(Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
President Trump this week fired Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter, the Federal Trade Commission's sole Democratic commissioners. Both say the move is illegal.
"The president just illegally fired me," Bedoya posted to X and later on Bluesky. “This is corruption, plain and simple."
In a statement attached to both posts, Bedoya defended the commission and pledged to fight back. "The FTC is an independent agency founded 111 years ago to fight fraudsters and monopolists. Our staff is unafraid of the Martin Shkrelis and Jeff Bezos of the world,” he wrote. “Now, the president wants the FTC to be a lapdog for his golfing buddies.”
Bedoya, whom President Biden appointed to the FTC in 2022, used another X post to share a statement from Slaughter, named by Trump in 2018.
Trump “illegally fired me from my position as a Federal Trade Commissioner, violating the plain language of a statute and clear Supreme Court precedent," Slaughter says. She suggested that Trump would direct FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, whom Trump promoted in January, “to treat the most powerful corporations and their executives—like those that flanked the president at his inauguration—with kid gloves.”
The law that created the FTC says a president can remove an FTC commissioner "for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office." Since the commission got to work just over 110 years ago, the norm has been for commissioners to serve out their seven-year terms without interruption by presidents.
When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ignored that and tried to fire GOP Commissioner William Humphrey in 1933, the Supreme Court held unanimously in a 1935 ruling (PDF) that presidents could only remove officials at independent, quasi-judicial agencies like the FTC for reasons specified by Congress.
In recent years, the FTC has played an outsized role in tech policy. Without a comprehensive federal privacy law, the commission’s authority to investigate "unfair or deceptive" conduct by businesses and punish violations with fines has become one of the only meaningful federal constraints on the abuse of power by giant tech companies.
The FTC also plays a central role in enforcing antitrust laws. Under Trump and Biden, it brought cases against Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon, among many others.
Consumer Reports denounced the attempted firings in a statement Tuesday from its director of technology policy, Justin Brookman, who earlier directed policy at the FTC’s Office of Technology, Research, and Investigation.
“This is a dangerous action that thoroughly undermines the integrity and independence of the FTC,” he said. “If an administration can remove commissioners at will, the FTC will be less thoughtful, less effective, and more subject to the whims of politicians and industry lobbyists.”
Trump himself has been uncharacteristically quiet about Bedoya and Slaughter, with no posts about them on his X or Truth Social profiles and no announcements about them on the White House’s site. But in February, he declared in an executive order that the White House would control the FTC, the FCC, and other independent agencies created by Congress with statutory limits to presidential oversight.
On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked why Trump fired Bedoya and Slaughter now. "Because the time was right to let these people go, and the president absolutely has the authority to do it. And they were given ample notice," she said.
Asked about the Humphrey decision, Leavitt said: "If we have to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court, we certainly will."
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—the right-wing policy document that Trump professed ignorance of during the campaign before adopting policies that match much of its content—questions the need for FTC independence. The 1935 Supreme Court decision, Humphrey's Executor v. United States, is "ripe for revisiting," Project 2025 says.
FTC Chair Ferguson, meanwhile, defended Trump’s authority in a statement posted Wednesday morning: "I have no doubts about his constitutional authority to remove Commissioners, which is necessary to ensure democratic accountability for our government.”
At the same time, the FTC’s site still listed Bedoya and Slaughter as sitting commissioners.
On Wednesday morning, Bedoya continued his protest in a short video shared on Bluesky. "You cannot think of this in terms of laws and precedents," he said. "You have to think of this in terms of who it helps."
He then reminded viewers of the executives of giant tech firms who huddled behind Trump at his inauguration in January: “Does it help you, or does it help the billionaires who have sent hundreds of millions of dollars into the president’s pockets?”
Editors' Note: This story was updated with Leavitt's statement.