Exclusive: Memo exposes DOGE's potential 'end game' for U.S. Postal Service

Alexandria Jacobson, 

Investigative Reporter

RAW STORY
June 3, 2025 

Donald Trump speaks next to Elon Musk and Musk's son in the Oval Office. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque


While still under the leadership of Elon Musk, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) consulted with the leader of a little known arm of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), a memo obtained by Raw Story revealed — prompting legal and academic experts to warn of potential trouble ahead.

On March 19, Chief Postal Inspector Gary Barksdale issued a “situational update” to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), USPS’s law enforcement arm, about a meeting with DOGE, according to the memo, which Raw Story received through a Freedom of Information Act request.

In the memo, Barksdale reiterated former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s requests for assistance from DOGE as outlined in a March 17 letter to Congress, including help with “efforts to combat counterfeit postage.”

But Barksdale also provided a new recommendation “when [DOGE representatives] asked for specifics on how they could assist us,” asking for "administrative subpoena authority.”

The request “essentially allows for government agencies to issue requests, subpoenas, without any type of specific judicial intervention or judicial approval,” said Felix Shipkevich, a professor of law at Hofstra University.

The request surprised more than half a dozen experts who reviewed the memo.

“I think this foray into the postal inspector’s realm, into his office, is to put the postal inspector on notice that DOGE is looking at them,” said James O’Rourke, a professor of management at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business who studies the postal service.

“The endgame is the dissolution of the U.S. Postal Service. Parts will be sold, and it will be entirely privatized, if the current administration gets its way.”

DOGE aims to slash trillions of dollars from federal budgets, resulting in cancelled government contracts, thousands of redundancies at government agencies, and intense controversy over Musk’s access to federally held data.

The world’s richest man last week left the Trump administration to return to businesses including Tesla and SpaceX.

But DOGE remains active.

A USPS spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. Representatives of DOGE and its House caucus could not be reached.

‘Mail theft epidemic’

USPIS is tasked with protecting the mail and investigating mail-related crimes. It employs more than 1,250 inspectors and nearly 450 police officers, according to its 2023 fiscal year report.

Mail theft and violent crimes against letter carriers have skyrocketed. Letter carrier robberies increased 543 percent in a three-year period, according to an exclusive Raw Story investigation.


In May 2024, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report calling on USPIS to better document decision-making processes in the wake of such a surge in mail-related crime.

USPS agreed with the GAO’s three recommendations, but they remain open a year later, said Derrick Collins, GAO’s director of physical infrastructure.

“They've told us that they're going to identify metrics or factors that they'll consider when making workforce decisions, but that's the extent of the information that we have at this point from them,” Collins told Raw Story. “They've not given us any additional details or timeframes.”

Asked if broader administrative subpoena authority could aid USPIS in investigating serious mail crimes, Collins said, “it did not come up in the course of our work, and we didn't explore it in part because it didn't come up.”

The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General — an independent agency examining fraud, waste and abuse — also investigated USPS’s response to mail theft, finding ineffective efforts in stopping robberies of mail keys and collection boxes.

Tara Linne, a spokesperson for the USPS Office of Inspector General, told Raw Story the agency “didn’t address the administrative subpoena authority in any of our reports” and referred questions to USPIS.


The “mail theft epidemic” coincides with a 2020 statute reinterpretation restricting postal police officers to working on Postal Service properties, unable to intervene in mail crimes on the street, said Frank Albergo, president of the Postal Police Officers Association union (PPOA).

The PPOA and Postal Service remain in litigation about the jurisdiction of postal police officers.

“The Inspection Service now wants to essentially bypass the judicial process and then leave it up to themselves … they want to hoard investigative authority while they bench their own postal police force,” Albergo said.

“Think of how contradictory this is. So, their uniformed police officers don't have any authority to protect postal workers and mail, and yet their postal inspectors should have administrative subpoena power?”




A postal police officer in Detroit greets a letter carrier (Photo courtesy of the Postal Police Officers Association)

USPIS recently joined a Department of Homeland Security task force detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants, and participated in a drug and immigration enforcement raid in Colorado Springs alongside the FBI and IRS, the Washington Post reported.

“It’s a safe assumption that they would use this administrative subpoena authority to go after illegal immigrants,” Albergo said.

Albergo said both Democrats and Republicans in Congress were “really getting annoyed at the Inspection Service and mail theft,” adding: “It's just not going away that they have a police force that they refuse to use. What is the Inspection Service busy doing? They're busy asking for administrative subpoena power. If they were serious, they would ask for postal police power.”

