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'Constitutional Crime': Outrage as Trump Fires Democratic FTC Commissioners
"The FTC is an independent agency founded 111 years ago to fight fraudsters and monopolists," said fired commissioner Alvaro Bedoya. "Now, the president wants the FTC to be a lap dog for his golfing buddies."
Mar 18, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump said he fired the two Democrats on the Federal Trade Commission Tuesday, a move blasted by consumer rights and democracy advocates as yet another illegal abuse of power by the twice-impeached Republican felon.
The White House announced the termination of Commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya from the FTC, a five-member body tasked with enforcing civil antiitrust law and protecting consumers.
"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," Slaughter said in a statement. "Why? Because I have a voice. And he is afraid of what I'll tell the American people."
Just got a statement from Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic FTC commissioner, who was unlawfully fired today, furthering a showdown in the courts over control of independent agencies.
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— David Dayen (@ddayen.bsky.social) March 18, 2025 at 2:22 PM
"The administration clearly fears the accountability that opposition voices would provide if the president orders Chair [Andrew] Ferguson to treat the most powerful corporations and their executives—like those that flanked the president at his inauguration—with kid gloves," Slaughter continued, referring to multibillionaire tech CEOs Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg.
Last month, Ferguson endorsed the fringe legal theory that the president can terminate commissioners without cause—despite federal legislation against this. Bolstered by obsequious Republicans in his administration and Congress as well as a Supreme Court that critics say has granted the president king-like powers, Trump has moved to assert greater control over the federal government, including agencies meant to be independent.
Bedoya
wrote on social media: "The president just illegally fired me. This is corruption, plain and simple."
Full statement of @bedoyaftc.bsky.social, in my opinion the best FTC commissioner ever to commish, who was just fired by Trump
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— Evan Greer (@evangreer.bsky.social) March 18, 2025 at 2:22 PM
"The FTC is an independent agency founded 111 years ago to fight fraudsters and monopolists, our staff is unafraid of the Martin Shkrelis and Jeff Bezos of the world. They take them to court and they win," Bedoya continued. "Now, the president wants the FTC to be a lap dog for his golfing buddies."
"I'll see the president in court," he added.
Responding to Trump's move, Jeff Hauser, founder and executive director of the watchdog group Revolving Door Project, said that "on the surface, this constitutional crime is about law and process and other abstract topics people often tune out—but underneath, it is motivated by good old-fashioned greed that will hurt every one of us who isn't a corrupt financier."
"Americans are rapidly losing their defenders against corporate fraud and malfeasance," Hauser continued. "First, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was gutted illegally by billionaire Elon Musk and his lackeys. Now, Trump is attempting, without a legal basis, to fire the FTC's two Democratic commissioners."
"As antitrust enforcement dies out and a handful of corporations accumulate even more economic power, Americans will only have one person to blame for the new fraud economy: Donald Trump," he added.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, the corporate power director at Demand Progress Education Fund, warned: "President Trump's illegal attempt to fire Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter opens the floodgates to unfettered corruption and self-dealing. This reckless attack on the FTC invites a return to the rampant, corporate graft that brought on the Great Depression."
"Billionaires like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos paid a lot for their concierge access to the White House and now President Trump is repaying their investment," she continued. "The FTC is currently investigating or suing many of the biggest corporations—including Google, which announced a multibillion-dollar merger just this afternoon."
"These illegal firing attempts put these investigations in doubt and could seriously curb the agency's power and responsibility to protect everyday Americans and honest, Main Street businesses from being scammed and trampled by megacorporations," Peterson-Cassin added. "With this action, the president is choosing to please his billionaire cronies, wreck the rule of law, and do generations of damage to a critical consumer protection agency."
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WaPo Columnist Resigns, Says Publisher Killed Column That 'Respectfully Dissented' Against Bezos Edict
"This just exposes the blatant fallacy in Bezos' new rules: civil liberty for him but not for anyone who disagrees," wrote one journalist.
Mar 10, 2025
Columnist and editor Ruth Marcus said Monday that she is resigning from The Washington Post after CEO and publisher Will Lewis allegedly decided not to run a column she penned critiquing billionaire owner Jeff Bezos' recent changes to the opinion section, according to a note from Marcus that was obtained by multiple media reporters.
In the note, which is addressed to both Bezos and Lewis, Marcus wrote that as an opinion writer, she was "honored to offer commentary that readers could be assured constituted my best independent judgment of the topic at hand. Unfortunately, on the opinions side of the newspaper, that appears to be no longer the case."
In late February, Bezos—who has owned the paper since 2013—announced a major change in the outlet's opinion section. From now on, the opinion section will advocate for "personal liberties and free markets" and "viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others," according to an email from Bezos. The section's editor, David Shipley, decided to depart and the paper lost thousands of subscriptions after Bezos' intentions became public, according to NPR.
The move was denounced, including by the Post's own chief economics reporter, Jeff Stein, who called it a "massive encroachment" on The Post's opinion section and said that the move makes clear "dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there."
