President Trump Is Destroying Consumer Protections For Americans

Trump is destroying consumer protections. Earlier, he tried to eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The Federal Trade Commission commissioners are appointed for seven year terms to remove politics from their judgments. It has five commissioners, so there will be one party in the majority, but the minority members can issue dissenting opinions, much like the Supreme Court.

Federal Agency Functions
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) helps consumers by providing educational materials and accepting complaints. It supervises banks, lenders, and large non-bank entities, such as credit reporting agencies and debt collection companies. The Bureau also works to make credit card, mortgage, and other loan disclosures clearer, so consumers can understand their rights and responsibilities.
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) works to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices. They also provide information to help consumers spot, stop, and avoid scams and fraud.
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates interstate and international communications through cable, radio, television, satellite and wire. The goal of the Commission is to promote connectivity and ensure a robust and competitive market.
Federal Election Commission (FEC) The Federal Election Commission (FEC) enforces federal campaign finance laws, including monitoring donation prohibitions, and limits and oversees public funding for presidential campaigns.
Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) hears appeals from federal employees, and studies federal merit systems in an effort to protect the rights of federal employees.
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) enforces the National Labor Relations Act by investigating allegations of wrong-doing brought by workers, unions, or employers, conducting elections, and deciding and resolving cases.
Securities and Exchange Commission The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) oversees securities exchanges, securities brokers and dealers, investment advisors, and mutual funds in an effort to promote fair dealing, the disclosure of important market information, and to prevent fraud.

‘He’s afraid of what I’ll tell the American people’: Official who Trump fired speaks out

Mar 20, 2025 #CNN #News President Donald Trump fired two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission with both commissioners saying they were “illegally fired.” Fired Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter joins CNN’s Kaitlan Collins to discuss. #CNN #News

How Trump’s firings could break the 110-year-old FTC - POLITICO

Removing two Democratic commissioners could trigger a cascade of problems for the longstanding agency, and even blow back on Republicans.

By Nate Robson

03/20/2025 10:38 AM EDT

President Donald Trump’s purge of the two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission could permanently reshape the 110-year-old agency in ways that could confuse many of the nation’s biggest businesses, trigger blowback at other agencies and even hobble Republicans’ cherished goals of rolling back regulations.

By firing commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter Tuesday night, Trump overturned decades of precedent at a key consumer protection and competition regulator.

The agency, under leadership from both parties, has challenged several major companies, including Facebook for privacy violations, Amazon for antitrust practices and Volkswagen for false emissions claims. A major antitrust case against Meta is scheduled to go to trial in April.

“If this stands, it totally ends the Federal Trade Commission as we have known it,” said Stephen Calkins, a former FTC general counsel who teaches law at Wayne State University.

Democrats fear the firings are just the beginning for not just the FTC, but the entire constellation of independent agencies that regulate American businesses.

Trump issued an executive order in February saying all such agencies, including the FTC, Federal Communications Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission, fall within the president’s purview, meaning he can directly control their agendas and fire their commissioners.

Trump is already facing lawsuits after he removed Democratic members of two other agencies, the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board.

Even among those challenges, the FTC firings hit the business and political world as a particular shock. Since its founding in the 1920s, it has run as a bipartisan commission with nominees from both parties drafting rules, conducting investigations and bringing enforcement cases — a structure that created stability and predictability for the companies subject to its oversight.

“You can’t just fire commissioners because you don’t like them, you can only fire them for cause,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA). “The FTC should be an independent, bipartisan consumer watchdog that puts consumers ahead of politics.”

But the White House held firm on Trump’s strategy Wednesday.

“President Trump has the lawful authority to manage personnel within the executive branch,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said. “President Trump will continue to rid the federal government of bad actors unaligned with his common-sense agenda the American people decisively voted for.”

Trump’s move gives unfettered power to Chair Andrew Ferguson to drive the commission’s twin goals of consumer protection and antitrust enforcement. Ferguson has said he wants to crack down on the tech industry for allegedly censoring conservative viewpoints online.

