Senate Democrats say they’re outraged about President Donald Trump firing two Democratic commissioners on the Federal Trade Commission — but they’re not sure if they should block the confirmation of one of his picks in response.
“I would be open to sending a stronger message to him,” Sen. Mazie Hirono said of the recent removal of FTC commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter.
When NOTUS asked about blocking confirmations, Hirono replied, “We shall see.”
Senate Democrats have by and large opted to maintain Senate tradition and approve Trump’s nominations. But consumer protection groups have called on the Senate to block any further action on FTC nominee Mark Meador until Bedoya and Slaughter are reinstated.
Now Democrats have to decide what to do at this moment: directly resist or leave the fight up to the courts.
Meador has already cleared the necessary Senate committees, though his vote before the full Senate is not yet scheduled.
Few Democrats were willing to commit to blocking Meador’s confirmation.
Sen. Cory Booker said Trump’s decision to fire the Democratic FTC commissioners is “eroding the spirit of the constitutional norms that Republican and Democratic presidencies abided by.” When asked if he would block Meador’s nomination, Booker said Democrats would “keep all options on the table on how to push back.”
Sen. Maria Cantwell, the ranking member on the Senate commerce committee, said Democrats were “looking at all our options.”
“You have to fire on cause, and I don’t think there’s a cause there,” Cantwell said. She voted against advancing Meador’s nomination from the committee days before the firings.
Consumer protection groups have pleaded with the commerce committee to launch an investigation into Trump’s firings. Cantwell and others sent a letter to Trump pleading with him to reverse the firings, but have not launched a formal investigation. Democrats appear to be taking a wait-and-see approach in hopes that the courts agree with them that those firings were illegal.
Many Democrats pointed to the courts as the place to work it out.
“You’ll find that the vast majority of [Trump’s actions] are getting overturned. So that’s how that process works,” Sen. John Fetterman, who’s been approving most of Trump’s nominees, told NOTUS.
There’s another complication in the push to block Meador. Although he’s a Republican, Meador’s views on antitrust and monopoly power are slightly more aligned with progressives than the two Republicans left on the commission.
Meador, who previously worked for Sen. Mike Lee, has advocated for strong enforcement and a vision of Republicanism that is not inherently opposed to intervening in the free market. The two remaining Republican commissioners have taken a more laissez-faire approach and consistently opposed former FTC chair Lina Khan’s antitrust efforts. (Meador did not respond to NOTUS’ request for comment.)
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who is on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, told NOTUS the Trump administration is already breaking the agency, so he doesn’t think blocking Meador’s confirmation would make things worse.
“At the rate they’re going, they’re shutting down the FTC, they’re strangling it in terms of resources, and it can’t be a functioning agency if it’s turned into a partisan tool,” Blumenthal said. “I think we should do whatever we can to hold a number of nominations.”
The FTC can take action on cases without a full slate of commissioners, but can be held up by recusals. The future of a case involving insulin prices, for example, is unclear because the two remaining Republican commissioners had to recuse themselves because they worked on similar issues at the state level.
Sen. Chris Murphy suggested he may also vote to block Meador’s confirmation as part of a broader opposition to Trump nominees. Last week, Murphy voted against Gail Slater’s nomination to lead the antitrust division at the Department of Justice despite her support from proponents of strong anti-monopoly enforcement, writing in a statement, “I cannot support her confirmation as President Trump continues to lead our country into a constitutional crisis.”
Lee, Meador’s former boss, said he was not concerned that Trump’s firings of FTC commissioners would negatively affect Meador’s nomination.
Lee predicted that the White House would prevail against legal challenges to the firings. The White House has said the firings were justified because the function of the agency has changed since the 1930s Supreme Court precedent Humphrey’s Executor, which prohibits the White House from firing commissioners at independent agencies without cause.
Senate Democrats maintain that what Trump did is illegal.
“They’re entitled to their own opinion, as the saying goes, they’re not entitled to their own facts,” Blumenthal told NOTUS. “Only somebody totally unfamiliar with the work of the FTC could claim it is not in an independent agency.”
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Samuel Larreal and Claire Heddles are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.