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April 24, 2025 16:21-17:25 - CSPAN
01:03:54
Discussion on Independent Government Agencies
Participants
Main
n
neera tanden
06:02
Appearances
Clips
c
christopher scalia
00:09
j
jane mcmanus
00:24
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Saturday, starting at 6 p.m. Eastern online and then live on C-SPAN at 8 p.m. Eastern.
Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A.
Sports journalist Jane McManus, author of The Fast Track, discusses the rise in popularity of women's sports since the early 1970s and the challenges female athletes have faced since then, including unequal pay and lack of media coverage.
jane mcmanus ▲ ● ▼
What you do have now are women who see themselves as athletes first, and they aren't looking to be pleasing to anyone else.
And I think that is where things have changed quite a bit.
They see, today's athletes see sports as their birthright, not just their brothers.
And I think honestly, their brothers would say the same thing for the most part.
unidentified
Jane McManus with her book, The Fast Track, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on the C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Three Democrats recently fired by the Trump administration from independent government agencies talked about their experiences during the cuts made by the White House and the Department of Government Efficiency.
The Center for American Progress hosted a panel discussion with Alvaro Bedoya, a former commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, former Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioner Charlotte Burroughs, and former Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board member Travis LeBlanc.
neera tanden ▲ ● ▼
Good morning, everyone.
Good morning, everyone.
Yay!
It's a beautiful day.
A lot going on in the world.
Thank you all so much for being here.
I'm Neera Tandon.
I'm CAPS president, and I'm really grateful for all of your participation today.
I think this is a really crucial conversation.
And I'm glad you're joining us for this panel, which will be discussing something that should really matter to all Americans, the independence of our federal agencies.
And I know when you say the independence of our federal agencies should relate to every American, it might seem like we need to explain that a little bit.
And that's why I'm so excited about this panel because I think it will really make clear how the stakes are very real for what is happening.
Because when these agencies come under attack, it really does make all of us suffer.
It ensures that we are less safe, we are protected less, our economic well-being is less protected, and that there are real consequences.
And so let me just take the example of Kristen Velshanki Volchenki.
Kristen has a genetic immunodeficiency that cost her thousands of dollars and has plunged her into debt.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was set to prevent her from set from preventing her debt to from preventing her debt affecting her credit score.
So essentially, she had gone into medical debt because of her illness, and the Consumer Financial Protection Board was there to ensure that she'd be protected from that.
This is a key achievement of the previous administration, but now President Trump is trying to roll that rule back.
This agency was created after the financial crisis, and its sole purpose is to stop big corporations and others from taking advantage of us.
And it's did its job well, returning more than $21 billion to consumers over the last 15 years.
$21 billion.
And that means more money in the pockets of Americans.
It means more savings for people.
It makes it easier for people to make ends meet.
So why is Trump trying to illegally dismiss 90% of the work workers at the consumer at CFPB?
I'll tell you why.
Because essentially undermining the CFPB, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Election Commission, and many others are really designed to protect the consumer, the little guy, the American voter, average Americans from special interests.
That is the bottom line of what is happening.
Those who are meant to protect us are being undermined.
So it's easier to take away the rights or the basic support or protections for individual Americans.
And that has real consequences.
We live in a time where there's news about so many things invading Greenland or Panama.
And I think it's really vital, and this is why this conversation is so important.
It's really vital that we focus on the consequences, the actual harms to people.
And that's why I'm so excited about this conversation today.
Because through this conversation, I think we will illustrate the real consequences and why we're really excited to have true public servants who've worked years to improve the lives of every American join us, who have led these independent agencies.
And I'm excited for them to tell us why these agencies have been so crucial to protecting Americans.
So first we'll have Alvaro Bedaya, sir, who served as commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission for three years.
We'll also have Travis Blanc, who served on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board for six years, and my very good friend Charlotte Burroughs, who chaired the EOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, for the past four years, and served as commissioner for six years before that.
These leaders and the agencies that they oversaw really did incredible work, you know, often invisible from the headlines, but work that protected Americans every single day.
Americans who are vulnerable to corporations who want to rip them off, vulnerable often to states that wanted to not protect their rights, vulnerable to a lot of big institutions who can gang up against average everyday Americans.
And that's why it's crucial that we remember why these agencies are important so that we can fight back and protect them and in the future ensure that they have the strength they need, the resources they need to actually do critical work.
Some of these leaders are engaged in lawsuits.
I am grateful for an independent judiciary and I'm grateful for their willingness to fight against bullying and intimidation.
And I want to say that seriously, bullying and intimidation, because they are really standing up, not for themselves, but for the Americans that their agencies protect.
And so I'm excited for this conversation.
I'm so pleased that Ben Alinsky, CAP Senior Vice President for Structural Reform and Governance, will be moderating this crucial panel.
And I'm grateful for all of you for attending.
Ben.
unidentified
Thank you, Neera.
Really appreciate your remarks and welcome to our panelists.
I'm Ben Olinski.
As Nera noted, I'm the Senior Vice President for Structural Reform and Governance here at CAP.
And I just want to thank all of you in the room and the many hundreds of you online for joining us for this really, really important conversation.
