When Helen Shaw found out in December that she needed to have a brain tumor removed, she emailed her employer, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to ask about the agency’s short-term disability plan.
A human-resources representative for the watchdog agency told Shaw that the plan “likely will not be available” by the time she expected to have surgery in 2026. Sure enough, in January, all employees received the news in an email: Russell Vought, the CFPB’s acting director, was ending not only their disability plan but their dental and life insurance plans as well.
Shaw, a single mother, is now trying to decide what to do. A neurologist offering a second opinion told her she could wait and see if the tumor grows before proceeding with a craniotomy — a surgery where doctors would cut into her skull so they could remove the tumor. She had hoped the short-term disability plan would replace some of her lost income during a recovery that could last three months. Instead, she’s left wondering how she’d support her 9- and 4-year-old kids, one of whom has special needs, when she’s not supposed to walk down the stairs. She was recently quoted $11,000 per month for overnight care, and that was from someone offering her a break due to her circumstances.
She feels overwhelmed — and angry at what’s happened to her agency under President Donald Trump.
“Everything the administration has been doing with regard to the CFPB is illegal,” said Shaw, who clarified that she was speaking in her personal capacity. “From trying to shut down an agency that Congress created, down to my situation where they’re now coming for CFPB employees’ paychecks and health care and benefits.”
In some ways, Shaw’s medical ordeal was a fitting coda to a miserable year in which Vought, who is also Trump’s budget director, laid waste to the CFPB. He and other agency leaders kicked employees out of their headquarters, forced them to stop working, and tried to defund the bureau and close it for good.
A legal battle has held up the latter plan for now, but Vought has already succeeded in severely hobbling the agency. The workforce has dropped from 1,750 at the start of last year to around 1,200, according to the staff union, after the White House pressured workers to accept early retirement offers.
The benefits Vought cut, including short-term disability, were part of an agreement between the staff union and the agency that was reached in late 2024 and was supposed to be in effect until the end of 2026. Vought told the union that the agency determined those provisions were “not legally enforceable,” and claimed budget cuts passed in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill made them unaffordable. The Trump administration has been hostile to federal unions all along and has even tried to eliminate collective bargaining rights for up to a million workers.
Asked why the bureau chose to cut the short-term disability plan specifically, a CFPB spokesperson said federal workers have great health care coverage.
“Every employee at the CFPB, just like every federal government employee, has access to top of the line health insurance coverage for tragic diagnoses like this,” the spokesperson said in an email. “In fact, these plans are often referred to as ‘Cadillac plans’ because they are so comprehensive.”
Brian W. Fraser for HuffPost
The CFPB was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to protect consumers from the predatory practices of big banks and other lenders. With an annual budget of about $750 million, the agency has returned more than $21 billion to consumers in its first 14 years of existence. Shaw works as an analyst who reviews land sales for regulatory compliance. In layman’s speak, she helps make sure property developers don’t screw people over.
The Trump administration has taken a hatchet to almost all federal departments, but the CFPB and select others have been singled out for wholesale destruction. The bureau has had the misfortune of finding itself in the crosshairs of some of Trump’s most powerful delegates — first with the billionaire Trump megadonor Elon Musk, who ran the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and wanted to “delete” the CFPB as one of his first orders of business, and later Vought, the architect of the administration’s plan to cull the federal workforce.
“For whatever reason, he has a particular axe to grind with us,” said Tyler Creighton, a CFPB lawyer and representative for its staff union, which is part of the National Treasury Employees Union.
Rohit Chopra, the former CFPB director Trump fired shortly after his second inauguration, said the agency “essentially hasn’t lifted a finger to enforce the law” under Vought. Chopra noted that, in addition to pursuing the staff cuts, the bureau spent much of its time rolling back fines and punishments in what amounted to corporate pardons.
“Consumers have been hung out and left to dry,” Chopra said. “For the individual who is subject to an illegal foreclosure, or for the individual whose credit report is illegally error-ridden, this is long-term damage for them.”
Workers at some departments have been able to keep their heads down and muddle through the Trump offensive, particularly if they have interim leaders plucked from among career staff. That’s been harder to do at an agency helmed by Vought, a guy who said he wants to put civil servants “in trauma.” In one of his first moves, he told staffers to stop their assigned work; many still have little to do a year later.
“Isn’t it asinine?” asked Richard Cordray, who led the bureau after Congress first created it, under former President Barack Obama. “They’re all there, being paid for this entire last year, but not allowed to do work. How’s that helping taxpayers and consumers? It’s a poorly thought-out strategy. It makes no sense.”
Brian W. Fraser for HuffPost
The administration has sought to lay off the vast majority of the CFPB workforce that remains, with Vought even trying to refuse the agency’s funding from the Federal Reserve. Following a judge’s order, Vought requested enough funding for the agency to continue operating through at least March while the union fights its dismantling in court.
Yet Vought still seems intent on driving more attrition at the agency. In a Jan. 7 email, the CFPB’s chief operating officer told employees that, in addition to dropping the dental coverage, life insurance, and short- and long-term disability plans on Jan. 10, the agency would not process merit pay increases or performance bonuses for the most recent fiscal year. (Workers were invited to pay for more expensive dental and vision plans through a federal benefits portal.) The union has filed a grievance in hopes of getting the benefits restored.
Shaw said all the turmoil inside the agency comes at a steep cost for consumers. Not only does the CFPB secure restitution for those who’ve been ripped off by banks and other financial institutions, its enforcement efforts can help prevent such practices in the first place. Instead, the Trump administration is sending the message that the agency is dead.
“The CFPB still exists, and we all just want to continue serving the public,” Shaw said.
Shaw isn’t sure whether she’ll undergo a craniotomy now, later this year or perhaps next year. She’s trying to figure out how to cover the income loss. The bureau’s human resources office told her that co-workers could donate their own paid leave to her. She set up a GoFundMe in hopes of softening the financial hit.
“I’m preparing to talk to the kids about it,” Shaw said. “I think it will be difficult for them. I don’t think they’ll understand why I’m not here [after surgery], or why I’m not myself when I’m back.”