President Trump is preparing one of the biggest changes in the US Postal Service's 250-year history, insiders say. Sources tell the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal that Trump plans to issue an executive order to fire the service's governing board and place it under the direct control of the Commerce Department. The board is planning to fight the move and retained outside counsel at an emergency meeting Thursday, the Post reports, citing sources who "spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals." The sources say two of the board's Republican members were not present at the meeting.
The plans throw the "future of the mail provider's quasigovernmental status into doubt," the Journal reports. The USPS was controlled directly by the White House until 1970, when the Postal Reorganization Act made it an independent agency to reduce "political tinkering," the Post notes. White House officials denied that Trump is planning to issue an executive order on the USPS. Trump has repeatedly spoken of privatizing the service and has mocked it as a "joke" and Amazon's "Delivery Boy." Privatizing the USPS is "an idea that a lot of people have liked for a long time," he said in December
Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, said that if the rumors are true, the move would be an "outrageous and unlawful hostile takeover, essentially a raid on an independently operated public institution," the Journal reports. Earlier this week, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced that he was stepping down. Trump doesn't have the power to fire DeJoy, a Trump donor and former logistics exec who was elected by the board during his first term, but his transition team started vetting candidates to replace him last month, according to the Post's sources. (More US Postal Service stories.)
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