AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein
President Donald Trump could “dissolve the leadership” at the U.S. Postal Service as soon as the end of this week and have the agency merge with the Commerce Department, The Washington Post reported on Thursday night.
The paper, citing six people it said were close to talks about a takeover of the USPS, reported Trump’s chief 2020 and 2024 campaign fundraiser Howard Lutnick – the current Commerce secretary – could lead the agency. The Post reported:
President Donald Trump is preparing to dissolve the leadership of the U.S. Postal Service and absorb the independent mail agency into his administration, potentially throwing the 250-year-old mail provider and trillions of dollars of ecommerce transactions into turmoil.Trump is expected to issue an executive order as soon as this week to fire the members of the Postal Service’s governing board and place the agency under the control of the Commerce Department and Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to six people familiar with the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals.
According to
Bogage cited experts on the matter who told him Trump’s reported plan to seize control of the postal service would violate federal law.
Trump has criticized the USPS for years and spoken in the past about privatizing it. As Tegna previously noted, it would take an act of Congress to make any major changes to the agency.
Bogage noted in Thursday’s report that an act of Congress that went into effect more than 50 years ago was written with the intent of protecting the mail from the executive branch:
But the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, the product of a crippling nationwide mail strike, led Congress to split the agency off into a freestanding organization, purposefully walling it off from political tinkering.
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