Pod Insights On with Kara Swisher Fired Up: FTC Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter Say They’ll Fight Trump About this episode President Trump fired Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter, the two Democratic commissioners at the Federal Trade Commission, last week, sending shock waves through political and business circles. The FTC is an independent, bipartisan agency and, as a defender of antitrust and consumer protection laws, one of the most important government watchdogs. FTC commissioners serve seven year terms and, according to a 1935 SCOTUS ruling, can only be fired for cause. But even though, based on that decision, Bedoya’s and Slaughter’s terminations are illegal, FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson has come out in support of Trump’s firing power. The White House says it’s ready to take the case to the Supreme Court.
Kara talks to Bedoya and Slaughter about why this happened now, what Elon Musk and other tech billionaires stand to gain by getting rid of “minority commissioners,” and why business leaders are concerned that Trump’s move could affect other independent agencies, like the Federal Reserve.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher.
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Transcript 10,411 words · 15 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 He was saying his internet on his Chromebook can be a little spotty.
0:04 Speaker 01 Why is he using a Chromebook?
0:05 Speaker 00 Because we had very good computers until this week, and now we had to dig out our, whatever we happen to have in our house.
0:24 Kara Swisher? Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Last week, the Trump administration illegally fired Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter, the two Democratic commissioners on the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC is an independent bipartisan agency. Its commissioners serve seven-year terms. They can only be fired for cause. When FDR tried to fire a commissioner without cause, the Supreme Court ruled that it was illegal. But last month, President Trump issued an executive order that claimed power over independent agencies. And after the firings, his press secretary, Carolyn Levitt, said they were willing to take the fight all the way to the Supreme Court. Well, Tracy Flick, that's where it's going. And
1:05 Kara Swisher? as Politico put it, "Washington and the business world are freaking out about Trump's FTC firings." So today, I'm talking to those people, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter. Before joining the FTC, Alvaro founded the Center for Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law School and helped establish the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy as its first chief counsel. Rebecca served as chief counsel to Senator Charles Schumer before joining the FTC, and before that, she was an associate in the D.C. office of Sidley-Austen LLP. And our expert question today comes from one of my favorite senators, Senator Amy Klobuchar, who's been working on these issues for a long time. So stick around.
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4:04 Kara Swisher? Alvaro and Rebecca, thanks for coming on, on. Thanks for having us.
4:08 Speaker 08 Thank you for having us.
4:09 Kara Swisher? So can you give us the state of play right now? I have maintained, and I think you are maintaining, that you were illegally fired. I want to understand why you were and why now. So let's hear from you both, Alvaro and then Rebecca.
4:23 Speaker 08 Sure. So on Tuesday, early evening, I walked into my daughter's gymnastics class after work, and I got a call from Commissioner Slaughter, Rebecca. And she said, have you checked your email? I said, no, I have not. And she said, well, I just got an email from the White House telling me, claiming that they're firing me, the president's firing me. So sure enough, I opened it up, and there it was. And what's extraordinary about that email is that it goes out of its way to not provide a reason for why we were being fired. It says, president has the authority to fire you. Not true, but we can get to that. And so the president is going ahead and firing you. And you raise this other question of why now, right? Because we weren't fired week one, week two.
5:08 Speaker 08 I think this is like week eight or something, week nine. And honestly, we don't know, but I think it is relevant that both Commissioner Slaughter and I have been steadfast in our desire to hold techs feet to the fire. Me personally, one of the last things I did in terms of public statements before I was fired was call out Jeff Bezos for the way he was treating his workers on the warehouse floor. Literally so many injuries, they have to put vending machines on the warehouse floor dispensing painkillers. It's that bad. And so I don't know if that's why I was fired, but I think it's quite a coincidence.
5:42 Kara Swisher? Which is not a new allegation against Amazon, correct?
5:45 Speaker 08 It's not new, but Senator Sanders put out like 180-page report based on like a year and a half investigation in late December, talking about how the injury rates were like two times higher and how people were turned away from outside referrals for medical care for up to three weeks. And the reason it's relevant is that guess who was just nominated to head up OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a former Amazon On safety executive. And that, of course, follows, you know, tens of millions of dollars in political donations and sweetheart deals for the president and his family.
6:20 Kara Swisher? And Jeff Bezos being on the dais at the inauguration. Rebecca?
6:25 Speaker 00 Yeah, so it's a great question, Kara, about what happened and why. My story is similar to Alvaro's. I was at my daughter's elementary school when I checked my email and saw this email from the White House Presidential Personnel Office purporting to fire us, or fire me specifically. And Alvaro mentioned that it gave no reason. And I think that's an important point because the statute in the FTC Act says FTC commissioners can only be removed for neglect, malfeasance, inefficiency, what's collectively known as for cause. They gave no cause. And I think it's really important to note, because there is no cause to fire us. We haven't done any of those
7:10 Speaker 00 things. And as to the why I share Alvaro's uncertainty, he's been raising really important public alarms about, as he was saying, things like Amazon. I think it's worth sharing that I've been also raising a lot of internal alarms about, for example, how extraordinarily illegal it would be for anyone outside of the FTC, like someone at DOGE, to access confidential FTC data. There is really important, serious business data, financial data, trade secrets at the FTC houses. And the law very, very much protects the confidentiality of that data. And I have been
7:55 Speaker 00 having a lot of conversations about how concerned folks at the agency are about potential attempts to access that data.
8:02 Kara Swisher? And DOGE has not entered the FTC yet for that, correct?
8:06 Speaker 00 As of Tuesday, when we were last in the building, I don't believe it had been there, but I think it's not something folks have been talking about publicly, but it's something I've been talking about a lot internally.
