One year ago, the Trump administration took over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and began a quest to dismantle the agency responsible for protecting the rights of consumers and holding big banks and Wall Street accountable for taking advantage of everyday people. On February 9, 2026, Americans for Financial Reform joined Sen. Warren, Rep. Pressley, the CFPB Union, and other financial justice advocates to speak out against the unlawful takedown of this popular and much needed Federal agency.
Trump’s attack has cost families billions of dollars in the last year alone. Together, we’re fighting back. Tom Feltner, AFR’s Associate Director of Consumer Policy, spoke at the event:
“For for over a decade, people have had a dedicated financial watchdog in their corner, the CFPB. And we’ve heard so much about that here already. But it is no surprise to me that the Trump administration moved quickly to shut it down in the early days of last year. And that’s why Americans for Financial Reform and all the champions that are here today and working across the country have been fighting day in and day out to put the CFPB back to work and back on track.
Most of us don’t have a team of lawyers ready to fight financial firms when we get overcharged, when we get scammed, when we faced a rigged or broken debt collection process. The CFPB is our legal team. And since it opened its doors, that team has returned over $21 billion to more than 200 million people.
But hidden in those numbers are the people whose stories should be steering that agenda rather than pushed to the sidelines.
It’s about service members. Predatory lenders have long circled military bases, targeted military families, and charge them sky-high rates. The CFPB enforces the Military Lending Act to ensure that service members get the protections that they deserve. But right now, its enforcement work has been ground to a halt. The Trump administration has tried to fire nearly every single member of the Office of Service Member Affairs.
It’s also about older people. Scammers are getting smarter and they’re getting faster. The CFPB watches out for financial scams and targets older people who have worked their whole lives for a dignified retirement. That’s right. But the CFPB’s office of older Americans can’t do its job if its staff is told to stand down and the agency is shuttered.
It’s also about the people that turn to the CFPB every day for help. This past year alone, five million people turned to the CFPB for help with their financial problems. From foreclosure issues to credit reporting errors, often with no place else to go.
Since taking office, this administration has made it harder to fix these problems before they happen. Harder to hold Wall Street and Silicon Valley accountable when they break the law. And just this last week, harder to even file a complaint with a consumer agency. So our call is this. We need to stop lobbyists and special interests who want to go back to the days of the foreclosure crisis when the rules were written by the people who profited from breaking them and millions lost their homes to in their livelihoods. We need to tell the Trump administration to listen to the people who turn to the CFPB every day for help. And we need to put the CFPB back to work. Thank you.”