Talk about going out in a blaze of glory. The acting head of enforcement at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau resigned in grand fashion yesterday, delivering a sharply worded farewell email criticizing the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency from within.
Driving the news: Cara Petersen, a CFPB veteran who has served at the Bureau since its founding in 2011, stepped down as Acting Enforcement Director, citing what she called a deliberate campaign to undermine the agency’s enforcement function.
“It has been devastating to see the Bureau’s enforcement function being dismantled through thoughtless reductions in staff, inexplicable dismissals of cases, and terminations of negotiated settlements that let wrongdoers off the hook,” Petersen wrote, according to multiple reports.
The backdrop: Petersen took over as acting head of enforcement in February, following the resignation of Eric Halperin, who also exited with a pointed critique of new leadership.
Soon after President Trump appointed Russell Vought, the White House budget chief, as acting director of the CFPB, the agency began walking back enforcement actions. Vought has sought to fire 90% of the agency’s workforce — a move currently blocked by a court order — and paused most Bureau functions.
Recent moves by leadership include:
- Dismissing approximately 20 active enforcement cases.
- Terminating settlement agreements, including a $48 million refund obligation imposed on Toyota.
- Abandoning lawsuits involving major banks accused of payment app fraud and deceptive savings account practices.
- Instructing enforcement staff to write “death memos” justifying the continuation of ongoing investigations.
Between the lines: Petersen’s resignation marks another high-level departure from the Bureau during a period of significant rollback. She emphasized in her email that she had “served under every director and acting director in the Bureau’s history” but had “never before” seen its mission so undercut. Her resignation called to mind that of Seth Frotman, who was the Bureau’s student loan ombudsman at the time (he would later be re-hired as CFPB General Counsel) and blasted the Trump administration when he resigned back in 2018.
“It is with a heavy heart that I leave my dream job, and the agency I love, but I can no longer effectively lead Enforcement in these circumstances,” Petersen wrote.