You know, at a time when Americans' rights are under attack, their livelihoods and their pocketbooks are under attack, it is some of the federal agencies that these leaders have been at the helm of that have been doing so much to actually protect Americans' rights, to protect Americans' pocketbooks.
When independent agencies are politicized, neutered, or dismantled, it hurts all of us, all Americans, and it's also an affront to the rule of law and the separation of powers.
I'm really pleased to be moderating this panel with three leaders at the front lines of protecting ordinary Americans, and some of whom I've been lucky to work with for years.
So let me just go through and introduce each of them.
First, to my right, we have Alvaro Badoya, who's a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission.
He was sworn in in 2022 and previously had founded the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law School.
He had helped to establish the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy as its first chief counsel and also co-founded the Esperanza Education Fund, which is the first status-blind college scholarship program for immigrant studies in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area.
He has a law degree from Yale Law and a bachelor's degree from Harvard.
Next over is Charlotte Burroughs, a commissioner at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
She was first confirmed in 2015 and then designated as chair in 2021.
Previously, she had served as Associate Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice and had also been a general counsel to Senator Ted Kennedy on two of his key committees where we had the chance to work together.
And before that, had worked in the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division in the employment litigation section.
She has a degree from Yale Law and went to Princeton for undergrad.
Travis LeBlanc, our last panelist, is a board member at the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, where he started serving as a board member in 2019 and was reconfirmed in 2022.
He is currently a partner at Cooley, an esteemed international law firm, and previously served as chief of the enforcement bureau at the Federal Communications Commission.
So we also have that experience to draw on today.
He had before that served as a senior advisor to then California Attorney General Kamala Harris, has his law degree from Yale, an LLM from Cambridge, an MPA from Harvard, and a bachelor's degree from Princeton.
So we'll talk, as Neera noted, for about 40 minutes and then reserve at least 10 minutes for audience questions both online and in the room.
For those of you who are online, you can use the QA function to submit your questions for consideration.
And just to reaffirm, there is active litigation going on regarding the improper removals of several of the folks on the stage.
So just want to make clear that nothing said by anyone at this event will bind another litigant, nor will it bind any organization they are affiliated with.
And you don't have to answer any question you're not comfortable with.
So with that, let's get to it.
Independent agencies have a long track record of helping everyday Americans.
Can you just kick us off by sharing a bit about your agency and some concrete examples of how it has helped American families?
Happy to start.
So good to see everyone today.
I am a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, so what the heck is that?
If you are someone who had someone in your family who had to take a drug that Martin Shrelly bought and jacked the price up on, it was our staff that got that guy banned from the pharmaceutical industry for life.
christopher scalia ▲ ● ▼
If you lived in a town where the biggest supermarket in town is about to merge with the next biggest supermarket in town, it was our staff that went and stopped that merger.
unidentified
And so that is the kind of work we do.
We do consumer protection and competition.
And in my view, it's keenly important that that work be done without fear of favor and without reference to the political donations that are flowing to the White House, whoever's inside of it.
Thank you.
And I just ask everyone to make sure to keep your mic up so that folks online can hear you.
Charlie?
Sure.
Hello.
And I really appreciate you all's attention to what is a truly important issue, even though it may not seem sexy at the beginning.
So the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has a huge impact for such a small agency.
And just looking back at the last year, first I'll say our mission is to prevent and remedy discrimination on all of the prohibited bases under the American federal civil rights laws.
And at bottom, it's about ensuring that there is dignity and respect in the workplace for everybody.
So just last year, we brought a case as an example for folks who were delivery drivers who are being discriminated against based on their race in how they were assigned.
They were sent to more dangerous areas.
They were actually segregated in the workplace.
We brought a case on behalf of a manager who found out that he had a diagnosis of cancer, went to his employer and told them, and instead of accommodating him as required under the Americans with Disabilities Act, they fired him three days before his insurance took effect.
We brought cases for women who were temp workers who year after year were asking for help to stop ongoing harassment, groping, kissing, physical assaults.
They were afraid to go in the parking lot because it was after dark when they left home and the same harasser was getting away with us.
And Sunshine Raisin, which we brought a case against, had refused to do anything before the EEOC stepped up.
So I could go on and on, but I'll just conclude by saying that the EOC only gets $445 million every year in appropriations, a tiny little rounding area when you look at DOD or some other agencies.
But it's an independent agency that's there for the American people.
That $445 million last year brought $700 million back to workers who had been discriminated against.
And so it has a huge effect for individuals when they're between a rock and a hard place.
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the acronym for it is the PCLOB, probably one of the worst acronyms across the government.
It was created out of a recommendation of the 9-11 Commission to ensure that at the same time as the U.S. government was getting a broad swath of new authorities to conduct surveillance to prevent terrorism, that there was an agency that was overseeing those efforts to ensure that the surveillance activities they were engaged in were balanced with privacy and civil liberties respect.
That agent is one of the smallest agencies in the government, but it is an independent agency that is headed by five board members and a full-time staff, working on largely classified issues that you wouldn't really see about in the newspaper unless there is an effort made by the administration to declassify or unless there's a leak, the most prominent of which was when Edward Snowden leaked a number of the NSA's surveillance programs.