After the firings, the FTC has only two commissioners, both Republican: Ferguson and Melissa Holyoak, a lawyer seen as a pro-business regulator with narrow views of agency authority.

It is unclear how any future Democratic commissioners would be nominated or approved. Given the current atmosphere in Washington, University of Washington law professor Douglas Ross said it’s unlikely that Donald Trump is going to take nominations from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who would traditionally get to fill the Democratic vacancies.

“We are in a time of breaking all norms,” said Ross. “What are the odds Trump goes to Chuck?”

A commission without Democratic members presents a new set of reputational and legal challenges for the FTC.

Though commissioners in the political minority didn’t drive policy and often disagreed vehemently with the majority’s decisions, their relative independence offered a counterweight and reservoir of expertise that strengthened the commission’s hand in court and created stability, said Calkins.

The minority slots also served as training grounds for future majority rulemakers — including Ferguson himself, a Biden nominee in 2023 who was promoted by Trump to lead the commission.

Maureen Ohlhausen, an antitrust partner at the law firm Wilson Sonsini and the former acting FTC chair during Trump’s first term, warned that investigations and lawsuits brought by the agency could suffer under a partisan commission. The different viewpoints brought by the Republican and Democratic commissioners, coupled with the experience of career staff, sharpen its legal arguments and investigations, she said.

Bill Kovacic, a George Washington University law professor who chaired the FTC at the end of the George W. Bush administration, said the agency risks losing its reputation in the courts if its lawyers appear to be “purely political operatives” working at the president’s behest.

That means federal judges could be skeptical of any FTC cases — particularly partisan GOP-sanctioned moves against the tech industry for allegedly censoring conservative viewpoints.

“In cases involving tech companies, [FTC lawyers] don’t get the benefit of the doubt,” Kavacic said. “I can see a way in which this hurts the FTC when trying to win tough cases in court.”

Berin Szóka, a lawyer who helms the advocacy group TechFreedom, foresees less pressure-testing of various concepts within the FTC and also thinks that will come back to bite the agency in court. “This removal of the dissent function really will end up hurting these agencies in litigation over how much the courts defer to them,” he said.

“This is the sort of thing that happens in a one-party state — you just stamp out the opportunity for dissent and the incentive for dissent everywhere,” Szóka added. “Now that commissioners know they can be fired at whim, what’s the incentive to go out on a limb?”

Many see the FTC move as part of a broader strategy to force the Supreme Court’s hand on a key expansion of executive power.

Trump is already using the lawsuits filed by ejected Democrats in at least four federal agencies in an attempt to overturn a 1935 Supreme Court decision, Humphrey’s Executor, that upheld limits passed by Congress on the president’s powers to fire independent agency members.

Trump’s Justice Department said on Feb. 12 it determined that agency powers have changed so much since 1935 that those protections are no longer constitutional.

Trump’s removal of the commissioners earned wide condemnation by Democrats on Capitol Hill, including a letter signed by 28 Democratic senators demanding that Trump reinstate Bedoya and Slaughter.

Republicans were largely silent on the move. An exception was Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz (T-TX), who has jurisdiction over the FTC.

“The heads of these agencies, like all members of the executive branch, must answer to the president, in whom ‘the executive power shall be vested,’” Cruz said in a statement to POLITICO. “President Trump is right to challenge this precedent and return power to the people.”

Democrats fear this is just the start.

“Today, it’s the FTC. Tomorrow, it’ll be the @FCC or @FEC,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) wrote on X. “At what point will my Republican colleagues finally speak out?”

Cases involving the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board are the furthest along before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Because the White House position on independent agencies calls back to legal precedent of the 1920s and ‘30s, there’s the chance for a huge reversion in the agency’s role if the FTC firings go to the Supreme Court.

If the justices agree with Trump’s legal argument, the FTC could be forced to return to its 1935 responsibilities to guarantee it a measure of independence, Ohlhausen said.

Currently, the FTC is investigating Amazon, Facebook, Meta, and Google. The CEO tech oligarchs were seated behind Trump during his inauguration.

The commissioners then primarily issued reports and used its in-house administrative process instead of going to court.

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