1 hour ago
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau deleted astatine slightest 2,200 webpages from its website past month, a move advocates opportunity is portion of nan Trump administration’s latest effort to dismantle nan national user finance watchdog.
The removed contented was each published earlier Trump’s 2nd term, and includes property releases, user advisories, legislature testimonies, speeches and blog posts. Some of nan worldly dates backmost to arsenic early arsenic 2010, erstwhile nan agency was formed.
“This is simply a desire to delete nan communicative of nan CFPB up until now and to commencement telling a caller story, that nan CFPB is successful nan measurement of invention and that nan CFPB is hurting, alternatively than helping, consumers,” said Tom Feltner, subordinate head of user argumentation astatine Americans for Financial Reform. He antecedently worked astatine nan CFPB arsenic a argumentation advisor to elder activity and near successful December of 2025.
The webpage removals travel arsenic nan Trump administration has been actively trying to unopen down nan agency complete nan past year.
Last February, Trump appointed Russell Vought, White House fund director, arsenic acting head of nan CFPB. Vought was a cardinal designer of Project 2025, which called for nan abolition of nan agency. He has since ordered CFPB labor to extremity each work, dropped dozens of pending enforcement cases and tried to occurrence astir of nan agency’s staff, a move blocked by a national judge successful an ongoing suit brought by nan agency’s unit union. Recent court filings uncover agency activity intends to trim nan agency’s headcount from 1,174 to 556.
The deletion of nan bureau’s website content, which was first reported by Bloomberg, is conscionable nan astir caller portion of a larger scheme to “undermine an agency that’s helped people”, said Adam Rust, head of financial services astatine nan Consumer Federation of America, a non-profit consortium of user authorities organizations.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created by Congress successful nan aftermath of nan 2008 financial situation to enforce national user financial law, beforehand adjacent competition, protect group from deceptive aliases predatory financial products and compel companies to prosecute pinch consumers erstwhile they record complaints.
Since its inception, nan bureau has returned much than $21bn to consumers done monetary compensation and canceled debts. A Democratic Senate banking committee report released this twelvemonth recovered nan Trump administration’s gutting of nan bureau and moves to rescind manufacture regulations person already costs consumers billions successful nan past year.
“[The CFPB have] rebalanced nan likelihood betwixt large banks and regular people,” Rust said. “But manufacture doesn’t for illustration nan mission, and Russell Vought has implemented their wishes to undermine it.”
The CFPB did not respond to nan Guardian’s questions astir why nan webpages person been deleted.
‘This is not an management that is listening to consumers’
To count really galore webpages were deleted, nan Guardian compared nan existent type of nan CFPB’s website pinch versions captured connected nan Internet Archive’s “wayback machine” and a mirror CFPB website, created by a erstwhile CFPB employee, that preserves each webpage contented from earlier February 2025.
At slightest 2,228 posts dated 17 September 2010 done 30 January 2025 were deleted from nan website’s “Newsroom” page, according to nan Guardian’s analysis. This is apt an undercount, peculiarly for non-English content, because it only counts posts that person antecedently been saved by net users.
The removed contented spans a wide scope of formats and topics, from user advisories astir what to do erstwhile your home security costs surge and know-your-rights pages for veterans, to CFPB directors’ testimonies earlier nan House financial services and Senate banking committees, which board are required to springiness doubly a year. (Vought appears to person skipped some truthful far.) Several speeches made by nan legislator Elizabeth Warren, who helped found nan CFPB, are besides gone.
Overall, nan astir communal topics addressed successful nan deleted posts were enforcement, mortgages, banking and rule-making, according to a Guardian reappraisal of nan metadata connected nan archived posts.
In summation to nan wide deletion of posts, nan CFPB’s newsroom page is besides being updated little frequently. Only 16 posts stay from February 2025 done March 2026.
In comparison, successful December 2024, nan past afloat period earlier Trump began his 2nd term, nan CFPB published 28 posts. These included a speech by erstwhile CFPB head Rohit Chopra connected really nan bureau could ace down connected information brokers who waste delicate individual accusation to scammers, a press release astir a suit nan CFPB brought against 3 of nan country’s biggest banks for allowing fraud connected peer-to-peer costs apps for illustration Zelle and Cash App, and an announcement that nan agency is distributing $1.8bn backmost to much than 4 cardinal consumers who were charged forbidden fees by 2 credit-repair companies.