8:19 Kara Swisher? That they could do that.
8:20 Speaker 00 I mean, they've done it at lots of other agencies. It's been publicly reported.
8:24 Kara Swisher? So you both vowed to fight these things. And there's a good chance you'll end up in front of the Supreme Court, where a 63 conservative majority has already expanded the president's power and shown openness to go even further. That said, they have pushed back on a number of things. And Justice Roberts just recently warned.
8:40 Kara Swisher? President Trump about judicial impeachments. Talk about the process right now. Alvaro, you start.
8:47 Speaker 08 So Commissioner Slaner and I are in the process of preparing our lawsuit. And I anticipate we'll be filing that imminently. We'll file in federal district court. And frankly, I think we'll be reinstated in fairly short order. But then, as you mentioned, it'll inevitably go to the Supreme Court, I would, I would believe. And, look, here's the thing. The last time someone tried to remove a commissioner without cause was 90 years ago, FDR, and FDR lost. The Supreme Court said, no, this is an independent agency. There's a value to having an independent panel of bipartisan experts that can build expertise and stays there irrespective of the, of the, you know, to and fro of the political process. And that hasn't changed, right?
9:31 Speaker 08 The importance of a bipartisan agency has not changed. And so I think this is pretty clearly illegal, and I'm hopeful and optimistic the Supreme Court will hold that.
9:41 Kara Swisher? So Rebecca, explain, there are five commissioners, but right now, there's only four, correct? Explain the makeup and how it works.
9:48 Speaker 00 Sure. So what the FTC Act says is that the commission shall be composed of five commissioners, no more than three from the same party. And over the time that I have been at the FTC, it has varied in membership as commissioners come and go. It has been two-two or three-one. But that statutory framework of no more than three from the same party has never been violated. Right now, we have two Republican commissioners, Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Commissioner Melissa Holyoke. When the administration changed, Chair Khan stepped down and ceded the chairmanship and control of the agency to Chairman Ferguson, consistent with the change in parties at the election.
10:33 Speaker 00 And there's been another Republican nominated for the commission, Mark Metter, who had his confirmation hearing only a couple of weeks ago. Alvaro and I were in attendance, and he's pending confirmation on the floor of the Senate.
10:47 Kara Swisher? So they have to just confirm Mark? Mark Metter, and then they have a dominance if they need to be together, correct?
10:54 Speaker 00 Yes.
10:54 Kara Swisher? If that's the case.
10:55 Speaker 00 And it looked like his confirmation was imminent. You know, they didn't need to remove both of us for there to be a Republican majority at the agency. He came out of committee on a bipartisan basis, and I think people were expecting a relatively speedy confirmation. And I have been really looking forward to working with Mark Metter because I think we have a lot of areas of common ground and concerns about the concentration of power.
11:21 Kara Swisher? So now, just so people understand, if they are able to put two people in place, it could be independent people. It doesn't have to be Democrats, correct?
11:30 Speaker 00 Correct. The statute does not say Democrats and Republicans. It just says no more than three from the same party. And who determines what party somebody's in, other than, I suppose, how they themselves identify? There have been independent commissioners in the past who were recommended by one particular party, but I think we don't have any reason.
11:51 Kara Swisher? Could be Jill Stein.
11:52 Speaker 00 Exactly. Correct.
11:54 Kara Swisher? So, Alvaro, you said that this firing isn't about unitary executive theory. It's about corruption and corporate pardons. We're going to get to those, but your firings have a bit about the unitary executive theory. Explain what the theory says, and President Trump thinks it gives him power to fire heads of independent agencies. As Trump once put it, "I have an Article II. I have the right to do whatever I want as president." And obviously, this was reinforced by Supreme Court around immunity and everything else.
12:19 Speaker 08 Yeah, so the unitary executive theory is the idea that, hey, if you vote a president into power, the entirety of the executive should be at his or her command. And so if you have, you know, again, I'm restating their viewpoint, but if you have an independent agency where the president can only remove someone for inefficiency, neglect, or malfeasance, then the president doesn't have full control of the executive. And so that, I think, is the point of view there. The issue, of course, is, yeah, the Supreme Court hasn't ratified that view when it comes to the FTC, and the protections that apply to us are still there. And by the way, the reasons they're there, and I know we'll talk about corruption later,
13:03 Speaker 08 but they're for a lot of similar reasons. You know, the protections in our statute come from something called the Interstate Commerce Commission Act, and they came from an age, the Gilded Age, when robber barons controlled not just commerce but government. And Congress wanted to insulate us from that corrupting influence of money and politics, hence the strong protections against our removal by the president.
13:25 Kara Swisher? Right, right. So Rebecca, you pointed out, I'm sorry for these technicals, I want people to understand what's happening here, so people understand what he can and can't do. You pointed out Trump can fire, you can fire the head of any independent agency like Jerome Powell of the Fed, which may be his avenue he's trying to go down. Could the Supreme Court find a way to make your firing legal but maintain the Fed's independence, for example? Or is it all or nothing?
13:47 Speaker 00 I mean, in my view, I don't think there's any intellectually credible way to do that. People make all sorts of arguments, but if the constitutional principle is everyone in government, that who is not in Congress or the judiciary needs to be accountable to the president, that's the theory that Alvaro was just articulating. I don't know how you could, with any sort of intellectual credibility, distinguish the Fed. And I think an important point to piggyback on is we've heard the words democratic accountability thrown around a bunch, like it is important for the president to be able to fire commissioners because that ensures democratic accountability and we are somehow unaccountable bureaucrats.
