File this under "it should be more, but we'll take it" — the Trump administration has now revealed a plan to slash the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, that likely unconstitutional brainchild of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), by two-thirds.
President Donald Trump's administration has developed a fresh plan to slash the workforce at the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by about two thirds, stepping back from earlier efforts to get rid of nearly 90% of all employees, court documents showed.
In a filing submitted Tuesday evening to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the Justice Department said the new plans showed the administration will not shut down the CFPB entirely, as a lower court had found they planned to do. CFPB representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
* Under the new plan, the CFPB workforce would fall to 556 workers, fewer than a third of its size when Trump took office, and it would eliminate 85% of positions in the Division of Supervision, which oversees the conduct of banks and nonbank financial companies offering consumer services, and 80% in enforcement.
It would be preferable, yes, to see the CFPB shut down completely, and in a sane world, that's what would have already happened. There is no constitutional authorization for its existence. The 10th Amendment, then, should preclude any such bureau from existing, but the 10th Amendment seems to be a dead letter these days.
So, we work with what we have:
* The Justice Department said a lower court should be allowed to consider lifting a stay that currently blocks the administration from carrying out this plan.
* The administration had been battling in court until now for permission to eliminate nearly all CFPB positions, something that lawyers for an employee union and others had argued would be illegal and would prevent the agency from fulfilling duties mandated by Congress, which created the agency in 2010.
And that would be the ideal solution: Congress created this beast, and Congress can remove it. As is the case in so many of Senator Warren's schemes, this idea has a great track record of taking bad situations and making them worse:
Read More: Shocking New Report: CFPB Adds $160-253 Per Loan in Consumer Costs
GOP Probes Biden CFPB Data Security Fail: Consumers' Data Leaked to Personal Email
It's unlikely the current Congress will take any such action. Honestly, they have bigger fish to fry, like getting the SAVE America Act passed, so we may once more have some confidence in our elections. There's a lot to be done, and we have no guarantees that the GOP will still hold the keys to the House and Senate after this fall's elections. The clock is ticking, the GOP's majorities aren't all that great; there are plenty of things that are higher priority.
And if we can't just go ahead and cut the CFPB's workers loose, why not reassign them? Set them to work for the DOGE — if that's not poetic justice, I don't know what is.
Need another reason to vote in the midterms this fall, at all costs? Here is reason #122,304,222.
Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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