President Trump fired the two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, a rejection of the corporate regulator’s traditional independence that may clear the way for the administration’s agenda.
The White House told the Democrats, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, that the president was terminating their roles, according to statements from the pair. The F.T.C., which enforces consumer protection and antitrust laws, typically has five members, with the president’s party holding three seats and the opposing party two.
Members of the F.T.C. and other independent regulatory boards are protected from removal under a 1935 Supreme Court precedent that says the president may not fire them solely over policy disagreements. Ms. Slaughter and Mr. Bedoya said they planned to challenge Mr. Trump’s decision in court.
“Today the president illegally fired me from my position as a federal trade commissioner, violating the plain language of a statute and clear Supreme Court precedent,” Ms. Slaughter, whom Mr. Trump nominated to the F.T.C. during his first term in 2018, said in a statement. “Why? Because I have a voice. And he is afraid of what I’ll tell the American people.”
In an interview, Mr. Bedoya, who became a commissioner three years ago, said he was worried that an F.T.C. without independence from the president would be subject to the whims of Mr. Trump’s business world allies.
“When people hear this news, they need to not think about me,” he said. “They need to think about the billionaires behind the president at his inauguration.”
The firings are Mr. Trump’s latest attempt to assert the power of the presidency over independent regulators at agencies inside the U.S. government, including those that Congress set up to be independent from direct White House control. While regulators are appointed by the president, many of them have traditionally held wide latitude to determine the direction of their agencies.
But the Trump administration has disregarded their traditional protections.
“I am writing to inform you that you have been removed from the Federal Trade Commission, effective immediately,” said a letter sent to one of the commissioners, which was reviewed by The New York Times. “Your continued service on the F.T.C. is inconsistent with my administration’s priorities.”
The Republican chairman of the F.T.C., Andrew Ferguson, said in a statement on Tuesday that the agency would continue protecting consumers but backed Mr. Trump’s authority to fire the commissioners.
“President Donald J. Trump is the head of the executive branch and is vested with all of the executive power of our government,” Mr. Ferguson said. “I have no doubts about his constitutional authority to remove commissioners, which is necessary to ensure democratic accountability for our government.”
A spokesman for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The firings followed an executive order from Mr. Trump last month that sought greater authority over the F.T.C., the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and the National Labor Relations Board.
The order required the independent agencies to submit their proposed regulations to the White House for review, asserted a power to block such agencies from spending funds on projects or efforts that conflict with presidential priorities, and declared that they must accept the president’s and the Justice Department’s interpretation of the law as binding.
In January, Mr. Trump fired Gwynne A. Wilcox, a Democratic member of the N.L.R.B. She sued to challenge her dismissal, and a judge reinstated her early this month. The administration has appealed that ruling.
The Justice Department no longer plans to defend as constitutional the Supreme Court precedent on firing regulators only for cause, according to a Feb. 12 letter that the acting solicitor general, Sarah M. Harris, sent to Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois. The department’s analysis applies to the F.T.C., the N.L.R.B. and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, according to the letter, which was first reported by Reuters.
The letter sent to one of the F.T.C. commissioners on behalf of Mr. Trump on Tuesday reiterated that position. The Supreme Court protections do not fit “the principal officers who head the F.T.C. today,” the letter said.
Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School who studies antitrust, said the F.T.C. had been established as an independent agency in 1914 “on the theory that consumer protection and the various goals of the F.T.C. were better addressed through less political means.”
“If we introduce the idea of political hirings and firings there, that serves to really undermine both the things the F.T.C. can do and also its legitimacy as a bipartisan institution,” she said.
Corporate executives and their advisers are closely watching the direction of the F.T.C. under Mr. Ferguson, its new chairman. During the Biden administration, the F.T.C. sued to block corporate mergers, aggressively punished companies for user-privacy failures and filed a sweeping lawsuit accusing Amazon of squeezing small businesses. It is set to face off with Meta during a trial in April scrutinizing the social media company’s strategy in acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp to cement its dominance.
Ms. Slaughter and Mr. Bedoya have consistently voted in favor of actions to rein in the power of the tech giants.
After Mr. Trump nominated Ms. Slaughter to the majority-Republican commission in 2018 to fill an unexpired term, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. nominated her for a full seven-year term in February 2023. She previously served as chief counsel to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the current minority leader, and led his congressional work on telecommunications and tech legislation.
Mr. Bedoya, a former head of a tech and privacy center at Georgetown University and Senate aide, joined the F.T.C. in May 2022 after Mr. Biden nominated him.
Mr. Bedoya said in the interview that he had learned of Mr. Trump’s decision when he received a call from Ms. Slaughter while at his daughter’s gymnastics class.
“He’s trying to fire me,” Mr. Bedoya said. “I am still an F.T.C. commissioner, and I am going to go to court to make sure that’s clear to everybody.”
Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, called the firings “outrageous” and “illegal,” and warned that the actions would harm consumers. The agency’s 2023 orders on such practices as hidden and junk fees resulted in a return of $330 million to consumers, she said.
“Illegally gutting the commission will empower fraudsters and monopolists, and consumers will pay the price,” said Ms. Klobuchar, who serves on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust and consumer rights.
