Trump has moved to fire three Democratic commissioners of the Consumer Product Safety Commission after they objected to the administration’s efforts to lay off agency staff, the commissioners said.CPSC Commissioners Richard Trumka Jr. and Mary Boyle said they received emails on Thursday night saying that the president had fired them from the independent bipartisan agency. Another commissioner, Alexander Hoehn-Saric, said he did not receive a termination notice, but was told “the President is also seeking my removal.”All three said that the effort to fire them was illegal, and Trumka said that he would take legal action to contest his termination.The CPSC’s official website now lists Trumka, Boyle and Hoehn-Saric, who are all Democrats, as “past commissioners.” The two remaining commissioners, Doug Dziak and acting CPSC chair Peter Feldman, are both Republican.The firings happened after the Democratic commissioners opposed an effort to bring two staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to the CPSC, where they planned to lay off agency staff, Trumka said.“I refused to be complicit with the efforts of DOGE to destroy the agency dedicated to protecting our nation’s consumers,” Boyle said in a statement. “I spoke out forcefully and unequivocally against efforts to strip the agency of qualified professionals whose work ensures that consumers can have confidence in the products they buy.”A White House budget document outlined the administration’s plans to eliminate the CPSC and put the Department of Health and Human Services in charge of overseeing product safety instead. The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.Trump has fired members of other independent agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission and the National Labor Relations Board.Last month, the Supreme Court issued a provisional decision that Trump was not required, for now, to reinstate two members of independent agencies who had contested their terminations.
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