President Joe Biden yesterday nominated Alvaro Bedoya to be a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission, which should finally pave the way for Rohit Chopra to be able to leave the FTC to become the next director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Chopra has remained at the FTC in order for Democrats to maintain their majority status; with the nomination of Bedoya, that will allow Democrats in the Senate to finally put Chopra’s nomination to a full vote, and, if confirmed, make him the next permanent director of the CFPB. The CFPB has been helmed by Dave Uejio as Acting Director following the resignation of former Director Kathleen Kraninger, who resigned at the request of President Biden in January. Uejio, meanwhile, has been nominated for a post at the Department of Housing & Urban Development.
Chopra’s nomination has been in limbo for months — he was nominated in February and narrowly confirmed by the Senate Banking Committee in March — but has remained at the FTC to ensure Democrats still maintained the majority among the five commissioners at the agency.
Bedoya is a professor at Georgetown University and the founding director of the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law. He was previously the chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“It is the honor of my life to be nominated to serve on the FTC,” Bedoya tweeted yesterday. “When my family landed at JFK in 1987 with 4 suitcases and a grad student stipend, this was not what we expected.”
Chopra has served as a commissioner at the FTC since 2018. Prior to that,
