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AMY GOODMAN: President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday to give more power to the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. He’s been leading the effort to dismantle numerous government agencies, including USAID and the [Consumer] Financial Protection Bureau. Musk heads the newly established DOGE, Department of Government Efficiency, which claims it’s looking at ways to reduce government waste.
But a new investigation by The New York Times reports Musk has been targeting many of the federal agencies and officials who have been engaged in investigations of Musk’s own multiple companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and the social media platform X. The Times reports, quote, “At least 11 federal agencies that have been affected by those moves have more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions into Mr. Musk’s six companies,” unquote.
On Monday, hundreds of protesters rallied outside the offices of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after Trump and Musk moved to shut down the agency’s headquarters and cut off its funding. This is Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who’s credited with creating the CFPB.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN: Look, these damn billionaires are making their moves right out in the open. Look at Elon, please. No, just look. He invested $288 million to buy an election for Donald Trump. And now he is right here to collect on that investment. Elon Musk owns X, which has been losing money like crazy. So Elon has a plan for a new payment platform called xMoney. Elon wants xMoney to touch every part of your financial life. But — but — Elon has got a problem: the financial cops. The CFPB is there to make sure that Elon’s new project can’t scam you or steal your sensitive personal data. So, Elon’s solution? Get rid of the cops: Kill the CFPB.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, speaking at a protest outside the closed headquarters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
We’re joined right now by Julie Margetta Morgan, the former associate director for research and monitoring and regulations at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She left a few weeks ago.
Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us, Julie. Can you explain — I mean, all the information that’s coming out right now — first of all, what the CFPB does, who it does it for, and what Elon Musk has to gain? This week, all the workers got a stop-work order, and they closed the headquarters. And, oh, let me just say one other thing.
JULIE MARGETTA MORGAN: Sure.
AMY GOODMAN: Didn’t Elon Musk say on his social media platform X — he just put out ”CFPB RIP” with a tombstone.
JULIE MARGETTA MORGAN: Thank you for having me today, Amy.
You know, this is really critical for all Americans. The CFPB is the place where Americans could go when they were scammed by a payday lender or when they couldn’t get inaccurate information taken off their credit report or when big banks like Wells Fargo were opening fake accounts in their name. And the CFPB, again and again, delivered for American families. Over its entire history, the CFPB has returned $21 billion to American families.
So, you know, this is a little agency that was punching well above its weight. And then, just a few days ago, you know, Donald Trump and Elon Musk took control and shut the agency down. So, we went from a place where, you know, in the last week before Trump took power, the CFPB was ordering big companies to return millions of dollars to consumers, to a place where the agency is doing nothing at all.
And you raised the role of Elon Musk here. I think this is a fact that we really have to focus on. Elon Musk himself wants to run a payments company. He has said from the start that he plans to turn X into essentially a bank. And he’s taken steps in that direction in the last few weeks, including a partnership with Visa. The thing that stands in his way is having strong regulators who will make him play by the same rules as every other bank. Luckily, he has access to the entire federal government, and he is able to simply shut those regulators down. So the actions over the last few weeks have been incredibly bad for individual, everyday Americans, but incredibly good for Elon Musk’s pocketbook.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And for those people who are not familiar, could you talk a little bit about the battle to get the — to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? Only in the aftermath of the financial meltdown of 2008 did the Obama administration move to create it. But it’s always faced enormous hostility, hasn’t it, from the financial — especially from the financial community?
JULIE MARGETTA MORGAN: Yeah, that’s right. I think it’s incredibly important to know that the CFPB was born out of a financial crisis that started in the mortgage markets. So, before the 2008 financial crisis, we didn’t have a cop on the beat watching what mortgage servicers, particularly non-bank mortgage servicers, were doing. And as a result, we ended up in a massive financial crisis that took us years to dig out of.