‘Fishing expedition’

Approximately 335 executive branch agencies possess subpoena authority, including the Postal Service, according to a 2002 report to Congress by the Department of Justice, the latest available report.

That scope of authority extends to the postmaster general, said Harold J. Krent, a professor of law at the Illinois Institute of Technology who served in the Office of Management and Budget under President Joe Biden.

Barksdale’s request could signal an interest in “broader use of the subpoena power,” Krent said, adding: “They might want that enforcement authority to spread to more members of the agency.

“At the same time, if you have more agencies that have subpoena power, that then minimizes procedural protections that you might get from centralizing the power.”Krent said administrative subpoena authority is “incredibly important” and “a critical part of the arsenal agencies wield,” but “tensions” can arise if there are not “constraints for private parties, so that they're not fishing expeditions, there's not invasion of privacy.”

O’Rourke took Barksdale’s request to be “a fishing expedition, clearly.”

Shipkevich said administrative subpoena authority was a “very important power” but “overreach” can occur.

Whether DOGE should be involved in USPIS, and USPS overall, is up for debate.

Rick Geddes, a Cornell University economics professor who researches the Postal Service, said the agency had a “government-owned monopoly” over first-class and standard mail.

“It is unlawful to compete with the Postal Service in those areas — it's a crime. That's a recipe for inefficiency,” Geddes said, adding that there could be “a particularly useful role for DOGE to play in cases where a firm performs a fundamentally commercial service, and this is physical document delivery.”

Furthermore, the USPS reported a $9.5 billion loss in the 2024 fiscal year, compared to a net loss of $6.5 billion the year prior.

“A high fixed cost in the face of declining revenue in your core business is a recipe for losses, for fiscal instability,” Geddes said.

O’Rourke, however, said asking the Postal Service to turn a profit would represent a “downward” slope toward privatization of the mail and other agencies like the National Park Service and National Weather Service.

“We do not ask the Marine Corps to make money,” he said. “We don't ask the fire department to make money. We don't even ask them to break even because they don't. They can't.

“We're asking that of government services like the Postal Service. The demand is ‘start making money, or we'll take over and sell you, and we'll show you how to make money.’”

Barksdale said in the memo that USPIS and DOGE “share a common goal to eliminate unnecessary spending, identify redundancies and build efficiencies across organizations.”

Keith LaShier, a former president of the Association of United States Postal Lessors, said “it’s appropriate for the Postal Service to seek outside professional consultant help, on occasion.”

But LaShier, who has been a postmaster and worked in USPS finance, said it would be “very difficult for an outside entity” like DOGE to quickly resolve issues given that the Postal Service has “an endless number of stakeholders.”

“DOGE from what I've seen, just on a personal level, doesn't care what the stakeholders think,” LaShier said.

“It scares me as to what they might encourage the Postal Service to do or gain administration support to impose some changes that are not carefully thought out.”

O’Rourke said Barksdale’s meeting with DOGE was “concerning” and could signal a “principal way to get a foot in the door” as a path toward privatization, an effort reportedly advocated by DOGE and the General Services Administration.

“The sale and dissolution of the Postal Service would return us to the 1920s where there was no rural free delivery,” O’Rourke said.

“You can see, honestly, that it's the poor who will be disadvantaged the most.”

Alexandria Jacobson is a Chicago-based investigative reporter at Raw Story, focusing on money in politics, government accountability and electoral politics. Prior to joining Raw Story in 2023, Alex reported extensively on social justice, business and tech issues for several news outlets, including ABC News, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune. She can be reached at alexandria@rawstory.com. More about Alexandria Jacobson.

Trump cuts inflict pain on federal workers: 'Absolute utter chaos'

Travis Gettys
May 26, 2025

ALTERNET

President Donald Trump's sweeping cuts to the federal workforce has created widespread chaos and suffering for government employees.

Federal workers from three separate agencies described bureaucratic chaos as they tried to obtain their workplace benefits, such as health insurance and pension payments, after the president and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk slashed thousands of jobs across the government, reported CNN.

“There are no words to describe how difficult this has been,” said one Department of Education employee, whose family lost their health insurance coverage for weeks. “There’s been no communication. No kindness, no compassion. It’s just devastating.”

