Donald Trump is reportedly considering disbanding the leadership of the US Postal Service (USPS) and folding it into his administration in a move that would end the 250-year-old agency’s independence and potentially threaten the mail delivery system’s impartiality.
The Washington Post reported that an executive order was being prepared to fire the service’s governing board and place it under the authority of the new commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick.
The White House issued an immediate denial amid fears of the effects of such a move on the mail delivery system and millions of dollars of e-commerce transactions handled by USPS.
“This is not true. No such EO [executive order] is in the works, and secretary Lutnick is not pushing for such an EO,” CNN quoted an administration official as saying.
However, there was no comment on whether the postal service – which polls have shown is the US’s most popular agency after the National Park Service among Democrats and Republicans alike – would be privatised as part of the administration’s drive to slash public spending and reduce the federal workforce.
Trump floated the idea of selling off the service, which he has often criticised, while he was still president-elect.
“It’s an idea that a lot of people have liked for a long time,” he told a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate last December. “We’re looking at it.”
He had a fraught relationship with the agency during his first presidency, labeling it “a joke” and Amazon’s “delivery boy”, and threatened to withhold emergency funding from it during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic unless it raised the price of package delivery fourfold.
The then treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, only authorised a loan for the service in exchange for access to its contracts with top customers.
Before the 2020 election – when coronavirus rules triggered an expansion of postal voting – Trump claimed the service was unable to facilitate mail-in voting because it could not access the emergency funding his administration was then blocking. The postal service delivered nearly 98% of ballots to election officials within three days of them being mailed.
The postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, who was appointed towards the end of Trump’s first presidency, this week announced plans to resign, less than halfway through his designated 10-year term. Trump’s transition team vetted candidates to replace him before he returned to the White House.
The USPS has about 630,000 workers and reported a net loss of $9.5bn in the 2024 fiscal year.
It has post offices in every zip code in the US and delivers millions of letters and packages every week, including medications and e-commerce deliveries.
Its functioning is overseen by the postal regulatory committee to ensure that there is no discrimination in its delivery practices and that all areas and neighborhoods are served adequately.
The Washington Post reported that the service’s governors were preparing to fight any executive order disbanding it. They staged an emergency meeting on Thursday and retained outside legal counsel.
Postal experts suggested placing the commerce department in charge of it would violate federal law.
“This is a somewhat regal approach that says the king knows better than his subjects and he will do his best for them,” James O’Rourke, of the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza college of business, told the outlet. “But it also removes any sense that there’s oversight, impartiality and fairness and that some states wouldn’t be treated better than other states or cities better than other cities.”
The American Postal Workers Union – which represents many of the service’s workers – called any move to disband the governors or privatize the service “outrageous”.
“Any attack on the postal service would be part of the billionaire oligarch coup, directed not just at the postal workers our union represents, but the millions of Americans who rely on the critical public service our members provide every single day,” the union said in a statement.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
