CFPB Orders Remaining Staff To Collect Personal Property
On May 22, CFPB’s facilities division sent out an internal email directing employees to sign up for a time to retrieve their belongings from the agency’s former offices at 1700 G Street NW. The pickup windows are scheduled for June 3, 4, 5, and 11, between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.—a move that would be familiar to any lot manager preparing a vehicle for release after a voluntary surrender.
Acting Director Russell Vought has kept most of the agency’s workforce locked out of the building since February, allowing only a small number to enter for regulatory cleanup duties. In a move that signals zero intention to reinstate operations as usual, Vought has even stripped the CFPB’s name off the building.
Behind this clean-out is the expectation that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will greenlight the mass termination of nearly 1,500 of the CFPB’s roughly 1,700 employees. Vought’s directive to clear out desks ahead of the ruling makes it clear: he’s betting the agency is about to be significantly downsized, if not outright dismantled.
The ongoing legal battle stems from the administration’s effort to gut the CFPB, reshaping it into a skeleton crew operation—something akin to a five-man office with a landline housed somewhere in the Treasury Department, per court filings. The appeals court heard arguments on May 16, and while a ruling is still pending, many staffers aren’t waiting around to find out—they’re retiring or moving on, leaving behind office assets and a rapidly emptying workspace.
