CFPB terminates dozens of employees: Reports

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) fired dozens of employees late Tuesday, according to media reports.

The agency sent termination notices to about 70 probationary employees, Reuters reported. The late-night purge comes as the Trump administration has moved quickly in recent days to dismantle the consumer protection bureau.

The notices, signed by Adam Martinez, CFPB's chief operating officer, seemingly failed to populate with employees’ information, featuring spaces for their first and last names, job title, division and appointment date, according to one email reviewed by The Hill.

The agency’s acting director, newly confirmed Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, initially ordered staff Saturday to “cease all supervision and examination activity.” On Monday, he told employees to “stand down from performing any work task.”

CFPB employees were also informed that the agency’s headquarters would be closed for the week, and Vought announced that he would not take the agency's next drawdown from the Federal Reserve.

The playbook closely follows the series of events that unfolded at the United States Agency for International Development last week, where employees were similarly ordered to halt work and stay out of headquarters before officials attempted to put thousands of employees on leave. The move was blocked by a federal judge Friday.

As the Trump administration seeks to cut down the federal workforce, it has focused its attention on probationary employees, those hired within the past one to two years who are slightly easier to fire.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which had asked agencies to turn over lists of probationary employees, recently clarified that agencies do not have to fire all employees on probation but encouraged them to remove any low performers.

“The Trump Administration is encouraging agencies to use the probationary period as it was intended: as a continuation of the job application process, not an entitlement for permanent employment in the D.C. swamp,” an OPM spokesperson said in a statement.

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