14:31 Speaker 00 I want to be very clear, I have no idea why a constitutionally term-limited president in his second term is more democratically accountable than commissioners who were confirmed by the Senate are accountable to Congress. We routinely have to show up and testify in Congress and explain ourselves and have to make our work transparent and available to the public. So I don't see the distinction in democratic accountability that we have heard. I think accountability is important. I think transparency is important. And that's actually why I think the role of minority commissioners is important, because part of what we can do is provide accountability and transparency.
15:15 Kara Swisher? So Alvaro, what's the case for constitutional, what's the constitutional case for independent agencies? The law creating them is clear. The Supreme Court ruling upheld on a case. Cloakly known as Humphrey's executor, but obviously lots of conservatives disagree. Senator Eric Schmidt of Missouri wrote on X that Humphrey's executor is bad law. It undermines the president's centralized authority. He is granted under Article 2. Let me hear your argument. Rebecca just made hers.
15:40 Speaker 08 You know, look at that 1935 case that ratified our independence in the Supreme Court. Look at a more recent case called Celia Law. Over and over, the Supreme Court said that there is a value to having independent agencies where there's bipartisan commissioners who can dissent, who can blow the whistle. And dissent is completely meaningless if, you know, your strongest dissent is your last. And if the president can just say, oh, yeah, great points, you're gone, right? And that's especially important now. Why? Because if we are indistinguishable from the Department of Justice, which has happened at the Department of Justice, the president appears to have cut a sweetheart deal with Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City. That was handed down like a stone tablet to DOJ,
16:24 Speaker 08 and they were told, you better ratify this or else. And it was like seven or eight career prosecutors, Republican, Democrat, who all, you know, took that or else option who were forced out. And I fear that the next merger that comes before the commission, it's not going to matter if it raises prices on consumers. It's not going to matter if it screws over workers, not going to matter if it screws over small businesses. The only thing that's going to matter is which billionaires have the president's ear on it and which way they can tug it.
16:51 Kara Swisher? So Trump has done a version of this before. He fired Gwynn Wilcox, a board member of the National Labor Relations Board, which is another independent agency like the FTC. She also sued and was reinstated by a judge who said the president is not a king. The Trump administration has appealed, and the case is back in court. Rebecca, if the Supreme Court overturns the Humphreys executor president, there's no longer any independent agencies because the president can fire anybody. What are the long-term effects of that expansion, presidential power, from your perspective?
17:19 Speaker 00 Well, I think it is very scary in terms of democratic accountability, as we have been talking about. I also think markets should be terrified. I think businesses should be terrified about that. I know that there are a lot of Executives who are sort of tantalized by the shiny object of tax cuts right now. But it is important to remember that actually honest businesses depend on guardrails in the markets and that the law is enforced without fear or favor. And if these guardrails come off, that is going to be very destabilizing to markets, not to mention hurting real people. You know, the work of the FTC is extraordinarily important.
18:04 Speaker 00 It's not always visible to people in their day to day lives. But the FTC is the only federal cop on the beat when it comes to privacy and kids' privacy. We enforce antitrust and consumer protection laws. When we're doing our jobs well, that allows people to operate freely and fairly in the economy. It protects consumers, it protects workers, it protects small businesses. And we've talked a little bit about the work of the Fed protecting monetary policy. So I think if the court overturns Humphrey's executor, what it says is that an unchecked executive can operate without regard to statutory language, to court rulings.
18:46 Speaker 00 And that is not only bad for accountability, it is very destabilizing to our economy.
18:55 Speaker 00 We'll be back in a minute.
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22:07 Kara Swisher? Let's talk a little bit more about the effect of FTC, then we're going to get to some specific cases. What a commissioner does, because not everyone understands the inner workings of the FTC, commissioners act as rule makers and administrative judges. They also have a prosecutorial role. Alvaro, correct?
22:21 Speaker 08 That's right. We're judges, we're prosecutors, we can issue rules. The last thing I'd say is that there's an element of policy expertise and legal expertise that the statute lets us build up, that the Supreme Court has ratified, is really important, where we become subject matter experts in any number of areas.
22:37 Kara Swisher? And Rebecca, you've said the role of minority commissioners provide transparency to the Congress. Current FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson used to agree, although he put out a statement, I'm sorry, I call him an unctuous toady, you don't have to follow in my footsteps, but he put a statement affirming President Trump's right to fire you. Let's hear what he said on Odd Lots podcast just recently.
22:56 Speaker 10 There's also, I think, some benefits in certain circumstances to having multi-member agencies with people from both parties. I mean, look, if you have an agency that is exceeding the law, abusing the companies that it purports to regulate, it's helpful for markets, for courts, for litigants, for government transparency, to have people on the other party pointing this out and saying in a dissent, like, you know, I wrote 400-plus pages of dissents during my time as a minority commissioner. I think that that adds value.
23:26 Kara Swisher? So what's happened, Rebecca, and what's happened to Andrew Ferguson?
23:29 Speaker 00 Well, I couldn't put the value of minority commissioners better than he did just there. And he demonstrated it, as he noted when he was a minority commissioner, writing extensive and voluminous dissents, which, by the way, are not only about public accountability, they become part of litigation cases, too. They are used in litigation cases. So I can't really speculate on what has happened in his head, but I think what he said on that podcast is exactly right and exactly why the statutes were designed the way they were designed. And I think we just cannot escape the fact That no one in the government, not the president, not the chairman of the FTC,
24:11 Speaker 00 gets to unilaterally overturn a statute, especially not one that's been in place for over 100 years. But we don't get to decide, we don't like a statute that Congress has passed, so we're not going to follow it.
24:22 Kara Swisher? And he's got to build consensus to, in order to convince you to vote for or against. You don't always vote on party lines, Oliver, correct? I mean, that's the whole point, is he now does not have to have consensus. He can just rule.
