Project 2025 Architect Vought Takes Over as Acting CFPB Chief

Russell Vought, newly confirmed as the Office of Management and Budget director, is now serving as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s acting head.

Vought, who was confirmed Thursday in a 53-47 party-line vote, replaces Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who had been serving as the CFPB’s acting director.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report Vought’s appointment.

Vought emailed senior CFPB staff from his OMB email account late Friday informing them he was the new acting director, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation who confirmed the Journal’s reporting.

Also Friday, the CFPB’s homepage was taken down and replaced with a 404 error message. The rest of the website remained functional late Friday night, but sources said they expect the rest of it to be taken down as well.

President Donald Trump fired former CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, a Biden appointee, in late January. Bessent paused most CFPB operations, including rulemaking and external communications, soon after taking over.

Vought’s appointment comes just a day after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency embedded several members inside the CFPB. Musk posted “CFPB RIP” on his X social media site Friday afternoon.

Project 2025

Vought’s appointment is the second time an OMB director has lead the CFPB on an acting basis. Mick Mulvaney, the OMB director in the first Trump administration, led the agency for several months before the Senate confirmed Kathy Kraninger as CFPB director in December 2018.

Vought is one of the architects of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation plan to reshape and minimize the federal government that became a key flashpoint during the 2024 presidential election.

Despite Trump’s disavowal of the plan during the campaign, several of its authors are working in the administration and have shaped the president’s executive orders.

Project 2025 called for eliminating the CFPB altogether—a recommendation echoed by Musk. But doing so would take an act of Congress since at least some CFPB positions and functions were mandated by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that established the agency.

Short of abolishing the agency, Project 2025 proposed reshaping the CFPB’s civil penalty fund so excess funds go to the Treasury Department and limiting agency enforcement actions.

The plan also called for repealing Section 1071 of Dodd-Frank, which required the CFPB to force banks to collect demographic data on small-business borrowers. The CFPB finalized its rule in March 2023 but the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Friday paused the rule’s effective date while litigation against it moves forward.

Project 2025 also called on the CFPB to define what constitutes an abusive act or practice “more precisely.”

Like most financial regulators at the state and federal level, the CFPB can go after companies that engage in unfair and deceptive acts or practices. Dodd-Frank augmented the CFPB’s powers by allowing the agency to pursue companies for “abusive” acts and practices as well.