In her farewell note, Marcus said that the Lewis' decision "not to run the column that I wrote respectfully dissenting from [Bezos'] edict... underscores that the traditional freedom of columnists to select the topics they wish to address and say what they think has been dangerously eroded."
Marcus, who has been with the paper since 1984, separately sent a note to staff in which she emphasized that her decision does not suggest "what anyone else should do in the circumstances in which we find ourselves," according to a copy of the note obtained by Semafor's Max Tani.
Marcus' departure comes amidst greater turmoil at the Post. In the fall, Bezos decided to block the paper's endorsement of then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris and ended the Post's tradition of endorsing presidential candidates. Hundreds of thousands of readers canceled their subscriptions in response. The paper has also undergone layoffs and experienced other high profile departures.
The news that Marcus was leaving the paper was mourned online on Monday.
"The tragic self-destruction of a great newspaper continues. I had the privilege of working with Ruth Marcus for years and she is the best of the best. Whether you agree with her or not, she is the model of journalistic excellence and integrity," wrote New York Times journalist Peter Baker.
"Terrible news," wrote journalist Julia Preston. "Ruth Marcus writes a well-researched, level-headed column. She is a voice of reason and decency. This just exposes the blatant fallacy in Bezos's new rules: civil liberty for him but not for anyone who disagrees."
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Warren Demands Big Tech CEOs Come Clean on Cozying Up to Trump for Corporate Tax Giveaways
Given that "American taxpayers will shoulder the burden of tax cuts" for major tech companies, she argued, "they deserve answers."
Mar 06, 2025
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren this week sent letters to five Big Tech executives—including the world's three richest individuals—to sound the alarm about their "personal and financial ties to the Trump administration" and how they "may be exploiting" those relationships for billions of dollars in corporate tax breaks.
The Massachusetts Democrat's targets include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the wealthiest person on Earth and head of President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, which is leading the administration's effort to dismantle the federal bureaucracy.
She also wrote to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta—which owns Facebook and Instagram—as well as Amazon.com founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos. As of Thursday, they are respectively the second- and third-wealthiest people on the planet. Warren's final two letters went to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet, Google's parent company.
"This $75 billion windfall is only one slice of the billions of dollars that you stand to gain from Republican efforts to lower your taxes while raising costs for working families."
Warren and other Democrats on Capitol Hill are intensely critical of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which congressional Republicans passed and Trump signed in 2017. The law was largely crafted to serve rich individuals and businesses, including by slashing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.
Now that the GOP has regained control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, its members are aiming to extend expiring provisions of the TCJA—funded by gutting programs for the working class.
As Warren's office noted in a Thursday statement, the TCJA ended "a corporate tax break known as research and development (R&D) expensing to help pay for their tax cuts for the ultrawealthy. This tax break allowed companies to deduct the total cost of their R&D expenses immediately, instead of deducting them over time, as is the standard practice in the tax code."
"This change was one of the few parts of the 2017 bill that forced companies to pay higher taxes," her office explained. "Now, corporations want to revert back to the pre-2017 rules—and not only do corporations want to apply immediate R&D expensing to future tax years, but they are also pushing to retroactively apply these deductions to 2022, 2023, and 2024."
Warren's letters cite a recent independent analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which found that retroactive application of R&D expensing alone would slash each company's tax bill by billions of dollars—specifically, Tesla: $2.5 billion; Meta: $15 billion; Amazon: $22 billion; Apple: $10 billion; and Alphabet: $24 billion.
In other words, Warren wrote, "collectively, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Tesla are projected to win $75 billion if Congress awards them retroactive R&D tax expensing—nearly double what the federal government spends on child nutrition programs each year and a fantastic return on investment for the millions you have spent lobbying on the tax fight."
"And this $75 billion windfall is only one slice of the billions of dollars that you stand to gain from Republican efforts to lower your taxes while raising costs for working families," she continued, pointing out that GOP lawmakers may "succeed in lowering the corporate tax rate even further, as President Trump has sought, or in handing out other tax giveaways to massive corporations."
Given that "American taxpayers will shoulder the burden of tax cuts" for major tech companies, "they deserve answers," argued Warren, a member of the Senate Finance Committee. She demanded responses to a list of questions by March 19.
Warren's inquiries include how much the companies are spending on lobbying for Republicans' tax legislation, and the R&D provision specifically; which trade associations, lobbying coalitions, or similar entities that they are a part of; and how much they have given, directly or indirectly, to federal elected officials who are advocating for corporate tax giveaways.
The senator also asked "exactly how much" of the retroactive tax breaks that the tech giants would put toward R&D investment and how they expect it will impact the companies' outlook for stock buybacks and executive compensation.
The potential tax law change is just one way Republican control of the federal government could benefit Big Tech. As the watchdog Public Citizen highlighted Tuesday, Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Tesla are among dozens of companies with ties to the Trump administration that could benefit from its efforts to end corporate probes and enforcement actions.
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