We are the ones that look at those programs.
We are looking at programs that are sweeping up massive amounts of communications, call detail records, phone conversations, email communications from around the world, including those that involve U.S. persons.
We look at issues like facial recognition technology in airports.
Everybody's probably familiar with that nowadays.
If you've flown anywhere, that you go up to TSA, for example, and they ask you to take a picture.
That's optional, by the way.
I will alert you to your rights.
It's optional.
You don't have to do it.
But it's now becoming more pervasive in airports, right?
Think about CLEAR, global entry.
Think about entering the United States.
And then a third issue that I will note that we do have looked at is surveillance of protests, right?
So there were a lot of protests around George Floyd, for example, where there were accusations that certain agencies of the government were conducting surveillance.
Drones was the big one that they used, over certain kinds of protests and not others.
So domestic terrorism is an issue that the board has been working on.
And it's the kind of issue that, frankly, if the board doesn't do it, if we, the P Club doesn't do it, the independent agency, there's probably no one else in government that's going to do it.
And there's probably no way for private individuals to really pursue any rights against these government projects because it's largely classified and there aren't rights to challenge it.
And Travis, maybe just to follow up, it seems like surveillance by the government is an issue that really unites a lot of Americans.
It's not just a left or a right issue.
In fact, there are often folks in the left and the right that have deep concerns about that kind of surveillance.
Is that your sense?
100%.
When it comes to privacy and surveillance, there is no Republican perspective that everyone knows and could say, that's it.
And there's no Democratic perspective that everyone looks at.
It actually crosses lines quite a bit.
And there are issues that I worked on at the board, for example, around the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act FISA.
Section 702 is probably a program that many people haven't heard of, but it is the most important surveillance tool that the United States government has.
Hands down, bar none.
And it is one where we, the board, made a recommendation that for the FBI to search those communications for use on U.S. persons, so using to query those communications about us for unrelated things to anything to do with foreign intelligence, that they should get a warrant.
They should go to a court rather than just being able to do it without a warrant.
And that was something that was hugely supported by the Freedom Caucus.
And that was a time when the three Democrats on the board are the ones that put forward the warrant requirement.
Freedom Caucus, huge.
The Biden administration actually was the one that was critical of the recommendation.
And so you can't actually, and it was actually aligned with the Republican that was on the board.
So you can't actually neatly carve what these issues are.
They matter to everyone.
And it's actually, I'll go one step further.
When I started working for Kamala Harris as Attorney General, she told me that she wanted to focus on privacy.
And I said to her, this was 15 years ago.
She said, you know, I said, what is it about privacy that's so important to you?
And she said, I have just come off of a year and a half of campaigning around the state.
And it didn't matter whether I was in a city or in an urban area, whether I was with wealthy people or with lower-income people.
Everywhere I went, people asked about privacy.
Everyone in the state cared about it.
And if you look at initiatives in California, you know it's true, right?
They overwhelmingly passed about privacy.
So there is no doubt that when you're talking about issues of surveillance and you're talking about issues of privacy, it has wide support across the entire spectrum.
People care about their privacy.
It is the civil rights issue of the 21st century.
Thank you.
That was really insightful.
I now want to go to each of you and just ask, what is one of your proudest moments as an agency leader, something that you were able to do for Americans?
So, look, I'll say something that I think was a huge win from our staff, which was blocking the Kroger-Albertsons merger.
And the reason I think this was so important is there's a couple levels to it.
The first is this merger, as I mentioned, was going to take in thousands of towns in the country the largest supermarket, merge it with the next largest supermarket.
One of the things that came out in the trial was that grocery executives were looking at inflation for milk, for eggs, and then marking up the price of milk and eggs above inflation.
This was testimony under oath from a Kroger executive.
And the reason that's remarkable is that during COVID, all of us can remember, grocery prices went up.
And one of the things that executives, not just in grocery, but everywhere, said, was this had nothing to do with us being greedy or wanting to be price leaders.
This has everything to do with inflation.
And it came out that, in fact, the opposite was true, at least in this instance, with respect to milk and eggs, these staple products.
And so the fact that staff was able to go in, outnumbered, outgunned, we had lawyers who were in four or five years going up against partners who probably made $3 to $4 million a year and winning objection after objection after objection.
And in fact, I think it was one of our youngest lawyers who got that testimony out at trial.
And seeing our folks go into trial, again, with a fraction of the resources that are being spent by these rows and rows of corporate attorneys on the other side and helping keep grocery prices down for Americans is something that I think is completely inspiring and something that I that made me, I think is remarkable.
Certainly my family appreciates that.
There you go, me.
Charlie?
I appreciate that too.
So there are so many examples where the career civil servants, the dedicated investigators at the EOC were able to really stand up for Americans who just had no idea even that they had rights, much less be able to do it.
And so it's hard to come up with just one.
I'm going to quickly name two.
One is being able to support them and to actually build that agency back.
We've now lost a lot of career employees, but we were at a 40-year low when I started as chair in 2021 in terms of the full-time staff.
We were able to build it back up over that time.