24:33 Speaker 08 That's right. So, number one, he can just do whatever he wants. But here's the thing, and people need to realize, because if Commissioner Slaughter and I can be removed at any point at any time by the president, it kind of doesn't matter what Chairman Ferguson wants to do or not. Because he said he wants to hold Big Tech's feet to the fire.
24:50 Kara Swisher? He has.
24:51 Speaker 08 But if suddenly the president decides he disagrees with him, he can fire him overnight and put in someone else who actually agrees with him. And so it's more than, you know, a single-party takeover of the FTC. It is a White House takeover of the FTC and a politicization of the FTC, or at least an attempted politicization of the FTC, I would say.
25:11 Kara Swisher? Absolutely. I mean, what's interesting is, he was very dissenting, I recall. I found him one of the more thirsty commissioners, I think that's what I said to someone, because he was always dissenting and being very loud about it, as I recall, and his staff certainly was. So, a lot of conservatives, of course, were tweaked by former Chair Lina Khan and said that she politicized the FTC. Here's Senator Ted Cruz listing alleged instances of politicization.
25:35 Speaker 11 The FTC has abused its enforcement powers to target political opponents of the Biden administration. It has attempted to impose competition rulemakings across entire industries, exceeding its legal mandate. It has destroyed documents, obstructing both congressional oversight and potential litigation. It has collaborated with European regulators to apply foreign laws that put American tech companies at a competitive disadvantage.
26:06 Kara Swisher? He keeps going, I think you get it, Oliver. What's your response? You put aside the unvarnished politicization that Trump showed by legally firing, you do Cruz and conservatives have a point? And I'll get to the ones who like Lina Khan, because there are conservatives who backed her.
26:20 Speaker 08 So... What I have noticed is how then Commissioner Ferguson essentially copy pasted press releases from then-President-elect Trump when it finally, you know, came time to potentially be picked for the president. And frankly, I agree with Chairman Ferguson on lots of things, not just holding big tech's feet to the fire, also the importance of labor and protecting workers in mergers. But here's the thing, what I disagree with him on profoundly is his professed fealty to the president. One of the first statements, perhaps his first substantive statement as a chairman, that he issued included the line, "I will obey all of the president's orders," with that "all" being italicized. Now, that had to do with an administrative matter around DEI office closures.
27:03 Speaker 08 But I think it's important to ask him, hey, you know, did you really mean "all," right? Were you just talking about administrative matters? Or if the president decides that he wants you to drop a merger, does this include that too? Did you mean what you wrote, or did you mean something else? That's what I have an issue with.
27:18 Kara Swisher? So earlier this month, a group of Democratic senators wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi over concerns that Elon Musk was using FTC as a bargaining chip in this battle to get advertisers to spend money on X. They say he might be, quote, "attempting to strike a quid pro quo deal," pressuring Interpublic to get its clients to spend certain amounts of money on advertising on X in exchange for directing President Trump to use his antitrust enforcement agencies to allow Interpublic's merger with Omnicom to proceed. Interpublic and Omnicom are both huge advertising conglomerates. All right, talk a bit about the potential corruption of the FCC by Elon, Trump, or someone else in Trump's orbit.
27:55 Speaker 08 Let me not talk about that merger. Let me talk about a different one that would be a little more appropriate for me to discuss. So last year, we were confronted with what would have been the biggest grocery store merger in history, Kroger and Albertsons. In thousands of towns, it would have taken like the biggest supermarket in town and combined it with the next biggest supermarket in town. And you don't need an economics PhD to understand what we heard in testimony. This would have jacked up prices on consumers. I think we had a Kroger executive say under oath that they were marking up, you know, milk and eggs above inflation. And here's the thing. That you may not know, which is that we were subject to immense political pressure in the forms of letters from elected officials. You know, some of them said block, you know, a lot of them said block,
28:40 Speaker 08 but a lot of them said allow it. And this also included prominent Democrats. And yet we blocked it because we looked at what this would do to grocery prices. We looked at what this would do to the union labor in these shops. And we said, no, this is going to decrease competition. My worry is what's going to happen with the next mega grocery merger? None of that stuff is going to matter. Higher prices, lower wages, doesn't matter. What's going to matter is the donors and the kind of proposed quid pro quo that you're alleging. That is what I'm deathly afraid of happening at the FTC. And it's going to screw over regular people and it's not going to hurt billionaires.
29:16 Speaker 00 And it's not just Kroger. The amount of political lobbying and pressure around, for example, the Microsoft Activision deal was outrageous. It is a frequent and common thing for us to be on the receiving end of extensive attempts to apply political pressure. Up to this point, that had not come from the White House, at least not in a way that was directed at me. But I think the very clear implication here is that it could and it would. And I want to be very clear. When you were talking about loyalty to the president and obeying the president, the oath that we take when we become commissioners is not to the president of the United States. We take an oath to the Constitution and the laws of the United States.
29:58 Speaker 00 And that is enormously, enormously important. It is not okay for us to do things that are not consistent with the laws and with the Constitution, even if the president pressured us to do so, because that is not where our oath is directed.
30:14 Kara Swisher? But can you talk specifically about this Elon influence with Omnicom?
30:18 Speaker 00 Yeah, I'm with Alvaro that I think it's not a great idea to go into that particular case because it has been publicly reported that it is a pending active merger. But I think it is something, as a general matter, being sensitive to where political pressure could be applied and how it could be applied is important. And we wouldn't always know, right? Without talking about that specific. Fake merger, I would have no idea in any particular merger case, even as a minority commissioner, if the White House had called the chairman up. However, what I would know is what the facts and the law in the case reflect. And if I looked at the facts and the law in a case and thought they did not add up to whatever action was being recommended,
31:01 Speaker 00 especially if there is political noise around that action that made me suspicious that we might be operating other than on the merits. A minority commissioner can say that out loud, can say, I have looked at the same facts and the law, and I don't think that this works. I don't think that this is on the level. And that can be true even if there isn't overt corruption. You and I have talked before about the $5 billion settlement that the FTC executed with Meta.
