On Wednesday, President Trump ignored both law and 90 years of Supreme Court precedent when he fired the two Democratic commissioners on the Federal Trade Commission, potentially changing the agency from a nonpartisan enforcer of trade law to the president's personal trade enforcement bureau.
“Our staff is unafraid of the Martin Shkreli and Jeff Bezos of the world. They take them to court and they win,” said Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya in a written statement after he learned of his (possibly unconstitutional) dismissal. “Now, the president wants the FTC to be a lapdog for his golfing buddies.”
The FTC Act allows the president to fire FTC commissioners but only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” It seems that Trump has fired Bedoya and FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter simply for being Democrats, a direct violation of the statute.
Trump, along with administration officials, argue that Congress can’t constitutionally limit the president’s firing power within the executive branch. But when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to fire FTC commissioner William Humphrey in 1935 over a policy disagreement, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could do exactly that when it comes to nonpartisan, semi-independent agencies like the FTC.
Trump may have fired the two Democratic commissioners as a way to fast-track a case to the Supreme Court, hoping that the justices will directly overturn the precedent set back in 1935 by Humphrey’s Executor v. United States.
The administration’s view of the law “clearly makes these currently independent enforcement agencies subject to much more White House control and direction,” said Bill Baer, a longtime antitrust enforcer and current visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.
With a relatively light set of federal technology regulations, the FTC has become the default regulator of big tech companies, focusing on antitrust issues and child privacy. With the proliferation of artificial intelligence, that dynamic does not seem likely to change, as most regulatory proposals grant the FTC primary enforcement authority. Under former Chair Lina Khan, a Democrat, the agency launched investigations into the tangled investments by big tech firms in generative AI companies.
Dating back to the first Trump administration, antitrust enforcement against big tech has been a popular bipartisan issue, and the nomination of Mark Meador to be the third Republican commissioner on the FTC shows that Republicans are still interested in antitrust enforcement.
But while Democrats have pushed for tough antitrust enforcement over concerns about growing tech monopolies, Republicans have approached the issue in a much more partisan manner. Congressional Republicans have warned that big tech companies have used their power to silence conservative speech online, despite multiple studies finding no evidence of such censorship.
For Trump, the matter is even more personal. He has pushed for harsh enforcement against tech companies that personally offend him, while simultaneously filling his administration with big tech executives, investors, and the richest man in the world.
If the Supreme Court upholds the firings and kills the FTC’s independence, tech companies soon may have to worry less about regulations – and more about how much Trump likes them.
An AI White House:
Top AI White House takeaways:
- The Trump administration seems poised to use generative AI to make decisions on everything from revoking visas to executive branch firings, pushing the bounds of law and raising serious concerns from civil rights and privacy advocates.
- As AI use increases, some worry that the reversal of former President Biden’s AI executive order will result in less transparency in how the executive branch uses the technology.
Rights advocates concerned by reported U.S. plan to use AI to revoke student visas: The Trump administration reportedly is planning to use AI tools to identify foreign students in the country who may express support for Hamas in an effort to revoke their visas. (Reuters)