Trump's FTC firings stir debate about agency independence

President Trump’s dismissal of two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is raising new questions about the future of the independent agency and what it could mean for the treatment of some businesses.

Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter said they were both illegally fired on Tuesday. It followed weeks of swirling concerns about the agency’s independence as Trump moves to expand his control at various regulatory bodies.

The move quickly sparked a slew of criticism from Democratic lawmakers and tech advocacy groups who blamed the decision in part on Trump’s recent links to technology executives who are already facing enforcement from the agency.

“This unlawful activity imperils the FTC’s ability to stand up to corporate abuses and protect consumers,” Reps. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said Tuesday.

“Trump and [Elon] Musk want to transform a vital INDEPENDENT agency into yet another political plaything for their billionaire buddies as they continue to wage war on the rule of law itself, leaving Americans defenseless against skyrocketing prices, predatory prices and the unchecked power of monopolies,” the lawmakers added.

Bedoya, in his announcement of the firing, called out Bezos and businessman Martin Shkreli, saying the decision is “corruption plain and simple.”

“The FTC is an independent agency founded 111 years ago to fight fraudsters and monopolists,” Bedoya wrote on X Tuesday, adding, “Now, the president wants the FTC to be a lapdog for his golfing buddies.”

The Trump administration, Slaughter said, “clearly fears the accountability that opposition voices would provide if the president orders Chairman Ferguson to treat the most powerful corporations and their executives – like those that flanked the President at his inauguration – with kid gloves.”

Several Silicon Valley leaders like Amazon’s Bezos or Meta’s Zuckerberg sought to reconcile with Trump ahead of his second term, as seen by their inaugural donations, meetings at Mar-a-Lago and a ticket to the president's inauguration.

The FTC’s antitrust case against Meta, originally filed under Trump in 2020, is slated to begin next month, while the FTC has also brought antitrust allegations against Amazon.

The FTC is an independent agency tasked with enforcing antitrust law and consumer protection separate from the direction of the White House. It is made up of five commissioners, who must be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and no more than three commissioners can be from the same political party.

Tech watchdog groups echoed the concerns of Democrats on Wednesday, characterizing the firing of the commissioners as a favor for Big Tech companies following their contributions to Trump.

“This is corruption, this is taking an independent agency and making it your own plaything,” said Emily Peterson-Cassin, corporate power director at business watchdog group Demand Progress Education Fund.

“Think of all of the billionaires that were standing behind Trump during his inauguration and just say, ‘Well they got what they wanted.’”

Justin Brookman, former policy director of FTC’s Office of Technology, Research and Investigation, called the firings “unnecessarily vindictive and bizarre.”

“I’m worried about making the FTC beholden to political pressure and, by extension, corporate influence. It’ll be harder for them to take more aggressive actions against big corporate wrongdoers,” said Brookman, now the director of technology policy at Consumer Reports.

Meanwhile, other former FTC staffers suggested this was actually a culmination of a years-long push towards politics and away from independence at the FTC.

“It’s a political move...in an agency that has gotten increasingly political over the last five or six years,” said Neil Chilson, former chief technologist for the FTC and current head of artificial intelligence policy for the Abundance Institute.

Chilson pointed to the elevation of former FTC Chair Lina Kahn, who spearheaded the Biden administration’s antitrust efforts as the youngest agency chair. In doing so, she became a polarizing figure, often fielding criticism from some Republican lawmakers and the Silicon Valley community.

The firings, Chilson said, are “a continuation of a series of political moves prior to this administration.”

“This is not the ideal state in which the FTC can operate, but it does mean that the chair can now move ahead with his agenda, maybe more directly than he could while they were on the commission,” he said.

For his part, Chair Andrew Ferguson has signaled he plans to press full steam ahead with the agency’s antitrust efforts amid speculation over Trump’s ties to Silicon Valley.

A day ahead of the firings, Bloomberg’s “Odd Lots” podcast released an episode with Ferguson, who expressed support for having members from both parties on regulatory bodies.

“Look, if you have an agency that is exceeding the law, abusing the companies that are purports to regulate, it’s helpful for markets, for courts, for litigants, for government transparency to have people in the other party pointing this out and saying it in dissents,” he said on the podcast.

With the removal of Bedoya and Slaughter, the commission only has two sitting members — Ferguson and Melissa Holyoak — while Trump’s Republican nominee, Mark Meador, awaits confirmation in the Senate.

While Trump cannot nominate any more Republican commissioners, the move frees up space for two other individuals who align with his policies and goals, even if not in his party.

It is not clear if a two-person commission meets a quorum for a vote in the meantime and the issue has not been litigated. Some attorneys said there may be precedent from 2017, when the FTC authorized a complaint filing by a vote of 2-0 in the final days of the Obama administration.

The White House maintains Slaughter and Bedoya are no longer aligned with the administration but did not provide concrete examples.

According to a copy of Slaughter’s termination letter obtained by The Hill, an administration official stated the commissioner’s continued service on the FTC was “inconsistent” with the Trump administration’s policies.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday the “time was right to let these people go,” while White House Press Assistant Taylor Rogers signaled the administration will continue their efforts.

“President Trump will continue to rid the federal government of bad actors unaligned with his commonsense agenda the American people decisively voted for,” Rogers told The Hill.

The firings are teeing up a likely legal battle in the future.

Bedoya said he plans to sue the Trump administration for the termination and Leavitt on Wednesday pledged to defend the moves in court.

At the heart of this argument is whether Bedoya and Slaughter are shielded from firing under a 1935 Supreme Court decision, Humphrey’s Executor vs the United States, which granted protections against a president removing members of independent boards without cause.

In the termination letter, the White House official argued Humphrey’s Executor does not apply to the commissioners and cited Article II of the Constitution, which establishes the executive branch of the federal government.

It comes nearly a month after the Justice Department informed Congress it now believes the legal protections afforded to independent regulatory commissions like the FTC or National Labor Relations Board are unconstitutional.

“As presently constituted, those commissions exercise substantial executive power,” Sarah Harris, a top DOJ official, wrote in a letter to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) “An independent agency of that kind has ‘no basis in history and no place in our constitutional structure.’ To the extent that Humphrey’s Executor requires otherwise, the Department intends to urge the Supreme Court to overrule that decision.”

Alden Abbott, a former FTC general counsel and currently a senior research fellow with the libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center, said he believes the president has the power to carry out the firings, calling the statutory limitation of the Humphrey’s Executor case “90 years old and dated.”

“It also ignores the separation of powers argument...Congress’s limiting the President’s dismissal power interferes with his constitutional authority to oversee the execution of the laws as he best sees fit,” Abbott said.

It is unclear how the courts could rule on the matter, though a federal judge ruled Trump’s similar removal of a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board was unlawful earlier this month.

Abbott predicted a Supreme Court majority will strike down the limitation.

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