Unfortunately, it's now even lower than what it was, is what I'm understanding.
So that's one.
But the other was we actually occasionally would do field hearings.
The EOC has the ability to bring, do hearings in here in D.C.
We did a number of those on everything from artificial intelligence to sort of a variety of issues, discrimination in the construction industry.
But we went to Buffalo, New York.
And we went there with the backing and the encouragement of the community after that terrible racially fueled shooting in 2022.
And we were there because the community wanted us to hear directly from them about what it meant to be in an area that was so segregated that people knew not only where you were going to be shopping, that this individual who committed that terrible hate crime knew where to find African Americans.
But it was also the segregation was such that we had cases where There was essentially employers were just saying we won't take that zip code, right?
That was code for not having to hire people because of their race, because that city had been so segregated that job opportunities were moved away from communities of color, and it was impossible at that time to really get from place to place.
And if you could, you were going to have the door closed in your face because of your zip code.
So that was one of the things that, not just that we were able to bring those cases, but that we were able to answer a call for the community to be there to hear from them, to lift their voices, and also to hear from members of the community who are business leaders who were saying, we know how to do this better, to give them the opportunity to show their leadership.
It was really a powerful moment, I think, for all of us, but also to have the community, and it was really humbling, I will say, to have a couple family members from that top shoot,
one who had actually lost a family member and one whose family member had survived, her son had survived, say, it's really meaningful that we can talk about the totality of what this means and to have someone from the government take that back.
And that's what I did.
I shared that with other agencies who had authorities because we were hearing things about housing and transportation as well as employment.
And so I think that for me was one of the most meaningful.
At a time when I think a lot of Americans have lost trust in institutions, I think that's really incredible and important work to make sure that people feel their voices are being heard by government.
Travis?
The vast majority of work that the P Club does is highly classified, which makes it very difficult to discuss a lot of the things that we do.
And some of the wins may not seem like wins to people, but they are huge.
When you just get a little bit of transparency out of a program that is highly classified and people won't even say the name of it, you know, publicly, to be able to get those kinds of wins, to be able to say publicly that there was a program called X Key Score.
I won't go into it right now.
You can look it up.
But Edward Snowden originally was involved in it.
But to be able to say that, that is a big win there.
I would, though, because we're discussing independent agencies, and I've had the chance to work in two, I would like to talk about the FCC because there is an example that I'm particularly proud of from my experience at the FCC as the chief of enforcement that I think does show the power and importance of independent agencies, even small agencies, and what they can do.
And the issue involves Marriott Hotels, which used to charge for Wi-Fi in conferences, for example.
And they would literally charge to get Wi-Fi access up to $100 for you to get Wi-Fi access.
Shocking sum of money for anyone to pay and to charge.
And it turned out that whenever you went in with your own phone and you tried to, or your own Wi-Fi device, your own device that you brought to set up your own personal hotspot, they had another technology that they used that would block it.
So that you wouldn't be able to use the Wi-Fi on the device that you brought, and you'd have to pay the $100 or any amount to them.
And you might say, who on earth would ever pay this amount of money?
Well, you all remember how much you could get charged in a hotel, $25 just for Wi-Fi for the night.
But also, if you go to a big convention where there are all those exhibit booths, every one of those exhibit booths, every computer that's connected there, $100, $100, $100, all the way around.
And they were blocking it as well.
The FCC, when we were there, declared that to be illegal and for them not to be able to do it.
The end result, they fought it like crazy that it's their property, their property.
They should be able to control the spectrum in their property.
Well, the spectrum, the air, it's all held by all of us.
It's part of the commons.
And so we prohibited them from doing it.
The result of that wasn't just that they stopped the blocking, right?
They could still charge for signing up for their Wi-Fi.
The result of it actually was a sea change across the hotel industry to get rid of Wi-Fi fees in hotels.
They became anathema, almost like, do you remember telephone calls in hotels, how much those used to call just to make a local call?
And so now, as long as you remember their loyalty program, it's all free.
That all came from us attacking and really, you know, protecting the public access to spectrums for spectrum waves for everyone else involved.
Yet again, thank you for unbehaving my family, too.
I want to pivot now to a little bit about the attacks that we've been seeing.
You know, Congress has put in multiple statutes.
Congress has created independent agencies and created mechanisms for shielding them from political interference and political attacks from a president, from other officials.
Why is that so important?
And how would increased politicization affect the work that your agencies are doing?
So for me, it's even less about politics and more about money.
So let me say one last thing about that grocery merger and talk about how things might look different in a world where the president can remove an FTC commissioner for any reason at any time.
So you don't need to have PhD in economics to understand what's going to happen in those towns where those supermarkets merge.
We also alleged in a lawsuit that, in our lawsuit to block the merger, that it would drive down the wages of the UFCW members in Colorado, for example, and union members across other states.
So hold that thought about how clear it appeared that this was going to drive up prices and drive down wages.
And, you know, pan over to the site at the inauguration where you have the three richest men on earth standing behind the president.
And then to something that happened a couple weeks later, where Meta was on the eve of a lawsuit filed under the Trump administration with a Republican chairman of the FTC and the support of two Democratic commissioners.