President Obama, Elizabeth Warren and others worked together to create the CFPB. It was created in a bipartisan fashion. But it’s had a target on its back from the start. And, you know, when we look at the — particularly when I was at CFPB, when we went out and talked to consumers around the country, there was nothing partisan or controversial about the CFPB when it came to the work that it was delivering for Americans. The only place where CFPB is really controversial is in Washington, D.C., with big bank lobbyists and tech company lobbyists. So, from the start, they’ve had a target on CFPB. I think this is one more step in their plan to get rid of the agency, and they’ve never had more power to be able to dismantle it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of some of the biggest achievements, could you enumerate some of them for our listeners?
JULIE MARGETTA MORGAN: Sure. So, CFPB has achieved some really big achievements for individual consumers. I think that our crackdown on Wells Fargo, that ended their campaign of issuing fake accounts in people’s names, is a really big one. But just in the last couple of years, we’ve had some really big wins for families, including a credit card late fees rule that limited late fees from $30 to $15; a rule that limited overdraft fees to $5; and, I think, really importantly, taking medical debt off of people’s credit reports. So, in the time that I was at CFPB, we did a lot of research on the impact of medical debt, and we found that a lot of the medical debt that was being reported on people’s credit reports was inaccurate, and then people were being hounded by debt collectors over debts that they didn’t owe. So, these actions are incredibly consequential for American families, and now they’re all being put at risk by Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s agenda.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to Elon Musk in this very odd news conference that President Trump, sitting at the Resolute Desk, and Elon Musk, standing next to him with his child on his shoulders, held. This is Musk.
ELON MUSK: Democracy. This may seem like — well, are we in a democracy? Well, if you don’t have a feedback loop —
X Æ A-XII MUSK: [inaudible]
ELON MUSK: OK, X — we would have to — if you — sorry. I tell you, gravitas can be difficult sometimes. So, if there’s not a good feedback loop from the people to the government, and if you have rule of the bureaucrat, if the bureaucracy is in charge, and — then what meaning does democracy actually have?
AMY GOODMAN: So, Julie Margetta Morgan, if you could respond to what Elon Musk said at that point, his child just standing next to him?
JULIE MARGETTA MORGAN: I think it’s incredibly bold for him to stand there and suggest that he’s creating a feedback loop between the people and the government. The CFPB itself was a feedback loop between the people and the government. Individuals could actually file a complaint on CFPB’s website and have the certainty that the agency was going to, you know, look into that complaint and not only resolve it for them individually, but also look at broader actions by the companies that people complained about and take action through our enforcement or supervision divisions. So, Elon Musk is actually doing the opposite of what he’s claimed. He’s shutting down those feedback loops for people. And he’s doing it for his own personal gain.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Julie Margetta Morgan, as we wrap up, at this point, how can the CFPB — can it be resurrected? And if you could, finally, comment on Russell Vought, the head of the OMB, who was one of the chief architects of Project 2025, how that fits into the shuttering of CFPB?
JULIE MARGETTA MORGAN: Yes, Russell Vought is in charge of the CFPB right now, and he’s taking an ax to all of the pieces of CFPB that have been the most helpful for consumers.
To your original question, it’s not too late for CFPB. I expect that we’ll see action in the court. I believe we’ve already seen a few cases filed here, because I think it’s just really important to know that the actions they’re taking are illegal. You know, the CFPB is responsible to Congress for completing certain activities, including having a robust supervision program that’s kind of like the cop on the beat inside of the largest institutions. And so, you know, as much as they’re doing the best that they can to dismantle CFPB right now, these actions are illegal, and I expect we’ll see the courts step in.
AMY GOODMAN: Julie Margetta Morgan, thanks so much for being with us, former associate director for research, monitoring and regulations at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She left a few weeks ago.
Coming up, “Are We Sleepwalking Into Autocracy?” Stay with us.
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AMY GOODMAN: “Gulf of Mexico” by Steve Earle. Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America in an executive order and declared February 9th Gulf of America Day. This week, Google and Apple changed the name on their maps for U.S. viewers, while other sources for online maps have not followed suit. And AP says it was blocked from covering the Oval Office because it did not change the name in its AP guidebook from Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.
