Trump Is Opening the Door to Scams Targeting Military Families
The administration gutted the federal office that protects military families from abusive lenders, debt collectors, and other scams.

By Chloe Rogers

The Trump administration could really lend a hand to veterans and servicemembers. Instead, it’s opening the door for scams targeting military families.

Trump is dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the 15-year-old consumer watchdog agency. The CFPB protects all Americans, and it has an impressive track record of standing up for military families in particular.

The CFPB Office of Servicemember Affairs has a clear mission: to protect military families from abusive lenders, debt collectors, and other scams by using a mixture of regulation, supervision, research, and public education. The office is attuned to the unique financial challenges faced by young enlisted personnel and military families: frequent relocations, irregular pay cycles, and the threat of targeted scams.

But today, the office exists mostly in name only.

Under its Trump-appointed leadership, the office has been gutted — with its staffing slashed, its law enforcement non-existent, and its public presence all but erased as part of the administration’s wholesale attack on the CFPB. Servicemembers have been left with fewer protections, fewer resources, and a lot more exposure to financial swindlers.

Josh Friedman is an Air Force veteran, reservist, and longtime CFPB employee. He was fired while on active duty, a move that violated federal law. Friedman was one of the last remaining staffers in the Office of Servicemember Affairs. He wasn’t just laid off — he was stripped of his ability to serve fellow military families at the very agency created to protect them and other consumers.

The Trump CFPB also just gave Navy Federal Credit Union a free pass, terminating its own enforcement order that had required the credit union to return $80 million to servicemembers, veterans, and Department of Defense employees for illegal overdraft fees. Navy Federal charged customers even when they had enough money at the time of purchase, despite prior warnings from the CFPB.

Meanwhile, the administration has repealed the CFPB’s overdraft protections altogether, which would have limited banks from charging excessive fees, especially important for junior enlisted members living paycheck to paycheck. (Navy Federal, the largest credit union for servicemembers, raked in $335 million in overdraft fees in 2024 alone.)

Rather than strengthening protections for military families, the Trump CFPB has systematically unraveled them, scrapping nearly 70 critical directives that previously shielded servicemembers from predatory lenders, credit reporting errors tied to deployment, and illegally high interest rates that violate the Military Lending Act, which caps annual rates at 36 percent.

Servicemember complaints are skyrocketing — up 165 percent from 2020 to 2024 — but the Trump CFPB is making it harder to get relief. The complaint system is being deprioritized. Enforcement is being scaled back. More than 84,000 complaints from military families led to some form of relief before Trump’s election. Now that figure is all but certain to plummet.

This isn’t just policy. It’s personal.

Military families are now on their own. What happened to Josh Friedman isn’t just an HR blunder. It’s a flashing red warning sign that financial predators are not back on their heels — they’re in charge.

The agency meant to defend against these abuses is being taken apart from the inside. The leadership at CFPB has slashed the agency’s workforce by nearly 90 percent and effectively shuttered its headquarters.

It’s time for Congress — and the public — to tell the Trump administration that it should embrace a vibrant CFPB.

Restoring the CFPB means fully funding the agency, re-staffing the Office of Servicemember Affairs, reviving enforcement against financial predators, and protecting the rules that shield military families from abuse. Lawmakers must defend the CFPB’s independence and reject any efforts to weaken its mandate.

Standing up for the CFPB is not only about good governance. It’s about honoring the commitment we make to servicemembers: that when they protect us, we will protect them.

Originally published on OtherWords on July 3, 2025