The White House wanted a bloodbath. The courts said no. On Friday, a federal appeals court slammed the brakes on the Trump administration’s desperate bid to immediately fire two-thirds of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s staff, marking yet another roadblock in the executive branch’s relentless crusade to smother the watchdog.
It is a tired dance. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued the order in response to a desperate, late-March rewrite from the Justice Department. This came after the administration suffered a string of embarrassing legal losses trying to completely dismantle the agency.
The judges were reviewing an appeal of a March 2025 injunction. That lower-court ruling had temporarily stopped the mass firings. Government lawyers, who previously eyed a staggering 90% staff cut, begged to start swinging the axe immediately. They also demanded the case go back to the district judge with a strict 45-day deadline to kill the injunction.
They got half a loaf. The appeals court kicked the case back down, sure. But they flatly rejected the request to start firing people, and they refused to put a stopwatch on the district judge. No deadlines. No immediate pink slips.
The CFPB was born from the wreckage of the 2008 financial crisis. Its job? Keep banks from bleeding consumers dry. Naturally, the administration hates it. Trump and his allies call it a bloated, partisan drag on the free market. Defenders call the assault a massive corporate handout.
If you can’t kill it, make it miserable. Blocked by the courts, the administration is trying back-door starvation tactics. In May, they ordered all staff to relocate to the Washington headquarters—a transparent play to force resignations. To top it off, Trump recently tapped a fierce critic of the agency to run the whole show.
