“Big time” confusion has wracked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) staff since last month, the agency’s chief operating officer, Adam Martinez, testified before a federal judge in Washington, DC, on Monday.
Martinez’s testimony — which will continue on Tuesday afternoon — is meant to address questions around what’s happening at the financial regulation agency, before a judge decides whether to grant a preliminary injunction to preserve agency data, funds, and staff. It clarified points of disagreement between Martinez and other CFPB staffers, who said in sworn declarations to the court that the agency has become far less operational than Martinez has portrayed, particularly since the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) got involved — with some functions effectively grinding to a halt.
Martinez described the last several weeks as typical for a presidential transition. He says the agency was in flux during DOGE’s first few weeks at the agency, and in a way, that’s not uncommon during a new administration. “DOGE came in with a very hard fist,” Martinez said, but there was “a change in posture” when acting CFPB director Russell Vought, who leads the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and his deputy, Mark Paoletta — who is working as chief legal officer at the CFPB — became more involved in the agency’s inner workings. Their arrival, Martinez said, made him feel as if “the adults were around the table.”
Judge Amy Berman Jackson appeared skeptical of these assertions, and the administration’s justification for a massive reduction-in-force (RIF) plan — which the government has temporarily agreed to pause while she’s making her decision. On Tuesday, she’ll hear opposing testimony from two federal employee witnesses for the union that brought the case: Matthew Pfaff, chief of staff for the CFPB’s Office of Consumer Response; and a federal employee going by the pseudonym Alex Doe, who attended meetings between the CFPB and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) about cuts to the agency.
Is the CFPB operating? Depends on who you ask
The CFPB supervises financial institutions and fields consumer complaints. It’s increasingly played a role in the tech industry’s ventures into digital payments, though a Republican-majority Congress is seeking to roll back some of that authority, which includes monitoring things like the Elon Musk-owned X’s payments project. But the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents CFPB staff, alleges Vought is violating the separation of powers by quietly shutting it down.
Jackson is attempting to determine whether Trump administration officials like Vought are preventing employees from carrying out work required by congressional statute. The answer, so far, depends on who you ask.
Martinez told the judge he doesn’t have direct insight into the on-the-ground status of many offices at the agency that fall outside of his purview, besides what’s been told to him and that his understanding of the Trump administration’s approach has changed over time. Even now, Martinez says, he’s still not sure what the Trump administration’s preferred “end state” of the agency looks like — whether that’s a drastically reduced workforce or a full dismantling, where some of CFPB’s tasks get distributed to other agencies.
The Trump administration aimed to trim up to nearly 1,200 of the 1,700 employees at the CFPB, Martinez testified, and the agency believed it needed to do so on a condensed timeframe due to President Donald Trump’s executive order about reshaping the federal workforce and Vought’s work stoppage order.
Jackson appeared dubious of the suggestion that Vought’s own stop-work order “became the emergency that justified a RIF.” She pressed Martinez’s glass-half-full view of the current state of affairs at the CFPB (not “normal, but we’re operating”) and his interpretation of early Trump administration messaging as fairly typical for a presidential transition. Jackson peppered him with questions: Is it typical to send an order to agency staff to stop all work? Is it typical to fire all probationary employees from the get-go of an administration? Is it typical to implement a RIF with limited notice before a new full-time director is even in place? No, Martinez testified.
While things are still not normal, Martinez painted a picture of slightly more stability. “I think there’s less confusion today. I think there’s hope,” he says. Whether CFPB staff should hold out hope for clearer directives from the Trump administration, or for the court to step in to straighten things out, remains to be seen.