That Education Department employee was eventually reinstated by a court order, but her husband was unable to maintain his medical appointments while recovering from cancer, which resulted in additional complications that required further attention.

“There is now so much unknown for our future," the woman said. "It is hard to feel secure. I feel like it could be ripped away at any time."

An IRS worker told CNN that she was hit with a $3,300 bill after taking her son to the emergency room on Easter for a severe allergic reaction because her health insurance was paused after she was laid off in February.

“I knew I didn’t have insurance, but I didn’t want to take the chance," she said. "At that point, you’re not thinking about health insurance.”

An IRS employee in Indiana told CNN she delayed crucial medical tests for her wife while she tried to get her health coverage back online, saying she spent more than 25 hours on the phone trying to get her insurance restored.

“The insurance company said I didn’t have insurance, the IRS said I did," the worker said. "I couldn’t get the sides to get together and talk on one another. It was absolute utter chaos. I was on the phone every single day for two weeks. I even broke down in tears on the phone.”

An IRS revenue officer from Massachusetts said he had been unaware that his insurance had been canceled until an unpaid bill arrived after his annual physical.

“If I get into an accident," he said, "that’s going to bankrupt me."

A retired U.S. Postal Service worker from Georgia told CNN that his monthly federal pension benefits stopped after the Social Security Administration erroneously declared him dead in April.

“Retirees are being left hung out to dry,” said 73-year-old John Reid III, who worked for USPS for more than three decades. “I am so disappointed with our government.”

Reid called the Office of Personnel Management eight times to resolve the issue, and while Social Security eventually corrected the record, he still hasn't gotten his May pension payment.

“At this juncture, I’ll believe it when I receive it,” Reid said.

 

Why the Right Really Hates the Postal Service

It’s not about USPS’s efficiency or viability. It’s about equity and collective good, values that are anathema to predatory capitalism.

By Sonali Kolhatkar

May 14, 2025

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

“Whose Postal Service?” workers chanted in New York City: “The people’s Postal Service.” (Photo: Jenny Brown)

President Donald Trump has tapped a former board member of the private mail delivery corporation FedEx to be the next United States Postmaster General. David Steiner’s appointment as head of the public service agency is a signal that Trump is going to take another stab at something he tried and failed to do during his first term: privatize the postal service.

In February 2025, when Trump said the USPS is a “tremendous loser for this country” and that he’s considering merging it with the Department of Commerce, he wasn’t echoing a random claim that came up in conversation with his golf caddy. During his first term, Trump appointed a task force to study the postal service, which concluded the current system was “unsustainable,” and recommended privatization in line with the president’s desire.

Right-wing forces have long had their sights on the postal service—as they have on public education, libraries, Social Security, Medicare, and just about any publicly funded service—and have carried out an effective propaganda campaign against USPS’s financial viability to justify gutting it.

For example, the Heritage Foundation—the morally bankrupt trafficker of market fundamentalism and peddler of the Project 2025 blueprint for democratic destruction—has claimed for years that the nation no longer needs a postal service. In 2024, it asked if Americans still needed their post office. In 2013, it wondered if the postal service had a future, and in 2010, it contended that postal workers were paid too much.

If the Postal Service is truly financially unsustainable, that has been, in part, by design. The federal government expects it to balance its books like any corporation, but, for years, mandated it pre-fund its workers’ retirements 75 years into the future—a ludicrous requirement that critics called a “manufactured” crisis. The mandate was finally overturned in 2022. And, when most institutions, including private package delivery companies struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump White House refused to bail out USPS as it did its commercial counterparts.

But there’s one more aspect to USPS that makes it a prime right-wing target: it is the largest unionized federal workforce in the nation, employing 600,000 people, more than 90 percent of whom are members of various unions. Under the oversight of his billionaire buddy Elon Musk, Trump has fired tens of thousands of government workers, as part of his overt plan to run the government “like a business.” Musk and Trump are presumably salivating at the prospect of dismissing unionized postal workers. It’s no wonder Don Maston, the president of the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association, warned in late April 2025, “the hounds are at the door.”

The American Postal Workers Union (APWU), which represents about 200,000 postal workers, has also issued a serious warning about Trump’s intentions. It recently debunked several conservative claims about the agency’s financial viability and explained that “[t]his administration intends to break up and sell off the profitable portions of the Postal Service to billionaires and USPS competitors.”

