Barely two days after Russell Vought, the new acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, ordered the agency to close its office and halt all its work, employees spent Monday in a state of deep confusion about what they should — or should not — be doing.
Mr. Vought, the recently confirmed director of the Office of Management and Budget whom President Trump installed late Friday night as the consumer bureau’s temporary leader, sent an all-staff email on Monday reiterating the instructions he issued over the weekend: Stop everything.
“Stand down from performing any work task,” Mr. Vought wrote. “Employees should not come into the office.” Workers were told to contact Mark Paoletta, named in the email as the agency’s chief legal officer, for approval before doing anything at all.
On encrypted chat apps and an instant-message platform run by the consumer bureau’s union, employees tried to decipher what, exactly, Mr. Vought’s instructions meant. Could they talk to one another on the bureau’s Microsoft Teams messaging system? Could they read their email, or would that be a violation of the stop-work command? Could they use their unexpected down time to complete required online training programs?
No answers were forthcoming, said several agency employees, who asked not to be named because workers had been ordered not to speak publicly. Department leaders were left to field questions from alarmed employees without any guidance from their new bosses on what to say. Bureau representatives and Mr. Paoletta did not respond to requests for comment.
An email Monday from Mr. Paoletta to the bureau’s enforcement lawyers told them the acting director would soon be establishing “new enforcement priorities.”
A sudden, complete halt to the work of a prudential regulator — agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which are assigned to oversee the safety of America’s institutions and guard against systemic risks — has no precedent. Examiners who typically work on site at banks and other lenders they oversee stayed home, and agency lawyers scrambled to figure out how to handle court deadlines this week on several high-profile enforcement cases.
Richard Cordray, appointed by President Barack Obama as the agency’s inaugural director after its creation in 2011, said he considered Mr. Vought’s stop-work order illegal.
“President Trump and his people, many of whom are not even properly members of the government, are taking a wrecking ball to our government,” said Mr. Cordray, who left the bureau in 2017. “He dislikes the law, and he’s trying to ignore it and act as though it doesn’t exist. That’s not his role. We don’t have a king in our society like that, and that’s deliberate on the part of our founding fathers.”
The consumer bureau’s staff union filed a lawsuit Sunday night against Mr. Vought, challenging the legality of his stop-work order. Several employees said they hoped the courts would act soon to clarify a situation multiple people described as “surreal.” Without any guidance from above, colleagues turned to one another for intel and gallows humor.
One popular discussion topic was the growing number of people from Elon Musk’s government efficiency team who had gained access to the consumer bureau’s computer systems. Mr. Musk’s team arrived Friday morning, and by Monday had grown to include half a dozen people whose names appeared in recent days in the bureau’s internal staff directory.
“Like with U.S. A.I.D., it’s been quite a bonding experience,” said one of the agency employees who asked not to be named. “It’s fascinating to watch people step into leadership roles to connect people and share information.”
Bureau workers, consumer advocates and several Democratic lawmakers staged a rally Monday afternoon outside the consumer bureau’s closed headquarters.
Waving placards bearing slogans including “Stop the Billionaire Grift!” and “Nobody Elected Elon!,” attendees cheered as speakers pledged to fight what many described as an illegal attempt to dismantle the agency.
“We’re going to shut down the Elon Musk operation,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, told the crowd.
Describing Mr. Musk as “the co-president now of the United States of America,” Representative Maxine Waters of California denounced him as a “gangster” and used a profanity in her invitation to Mr. Musk to “come here and face us.”
“He’s not going to kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” Ms. Waters said. “We will not allow it.”
Jess Bidgood contributed reporting.