31:31 Kara Swisher? Parking ticket, yeah.
31:31 Speaker 00 Yeah, right, where the majority lauded it as, you know, the biggest fine ever, huge deal, massive win for enforcement. I don't think it was a corrupt deal. I just think they were wrong, that it was an effective enforcement tool. And that's what I said out loud as a minority commissioner at the time, with the benefit of access to the information in the investigation and in the case. And that is the kind of transparency and accountability, whether it is a disagreement on substance or the evidence of some malign influence. The importance of calling that out is huge in order to protect the validity of the agency's actions.
32:16 Kara Swisher? I think at the time I said they need to add a zero to that to make it 50 billion, but go ahead.
32:21 Speaker 08 Yeah, let me talk about one thing that I can talk about with respect to Mr. Musk, which is Commissioner Slaughter and I are personally responsible for enforcing the privacy consent decree, the 20-year privacy consent decree that applies to X. And, you know,
32:37 Kara Swisher? This is previous to his ownership.
32:39 Speaker 08 Previous to his ownership, but now he owns it. And it isn't just the president saying that he can fire us at any time. There was a separate executive order where he said that his budget director can cut our budgets down to the line item at any time at his discretion on an ongoing basis. And so it's public information what FTC Division enforces the X privacy consent decree. And so it doesn't even need to be a quid pro quo. It can just be a flick of a pen over at the White House Budget Office and suddenly the folks who are responsible for keeping, you know, the people who use X might be on leave or out of a job. That is the kind of thing I'm profoundly worried about.
33:22 Kara Swisher? So there wouldn't be anyone enforcing it? So it's by not having people.
33:26 Speaker 08 Well, if you can't pay them, yeah, you don't have them. And that is another power the president is asserting, the ability to like line item veto, you know, the appropriations that Congress has sent our way. And that can be used by someone in this kind of position without even, you know, calling in a favor over at FTC. That can be done directly from the White House.
33:47 Kara Swisher? Republicans have alleged that the X consent decree was politically jammed through once Elon bought the platform. Is there any validity to their claims, Rebecca?
33:55 Speaker 00 No, I'll speak to that. Absolutely not. And I think it's really important to clarify, I take enormously seriously the obligation to enforce the law without fear or favor. I do not care about the political affiliation of any CEO or any company. And in fact, it was the same FTC that enforced the valid consent decree against Twitter that also sued Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, all these big tech companies that Republicans have been complaining are too democratically aligned for a long time. I do not and have not ever cared about the political affiliation of a company. I care about whether they're following the law.
34:38 Kara Swisher? Rebecca, can you just address, is there any argument to be made that Chairman Khan made it too political? Obviously, she was famous for the Amazon essay she wrote and everything else. Did this bring this on? Or from your perspective, because she definitely angered tech people quite a bit.
34:56 Speaker 08 Look, when you compare it with what Chairman Ferguson, again, someone I agree with on plenty of things, but when you compare it to what he did, it pales in comparison. You know, you literally have Chairman Ferguson retweeting the Trump Vance Zelensky meeting and saying, "I voted for this." You literally have him in January talking about the inauguration that he can see from his window and how he's so looking forward to it. You know, if Chair Khan could be accused of anything, it is, you know, working really, really, really hard to enforce the law. You know, if your critique is, is that, I disagree with you, but I understand it. The idea that she somehow politicized the agency, I think is ridiculous.
35:36 Speaker 08 I think the thing about Chair Khan is that she is fundamentally unafraid of Silicon Valley. She's fundamentally unafraid of billionaires, and she does not care what they think about her in Aspen or Davos. And I think frankly, that scared a lot of people, and they made all sorts of noise about it. But, you know, you can accuse her of a lot of things, politicizing the agency? I don't think so. I don't, I don't buy that argument one bit.
36:01 Speaker 00 Rebecca? Yeah. People say "political" in that particular context to mean, "I don't like it." They mean aggressive and effective. You know, when I hear about politically motivated enforcement, I think, "Oh, I don't like somebody's politics or how they conduct themselves, not with respect to the law, but just in the world. Maybe I don't like their diversity policies, and so I target them for that reason." Chair Khan absolutely did not do that. She looked at the law. She said, "I don't think the law has been enforced effectively and aggressively for the last 40 years, and we need to get back to basics and fundamentals and congressional intent and be faithful to that." That's not political.
36:46 Speaker 00 That is following her oath. So, people like to throw around the term "political" about her, but I think what they mean is, "It scared us," just like Alvarez said, "and we didn't like what she was doing."
36:58 Speaker 08 Let me quickly, if I may very quickly add one thing, which is I don't want this to be a Democrat versus Republican thing. And so I will say, you know, we've been warning about the corrupting influence of money on the FTC. This happened under Democrats, I would submit. I'm just speaking for myself here, but I think it's extraordinary that even though the policies Chair Khan put forward, like stopping subscription traps where you sign up online and then have to wait on hold 60 minutes on the telephone to cancel.
37:24 Kara Swisher? To get out.
37:25 Speaker 08 Her policies were wildly popular, not just in blue states, but in red states and everywhere. And yet Vice President Harris would not sign on the dotted line and say she was going to keep Chair Khan as chair if she were to be elected. And I think that had a lot to do with money.
37:40 Kara Swisher? And a lot of it came during the Obama administration.