It’s precisely because most postal workers are unionized that they enjoy decent wages and benefits—as all Americans deserve, and as most non-union blue-collar employees of private companies don’t get. Postal workers, who are currently in the midst of negotiating union contracts, have historically fought hard for their rights. The Great Postal Strike of 1970 paved the way for the Postal Reorganization Act, which President Richard Nixon signed into law later that year. That bill allowed postal workers the right to union representation and to get raises, and cleaved off the postal service as an independent agency.

It’s true that the modern-day transition to electronic bill payments and digitized news media is rendering a large percentage of USPS’s delivery services obsolete. But there are crucial things that can’t be delivered electronically or are extremely difficult to pick up in person, namely, prescription medications and vote-by-mail ballots for elderly and disabled Americans. FedEx—one of USPS’s prime private competitors—is more expensive than USPS for letter-sized and small packages, which is why your neighborhood postal worker is more likely to deliver meds and ballots to your grandparents on time.

Trump, Musk, the Heritage Foundation, and their ilk routinely claim private corporations are more cost-efficient and deliver greater value than publicly funded services. Precisely the opposite is true. Not only is FedEx operating with a net debt of more than $14 billion, it doesn’t deem delivery to remote rural areas profitable enough, relying instead on USPS to pick up the slack. It takes hubris to claim up is down and black is white, but hubris is what purveyors of predatory capitalism have in spades.

Much of Congress realizes the postal service’s worth. The only reason Trump was unable to succeed in his plan to privatize USPS during his first term was bipartisan congressional opposition. This time around, the same dynamic is shaping up, with U.S. House Representatives introducing legislation to protect the postal service in January 2025, and senators taking a similar step in late March.

In recent years, proponents of the USPS have been pushing to expand the agency’s purview by incorporating public banking as one of its services. The Save the Post Office coalition, formed in the wake of Trump appointing Louis DeJoy as the postmaster general, laid out in great detail how millions of “unbanked” Americans would benefit from a public banking service that the USPS is well-poised to offer.

The right wants to gut the Postal Service precisely because it operates on a model of government serving the collective good, charging the same rate to all Americans, and giving them the same service regardless of location, even though it costs more to deliver mail to isolated rural communities than well-connected urban ones. This is a form of equity—ensuring that those who have the least are subsidized by the rest of us—and we all know how much conservatives hate that word.

It’s also the same concept that publicly funded health care is based on: everyone pays the same amount and each person draws according to their need, with younger, healthier Americans subsidizing the care of older, sicker people, and no corporate executives sucking out profits like leeches on skin.

The reason we still don’t have such a health system is essentially because the leeches don’t want to give up their unearned booty. Instead, they craft laughable propaganda about public services shaping the character of Americans to become soft, as though reliance on one another was a moral failing.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.ail

Sonali Kolhatkar

Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her most recent book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization.

Wells Fargo Wants to Privatize USPS. We Should Dismantle the Mega Bank Instead.

Why would a mega bank with one of the worst reputations in a scandal-ridden industry take over a popular institution?

By Terri Friedline , 

Truthout

May 11, 2025

A sign at the entrance to a Wells Fargo bank in Manhattan, New York, on May 14, 2025.Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images


The United States Postal Service (USPS) is a front line in the struggle for democracy and justice against corporate power, as a memo released by Wells Fargo unveils. Published February 27, the memo outlines a plan for privatizing the USPS and enabling investors to reap the profits. The plan has been met with criticism and protest, since achieving profitability relies on selling off property, firing workers, limiting or eliminating services, and raising parcel rates by up to 140 percent. At the end of March, senators introduced a resolution calling on Congress to affirm the USPS as an independent agency and protect it against privatization.

Wells Fargo outlines challenges to implementing their plan, including that legislation needed for privatization is unlikely to pass through Congress, support for the USPS remains high especially among rural communities and investors in a privatized USPS would need to contend with “nine collective bargaining agreements with seven unions covering 550,000 employees.” But the mega bank has solutions for each of these challenges.

First, it suggests using a reconciliation bill that would only require a simple majority of votes to pass through the Senate, aggressively limiting or eliminating services to frustrate public support, and undercutting unionized labor by laying off workers and slashing benefits.

In laying out its privatization plan, the bank is returning to a previous, historical ambition: Wells Fargo was founded in 1852 by stagecoach mail delivery executives, Henry Wells and William Fargo. Wells and Fargo wanted to capitalize on the California gold rush and used stagecoaches to ship gold and deliver mail and other supplies between outposts and mining towns scattered across the state. Over the decades, Wells Fargo merged with other “pony express” mail services to monopolize delivery. The westward expansion of the railroads eventually ended the bank’s reign over mail delivery, but Wells Fargo’s interests in USPS remain centered on capitalization and monopolization.

