In this op-ed, five former employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reflect on being fired from the agency as part of massive reductions across the federal workforce.
Authors' note: Our views are our own. We are not speaking on behalf of the CFPB. Teen Vogue reached out to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for comment.
We were in elementary school in 2010 when Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). We were high schoolers the first time Donald Trump was elected president. Until two weeks ago, we were federal employees at the CFPB.
The CFPB is highly politicized by its opponents, but its mission is simple and nonpartisan: to stand up to bullies in the financial marketplace. We worked at the only federal agency that views consumers (everyday, working people) as the center of our economy.
We act on consumer complaints to counter deception and fraud in our financial system, and secure real results for consumers within weeks. We study financial markets to understand existing risks to consumers and to prevent new ones. We contribute to rigorous research that breaks down how our economy actually operates, revealing evidence-backed disparities in access to student loans, housing, and credit cards, among other market areas. As young professionals at the beginning of careers in public service, each day at work is a chance to contribute to a mission in which we can take pride.
That is, until we couldn't anymore. We were locked out of our office on February 9. We were told to cease all work tasks. Our colleagues were fired, some potentially illegally, with form emails that reduced them to [EmployeeFirstName] [EmployeeLastName]. On February 13, we were fired too, along with more civil servants from across the federal government. At least our termination letters had our names on them.
At the start of this month, the world was introduced to the DOGE bros, fellow twenty-somethings who, without any prior federal experience, have been directed to dismantle at least parts of our federal bureaucracy (again, potentially illegally) through Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. We are all young people early in our careers. Even our employers share a similar directive, at least on paper: holding powerful entities accountable for returning money to the American people. Though mainly coincidental, these similarities emphasize the fundamental differences in who we are and our work.
We believe the CFPB should exist, with all its human power and resources, to ensure the agency can send another $21 billion back to consumers, while they seem to believe that the CFPB is a wasteful, bloated agency. President Trump has instructed DOGE to slash spending on programs that "have no value." To them, that includes us. Along with our former colleagues, we shoulder the grief of the impact this could have on the consumers our agency has spent years fighting for.
The nature of our work seems opposite to that of the young men carrying out the DOGE cuts. Government work can be notoriously slow and laborious -- and that can be frustrating. But the CFPB's lengthy, empirically-driven rulemaking process, for example, prioritizes public feedback at all stages, depending on subject matter expertise and statistical analyses. In other words, we have guardrails in place that do take time, but ultimately help us get the best results for consumers.