37:43 Speaker 08 That's right. And those were Democrats.
37:44 Kara Swisher? Obama had a big bear hug on.
37:46 Speaker 08 That's right. You know, all the visits to Google. And so this is, this is a problem in both parties. We're seeing a really acute version of it now. But money in politics and how it affects law enforcement is an issue no matter who is in office.
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39:19 Speaker 04 I'm Josh Mucio, host of The Pitch, where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. For our sweet season 16, we're giving you more of what you love and less of what you don't.
39:30 Speaker 13 I definitely start to blank out when we're talking about like middleware AI wrappers.
39:36 Speaker 04 Software is out. Actual cool stuff is in. We've got consumer brands. We're building Eight Sleep for daytime. Hardware that helps blind people see. They kept asking for middle finger. Next thing we knew, we had like 10 students running around flipping each other off. We've got deep tech to change the weather.
39:53 Speaker 05 Our big vision is to make it rain and snow on demand.
39:56 Speaker 14 What if you wanted to not make it rain somewhere else? Like one day, we're just like, screw Arizona.
40:04 Speaker 04 And dairy?
40:05 Speaker 06 I never imagined my life journey would be milk.
40:08 Speaker 04 Season 16 of The Pitch is out now. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. This season is presented by Engine.
40:17 Speaker 07 Support for the show comes from TikTok. There is a scientifically documented correlation between listening to podcasts and curiosity. So since you're here, you probably enjoy discovering new things. One great place to indulge your curiosity is TikTok. Whether it's how to forecast volcanic eruptions, strange phenomena that the James Webb Space Telescope picked up near the beginning of time, or a literal deep dive on the ocean's deepest reefs. TikTok has a wealth of fascinating videos just waiting to be discovered. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.
41:00 Kara Swisher? So let's switch gears to the tech industry because that's where the money is. I think both of you pointed out the FTC has investigations or lawsuits against companies, almost all tech titans that surrounded Trump at the inauguration. So let's talk about that. Every episode, we get an expert to send in a question. Let's listen to yours.
41:16 Speaker 01 Hi, Cara. Hi, Commissioners. Amy Klobuchar here. First, I wanted to thank both of you for your just incredible work on behalf of the consumers.
41:28 Speaker 01 Congress has long had the power to create independent bipartisan commissions. I think you also know in the area of tech, despite my best efforts, we passed a few things, but Congress has been slowed down and paralyzed by hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying. It's the FTC that's actually moved to enforce laws free of political pressure. If the FTC is subject to the political whims of the president, how will this impact the commission's ability to protect consumers in all cases, including tech cases? Why don't you start, Alvaro?
42:11 Speaker 08 So, one case we have yet to talk about that I think this is really relevant to is the Amazon case involving small business sellers. Because we've been talking about consumers, we've been talking a little bit about workers. You know, you might be listening to us and say, you know, I really care about startups. I really care about small businesses. And so what do we allege in our lawsuit against Amazon about this? Well, first of all, if you are a small retailer, you know, selling products in this country, you gotta be on Amazon. But then what does Amazon do? It squeezes those sellers and forces them, we allege, to pay up to 50 cents of every dollar they make on the site. They're barely making margins on that site. And yet, when they try to go off the site to offer the same products for lower prices,
42:56 Speaker 08 Amazon has a whole surveillance system to find them and punish them by downgrading their offers on the Amazon site. And so, a world where the president can fire us at any time is a world where his billionaire donors can say, hey, look, right now I'm being sued by the FTC. In not one, but two cases, it'd be pretty sweet if that was just one, right? And given what we've seen with the nomination of an Amazon safety executive to OSHA, I think this is a reasonable concern to have, to be clear. I'm not alleging this is going to happen, but we would be foolish to not countenance the fact that this very well could happen.
43:33 Kara Swisher? So next month, the FTC's trial against Meta kicks off. The agency sued Meta back in 2020 alleging the company tried to maintain an illegal monopoly with its purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp. It could force Meta to sell one or both of those apps. Rebecca, how much hunger does the Trump administration have for cases like this, which could lead to corporate breakups? And will they be willing to devote the resources necessary to win those sorts of cases, which is really the critical thing?
43:55 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, I think we will have to see. This was a case that I mentioned started under the first Trump administration, continued under Chair Khan. We can have a side note about the fact that it is a huge problem in antitrust law, that it has taken five years for this case to go to trial at all, to undo problems that started over a decade ago. That is a separate and independent problem. But it's actually why it's important that this case be done well and be litigated to an effective verdict, because to effectively enforce competition rules, we really need to send a message to the markets about what's illegal, so it doesn't happen in the first place. How this will play out in trial in terms of resourcing and commitment, I do not know. I'm glad Chair Ferguson has said he is committed to it.
44:40 Speaker 00 But I also think it's important to note that some of the administration's actions with respect to cutting government funding and throwing agencies into chaos are necessarily going to affect the ability of the government to litigate these cases effectively. You know, you saw a couple of weeks ago in the FTC's case against Amazon over Roscoe, which Alvaro mentioned earlier, that an FTC litigator explained that because of all of the sort of government-wide doge disruptions to budget and spending and travel, the FTC was not going to be able to meet the trial schedule that had originally been planned.
45:20 Speaker 00 They walked it back afterwards, and Chair Ferguson said he was committed to the case. But that is a natural and predictable consequence of tying the hands of government. They can't enforce it effectively. So part of my concern is that even if Chairman Ferguson wants the case to go ahead, the folks who are pulling the strings at OMB and OPM, saying you can't hire staff, you can't replace staff who have departed, you can't do all, like, that makes it very difficult to litigate these expensive and important cases where, you know, incredibly hardworking FTC staff are going up against
46:00 Speaker 00 Firms with 10, 20, 30 times the number of lawyers for every one of them that they have. And so I'm concerned that it isn't even a question of will. It's a question of ability in this context.