So it was a bipartisan lawsuit where Mr. Zuckerberg and his executives, after donating a million dollars to the President's inauguration, and I believe there was a separate, very substantial financial settlement around that time of many millions of dollars, openly lobbying the president to drop the lawsuit.
I think this in the law, what matters isn't just corruption, but the appearance of corruption.
And in a world where law enforcement comes down to not is this merger going to raise the price of groceries or cut wages, is this merger going to impede competition in this critical sector of our economy, which is the tech sector, where those things don't matter.
And the only thing that matters is who has given how much to the president or to some other elected official.
That's a problem.
And if you look at that grocery merger, you would be stunned to know the kinds of letters the FTC got from electorals because most of them said, hey, on the left and the right, Republicans and Democrats, they said, hey, we think you should block this merger.
But we had a lot of outreach, both direct and indirect, where elected officials, including prominent Democrats, said, no, we want you to allow this merger.
And so I think it's critical that these decisions be made without reference to that politics.
And by the way, this is why we have these protections to begin with.
A lot of people forget that the four-cause removal protections, the FTC Act, were copied from something called the Interstate Commerce Commerce Committee Act, Commission Act, pardon me, in the late 19th century, which was passed in the Gilded Age at a time when people like John Rockefeller and other robber barons were able to effectively control government because of the amount of money they were pouring into it.
And so when Congress created this idea that there should only be removal from these commissions for a certain set of circumstances, it wasn't just about this party or that party affecting politics.
It was about money infecting law enforcement and preventing that infection.
And so that is why I think it's so important that we be able to do our jobs without reference to money, particularly now with the degree of inequality we have in our country.
Really helpful.
Do either of you want to jump in on this one?
The P Club has actually seen a world of what it's like to not be independent.
When the P Club was initially created, it was actually created within the executive office of the President.
It was supposed to be independent.
And the board member served under the supervision of the President by statute and also served at the pleasure of the President.
And in its first iteration of five board members, there were four who were Republican and one who was Democrat.
In the first report that the board did, it was submitted to the White House for review in the Bush administration, because that's what you had to do if you were going to put a report out.
The White House sought to make over 200 edits to the report.
The lone Democrat at the time, Lanny Davis, resigned in protest over the fact that the White House wanted to edit their report, which was supposed to be independent.
The month after he resigned, he testified before Congress over the lack of independence in an agency that is supposed to oversee the executive branch's counterterrorism activities.
A month after that, Congress revised the statute.
It pulled the P Club out of the White House.
It created it as an independent agency.
It required that the board be no more than three members of the same party as opposed to four members.
It required that board members, minority views, be included in reports.
It required board members to testify.
It prohibited appointing anyone to the board on the basis of their party affiliation.
And it also, at the same time, made sure to note that board members serve six years, not, you know, and it removed any language that said board the pleasure of the president or that they were supervised under the president.
It did that, but Congress did that.
Congress did that.
That isn't just theory.
Congress did that because it wanted an agency that was truly able to bring expertise and to look at an issue and report the Congress on any concerns that were raised.
In fact, any recommendation that we make, if the administration chooses not to follow it, we're required to report that to Congress too.
And so the risk to an agency like the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is that if we are an arm of the administration, then instead of being a watchdog, we become a lapdog.
And that is not what Congress wanted.
So I would agree with both of those with respect to the EOC.
The other thing I would add is that companies care a lot about their brands.
And so to this point about money and population, we saw as Me Too was going viral, was going global, that it was that attention, that brand, that was really effective as much as I am delighted to have helped with the work that the EOC was doing to bring cases, to investigate, et cetera.
And so I think that the real concern could be there that a company that wants to protect that brand is going to want to, you know, keep the lapdog on a leash, to continue the metaphor.
And so we cannot be in a situation where people are going to work day in and day out for whatever reason they're facing discrimination.
And we, the people, have already spoken through Congress that that's not okay, that we mean equal rights and equal justice for all.
And yet, you know, a wealthy company can prevent anything being done about that basic democratic protection.
So let me shift.
I think everyone here is likely aware that each of you has been unlawfully removed from your positions.
And you're approaching it in different ways.
Some of you are challenging it in court.
Could you speak to the circumstances of the attempt to remove you and what your response has been?
So I just arrived at my daughter's gymnastics class right after work on a Tuesday, and my daughter gets really annoyed when I'm not watching her do gymnastics because she'll do a really good trick and then she'll look over.
And if I'm on my phone like an idiot, she gets really mad.
And so I was like very insistently watching her.
And then I got a call from Commissioner Slaughter who said, hey, Alvra, have you checked your phone?
And I said, actually, I haven't checked my phone.
She said, you should check your phone because the president's trying to fire you and me.
Or trying to fire me.
Do you have the same email?
And I said, check that.
In fact, I do.
How are we handling it?
I think this is really, I'll tell you how we're handling it.
I'll tell you why I think it's important, why we did what we did.
So it's our position.
We're still commissioners.
And it's, you know, I don't have access to Westlaw.
I don't have access to Lexis.
I don't have access to all of my files.
But Commissioner Slaughter and I are insistent on doing the aspects of our job that we can still do.