Steps toward privatization may already be underway. Before resigning from his position, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy signed an agreement with Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” — the pseudo agency finding efficiencies in the federal government on the backs of public-sector workers — and announced the elimination of 10,000 jobs.

Related Story

As Trump Pushes Privatization of USPS, Amazon May Be Preparing to Take Over
A new CEO statement from Amazon suggests it could be angling to take over the US Postal Service. By Jonathan Rosenblum & Benjamin Y. Fong , Truthout May 6, 2025

USPS took a big step toward privatization on May 9, when the USPS Board of Governors announced that FedEx official David Steiner would become the next Postmaster General. Steiner was favored by President Donald Trump to lead the agency, despite the clear conflict of interest appointing a senior executive from a USPS competitor.
Privatization Is an Attack on Democracy

It’s a special kind of irony that a mega bank with one of the worst reputations in an industry where the bar is embarrassingly low wants to take over a broadly popular federal agency. The truth is, we need the USPS. We do not need Wells Fargo.

If there’s a federal agency that exemplifies democracy’s potential, it’s the USPS. The USPS delivers to every address in the country, without exception. No matter who you are or where you live, the USPS delivers birthday cards and love letters, including to people who are incarcerated in jails and prisons. Election ballots are sent through the mail, where people make choices about who will represent their concerns in the halls of political power. Prescription medication and abortion pills are received in the mail, providing people with access to health care and reproductive justice. Tax refunds, social security and stimulus checks arrive in the mail, offering people some financial security in a volatile economy. Seeds and saplings are delivered through the mail, making the USPS a partner in environmental justice efforts. The USPS even transports insects and live animals, including honeybees and baby chicks that sustain local food and agriculture.

What’s more, the USPS employs workers at competitive wages and with union representation. These wages and benefits are hallmarks of working conditions and benefits won through organized labor, where workers express their collective power and fight for dignity on the job. Postal workers earn a median wage that is higher than the national average and receive benefits like health care and paid leave. With Black employees making up 29 percent of its staff, the USPS has played an important role in building the Black middle class (perhaps a reason President Donald Trump and Musk have the agency in their crosshairs, given the administration’s anti-Black and segregationist agenda). Moreover, since formal education is not required to become a postal service worker, the USPS is one of the few places where workers can earn decent pay regardless of education level.

As I’ve written before, we should be imagining the dismantling of Wells Fargo, not the privatizing of the USPS.

Wells Fargo is an enormously unpopular bank well-known for its scandalous business practices. On a 2023 ranking of the 100 largest publicly traded banks, factoring criteria like credit quality and profitability, Wells Fargo came in last place. Two years later, it didn’t even make the list. The mega bank has been charged billions of dollars in fines and penalties from regulators for repeated wrongful and illegal practices, including foreclosing on people’s homes, repossessing vehicles, and overcharging fees and interest. The bank is fodder for comedy routines and an easy target for activists and policy makers wanting to express their displeasure with the finance industry overall.

A bank that has kicked people out of their own homes and deprived people of their livelihoods now wants to undermine the public service that delivers the mail, too. If Wells Fargo and private investors get their way, more expensive parcel rates would be only one of many concerns. One place to look for understanding just how much privatization can cost are the experiences of people who are incarcerated.

For people locked behind bars, mail and phone calls are lifelines to the outside world. But, they’re expensive to get. Phone calls are especially costly, in part because these services have been monopolized by private telecommunications companies taking advantage of captive populations. In some jails and prisons, telecoms charge $1 per minute for phone calls. One 15-minute phone call can easily cost as much as $25 — an outlandish price for the human right of communicating with loved ones. In 2024, the Federal Communications Commission intervened and issued a rule cutting costs for phone calls in jails and prisons. Under the new rule, a 15-minute phone call now costs between 90 cents and $1.35.

If the USPS is privatized, we can expect private investors to raise prices on stamps and parcel rates in the same way telecoms have made their profits off people who are incarcerated. Instead of the promise to deliver to every address, your zip code will matter more than ever. Rural communities, communities of color and poor communities will likely pay the highest rates for mail delivery, since, like incarceration, residential segregation aids in identifying groups of people for exploitation.

