Judge Amy Berman Jackson expressed concern that acting Director Russ Vought’s orders to stop activity at the CFPB, a watchdog of major financial institutions, meant the agency was not fulfilling its legally required duties. Jackson, an Obama appointee, indicated she was seriously considering granting an injunction against Vought to keep the CFPB afloat as the Trump administration moves to mostly eliminate that and certain other government entities, including the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Jackson demanded parties in the lawsuit, which was brought by unions representing hundreds of CFPB employees, supply her by Tuesday with all the CFPB’s recent internal memos about changes the agency has made. She set another hearing in one week, when she expects to hear from witnesses and dig into the merits of the case.

“I just want to know that the work is being done, or isn’t being done,” Jackson said.

Congress created the CFPB in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to investigate complaints about mortgages, car loans, payday loans, student loans, and other banking activity that involves consumers. According to its 2024 Annual Report, more than one million people report allegations to the CFPB each year and roughly 40% of them secure some form of relief.

Since its inception, the agency has been a target for Republicans, who often say it goes “rogue” and abuses its authority by imposing burdensome regulations on financial institutions.

In the face of Republican-backed lawsuits, courts, including the conservative Supreme Court, have recognized that the CFPB is properly funded and authorized to carry out its congressionally mandated obligations, which include supervising banks and vetting consumer complaints. The high court did rule in 2020, though, that the president has the authority to fire the director of the agency.

President Donald Trump’s and Vought’s efforts to shut down the agency mark the most aggressive attack on the CFPB yet and one that the plaintiffs in the lawsuit claim is illegal.

While Vought has said he is not shutting the CFPB down but rather streamlining it to make it more efficient, the unions who brought the lawsuit repeatedly pointed to Trump’s and his senior adviser Elon Musk’s comments that they wanted to dismantle it entirely.

“RIP CFPB,” Musk wrote last month in a post on his platform, X, next to a picture of a tombstone. Musk is leading Trump’s efforts to dramatically slim down the government and reduce federal spending.

Jackson said Monday that for now, she would keep in place a consent order she imposed two weeks ago that prohibited Vought from destroying or manipulating any CFPB data, firing employees for any reason aside from misconduct, or blocking CFPB funding, which comes from the Federal Reserve System.

Jackson said one witness she wanted to hear from at the next hearing was the CFPB’s chief operating officer, Adam Martinez, so that he could testify under oath about whether the agency was, in fact, performing its congressionally required duties.

Vought, a Trump ally, Project 2025 architect, and longtime budget hawk, shuttered the CFPB’s headquarters as soon as he was tapped last month as interim head of the agency. About one day later, he ordered all staff in an email to stop working entirely and has since canceled more than $100 million in CFPB contracts, according to court papers.

Government lawyers argued on behalf of Vought in court papers that the moves were typical of any new presidential administration.

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“Incoming Presidents of both parties have routinely issued directives that pause policy related decision-making to allow the reevaluation of those policies that were under consideration or under development but not finalized by the prior administration,” the lawyers argued.

The plaintiffs countered during the hearing that Vought had reduced the CFPB to “five men and a telephone in a room,” which they said met the bare minimum requirement of the Dodd-Frank Act but made it impossible for the agency to function.