A fired Federal Trade Commission official said Saturday that a recent Supreme Court ruling favoring President Donald Trump will leave billionaires “running wild.”
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During an appearance on MS NOW, Rebecca Slaughter talked about her Supreme Court case against Trump in which she and another former Federal Trade Commission commissioner, both Democratic appointees, challenged their dismissals.
“I was just profoundly disappointed,” Slaughter said about the Supreme Court decision that allowed Trump to fire independent agency commissioners at will.
“That’s a really sad change in our fundamental structure of government, mostly for the American people,” Slaughter said. “The American people deserve a government that is fighting for them, and not just for the powerful.”
However, Slaughter warned that billionaires in particular stand to benefit from the Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. Slaughter.
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She described the Federal Trade Commission as a “check on unfair and illegal business practices on billionaire corporations and the billionaires who run them.” The “chilling effect” of the Supreme Court ruling will leave those billionaires and corporations “running wild,” Slaughter warned.
Federal Trade Commission officials will have to “operate in fear of getting fired for failure to do a favor for the president’s billionaire buddies,” and won’t know “whether they’re going to be able to operate as a check” on the powerful, according to Slaughter.
“What will it mean if the president says to the FTC commissioners, ‘I want you to make this case go away because this company is helping to build my ballroom or donate to my inauguration,'” Slaughter said. “In the past, what it would mean would be nothing because the way the FTC was structured, commissioners were obligated to follow the law, follow the facts, follow their oath.”
Slaughter added that the chilling effect could extend to “about two dozen agencies” that are under Trump’s purview, including those that oversee “all kinds of important things, from nuclear safety to consumer product safety.”
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