The President Goes Postal

Trump takes on the Postal Service.

Source: Matt Johnson (unaltered).

It’s never a dull moment at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) — or in the new Trump administration. According to a breaking report by The Washington Post’s Jacob Bogage,

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[.]

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In an emergency meeting Thursday, the board retained outside counsel and gave instructions to sue the White House if the president removed members of the board or attempted to alter the agency’s independent status.

This move will prove exceptionally difficult to square with the law. The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 plainly establishes the USPS as an “independent establishment” of the executive branch and makes clear that the, “exercise of the power of the Postal Service shall be directed by a Board of Governors composed of 11 members.” Governors have fixed year terms and can only be removed “for cause” And, as the Supreme Court noted in the 2021 Collins v. Yellen decision, “for cause” provisions impose at least some restrictions on Presidential control and are not akin to “at will” employment. So, sweeping the deck clean in one fell swoop and obliterating agency independence will at least raise judicial eyebrows.

Legality aside, the USPS has lots of complicated problems driving billions of dollars in net losses. These issues range from bloated compensation to funky cost attribution models to vehicle contracting deficiencies. Simply playing “agency musical chairs” and putting the USPS under the Commerce Department’s control isn’t likely to fix any of these issues. Regardless of where the agency is housed, there is plenty of postal waste for the Trump administration to cut. It’s long past time to get to work.