# Interview Only w/ Alvaro Bedoya - The Fired FTC Commissioner Sounding the Alarm on Corporate Power Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-chuck-toddcast-1551191/interview-only-w-alvaro-bedoya-the-fired-ftc-commissioner-sounding-the-alarm-on-corporate-power Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-chuck-toddcast-1551191/interview-only-w-alvaro-bedoya-the-fired-ftc-commissioner-sounding-the-alarm-on-corporate-power.md Podcast: [The Chuck ToddCast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-chuck-toddcast-1551191) Published: 2026-06-29T09:00:00+00:00 Episode link: https://omny.fm/shows/the-chuck-toddcast/interview-only-w-alvaro-bedoya-the-fired-ftc-commissioner-sounding-the-alarm-on-corporate-power Audio file: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/claritaspod.com/measure/pscrb.fm/rss/p/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/p57137/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c749d540-b5b7-42b1-a855-b33100f844fa/5f8ed993-b9e0-4668-9d8b-b4770142c958/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=8e017e60-9c2d-418d-97bb-b33100f84504 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-chuck-toddcast-1551191/episodes/interview-only-w-alvaro-bedoya-the-fired-ftc-commissioner-sounding-the-alarm-on-corporate-power Duration seconds: 4157 ## Resource Alvaro Bedoya — the former FTC Commissioner whom Trump fired in an unprecedented break with a century of agency-independence norms — joins the Chuck Toddcast to explain why his firing matters far beyond his own career, and what it reveals about the collision between corporate power and consumer protection in the Trump era. Bedoya makes the legal case plainly: removal "for cause" is clearly written into the law, Congress needs to codify FTC independence, and while he's skeptical this Supreme Court will rule in favor of agency independence, the circumstances of his dismissal are damning — he believes he was fired specifically for suing companies that happened to be Trump donors. The Amazon case is his exhibit A: the FTC was actively pursuing Amazon until Trump intervened, and after Amazon funneled millions to Trump, the investigations simply evaporated — proof, Bedoya argues, that existing laws against bribery and corruption clearly aren't working. He walks through the sprawling, well-funded lobbying effort against meaningful privacy legislation, and offers vivid examples of how unchecked data collection harms ordinary people. His prescription is structural: America needs genuine restrictions on what data can be collected and how it can be used, paired with serious antitrust enforcement — but the agencies tasked with that work have been starved of the resources they need. The conversation opens up into a fascinating, wide-ranging debate about monopoly power and consolidation across the American economy. Bedoya argues that streaming bills were already climbing even before the proposed Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger — a deal he believes there's a clear consumer case to block. He notes that Thomas Jefferson once argued for an ant… ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-chuck-toddcast-1551191/episodes/interview-only-w-alvaro-bedoya-the-fired-ftc-commissioner-sounding-the-alarm-on-corporate-power/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-chuck-toddcast-1551191/interview-only-w-alvaro-bedoya-the-fired-ftc-commissioner-sounding-the-alarm-on-corporate-power.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.