Trump Fires 2 Democrats from Federal Trade Commission

President Donald Trump fired two Democratic commissioners at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Tuesday in a direct challenge to a 90-year-old Supreme Court ruling that protects independent agencies.

Trump firing Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter marks an escalation in his administration’s assault on independent agencies that were designed by Congress to operate without direct control from the White House. 

“The FTC is an independent agency founded 111 years ago to fight fraudsters and monopolists,” Bedoya said in a social media post Tuesday, adding that he believed his dismissal was unlawful. “Now, the president wants the FTC to be a lapdog for his golfing buddies.”  

“Today the president illegally fired me from my position at the Federal Trade Commission, violating the plain language of a statute and clear Supreme Court precedent,” Slaughter said in a statement. “Why? Because I have a voice. And he is afraid of what I will tell the American people.”

Bedoya’s and Slaughter’s dismissals leave only two Republican-appointed commissioners at the FTC, Chair Andrew Ferguson and Commissioner Melissa Holyoak. However, the FTC must have three commissioners present to form a quorum and perform certain functions.

“Removing opposition voices may not change what the Trump majority can do, but it does change whether they will have 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,” Slaughter said.

Experts have warned Democracy Docket that the Trump administration’s attempt to overturn the 1935 Supreme Court case Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S. could ultimately give the president extraordinary powers to investigate and penalize private businesses and individuals, tilt elections and use monetary policy for political purposes.

Trump dismissing Bedoya and Slaughter mirrors the conflict at the heart of Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S. Then, former President Franklin Roosevelt attempted to fire a member of the FTC in 1933 over political differences. However, the law that created the FTC only allowed a president to remove a commissioner for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

Roosevelt’s administration argued that statutes created by Congress could not encroach upon the president’s ability to fire federal officials. The Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that the president’s removal powers did not fully apply to congressionally created agencies that perform quasi-legislative and judicial functions like the FTC.

Trump administration officials at the Department of Justice have made similar arguments against limits to the president’s removal powers in the numerous lawsuits challenging Trump’s dismissals of other independent federal board members and commissioners.