Dive Brief:
- The Federal Trade Commission gathers potentially market-moving, confidential business data that would be at “substantial” risk if accessed by the Department of Government Efficiency, according to two Democrats suing President Donald Trump to reverse their recent removal from the commission.
- In a joint statement Thursday, Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya said they were “deeply concerned” after reports indicated that the FTC has opened its doors to DOGE representatives.
- “The FTC collects and retains extremely sensitive and confidential business data,” they said. “This data can move markets. It can certainly change the competitive dynamics in any industry. Under no circumstances should DOGE be able to access this data.”
Dive Insight:
The FTC, an enforcer of competition and consumer protection laws, is the latest federal agency to face data privacy and security questions stemming from potential cooperation with DOGE, which has focused on shrinking the federal workforce and cutting what the Trump administration views as waste, fraud and abuse in government spending.
In February, the National Association of Tax Professionals urged Congress to protect information at the Internal Revenue Service, citing concerns that DOGE “may be granted access to sensitive taxpayer data.”
In their Thursday statement, Slaughter and Bedoya said they understand that DOGE representatives have been onboarded to the FTC as agency staffers rather than non-staff visitors.
“While this may be an attempt to mitigate the risks posed by DOGE review of the FTC, those risks remain substantial, because they are coming from an arm of the executive branch not authorized by Congress and already known to be full of active market participants,” they said.
“Even if these DOGE FTC employees focus primarily on contracts and vendor relationships rather than particular case files, they may still access substantial non-public data. For example, our contracts for expert witness testimony necessarily reveal information about ongoing, nonpublic law enforcement investigations,” they said.
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson should address how he will ensure that agency-controlled data is properly protected if accessed by DOGE, although any such access would be problematic, according to the emailed statement.
An FTC spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Slaughter and Bedoya filed a lawsuit last month accusing Trump of illegally firing them without cause. The complaint calls on the court to declare the president’s action unlawful and allow the commissioners to resume their service at the FTC.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said that Trump “absolutely has the authority” to fire at will commissioners of independent federal agencies like the FTC and is prepared to “fight it all the way to the Supreme Court.”
In the wake of the firings, the five-seat commission has been operating with just two members, both Republican: Ferguson and Commissioner Melissa Holyoak.
On Thursday, the Senate approved Trump’s nomination of Mark Meador, an antitrust lawyer and former agency staffer, to become a third FTC Republican commissioner.
Slaughter and Bedoya said in their statement that they remain FTC commissioners, “even though our purported termination is preventing us from conducting the formal duties of commissioners at this time.”
“It is the position of this administration that we are no longer commissioners,” they said. “However, the clear language of the Federal Trade Commission Act and binding Supreme Court precedent prohibits this no-cause removal.”
