Fired Officials Condemn Loss of Agency Independence
A loss of agency independence will ease the path for corruption and make it harder to address bipartisan issues such as privacy and increasing competition, said a trio of Democratic agency officials recently fired by the White House. For agencies like the FTC or Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, “if we are an arm of the administration, then instead of being a watchdog, we become a lap dog,” said fired PCLOB member and former FCC official Travis LeBlanc during a Center for American Progress panel discussion Wednesday.
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Allowing the White House to remove commissioners at will makes it easier for the richest entities to influence policy, said dismissed FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya. Congress created for-cause removal protections for many agencies because of the prospect of “money infecting law enforcement and preventing that infection,” he said. Bedoya pointed to the prominent presence of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Space X CEO Elon Musk, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at President Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration. It's “a problem” if rules are decided in a manner where “the only thing that matters is who is given how much to the president or to some other elected official.”
Wealthy companies that want to protect their brands will seek to “leash” federal agencies, said Charlotte Burrows, who was removed as chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in January.
Congress specifically restructured PCLOB after its creation in 2004 to limit White House influence over its work, LeBlanc said. “Congress did that because it wanted an agency that was truly able to bring expertise and to look at an issue and report to Congress on any concerns that were raised.” Agencies such as the FTC and PCLOB work on many bipartisan issues around tech, said Bedoya and LeBlanc. “When you're talking about issues of surveillance and you're talking about issues of privacy, it has wide support across the entire spectrum,” LeBlanc said. “People care about their privacy. It is the civil rights issue of the 21st century.”
All three officials said they didn’t know why they had been removed, and they haven’t been given any cause. “I don't know why. I just know it's illegal,” Bedoya said. He and LeBlanc have both sued over their termination. Burrows said she couldn’t speculate about the reasons for her removal, but she saw a trend in the commissions that the White House targeted: The National Labor Relations Board, EEOC and Merit Systems Protection Board are all focused on protecting workers' rights and all have seen members targeted for removal, Burrows said.
LeBlanc said that before being removed, his top priority at PCLOB was oversight of the FBI. “There are lots of reasons for that, but it's a priority that I actually thought was shared by the current administration,” he said, adding that he was originally appointed to PCLOB by Trump during the president’s first term.
Bedoya said illegally fired commissioners should continue their work as though they were still in office. “It is really important to greet disorder with disorder and not to accept the terms that are being put upon you if those terms are overtly illegal.” He said he's still meeting with groups that have FTC-related issues, and both he and Burrows have been issuing statements on actions by their respective former agencies. Bedoya said he doesn’t believe FTC commissioners should have outside employment and so has been burning through his family’s savings while he fights his dismissal. Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said earlier this month that if the White House removes her, she also plans to keep acting as a commissioner. “I will not stop speaking out, because I have to,” Gomez said at the NAB Show 2025 (see 2504080036).
LeBlanc and Burrows said would-be federal workers shouldn’t be scared away by the current environment at agencies. “While government service may not be as exciting or as tempting today to some, it is still performing critical work that is needed,” LeBlanc said. Ultimately, the country will need many of those agencies to continue performing their functions, he said. “But the only way that work can get done is if there are people who are willing to stand up and actually do the work there.” Burrows said government “is about doing those things that are absolutely essential for the American people to flourish, to succeed, that we can't do -- any of us -- on our own.”
LeBlanc said the “biggest risk of not having independent agencies” is a loss of expertise and possible damage to the ability of Congress and the public to get access to information that the administration may not want released. "I am confident that we are all worse off without independent agencies that have consistency of leadership and consistency of vision across large swaths of the economy.”