Eva Steege may have seemed like an unlikely combattant in the pushback against mass firings by the Trump administration. The 83-year-old retired Lutheran pastor was in hospice, unable to walk, when she was asked to join a group seeking to block the administration’s gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“It took us about five minutes to decide that that was a good thing to do,” her husband Ted Steege, 82, told CBS News in an interview.
When Eva died in March, Ted took her place in the lawsuit which, to this point, has prevented the agency’s dismantling and yielded hundreds of pages of internal communications shedding new light on DOGE’s effort to slash the federal workforce. Steege has become one face of the human toll wrought by the chaos and scope of the mass federal firings that marked the Trump administration’s first 100 days in Washington.
“We saw an opportunity, not just to gain something that we were entitled to, but also to do something that will change lives for lots of dedicated workers and for people all around the country who have suffered injustices, quiet things that nobody ever notices,” Ted Steege said.
The injustice the couple faced originated with Eva’s decision in her 60s to fulfill a lifelong dream of becoming a pastor. To afford her seminary school tuition, Steege said the couple sold their house and took on $43,000 in debt.
For years, they dutifully paid down the debt but, as of January, still believed they owed about $17,000. On the advice of Lutheran Social Services, the couple approached the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for help enrolling in a federal loan forgiveness program.
Established by Congress in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the bureau, known as the CFPB, is tasked with protecting consumers from financial fraud and shady lending practices. Workers reviewing the Steeges’ case discovered the Steeges didn’t need loan forgiveness at all — that in fact they had overpaid and were owed them more than $15,000 in refunds.
Filled with hope, the couple planned on meeting with CFPB staffers on Feb. 10. That morning the Trump administration issued a stop work order effectively shutting down the agency.
“An email came that said, sorry we have different directives,” Steege said. “We can’t meet with you.”
CBS News 
A grieving husband joins the court battle over DOGE firings
Now, he’s fighting to restore the bureau’s functions by staving off the mass firing of its employees. The battle is playing out in federal court, where earlier this month appellate judges issued a ruling to temporarily block the Trump administration’s latest effort to slash the workforce.
The ruling came after a flurry of filings in the case made public a trove of emails, internal chats and sworn employee declarations. The documents revealed a frantic push in April by agency leadership and DOGE officials to fire nearly 1,500 employees — about 90% of the CFPB’s staff.
Helping to carry out the mass dismissals was a 25-year-old DOGE official named Gavin Kliger, who has helped implement cuts across at least half a dozen federal agencies. Kliger has no federal government experience prior to working for DOGE.
CBS News reached Kliger by phone, but he declined to offer comments or answer questions. In a statement, a White House spokesperson disputed the idea that Kliger “managed” the firings at CFPB, but did not clarify his role. In an internal chat made public in the court filings, messages show Kliger claiming he would “be running this operation.”
According to sworn testimony from a CFPB employee, Kliger allegedly demanded staffers prepare firing notices for 36 hours straight, “screaming at people he did not believe were working fast enough, calling them incompetent.”
The White House spokesperson said the allegations against Kliger were “another attempt to diminish DOGE’s critical mission to [make] government more effective and efficient.”
Former director disputes claim of “vast waste”
Before they were put on hold by the court, the CFPB’s Trump-appointed chief legal officer defended the firings, saying they were necessary to “better align with Administration police, and right-size Bureau” and claimed “leadership discovered vast waste”.
The CFPB did not respond to a request for comment about the Steeges’ case or the ongoing efforts by agency leadership to reduce its workforce.
In an interview with CBS News, former CFPB Director Rohit Chopra called that finding of waste “completely made up.” He said the bureau will cease to function if the administration’s cuts are allowed to proceed.
“This is a ‘defund the police’ approach to looking after Wall Street and the financial industry,” said Chopra, who was fired by the White House in February despite President Trump having appointed him to a role on the Federal Trade Commission during his first term.
Chopra said extending help to borrowers like Ted and Eva Steege who are looking to mount challenges against predatory lenders is core to the agency’s mission.
“Every day, thousands of people come to the CFPB for help like this, and all of that looks like it’s getting shut down,” he said.
As the courts wrestle over the administration’s actions, Ted Steege is continuing to pursue Eva’s reimbursement claim, hoping the agency will survive long enough to help deliver the money she was owed.
“She definitely wanted to have that refund money to be part of our estate and make things better for our children and grandchildren,” he said.
