President Donald Trump’s administration has rejected calls for the White House to reverse the dismissal of two Democratic commissioners who were recently fired from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), arguing it would infringe upon his executive powers.
“An order requiring the president to reinstate officials he has chosen to remove from office would be an extraordinary intrusion on the president’s exclusive authority to exercise control over the executive branch,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in a court filing Wednesday.
Newsweek has reached out to representatives of the two commissioners via email for comment.
Why It Matters
Since his return to the Oval Office, Trump’s attempts to remove both officials and lower-level employees from federal agencies have been met with significant legal pushback, with critics arguing that these amount to textbook examples of executive overreach.
However, the response from Trump’s legal counsel to the ongoing FTC lawsuit indicates that the administration is firm in its conviction that the Constitution grants the president broad authority to dismiss individuals while carrying out his executive responsibilities.
Alex Brandon/AP Photo
What To Know
Last month, FTC commission members Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro M. Bedoya were dismissed from their posts by Trump. According to a lawsuit filed against the White House and high-ranking FTC officials, the pair received an email from the president which read: “Your continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with my administration’s priorities…Accordingly, I am removing you from office pursuant to my authority under Article II of the Constitution.”
Slaughter and Bedoya are now requesting that their dismissals be declared unlawful and ineffective, and that they be permitted to return to their duties at the federal agency.
Both officials are Democrats: Slaughter was initially nominated to serve as a commissioner by Trump in 2018 and renominated by Joe Biden in 2023, while Bedoya was nominated by Biden in 2021.
In their response, filed with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Trump’s representatives cited Supreme Court precedent to assert that his dismissal of the commissioners did not fall within the recognized exceptions to the president’s “unrestricted removal power.”
What People Are Saying
President Donald Trump’s counsel, in Wednesday’s court filing, wrote: “Neither of the two narrow exceptions the Supreme Court has recognized to the president’s otherwise unrestricted removal power—for inferior officers with limited authority and for multimember bodies that exercise functions that are legislative and judicial, rather than executive—applies here. FTC Commissioners must therefore be removable at will to ensure they, like the rest of the executive branch, are accountable to the people who elect the president.”
Earlier in the filing, Trump’s lawyers wrote: “The Constitution vests the ‘executive power—all of it’—in the president…That executive power encompasses the authority to remove those who aid the president in carrying out his duties.”
Mattie Neretin/Sipa via AP Images)
Representatives of Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, in a March 27 court filing, wrote: “The president’s action is indefensible under governing law. This court should declare the president’s attempted removals unlawful and ineffective.”
FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, in a statement released in March, said that her dismissal violated “the plain language of a statute and clear Supreme Court precedent,” and that Trump had removed her because “he is afraid of what I will tell the American people.”
What Happens Next?
The president’s legal team has asked the court to reject the commissioners’ motion and dismiss the lawsuit.
