Senate Confirms Trump Nominee Mark Meador to FTC on Party-Line Vote

WASHINGTON, April 11, 2025 – The Senate on Thursday confirmed antitrust attorney Mark Meador to the Federal Trade Commission in a 50-46 party-line vote, finalizing a 3-0 Republican majority just two weeks after President Donald Trump removed the FTC’s two Democratic commissioners.

Meador, who most recently worked in private practice and served as a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation's Tech Policy Center, previously held roles at the Justice Department and in the office of Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. He joins Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Commissioner Melissa Holyoak — both Trump appointees — at the now all-Republican commission.

Ferguson issued a short statement Thursday congratulating Meador, saying, “Mark is a brilliant antitrust lawyer who will be a great asset to the Trump-Vance FTC.”

Public Knowledge issued a statement applauding senators who opposed Meador’s confirmation, calling the firings a “direct attack on the independence of an agency that has long served as a cornerstone of consumer protection.” The group also led a March 21 letter signed by over a dozen public interest organizations urging lawmakers to reject Meador’s nomination.

Ousted Democratic Commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, have argued that their fixed-term roles are protected by federal statute and Supreme Court precedent. In a lawsuit filed March 27 they asked a federal judge to block the administration from locking them out of their posts.

“It is bedrock, binding precedent that a President cannot remove an FTC Commissioner without cause,” the pair wrote in their March 27 complaint. “And yet that is precisely what has happened here.”

They described Trump’s action as a violation of “a century of federal law and Supreme Court precedent.” In Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), the Supreme Court ruled that presidents cannot remove FTC commissioners without cause — a protection designed to preserve the agency’s independence from executive overreach.

But current Ferguson has cast doubt on whether that precedent still applies. Speaking at a policy conference last month, Ferguson called Humphrey’s Executor “outdated,” arguing that the FTC in 2025 exercises far more executive power than it did in 1935.

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers sharply criticized the Democratic-led FTC under the Biden administration, accusing it of veering from its traditional role.

In a joint statement, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., and Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., said the FTC had “abandoned its rich bipartisan tradition and historical mission in favor of a radical agenda and partisan mismanagement.” 

During his confirmation process last year, Ferguson pledged to “abide by binding Supreme Court precedent,” saying that Humphrey’s Executor “remains binding precedent until [the Court] sees fit to reconsider [it].”