So we are meeting with, the day after I got, quote unquote, fired, I met with rideshare drivers in Denver, Colorado who are being ripped off.
We will soon meet with some fishermen in the Northeast.
We'll soon meet with some small business leaders.
We issued a statement on what Doge appears to be, what we're worried about Doge doing at the Federal Trade Commission.
And I think it's important to do this for a couple of reasons.
One of them is, as we are learning, when I think one way to put it is when disorder happens, most good people say, oh, this is disorder.
I'm going to respond in an orderly way.
I'm going to try to take the temperature down and respond by just saying, oh, I'm just going to keep my head down and let's be done with this.
I think it's really important to meet disorder with disorder and not accept the terms That are being put upon you if those terms are overtly illegal and not accept the reality that people are trying to create if it flies in the face of a century of American law.
And so that's what we're trying to do.
Not just a century of American law, but Supreme Court jurisprudence as well.
Correct.
And let me explain to the degree that we're doing this.
I don't think FTC commissioners are not supposed to draw outside income, right?
And so I am burning through my family savings in order to continue to abide by the ethics rules that apply to me.
There's a limit to this, right?
I can't do this forever.
But that is how I am trying to continue to do my job.
And that's why we also thought it was very important to openly say this is opening the door to corruption.
This is not about us.
This is about the billionaires over the president's shoulder at the inauguration.
And I think that I think all those things are important to not just go along, but to abide by the law.
Absolutely courageous.
And can I just ask, what's the status of your litigation now?
Sure.
I think we have a hearing for a summary judgment motion on May 20th before Judge Ali Khan.
Although, of course, we are closely tracking the lawsuit that the National Labor Relations Board that Gwen Wilcox is also pursuing and to see what the results are there.
Great.
Charlie?
Yes.
So somewhat similar, although there was no gymnastics with me, but there was a fairly short email at, I think it was, you know, some 10:30 or something on a Monday evening.
You know, interesting.
I'll just leave that.
That's my adjective.
That was interesting.
Similarly, I have been trying to make clear both what exactly is at stake and also to remind folks what it is that the EEOC can and should be doing.
And frankly, unfortunately, to identify those instances in which some of the actions it's taken have not been consistent with the legal mission.
So one of the things that I did was recently take a position in writing with a number of former EOC officials together,
including another commissioner who was unlawfully removed and a former general counsel who was removed with us as well, about this attempt to use the EOC as a cudgel against several large law firms, some of whom have settled with respect to that and some whom have not.
But to really sort of point out that the EOC and our founding statute, Title VII, prohibits under penalty of a criminal prosecution, I should add, the sort of naming and shaming, so putting out a public announcement that you filed a charge, if that is in fact what has happened.
And so to try and identify those things that are going on that really are not consistent with the statute or the mission of the agency, because I think it is incredibly important to protect the institution and the integrity of what that civil rights agency does.
It's an agency that came out of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
We were the jobs part of that request.
The agency's 60th anniversary is this year.
And there's a proud tradition, but also really a core tradition of trying to get up every single day and remind the American people that we can live our values.
We can be about equal justice under the law.
And so I've continued to think about how to carry that message, even though I too no longer have access to my office or my emails.
I think that's a really important point you make about effectively this opening the door to political and systemic corruption, right, of powers that Congress has granted to independent agencies to do enforcement and investigation with the understanding that these agencies would be independent.
And just for the record, my understanding is not a single one of you were given any kind of cause when there was an attempt to remove you from your office.
Is that correct?
Nothing that you would consider cause.
I think there were reasons.
Our experience was slightly different than the other commissioners in the sense that we were very early in the administration.
It was actually day one, the first business day of the administration.
It was around 6.30 at night.
And I got an email that was to my PCLOB email address.
And it also copied my law firm address.
And it also copied a random Yahoo email address for someone with the name G and my last name.
And I didn't know what that was.
And so I first, I was like, I'm a cyber lawyer by trade.
So when I get an email like this, I'm like, okay, you know, all right, this is a joke.
Like, why are you emailing someone at Yahoo?
And it was from someone named Trent Morse.
Never heard of that guy.
I was like, who's that?
You know, who says, you know, he's writing on behalf of the president asking for my resignation within 48 hours or we would be terminated.
And then there was a sentence at the end of the email that says, if, however, the president determines that your services are still needed, you'll hear from us again.
And I was like, well, this is odd.
Well, am I fired?
I didn't know what that was.
I just thought, I thought it was a joke.
I was like, someone's playing the joke on me with this.
But then I did exactly what Alvaro sort of described with Becca, which is I reached out to the other board members.
And within a minute, each of us had all gotten the exact same email.
And so we were like, well, okay, well, this is interesting.
But unlike some of the others, we weren't fired immediately, right?
Number one, we were told to wait 40 hours.
And number two, we were told you might hear, you know, otherwise, that they still want us to stay around.
So 48 hours passed.
And the Republican board member who was left, there's one Republican board member, she starts telling the staff that we're going to get fired.
At 5.01 p.m. on the Thursday, 48 hours later, we would be fired.
She ordered the staff to remain in the building after 5 o'clock because she knew it was coming.
