CFPB Employees Left Stranded and Confused After Stop-Work Orders

Barely two days after Russell Vought, the new acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, ordered the agency to close its office and halt all its work, employees spent Monday in a state of deep confusion about what they should — or should not — be doing.

Mr. Vought, the recently confirmed director of the Office of Management and Budget, whom President Trump installed late Friday as the consumer bureau’s temporary leader, sent an all-staff email on Monday reiterating the instructions he issued over the weekend: Stop everything.

“Stand down from performing any work task,” Mr. Vought wrote. “Employees should not come into the office.” Workers were told to contact Mark Paoletta, named in the email as the agency’s chief legal officer, for approval before doing anything at all.

On encrypted chat apps and an instant-message platform run by the consumer bureau’s union, employees tried to decipher what, exactly, Mr. Vought’s instructions meant. Could they talk to one another on the bureau’s Microsoft Teams messaging system? Could they read their email, or would that be a violation of the stop-work command? Could they use their unexpected down time to complete required online training programs?

No answers were forthcoming, said several agency employees, who asked not to be named because workers had been ordered not to speak publicly. Department leaders were left to field questions from alarmed employees without any guidance from their new bosses on what to say. Bureau representatives and Mr. Paoletta did not respond to requests for comment.

An email on Monday from Mr. Paoletta to the bureau’s enforcement lawyers told them that the acting director would soon be establishing “new enforcement priorities.”