FTC tells staff to stop calling the agency ‘independent’ in complaints

Staff at the Federal Trade Commission have been instructed to no longer refer to the agency as “independent” in complaints, according to an email obtained by The Verge. 

“Moving forward, when describing the Commission as the Plaintiff in a Complaint, please track the below edit,” Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Christopher Mufarrige said in a March 21st email viewed by The Verge. The email was sent to the bureau’s associate and regional directors, and copied to deputy directors of the unit. “The FTC is an independent agency of the United States Government created by the FTC Act.”

It’s the latest sign that Republican leadership at the FTC is not pushing back against President Donald Trump’s unprecedented attempts to assert control over the historically independent agency. In February, Trump signed an executive order saying that the White House could “review independent regulatory agencies’ obligations for consistency with the President’s policies and priorities” — one of his first steps toward bringing agencies like the FTC under greater scrutiny by his administration. 

On March 18th, Trump fired the two minority Democratic commissioners at the FTC, defying decades-old Supreme Court precedent that says people in such positions can only be removed for cause. In their lawsuit filed Thursday, the commissioners include a copy of the letter one of them received from the White House about the removals. According to the version in the filing, it claims the current FTC does not fit the “narrow” exception claimed in that Supreme Court ruling (which happened to be about a president trying to remove an FTC commissioner). “Your continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with my Administration’s priorities,” says the letter on behalf of Trump, according to the court filing.

Republican FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson has expressed public support for Trump’s actions. “My Democrat former colleagues are entitled to their day in court, but I have no doubt that President Trump’s lawful powers will ultimately be confirmed,” he said in response to the lawsuit over the commissioners’ firings.