With CFPB Closed-Now the Fox Guards Your Nest Egg

WASHINGTON (03-24) – A cold and wet day could not deter recently fired Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) employees along with other federal workers from their weekly picketing outside of the bureau’s closed headquarters located at the aptly named Liberty Plaza. The important bureau now shuttered acted as the nation’s guardian for all financial products and services used by every American in their daily lives.

The CFPB was created by Congress in 2010 in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and since that time, it has returned $21 billion to consumers who have been ripped off in financial transactions in their “watch dog” capacity over Wall Street and financial institutions. For every dollar spent on the Bureau it has returned $2.80 to consumers. Being highly “efficient” in protecting consumers is not anything DOGE is concerned with other than their desire to destroy, just to destroy.

Nevertheless, Elon Musk and his DOGE minions closed the CFPB and installed a new leader, Russell Vought, who told employees to go home but not to do any work. Musk, always wanting to have the last word, then posted “CFPB RIP” on X, his social media platform.

Rallying in solidarity for reinstatement in their jobs before walking the picket line, the group chanted loudly “In the rain or in the snow, they say layoffs, we say no” and “Stand Up Fight Back” to a lengthy list of attacks against federal workers, civil and union rights, democracy, the rule of law, freedom of speech and against those aimed at eliminating air and water standards. They followed by chanting “Union Power” before marching, wearing red Solidarity t-shirts and carrying signs promising “We are not going away without a fight!”

If Musk was in the DOGE headquarters’ office across the street in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where he is said to sleep in the office to be near his work, he could not help but hear the action in the street below.

Before leaving, former CFPB enforcement attorney Gabe Hopkins, and a proud National Treasury Employees Union 335 member, told the crowd that their turnout in spite of the weather was a sign of their commitment and that “While we hope for sunnier days ahead, we must remember that there will be more rainy days, too. We all need to be ready for that! Remember that what we are fighting for is more important than staying 100 percent dry.”

Speaking on their present status, he went on to say that “We have been almost entirely shut down under the illegal and unconstitutional act and action of our leadership and the self-serving machinations of Elon Musk.” He then spoke of how the DOGE impacts are negatively affecting taxpayers because “federal work and federal worker’s matter. This is about bigger things. It is our work, it is our job when democracy is under attack, when the rule of law is under attack, when the balance of power is under attack, it is about bigger things than just us.”

In closing, after promising to return every week for as long as it takes, in reminding everyone that when the Constitutional Convention was concluded in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a lady in Philadelphia “What have we got a republic or a monarchy? A republic,” replied Franklin, “if you can keep it.”

Report and photos by Phil Pasquini

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