46:13 Kara Swisher? And resources.
46:13 Speaker 00 And resources. And, and that's a very serious problem.
46:17 Kara Swisher? Yeah, absolutely. It's been for a long time, for a very long time.
46:20 Speaker 00 Yeah, the reason, we've always been outmatched, but we have not had the government tying its own hands in the outmatching. And that's what's happening right now, that the government from the White House is directing these hiring freezes and these resource constraints. And that has material effects on our cases. And those effects may redound to the benefit of the folks who flanked the president at his inauguration.
46:47 Kara Swisher? So both parties talk about wanting to rein in the excess of big tech, but what can mean very different things depending on who's saying it. Chairman Ferguson recently launched an inquiry into tech censorship. It's clear he's obsessed with this and it's clear he's talking about conservatives. However, when conservative tech critics talk about regulating big tech, do you see a good faith effort to rein in monopoly power or bad faith effort to politicize content moderation or a little of both?
47:08 Speaker 08 So obviously, you know, conservatives aren't a monolith on this. And the, the part that I like and admire are folks who care about little tech. You know, Vice President Vance has talked about this, you know? In a world where the quote unquote magnificent seven can decide whether a merger is good or bad by steering their political donations one way or another, that is not a good world for startups. That is a terrible world for startups, including those, by the way, small businesses that might find themselves on Amazon. And so I think that is genuine. I think that's real. And I'm also, I share that concern because antitrust enforcement is critical to little tech. It's critical to startups so they don't get screwed by the big guys. Now, look, on this broader question of tech censorship and moderation, look, it's something
47:53 Speaker 08 I am learning a lot about. I will say that the sad fact is that we now know that during COVID, you know, people who proposed that the Wuhan COVID laboratory might be somehow involved, you know, in the propagation of COVID or something. They were laughed at and now, you know, it is the consensus of government agency after government agency, you know, including during President Biden's time, that this is a real thing. And it seems likely.
48:20 Kara Swisher? Well, they argue with each other to be.
48:22 Speaker 08 Sure, sure. They're saying it's likely with low confidence. You know, so I am sympathetic to conservatives or other folks online who say, what the hell? What the hell? Why are our voices being muted? But let me be frank, when I zoom out and look at the fact that you've got people who can barely pay their grocery bills, barely pay for their health insurance, you know, people who are being treated like shit on the warehouse floor. The idea that tech censorship is a priority does not really wash with me. Now, I would need to see those comments, but like, I understand the argument and I'm learning more, but I can't say this is something that is at the very top of my mind in terms of our priorities and what we can do for the American people.
49:05 Kara Swisher? Right, right. Tech giants generally loathe regulation, especially the thought of getting broken up, obviously. And they've been resisting it, including from the Justice Department. And Elon Musk posed on an exit support of a bill called the One Agency Act, which would transfer antitrust enforcement from the Federal Trade Commission to DOJ. Rebecca, how could stripping antitrust enforcement powers from the FTC benefit tech founders like Musk or Bezos or anybody else? And how likely is it going to happen?
49:32 Speaker 00 I think not likely, because it would require an act of Congress. And I don't see a lot of appetite in Congress to further concentrate power in the hands of the executive. The presence of bipartisan commissioners at the FTC, which, as we have discussed, provides accountability and transparency. And people who want the government to do what they want don't like that. And the FTC doesn't just enforce competition laws, it enforces consumer protection laws. And these laws are related to each other. Consumer protection law fundamentally is about making sure that businesses get ahead by being honest and by providing the best products and the best services at the best prices, not by lying and cheating. That is a way of protecting competition.
50:17 Speaker 00 And so I actually think, I mentioned that we have multiple cases against a lot of these companies going on. We currently have a. Competition and a consumer protection case against Amazon. We currently have a competition and a privacy case against Meta. And I think that the relationship between those cases is enormously important. And taking away that lens that the FTC can provide is a benefit from companies who don't enjoy the scrutiny. And then the last point I'll make, the power that the FTC has that DOJ does not have is in conducting market studies. And the market studies we do can also provide really important transparency and accountability in markets. And so a couple that I'll mention that we've done recently, we did, under former Chair
51:02 Speaker 00 Simons, the first Trump FTC chair, we did an important study about non-reportable acquisitions by large tech companies. So things that they, companies that they bought up, startups, that were smaller deal values than the law requires pre-clearance of. And that showed really interesting things about the acquisition patterns of these companies. We did a service about social, a study about social media and video streaming services and their privacy policies. And then another important one that isn't tech-related but matters to a lot of people in a bipartisan way is an ongoing study on pharmacy benefit managers and how they operate
51:45 Speaker 00 as middlemen to raise the price of prescription drugs. PBMs, yeah. So those are all powers that the DOJ does not have, studies that the DOJ is not doing. And like I said, the companies that are the subject of these studies often don't like the transparency and accountability that it provides.
52:04 Kara Swisher? Alvaro, do you think this one agency thing will happen, be pushed through?
52:07 Speaker 08 Look, I'm not going to prognosticate, but I will just boil it down to this. Who wins if you chop the FTC in half? Right? Who wins from that? Is that regular people or is it billionaires? And that's exactly what this One Agency Act does. It literally just takes an axe, chops us in half, sends half of us over to the Department of Justice. The idea that this makes sense is bananas. It's, this is, this is just yet another way to try to shut down government for the benefit of the wealthy.
