Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Russell T. Vought on Friday submitted his first-ever funding request to the Federal Reserve, seeking $145 million to keep the agency operating through March 2026 after a federal judge ruled its funding cannot lapse. Vought, who is simultaneously the White House budget director and has publicly vowed to shut down the CFPB within months, had previously argued the Fed could no longer lawfully fund the bureau because it had no 'combined earnings,' an interpretation Judge Amy Berman Jackson rejected in a recent ruling in a lawsuit brought by the CFPB staff union and other plaintiffs. The request keeps the CFPB minimally functioning while Congress has not acted to dissolve it and the courts have ordered continued financing under the existing statutory framework.