So she wanted us removed from the website.
She wanted our emails shut down.
She wanted us shut out of the office.
So she herself was in touch with the White House.
That Thursday came, nothing happened.
Friday, worked like normal.
All the other board members said nothing happened to them either.
Saturday came, nothing.
Sunday came, nothing.
Monday came, nothing.
And then around, oh, sometime in the afternoon on Monday, we got an email that said that we were officially terminated.
Each one of us got, well, actually, I didn't get an email.
I got a call from the general counsel who told me that we had been terminated.
I said, well, how do you know this?
I mean, I haven't heard anything.
I'm a board member.
Not only am I a board member, actually, to Alvaro's point about being a commissioner, I have a commission.
I have a commission that was signed by the President of the United States.
I have a commission that was signed by the Secretary of State.
It says that I am a board member for a fixed term, subject to law.
It does not say I serve at the pleasure of the president.
If I did, it would actually say that.
And if you actually see commissions for people who serve at the pleasure of the president, it says it.
That's not what mine says.
And it tells me the exact date for which my commission goes until.
And so I'm saying, well, how can I get an email to tell me that I've been fired?
I mean, to get the job, you can't just get an email to show up at the agency.
To get it, you have to be nominated by the president.
You have to go through confirmation of the Senate.
Most people think once you've been confirmed by the Senate, I was confirmed twice unanimously.
Most people say once you've been confirmed, you get the job.
You do not get the job.
You can't show up at the agency and say, aha, I've got confirmation.
I'm now a commissioner.
No, you need to be appointed properly, which means you need the commission.
Remember Marbury versus Madison, for those who are lawyers?
You need the commission signed by the President and the Secretary of State.
And it is a legal document.
And so despite having that, there was the email that actually was sent to, as my understanding, to the Republican on the board, who then told the general counsel to implement it and terminate us.
And so it was only at that point when we complained that the general counsel said they need an email.
And so then the White House sent us an email from Trent Moore saying you've been terminated retroactively back to Thursday.
Remember, it's Monday.
And now they're trying to go back to Thursday at 5.01 p.m., even though we've been continuing to serve there.
That is a completely different story than now, but that was day one when they started.
Now it's much more developed process that they have for the removals.
So I have one last question, then we want to go to audience questions.
And we'll do this lightning fast, which is what do you think they're trying to do, right?
When folks are trying to end the independence of independent agencies, is this an effort to dismantle government?
What is really the goal here with regard to what your agencies are doing?
I don't know why.
I don't know why.
I just know it's illegal.
Charlie?
Yeah, I would agree with that.
I'm not going to speculate.
But one of the things that has been very concerning is that there are watchdogs, once again, that are supposed to protect American workers, that provide some security and some predictability to your work life, right?
And workers are in a really tough spot when you've got the agency that protects the ability to gather and unionize, right?
No quorum.
The agency that protects against discrimination, no quorum.
If you're a federal worker, if you want to go and say I've been discriminated against or the merit systems protection, I'm not being treated fairly based on merit, that too was a tat, right?
And so if you look at what's happening to working people with effectiveness, including the effect on prices, the effect of all this, there's a real human cost and a huge uncertainty that is hitting American people and will become,
unfortunately, if this current state of affairs is about to stand more and more obvious that it is creating a vulnerability that just isn't there.
But I too have no idea what the explanation would be, and I'm not going to speculate.
I also don't know why no reason was given for my or the other Democratic board members' terminations from the P Club.
I do know that my top priority while serving six years on the board has been oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
That has been my top priority, and there are lots of reasons for that.
But it's a priority that I actually thought was shared by the current administration.
And moreover, I was originally nominated and put on the board by Donald Trump.
That's who actually put me on the board.
And I served during his first administration and then all of the second administration.
And to get nominated by the President from the beginning, I had to interview with the White House Counsel's office.
I interviewed with the Trump National Security Council.
And I think I don't know what the purpose of those interviews are.
My suspicion was to make sure that I'm not a crazy guy.
That was my suspicion.
But I passed it without any problem, and then unanimously confirmed by the Senate as well.
And so I share that only to say that across administrations, across parties, there's a benefit to having a diverse set of experiences and expertise that are brought to very complicated issues.
And I can only think that whether there's a short-term reason or a long-term reason, in the long term, I am confident that we are all worse off without independent agencies that have consistency of leadership, consistency of vision across large swaths of the economy or across exclusive areas of government oversight that are there.
And that, to me, is the biggest risk of not having independent agencies, is that deep expertise, that diversity of views, that ability for Congress to get access to information, for the public to get access to information that the administration may not want.
That goes away.
And to me, that is the greatest risk of all.
Well, thank you.
We're going to go to audience questions now.
Just raise your hand, and Billy can bring the mic over to you.
Thank you.
I'm wondering if you can talk about what's happening at other independent agencies.
You know, not all of the leaders of independent agencies have been illegally fired yet.
What do you think is going through their heads now?
How do you think those other independent agencies are operating now?
Does someone want to take that?
I'm not sure I am able to speak for another agency.
Unfortunately, I can imagine, but it would only be speculation.
I don't think I would add to anything that you could come up with on your own.