52:36 Kara Swisher? If we step back and look at the big pictures, clear Donald Trump ignores the law. It doesn't serve his interests. Dismantling USAID was probably unconstitutional. The administration deported people seeming without any due process and ignored a judge's orders to stop. That's ongoing. It ignored settled law of 90 years of Supreme Court president and then fired you two. What happens if you win? Are you going to go back to the office with your Supreme Court pass card? Or what Rebecca and then Alvaro?
53:01 Speaker 00 Yeah, I think that's our hope and in our intention. We want to do our jobs. You know, we get up in the morning every day thinking about how we can effectively fight for the American people and we want to keep doing that. And so, yeah, that is exactly what I hope will happen.
53:18 Speaker 08 Same, I want to do my job. I want to be able to stop bad mergers. I want to be able to shut down fraudsters. And the moment that a court says that I can swipe my badge back in the office, I'm there.
53:30 Kara Swisher? But if you win and they don't do it?
53:33 Speaker 08 Ah, yes. So what happens? What happens then? Look, I mean, my mother says you can only do your best. After that, it's not up to you. That is, that would be a dark day if the Supreme Court says you get to go back to work, you know? And the president does not accede to that. I think we've got a constitutional crisis on our hands, but frankly, we're probably there already right now.
53:54 Speaker 00 Carrie, can I make a point, though?
53:55 Kara Swisher? Sure.
53:55 Speaker 00 Because Alvaro and I do both want to do our jobs. But actually, for both of us, it's not about us and our jobs. The principle that is at stake here of law enforcement without fear or favor, of checks and balances is much, much more important than either of us getting to do a job that we love. And so that's part of why we really care about having this fight. I think both of us would prefer not to have to have this fight. But the underlying principle really, really matters. And you referenced it earlier, but I think it bears mentioning again. If the president's attempt to fire us is successful, it doesn't hurt us. It hurts or doesn't hurt just us.
54:38 Speaker 00 It hurts the American people and it hurts every other institution of government that relies on independence. And the big, big one to think about is the Fed. So that is the thing and the principle for which we want to fight.
54:55 Speaker 00 Even more than for our particular jobs.
54:57 Kara Swisher? And last question, can they move forward on cases without you there?
55:02 Speaker 00 It's going to be a big question, honestly, because, you know, if the president is correct that we are fired, they can operate with two commissioners, so they could do things. If the president is incorrect that we are fired, then anything they do with only two out of four voting commissioners wouldn't meet the agency's quorum rules. So it is a very, like, one of the, among the shadows that is cast over this is any action the agency takes right now is going to be called into question. And the validity of that action is going to be called into question because if I were a litigant on the other side of an FTC case, even one I might personally agree with as a commissioner,
55:46 Speaker 00 I would say, hmm, you don't have a quorum. You can't bring this case against me. So it's really hard to know the answer to these questions because the situation is so unprecedented.
55:55 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
55:56 Speaker 00 And so I think the fact that all of these questions are coming up and all of these, this uncertainty is coming up is also part of what is hamstringing the ability of government generally and the FTC specifically to carry out work on behalf of the American people.
56:10 Kara Swisher? All right, Oliver, last question for you. What if you lose?
56:14 Speaker 08 I don't think we will lose. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. But the law is clear.
56:19 Kara Swisher? What does it mean?
56:21 Speaker 08 Oh, what it means is that there is an open door for corruption and corporate pardons that leads straight to the FTC. And that's bad news for everyone. Consumers, grocers, pharmacists, franchisees, labor unions, you name it. And I hope that world doesn't come. I think we'll win.
56:38 Kara Swisher? Thank you so much. I really appreciate it and good luck with your case.
56:42 Speaker 00 Thanks for having us, Kara.
56:46 Kara Swisher? On With Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro- Mosell, Kateri Yokum, Dave Shaw, Megan Burney, Megan Cunane, and Kalen Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Special thanks to Kate Furby. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Aruda, and our theme music is by Track academics. If you're already following the show, and I know you are, Andrew Ferguson, so stop being such an anxious toady. If not, Andrew Ferguson, please do the right thing. Go wherever you listen to your podcasts, search for On With Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On With Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.
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58:14 Speaker 04 I'm Josh Mucho, host of The Pitch, where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. For our sweet season 16, we're giving you more of what you love and less of what you don't.
58:25 Speaker 13 I definitely start to blank out when we're talking about like middleware AI wrappers.
58:30 Speaker 04 Software is out. Actual cool stuff is in. We've got consumer brands. We're building Eight Sleep for daytime. Hardware that helps blind people see. They kept asking for middle finger. Next thing we knew, we had like 10 students running around flipping each other off. We've got deep tech to change the weather.
58:48 Speaker 05 Our big vision is to make it rain and snow on demand.
58:51 Speaker 14 What if you wanted to not make it rain somewhere else? Like, one day, we're just like, screw Arizona.
58:59 Speaker 04 And dairy?
59:00 Speaker 06 I never imagined my life journey would be milk.
59:03 Speaker 04 Season 16 of The Pitch is out now. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. This season is presented by Engine.
59:12 Speaker 07 Support for the show comes from TikTok. There is a scientifically documented correlation between listening to podcasts and curiosity. So since you're here, you probably enjoy discovering new things. One great place to indulge your curiosity is TikTok. Whether it's how to forecast volcanic eruptions, strange phenomena that the James Webb Space Telescope picked up near the beginning of time, or a literal deep dive on the ocean's deepest reefs, TikTok has a wealth of fascinating videos just waiting to be discovered. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.
Previous Is America Ready for a Full-Blown Cyberwar? with Nicole Perlroth, Michael Schmidt & Lt. Col. Vindman Next Graydon Carter on Vanity Fair, Editing & a Short-Fingered Vulgarian Named Trump Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated