Commissioner. When we consider President Trump's words

about your case and the court's ruling, he called it the biggest and most

consequential decision issued by the court, which he says gives tremendous

additional power back to the presidency. Is that the right characterization?

Yes, I think that's exactly the right characterization.

And it's exactly why I think the ruling is so disturbing.

It is a massive transfer of power from Congress to the president, and it's a

transfer that transforms these agencies that Congress set up to work for and be

accountable to the people into instruments of the powerful and of the

executive. Well, kind of interesting to hear you

agree with Donald Trump, uh, in a live conversation.

Rebecca, thank you for coming back to talk to us here on Bloomberg.

What's what's the result of this? The door keeps swinging every 4 to 8

years. It's not just the administration that

changes, but the entire administrative state.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I think it's important to go back to

the history and understand that this is not a partisan issue, and it certainly

shouldn't be a partisan issue. The case that was overturned yesterday,

Humphrey's executor, was the case of a conservative, pro-business Republican

who FDR tried to fire from the FTC because Commissioner Humphrey was

running around calling the New Deal socialist.

And FDR didn't like that. Um, and so the president, the 91 year

old unanimous precedent, actually originally protected a pro-business

Republicans ability to provide transparency and accountability at the

FTC. The other way I think about it, it's not

about whether a president can set policy or pick people to work at agencies.

I think about it a little bit like corporate boards.

We have a requirement. The publicly traded companies have

independent boards of directors, not so that the CEO can't be in charge, but the

decisions that the CEO makes are really in the best interests of the

shareholders of the company, and not just a way to do favors for his pals or

enrich himself. These boards and commissions, like the

FTC or the Federal Communications Commission, were set up by Congress with

a similar structure to make sure that their decisions were in the best

interests of the shareholders of the American government, the taxpayers, and

not just to benefit the executives. Hmm.

Well, when we consider the setup of these independent commissioners, there

is usually a partisan split, if you will.

You can't have, uh, a clean, uh, tie on a lot of, of these boards, as you put

them. Rebecca.

So what would be lost if a president is able to effectively just get rid of

anyone who was appointed by a predecessor of, uh, a different party,

is it not the case that usually you would still see things swing the way the

administration wants it to swing, given the majority that would be there on the

commission? Yeah, I think what is lost is a lot of

the quality of the debate and the discussion and the work that the agency

produces. I started at the FTC as a Trump

appointee, as a minority commissioner in the first Trump administration.

I was in the majority during the Biden administration back to the minority.

So I've seen all sides of it. And what I learn from experience is that

there is enormous benefit to the agency and to the public from having a

leadership structure that requires you to engage with people from different

political perspectives, understand their point of view, try to find consensus.

There's an incentive to find consensus where you can, so that decisions will

have durability and stability throughout administrations, and then to err for the

public, respectful disagreements when you can't reach that consensus, and that

quality of debate and discussion and consideration is absolutely lost if we

move to agencies that are just going to swing wildly one way or the other.

And I think the downstream consequences are not just at the leadership level of

these agencies, but if the principle that the court articulated in my case

holds, it also decimates the civil service, for example, or any of this

sort of career expertise that we have over centuries work to build up in our

government so that it can really do its best work on behalf of the American

people. Of course, your case, uh, Rebecca was,

uh, delivered in its decision alongside a separate and more narrow ruling on

Lisa Cook's case on the Federal Reserve. I don't want to turn you into a legal

analyst. We're not going to run through all the

decisions here. But knowing that this is about her

potential hiring or firing, I'm wondering what you thought of of this

very narrow ruling that, to the extent that I read it here, still allows for

her potential firing if the administration can prove allegations of

mortgage fraud. Did they move the needle on this case or

not? Well, I think it is actually a really

important distinction. The president attempted to fire me or

successfully now fired me, or no calls at all.

Just at will. He tried to fire Lisa Cook for a cause.

I think it is a pretty clearly pretty textual cause, um, but that is

consistent with what the statute that enabled the Federal Reserve in 1913 and

the statute that enabled the FTC in 1914 allow it allows commissioners to be

removed for cause. And so what the Supreme Court has done

has said, yes, that rule is valid and applies to the fed, but it doesn't apply

to the FTC or the other independent agencies

for reasons that are very difficult for me to pin down in any kind of

intellectually coherent manner, I think it's important to recognize that there

were only two justices who took the position that I could be fired and Lisa

could. Cook could not be.

Um, it is the chief justice and Justice Kavanaugh, the other conservative

justices said all of us could be fired. And the liberal justices said nine.

Um, but the two who switched positions, I find those decisions very difficult to

reconcile from any sort of intelligible constitutional law principle.

I think they're pretty more easily understood as sort of outcome oriented.

We want to protect the fed because we're worried about its effect on the economy.

But for the agencies that are supposed to be watchdogs for the American

consumer and honest businesses, we're not so worried about it.

Well, we're almost out of time, Rebecca. Less than a minute left.

We obviously know what this Republican president has wanted to be able to do in

terms of exercising power to get rid of people, uh, that he doesn't want in

these positions. What would your advice be if a Democrat

is in the white House next? Should they take advantage of it?

Well, listen, I think the first thing that needs to happen is that Congress

needs to reassert its authority and its constitutional responsibility to check

an out of control executive. And that means oversight.

That means using the power of the purse. That means using its own role in the

nominations process. Uh, and I think that means electing

members of Congress from both parties who are willing to do that.

Uh, and that is the first step to getting the system back on track.