I will just say that the message is clear.
If you obey, you stay.
And if you don't, you won't.
And so I don't know how you can, well, I'll put it this way: that I admire anyone who's trying to do their job and enforce the law without fear of favor, despite that hanging over their heads.
But for me, that message is crystal clear.
I'm going to take a quick question from our online audience.
If we want to talk about the importance of independent agencies with friends and family, what are the big points you think we should raise?
The one that I've been raising that I think connects with a lot of people is Commissioner Slaughter and I were sitting as judges because the Commission also functions as a court in a case in which FTC staff was alleging that these pharmacy middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers were competing to not lower the price of insulin but raise the price of insulin.
And once we were removed, there were no judges on that case.
Well, there was an administrative law judge, but there was no commissioners above that judge to take appeals from the ALJ's decisions.
So the pharmacy benefit managers moved to stay it for, I think it was three and a half months.
They were granted the stay, and the evidence you're hearing was to occur even after that.
Our other commissioners, Chairman Ferguson and Commissioner Holyuck, were both at the time recused.
And Chairman Ferguson has since decided to unrecuse himself in order to allow that lawsuit to proceed.
So whatever you think about the merits of the lawsuit, I think it's in everyone's interest to be adjudicated in a coherent, understandable, and expeditious manner.
And that is what I worry is being lost for this life-saving drug that millions upon millions of people have to take to survive.
So I think that's a very concrete way to put the stakes here.
I would just add that it's really important to make sure that the decisions about legal issues are made on the law and on the facts by people who are actually expert in that.
And having an independent agency allows you to go deep.
A lot of the cabinet agencies have enormous expertise, but they're generalists.
And Congress has given certain statutes solely to particular agencies.
So without those agencies having a quorum to do business, a whole host of things that are important can't happen.
But the independent part of it is that they won't happen in a way that's based on the law.
From anything from deciding during COVID, there were a lot of people who either didn't want to take the COVID vaccine once it was available or couldn't because they had a disability.
And the employer should not be deciding for you whether or not if your doctor is giving you certain advice or you have a religious objection, whether or not you have to take that vaccine.
That's just one example.
But there's a legal rule about whether or not you're going to be a direct threat to the rest of the workforce, right?
And do you want people to just kind of guess or base it on their own personal views?
Or do you want there to be a rational analysis?
And there are thousands of issues like that, where it really does require careful review and to decide it in the best public interest without having to worry about political interests.
Let's try and get one or two more questions in.
Thank you for being here.
What is your advice for students like myself who are interested in pursuing careers in civil service but are quite frankly nervous about the future of this career path?
Well, what I'd say is I'm so encouraged to hear, first of all, that that's still of interest.
And I would it depends really on what area you're interested in.
Obviously, I'm not going to tell you, don't be concerned.
But I think talking to folks and watching this moment, I don't know if you're right now applying or if you're still studying for a while and have time, but talking to folks who are in the field that you have so that you understand more about what's actually going on.
It's very difficult to follow the news right now.
But I would not say, oh, turn the page and walk away from it.
It is so important for people to understand that 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.
It is not possible for one person to protect against unlawful mergers that are going to hike everybody's grocery prices, as my colleague was saying earlier.
It is not possible for one person to take on an entire industry that has a discriminatory pay-setting scale, right?
And that is short-changing people.
And so, you know, it's not possible to be a watchdog for the FBI on your own or, you know, very, very difficult.
Important, or raise an army or do a whole lot of things, right?
Important to have government functioning and to have good people going into it.
So I would not give up, but you do need to think very carefully about how to be strategic and where you want to put your energies and time.
I'd like to offer a note of optimism for the future.
I've served in every presidential administration since George W. Bush, and I have loved my time in government, all those administrations.
It was more challenging in some than in others, but I loved my time there.
And the work that government employees do are critical to all of our lives.
We have three to four agencies represented up here on the stage today.
But if I started going through the list of other either independent agencies or all of the cabinet agencies and the things that they're doing, it touches every single one of our lives.
While government service may not be as exciting or as tempting today to some, it is still performing critical work that is needed.
And it's even, you know, we're talking about government, there's also state-level service as well that's still available.
States and locals, like they are hiring and they need help too.
So I've worked at the state level and I loved the state work as well.
The last thing I'll note is while my priorities, if I were the one making decisions about an agency, may be different from those of others, I feel as if, at least in the agencies that I've worked at, ultimately they want the agency to do something.
That's not true in every agent, but ultimately they want them to do something.
And so they will continue to do some work.
It won't be the same work.
Hopefully, it will be work that we all respect.
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.
If everyone leaves, there won't be anyone to do it.
And that, to me, is a worse fate for all of us than even a fate where everyone's terminated at the whims of a superior.
So I think I'm being told that we're about out of time.
I want to give a huge round of applause to our panelists for all that they have done, their leadership at their agencies and what they've shared.
And I think that note of optimism, I think, was needed in these times.
And I hope that you all have a bit more of a sense of the importance of independent agencies on all of our individual lives, our family lives, our lives at work, and why it is so important to have these independent watchdogs on the beat.
So again, thank you so much for being here with us today.
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