2,228 articles successful nan CFPB website's newsroom conception person been deleted. Only 18 remain, each published aft February 2025
Guardian graphic. Source: Internet Archive
Advocates opportunity nan deficiency of nationalist posts signals some a break from erstwhile agency leaders’ way grounds of transparency and really retired of touch Trump’s management is pinch user needs.
“It’s clear that this is not an management that is listening to consumers, responding to their concerns, aliases addressing nan issues that they raised,” Feltner said. “It is chiefly focused connected nan rollback of user protections that I deliberation are making consumers and nan system little safe.”
The sparse posts are noticeably much partisan and overwhelmingly astir nan rollback of erstwhile regulations and policies.
The first post aft Vought took complete nan agency announced that nan CFPB would return a erstwhile “six-figure financial penalty” it had levied against a Chicago-based institution because of its group disparities successful owe lending. The station says “CFPB abused its power” by moving a “redlining screen” and utilized “radical ‘equity’ arguments” to bring down nan company.
Other posts denote nan scaling backmost of enforcement of regulations connected payday lenders; a simplification of fines levied – from $2m to $45,000 – connected an physics money-services supplier that misled consumers astir its fees; and nan withdrawal of a connection prohibiting creditors from utilizing an applicant’s citizenship position successful lending decisions.
Removing connection accessibility while user complaints skyrocket
The agency besides removed respective devices for non-English speakers to entree nan site, including a select to position news posts successful 9 different languages and a paper astatine nan apical of nan CFPB website that translated it into Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Tagalog, Russian, Arabic and Haitian Creole.
Advocates opportunity this intends important user advisories and webpages astir really to record user complaints – astir really group person been harmed and tin perchance get financial alleviation – will nary longer beryllium accessible to non-English speakers.
A Guardian study recovered that astatine slightest 129 posts successful Spanish, 3 posts successful Chinese and 1 successful Arabic were deleted.
“Limited-proficiency English speakers do get exploited and sometimes they do get exploited based connected their constricted English ability,” said Chi Chi Wu, head of user reporting and information defense astatine nan National Consumer Law Center, which is besides a plaintiff successful nan national suit brought by nan bureau’s unit union.
This comes arsenic nan measurement of user complaints, astir thing from errors connected in installments reports to violations of adjacent indebtedness postulation laws, person reached nan highest levels successful nan agency’s history during Trump’s 2nd term. A grounds 5.4m complaints were submitted successful 2025, double nan number successful 2024, according to a Guardian study of CFPB title data.
Broken links
Since nan removals were first reported 2 weeks ago, nan CFPB has added backmost a measurement for users to entree immoderate of nan deleted pages. A statement astatine nan apical of nan newsroom page includes a nexus that redirects users to a type of nan news releases page stiff successful clip past year.
As of publication, nan tract says, “news items published earlier February 2025 tin beryllium recovered successful nan archives”.
However, a Guardian reappraisal of nan archived page, hosted by a third-party vendor, recovered that respective links to nan afloat property releases were broken. Most deleted contented is not disposable elsewhere connected different agency aliases national websites.
“Removing it from a authorities agency tract and saying, well, you tin ever find it successful nan archive aliases nan ‘wayback machine’, that’s a very different connection that you’re sending to consumers,” said Feltner.
The connection now, says Feltner, is much for illustration “the authorities is nary longer offering this information”.
Methodology
The Guardian utilized nan Internet Archive to cheque for each webpages nether consumerfinance.gov. We recovered more than 5,000 URLs aft cleaning nan results for copy pages. We filtered for pages nether nan newsroom directory, wherever nan bulk of deletions has happened, and checked to spot whether each webpage was still online. After confirming the statuses, we collected nan original pages from nan Internet Archive, and performed an study connected nan contented of each individual page.
The Guardian’s “Deleted data” bid explores really captious US authorities accusation is being deleted and what nan consequences will be, and will sphere aliases re-create mislaid datasets. If you cognize astir immoderate datasets, webpages aliases authorities materials that person been deleted aliases altered successful nan past year, aliases are consenting to share how those changes impact you, we’d emotion to perceive from you. Please scope retired astatine [email protected].
