Consumer protection agency deletes thousands of pages as Trump administration seeks to dismantle it

‘The administration is focused on the rollback of consumer protections that I think are making consumers and the economy less safe.’ Illustration: Guardian Design/Getty Images View image in fullscreen ‘The administration is focused on the rollback of consumer protections that I think are making consumers and the economy less safe.’ Illustration: Guardian Design/Getty Images Consumer protection agency deletes thousands of pages as Trump administration seeks to dismantle it Deletion of the bureau’s website content is just the most recent part of a larger plan to ‘undermine an agency that’s helped people’ The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau deleted at least 2,200 webpages from its website last month, a move advocates say is part of the Trump administration ’s latest effort to dismantle the federal consumer finance watchdog. The removed content was all published before Trump’s second term, and includes press releases, consumer advisories, congressional testimonies, speeches and blog posts. Some of the material dates back to as early as 2010, when the agency was formed. “This is a desire to delete the story of the CFPB up until now and to start telling a new story, that the CFPB is in the way of innovation and that the CFPB is hurting, rather than helping, consumers,” said Tom Feltner, associate director of consumer policy at Americans for Financial Reform. He previously worked at the CFPB as a policy adviser to senior leadership and left in December of 2025. The webpage removals come as the Trump administration has been actively trying to shut down the agency over the past year. Last February, Trump appointed Russell Vought, White House budget director, as acting director of the CFPB. Vought was a key architect of Project 2025, which called for the abolition of the agency . He has since ordered CFPB employees to stop all work, dropped dozens of pending enforcement cases and tried to fire most of the agency’s staff, a move blocked by a federal judge in an ongoing lawsuit brought by the agency’s staff union. Recent court filings reveal agency leadership aims to reduce the agency’s headcount from 1,174 to 556. The deletion of the bureau’s website content, which was first reported by Bloomberg, is just the most recent part of a larger plan to “undermine an agency that’s helped people”, said Adam Rust, director of financial services at the Consumer Federation of America, a non-profit consortium of consumer rights organizations. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created by Congress in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to enforce federal consumer financial law, promote fair competition, protect people from deceptive or predatory financial products and compel companies to engage with consumers when they file complaints. Since its inception, the bureau has returned more than $21bn to consumers through monetary compensation and canceled debts. A Democratic Senate banking committee report released this year found the Trump administration’s g