March 19 (UPI) — President Donald Trump fired the FTC’s only two Democratic commissioners, prompting a hearing Wednesday on claims that they were terminated illegally.
Democrat FTC commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter alleged that Trump criminally terminated them as a White House official confirmed their dismissals but did not provide further details.
“I’m a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission. The president just illegally fired me,” Bedoya wrote on X Tuesday, adding he’d be testifying Wednesday “before the Colorado Joint House and Senate Judiciary Committees and will have more to say then.”
Slaughter said in a statement that she was let go “because I have a voice,” and that Trump is afraid “of what I’ll tell the American people.”
The FTC is an independent agency that protects consumers from shady business practices, and both Bedoya and Slaughter could only be dismissed from duty “by the president for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office” as stated in the Humphrey’s Executor v. United States case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1935.
“When Congress provides for the appointment of officers whose functions, like those of the Federal Trade Commissioners, are of Legislative and judicial quality, rather than executive and limits the grounds upon which they may be removed from office, the President has no constitutional power to remove them for reasons other than those so specified,” the case syllabus states.
However, Trump put out an executive order in February that insisted there is “no carve-out for so-called independent agencies” when it comes to executive power.
The order further decreed that regarding “so-called independent agencies” like the FTC “the president can now hold all federal agencies — not just Cabinet departments –responsible for their decisions.”
The board had been down a member when Trump arrived in office, leaving it deadlocked with Republicans Andrew Ferguson, who serves as chairperson, and Melissa Holyoak alongside Bedoya and Slaughter.
Trump has been trying to install a fifth member, Republican Mark Meador, but the U.S. Senate has yet to confirm him.
The boards can only feature three members from the same party, but with the expulsions of Bedoya and Slaughter, it is currently only a two-member, and all-Republican board.
Ferguson posted a statement to X Tuesday saying that Trump is “vested with all the power of the executive power in our government,” and that he has “no doubts about [Trump’s] constitutional authority to remove Commissioners,” before wishing “Slaughter and Bedoya well.”
Slaughter has since told reporters she plans to challenge the decision to fire her in court as well, that “We intend to fight this illegal attempt to fire us,” and “We are not going to go and we are certainly not going to go quietly.”
