that the bureau needed to be downsized and reined in because it had become too large and overgrown.
The administration assumed control of the CFPB in February 2025 after Rohit Chopra, the bureau’s director under President Joe Biden, resigned, leaving White House budget director Russell Vought as acting director. Since then, some new investigations have been opened, several employees have been ordered off work and several pending enforcement actions against financial companies have been dropped.
The White House announced in April that it wanted to reduce the bureau’s staff from 1,689 positions to 207 positions, but that move was blocked by a court. Even if the employee unions succeed in their case against the vote, Congress will cut the bureau’s budget by nearly half in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It is unlikely that all those employees will still have their jobs after all the litigation is settled.
“The CFPB may still be standing, but it’s essentially on life support,” said Chuck Bell, director of advocacy programs at Consumer Reports, in a statement. Consumer Reports released its own data Monday that reached the same conclusion as Warren’s office.
A spokesperson for the CFPB did not respond to a request for comment.
One form of relief the report said consumers were denied was a cap on overdraft fees, which the Biden CFPB finalized in 2024 but the Republican-led Congress reversed last year. According to bureau estimates, this saved consumers $5 billion annually.
The bureau also tried to limit the amount consumers pay credit card companies when they pay their bills late. When the rule was proposed, the bureau estimated it would save Americans about $10 billion. The regulation was blocked by a federal court last year, and the bureau, which is controlled by the Trump administration, decided not to fight the case in court.
Another roughly $4 billion in consumer relief came from a series of lawsuits or settlements dismissed by the bureau under the acting director’s vote. For example, the bureau sued Capital One for $2 billion in January 2025, days before President Trump took office, alleging that Capital One misrepresented the interest rates it paid customers on their savings accounts. That case was dismissed.
The bureau sued Early Warning Systems, the company that runs money transfer service Zelle, for $870 million in December 2024, alleging that the banks that operate EWS and Zelle were negligent in protecting consumers from fraud and scams. That case was also dismissed last year.
There has also been a slowdown in the number of complaints resolved by the bureau. The CFPB operates its own consumer complaint database, where consumers can allege wrongdoing by their bank or financial services company, and the bureau will act as a mediator between consumers and financial companies to resolve complaints. Under the Biden CFPB, nearly half of all consumer complaints were resolved with relief for the consumer, while under the Trump CFPB, that number has dropped to less than 5%.
The independent Government Accountability Office released a separate report Monday outlining the Trump administration’s efforts to keep track of the reorganization and restructuring of the CFPB. The GAO said it received no assistance from the White House or the bureau, and that the GAO had to rely mostly on public records to produce its report. In GAO’s response, the CFPB cited ongoing litigation between its employees and management as the main reason for its inability to cooperate.
The GAO’s report is largely consistent with what has been documented in news reports that the bureau has canceled dozens of enforcement actions against alleged wrongdoers, overturning rules and regulations that previous bureau management said would protect consumers or provide them with financial relief. There are also rules and regulations enacted during President Trump’s first term that are targeted by the bureau’s current management.
Mark Paoletta, the bureau’s chief legal officer and effectively its deputy director under the vote, did not raise specific issues with its findings except to say that the GAO’s report was “biased and flawed” in a letter to the agency, except that the GAO was working with incomplete information.
