NATIONAL TREASURY EMPLOYEES UNION, Et Al., Plaintiffs, V. RUSSELL VOUGHT

The evidence presented in connection with the motion – the testimony of the agency’s Chief Operating Officer and other witnesses, and the agency’s own documents, produced by both sides – showed that Russell Vought, the Acting Director of the CFPB, ordered all employees to stop work on February 10, 2025. As of that date, the defendants were fully engaged in a hurried effort to dismantle and disable the agency entirely – firing all probationary and term-limited employees without cause, cutting off funding, terminating contracts, closing all of the offices, and implementing a reduction in force (“RIF”) that would cover everyone else. These actions were taken in complete disregard for the decision Congress made 15 years ago, which was spurred by the devastating financial crisis of 2008 and embodied in the United States Code, that the agency must exist and that it must perform specific functions to protect the borrowing public. The elimination of the agency was interrupted only because plaintiffs sought and obtained the Court’s intervention on the day the overwhelming majority of the employees were going to be fired.

That slowed, but did not deter, the defendants. The shut down activities continued for the next two weeks, and it wasn’t until the Sunday afternoon before the Monday when the Court was scheduled to hold a hearing that agency officials turned around and announced to the surprised staff that they were supposed to have been performing their statutorily mandated duties all along.

The testimony and the contemporaneous documents suggest that those last minute communications were nothing more than window dressing, and that nothing has changed. The defendants are still engaged in an effort to implement a Presidential plan to shut the agency down entirely and to do it fast. Absent an injunction freezing the status quo – preserving the agency’s data, its operational capacity, and its workforce – there is a substantial risk that the defendants will complete the destruction of the agency completely in violation of law well before the Court can rule on the merits, and it will be impossible to rebuild.