Rich Trumka Jr., a commissioner of the Consumer Product Safety Commission until he was fired by President Trump on Thursday, said in a letter that his dismissal is illegal and that he plans to fight the action.
“See you in court, Mr. President,” Trumka wrote in a May 9 social media post that included a statement using the CPSC’s official letterhead in which he describes his dismissal.
The CPSC is an independent agency that regulates the safety of consumer products, from toys to appliances. It’s the group that often handles recalls of items such as kitchen ranges that can set fires and steam cleaners that have burned users.
In his statement, Trumka said he was given no reason for his firing, but that his dismissal came after he and two other commissioners voted against allowing members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to work at the agency. Trumka, who was appointed to a 7-year term by President Biden in 2021, said he pushed back against DOGE because “if these people are allowed in to govern our agency, they will gut it and the result will turn back the clock on product safety.”
He added, “CPSC’s livesaving work is far too important to take this lying down.”
In addition to Trumka, two other commissioners on the five-person Consumer Product Safety Commission were fired on Thursday, according to the Washington Post. All three were Democrats, the publication said.
Trumka expounded on the firings in an interview Friday with CBS News.
“On Wednesday, we had a public commission meeting, where we said there’s no financial reason, no logical reason, to get rid of anyone at our agency, because their lifesaving work is to important to compromise,” Trumka told CBS News. “And just the next day, DOGE was in our building. They asked if we would allow them to implant at our agency. They asked for our answer to that by 6 p.m. We said ‘no.’ And moments later, we were fired by email from the president.”
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, however, in a press briefing Friday, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that the CPSC falls under the executive branch, giving the president the right to fire employees there.
Consumer Reports issued a statement condemning the CPSC firings, and said that the commissioners should be reinstated immediately.
“This is an appalling and lawless attack on the independence of our country’s product safety watchdog,” said William Wallace, director of safety advocacy for Consumer Reports, in an email. “Anyone who cares about keeping their family safe should oppose this move and demand that it be reversed.”
Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, and three other Democratic senators — Maria Cantwell of Washington; Ed Markey of Massachusetts; and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut — also objected to the firings in a May 9 letter to Mr. Trump, calling the dismissals “illegal.”
“The Consumer Product Safety Commission makes sure toys are safe for our kids and the products Americans use everyday don’t have hidden hazards,” Klobuchar said in a statement. “It conducts thousands of investigations and issues crucial recalls …. This move is dangerous and illegal.”
DOGE firings
DOGE has sought to cut federal workers in the name of reducing fraud, waste and abuse. But many of its firings have had to be reversed, either because the group mistakenly fired essential workers — like bird-flu experts with the U.S. Department of Agriculture — or after a court ruled the dismissals were illegal.
DOGE’s savings have largely been wiped out by costs related to those issues as well as lost productivity, according to a recent analysis by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit that focuses on the federal workforce.
The CPSC firings come after the Trump administration dismissed other officials at independent agencies, including the vice chair of the National Transportation Safety Board this week and a member of the National Labor Relations Board in January.
“If my illegal firing is allowed to stand, it will clear the way for the Administration and its lapdogs to cripple the lifesaving functions of this agency to benefit their wealthy donors,” Trumka added.
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