Don’t Rubber Stamp Trump’s Regulators

Craig Aaron and Jessica J. González are the co-CEOs of Free Press Action.

In normal times, the nominations of two experienced United States Senate staffers to fill vacant commissioner seats at independent regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission would be pro forma: a few private meetings, a quick and amiable hearing, a quick vote.

But these are not normal times.

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are relentlessly attacking and undermining the independence of expert agencies that Congress created and funded. Last week, the White House issued an executive order claiming the right to control and neuter these agencies.

The administration is threatening to remove sitting commissioners without cause, slashing budgets with abandon, and sacking staff without authority or due process. It’s a brazen abuse of executive power designed to settle political scores and undermine the long history of bipartisan deliberation and debate that informs decision-making at these essential agencies.

Given these conditions, the Senate must refuse to ratify Trump’s nominees and reward the administration with a decisive majority of votes on the five-member commissions that govern the FCC and FTC. This is an emergency moment that demands real oversight, investigation, and interrogation of the unconscionable and unconstitutional actions being taken at these agencies.

At the FTC, for example, Chairman Andrew Ferguson has pledged to “terminate uncooperative bureaucrats” — a list that appears to include his Democratic colleagues on the commission. Ferguson is fully on board with making the FTC an appendage of the Oval Office that acts on Trump’s whims, abandons antitrust enforcement, and instead focuses on combating “wokeness” and the “trans agenda,” whatever that means.

Ferguson seems more committed to perpetrating fraud than fighting it. While millions of people are struggling with the high cost of healthcare and groceries, Ferguson’s top priority is the mythical issue of tech companies “censoring” conservatives.

His false definition of censorship is when private companies exercise their First Amendment right to set terms of service to moderate hate and lies on their platforms. Yet he apparently wants to use government power to force online platforms to leave up hateful content and disinformation that violates their community standards. He wants to penalize advertisers that don’t want their brands displayed next to extremist content like the garbage that dominates Elon Musk’s X. This is real government censorship of constitutionally protected speech.

At the FCC, Chairman Brendan Carr is investigating and harassing news organizations for daring to question or fact-check the Trump regime. In what should be a major scandal, Carr has threatened to block a merger sought by CBS’ parent company Paramount — which Trump is simultaneously suing for $20 billion — and launched a baseless investigation into “news distortion” at the network for simply editing an interview with former Vice President Harris. Carr is trying to squeeze the company so it will pay off the president. This is a shakedown, plain and simple.

Carr, a co-author of Project 2025’s extremist policy blueprint, secured his job as FCC chairman by launching a personal crusade to end the “regulatory harassment” of Elon Musk after the Biden administration refused to give Starlink nearly a billion dollars of the public’s money to provide internet service to unpopulated golf courses, parking lots and highway medians. But once Carr gets a third vote on his side at the FCC, he can start handing out money to Musk and other Trump loyalists — while ramping up his harassment of media companies for their diversity programs and fact-checking.

The Senate must refuse to confirm any nominees to the FTC or FCC unless and until the Trump administration reverses course, guarantees the independence of expert agencies, disavows any plans to remove sitting commissioners, and respects the separation of powers.

On Tuesday, the Senate Commerce Committee meets to consider the nomination of Mark Meador, a former staffer for Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), as an FTC commissioner. Sometime soon, the committee will also be asked to appraise the qualifications of Olivia Trusty, a former aide to Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), to serve on the FCC.

Senators need to grill these nominees on their commitment to follow the rule of law, execute laws made by Congress, and reach decisions based on the facts. They should haul in the chairmen of the FCC and FTC before the committee to answer for their actions before giving them even more power to abuse.

With our very democracy at stake, this kind of accountability should be a bipartisan issue. But if the Republican majority won’t act in these polarized times, then Senate Democrats must use all their legal and procedural powers to delay and block these nominations.

For a refresher on how to do that, they need only review the repeated hearings, lengthy questioning, nomination holds and other delays that the GOP used to thwart and delay President Biden’s nominees — including at the FCC — when Republicans were in the minority.

The conventional wisdom on Capitol Hill is that nominations like these commissioners aren’t worth fighting over because they’re “not the worst” of the Trump nominees — and they certainly aren’t.

But putting them in office will only empower some of the worst of the worst, undermine congressional authority to make laws and charter agencies, and effectively endorse the illegal and unethical actions of Trump, Musk, Ferguson, and Carr.

Senators’ phones have been ringing off the hook for weeks with calls from constituents worried about severe cutbacks to essential programs, the thousands of unjustly fired federal workers, DOGE hackers breaching their personal data, and the illegal power grab underway at the White House. People are surrounding district offices and begging their elected representatives to do something.

Refusing to rubber stamp Trump’s nominees is something they can do.

Because these are not normal times. And the Senate must stop pretending otherwise.