WASHINGTON (news agencies) — President Donald Trump fired two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, intensifying efforts to exert his administration’s control over independent agencies across the government.
Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter said they’d been dismissed illegally and would sue to block Trump’s order. They also said they consider themselves still part of the FTC, though whether they will still have access to their offices and logistical tools like email going forward was unclear.
Removing Bedoya and Slaughter could free up space on the five-member FTC for new commissioners loyal to Trump and his priorities and policies.
The White House confirmed the dismissals. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, a Republican whom Trump designated for the role upon taking office in January, released a statement on X saying he had no doubts about Trump’s “constitutional authority to remove Commissioners, which is necessary to ensure democratic accountability.”
The FTC is a regulator created by Congress that enforces consumer protection measures and antitrust legislation. Its seats are typically comprised of three members of the president’s party and two from the opposing party.
Commissioners are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. They serve seven-year terms that are staggered to prevent multiple vacancies at once.
The ousted commissioners pointed to past Supreme Court rulings that sought to solidify the body’s independence and only allowed commissioners to be removed for cause.
“The president just illegally fired me. This is corruption plain and simple,” Bedoya, who was appointed in 2021 by President Joe Biden and confirmed in May 2022, posted on X.
He added, “The FTC is an independent agency founded 111 years ago to fight fraudsters and monopolists” but now “the president wants the FTC to be a lapdog for his golfing buddies.”
The White House countered late Tuesday night that other Supreme Court rulings affirmed the president’s “unrestricted” power to remove “executive officers who had been appointed by him.”
Slaughter was first appointed to the FTC during Trump’s first administration in 2018, and served as its acting chair in 2021. Biden renominated her for a second term in February 2023. Slaughter said in her statement that the “law protects the independence of the Commission because the law serves the American public, not corporate power.”
“Removing opposition may not change what the Trump majority can do, but it does change whether they will have accountability when they do it,” she wrote.
In 1935, the Supreme Court held that the president couldn’t fire leaders of independent agencies without cause. Otherwise, the agencies would become more political and less independent.
While that restriction was eroded in a subsequent decision that came in 2020, it has largely remained in place.
The firings will likely intensify the legal fight around key questions about the extent of presidential powers — battles that could have consequences for other independent agencies, including the Federal Reserve. But the Trump administration has so far been undeterred in its push to expand a president’s ability to remove such officials at will.
The president used a previous executive order to give the White House more control over the FTC and other regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission.
On a subsequent conference call with reporters, Bedoya noted that the FTC was engaged in cases involving tech giants and drug companies and predicted that the move will help powerful corporations while meaning higher prices for consumers.
“Who does this attempt to remove us help?” Bedoya asked. “Who it helps is billionaires. And I think it opens the door for corruption and for (a) law enforcement apparatus controlled, not by the law, but by money.”
Slaughter said on the same call that she and Bedoya were informed at the end of the day about Trump’s action and that no specific reason was given for the dismissals.
“We are not going to go,” Slaughter said. “And we certainly are not going to go quietly.”
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