The new chair of the Federal Trade Commission is putting his commissioners on notice that he thinks President Trump has the right to fire them if he wants to.

Why it matters: Andrew Ferguson, who replaced Lina Kahn on Jan. 20, is the first head of an independent agency to embrace a controversial legal theory that could dramatically reshape the federal bureaucracy.

• It will alarm progressive activists and Democratic lawmakers who are concerned that Trump wants to purge independent agencies like the FTC and the National Labor Relations Board.

Driving the news: Ferguson, a former solicitor general for the Commonwealth of Virginia, is filing a motion on Friday to formally change the FTC’s legal position.

• He is seizing on a letter sent to Congress this week by the acting solicitor general that the Trump Justice Department will seek to overturn a 90-year old Supreme Court decision known as “Humphrey’s Executor.”
• In 1935, the court ruled that the president could only dismiss the head of an independent agency “for cause.”
• The new Trump approach holds that the heads and other board members can be fired based on the president’s “will.”

What they’re saying: “I agree with every word of the Acting Solicitor General’s letter. Humphrey’s Executor was wrongly decided, is deeply anti-democratic, and ought to be overruled,” Ferguson told Axios in an exclusive statement.

• “I will be making a motion to ask my fellow Commissioners to agree to align the FTC’s position on this issue with the President’s position,” he said.