U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren sharply criticized the Trump administration's decision to stop most operations of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, calling it a win for big business.

In a Saturday night email, Russell Vought, the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget, directed the CFPB to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any regulations that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations, The Associated Press reported.

The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama pushed to include it in the 2010 financial reform legislation that followed the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

Warren, who first proposed the idea for the agency, wrote in a post to X that, with Saturday's action, "Vought is giving big banks and giant corporations the green light to scam families."

"The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has returned over $21 billion to families cheated by Wall Street. Republicans have failed to gut it in Congress and in the courts. They will fail again," the Cambridge Democrat wrote.

Vought's Saturday email also ordered the bureau to "cease all supervision and examination activity."

Vought said in a social media post late Saturday that the CFPB would no longer withdraw funds from the Federal Reserve, adding that its current financing of $711.6 million is "excessive." Congress directed the bureau to be funded by the Fed to insulate it from political pressures.

The CFPB says that it has obtained nearly $20 billion in financial relief for U.S. consumers since its founding in the form of canceled debts, compensation, and reduced loans.

Warren, the ranking Democrat on the Senate's Banking Committee, has spent the last month in a pitched battle with the Republican White House over the agency's future.

Last week, Warren urged the White House to lift a funding freeze on the bureau, sending a letter to President Donald Trump outlining her arguments.

The CFPB is the only safeguard against "debanking" which is the closing of bank accounts for individuals, businesses, and others, Warren argued. The issue arose during a Banking Committee hearing last week, HousingWire reported.

Both Trump and First Lady Melania Trump "share what appears to be a bipartisan interest in addressing debanking," Warren wrote.

But the White House's decision to freeze the bureau's funding "conflicts with the Administration's stated goal of preventing debanking and lowering costs for American families," Warren wrote. "More Americans across the country will unfairly lose access to deposit accounts as a result."

The White House cannot unilaterally shut down the agency, which was established by an act of Congress.

But it can, as it has with the U.S. Agency for International Development, significantly pare back its operations, The New York Sun reported.

Warren also has taken the White House to task for its decision to fire the bureau's former director Rohit Chopra.

Vought wrote in his email that Trump had made him acting director of the CFPB on Friday.

Under Chopra's leadership, the bureau "[held] Wall Street accountable for cheating hard-working families and preventing the de-banking of Americans across the country, including consumers locked out of the financial system due to overdraft fees, religious organizations, and conservatives," Warren said in a Feb. 1 statement.

The administration's move against the CFPB highlights the tensions between Trump's more populist promises to lower costs for working-class families and his pledge to reduce government regulation.

During the campaign, Trump said he would cap credit card interest rates at 10%, after they had soared to record levels above 20%, on average, as the Federal Reserve lifted interest rates in 2022 and 2023. The CFPB had started work on how that proposal would be implemented.

Vought's email follows a similar directive from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Feb. 3. It's the latest move by the Trump administration to rapidly curtail the work of federal agencies that it has deemed excessive.

Vought suggested that the CFPB is "unaccountable" in his social media post.

Obama created the bureau in the wake of the 2007-2008 housing bubble and financial crisis, which was caused in part by fraudulent mortgage lending.