‘What This Does Is Throw Open the Door for Corruption’: Trump Illegally Fires Two FTC Commissioners

President Donald Trump has illegally fired two of the five commissioners at the Federal Trade Commission. The commissioners were Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter, the Democrats on what is supposed to be a bipartisan commission that oversees the FTC. And that will allow Trump to tremendously weaken the FTC, which oversees consumer protection and competition laws. Bedoya told Gizmodo in an interview that he was at his daughter’s gymnastics class on Tuesday when he learned he’d been fired. “I got an email from the White House claiming that it was firing me but, of course, only the president can fire me and only the president can fire me for cause, which the email itself basically said they had none,” said Bedoya. Under the law, presidents can only fire FTC commissioners in the case of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance.” As Bedoya says, there’s no indication Trump’s stooges even tried to allege any of those things as a pretext for firing him. Bedoya was quick to note th ... Read full article.