Instead of privatizing the USPS, we should be expanding its public services. For example, the USPS can expand the financial services it already provides. The agency sells over $21 billion in money orders every year and, between 1911 and 1967, operated a popular banking system out of the nation’s post offices. At its height, nearly 4 million people held $3.4 billion in interest-bearing accounts (over $50.5 billion in today’s dollars). People made deposits and purchased savings bonds alongside sending and receiving mail. However, President Lyndon B. Johnson ended postal banking as sales from defense bonds waned after World War II, bank lobbyists applied pressure, and people went elsewhere for financial services.

It’s certainly possible the USPS is better at offering these financial services than Wells Fargo, given the bank’s massive “fake accounts” scandal, where employees, under pressure to meet aggressive sales quotas, opened bank accounts for people without their knowledge and then charged excessive fees. In fact, rather than privatization, the USPS could be expanded to operate a public banking system again — a timely idea since private banks are facing less regulatory oversight from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to rein in their costs and fees.

The USPS is an agency where struggles for democracy and justice converge. If you care about organized labor, you care about the USPS. If you care about climate change, you care about the USPS. If you care about racial, economic and reproductive justice, you care about the USPS. If you care that your grandma receives her social security check, you care about the USPS.

Wells Fargo does not care about any of these things. Don’t let it privatize the USPS.

There are a few things you can do to take action and save the USPS. Sign a petition, call your senators, host a teach-in event in your community or record a video about what the USPS means to you. Tell Wells Fargo and the Trump administration to get their hands off the USPS.


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Terri Friedline writes, organizes and teaches about racial capitalism, technology and the financial system. She is a professor of social work at the University of Michigan and is the author of Banking on a Revolution: Why Financial Technology Won’t Save a Broken System (Oxford University Press).

'US Mail Is Not For Sale': Americans Across Political Spectrum Oppose Postal Service Privatization

"Postal customers should trust their gut when it comes to schemes to sell off or transfer the USPS," said the head of the American Postal Workers Union.


Activists protest during a "U.S. Mail Not For Sale" rally near the Brentwood Post Office on March 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Julia Conley
May 08, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

As the Trump administration signaled a potential step toward privatizing the U.S. Postal Service with the reported selection of a FedEx board member to serve as postmaster general, new polling on Thursday showed just how strongly the American public would oppose such a move.

The survey by Hart Research Associates and North Star Opinion Research, which was commissioned by the American Postal Workers Union, found that 60% of respondents were opposed to privatizing the postal service, while just 26% were in favor.

The opposition cut across ideological, geographic, and demographic divides, with people in all regions of the country saying they wanted to maintain the USPS as a public service by a margin of at least 29 points—and as many as 40 points in western states.

While rural voters supported President Donald Trump by a 23-point margin in the 2024 election, the research firms posited that the heavy reliance people in far-flung areas have on the USPS helped push rural respondents to say they oppose privatization, with 58% saying they were against it.

As Common Dreams reported last month, an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies found that private mail carriers like FedEx and UPS already charge "remote surcharges" to 8% of all U.S. ZIP Codes—home to nearly 4 million people—because they are in mountain communities and other remote areas. While USPS has a universal service obligation, people in rural areas pay up to $15.50 for deliveries from private companies.


Fifty-six percent of Americans said privatization would result in higher prices for mailing packages and letters, while 17% said prices were likely to improve.

Without competition from USPS, private companies could impose additional charges for weekend deliveries, fuel, residential deliveries, and more.

"Postal customers should trust their gut when it comes to schemes to sell off or transfer the USPS," said APWU president Mark Dimondstein. "Plans to privatize the Post Office are about enriching Wall Street and not serving Main Street. Evidence shows that selling off the USPS would lead to higher prices for postal services as well as higher prices for shipping packages at FedEx and UPS."

On the House floor recently, U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) warned that "corporations won't serve what isn't profitable."

"This isn't about efficiency," she said. "This is about dismantling public services so they can prove government doesn't work."




The poll was released two months after Wells Fargo presented a five-step plan for privatizing USPS to Wall Street investors, including raising USPS prices by as much as 140%, selling postal real estate to commercial bidders, and imposing mass layoffs on the service's 600,000 employees.

The bank said privatization would lead to the "harvesting," or closing, of neighborhood post offices across the country—something 72% of respondents opposed in Thursday's poll.

Trump ally Elon Musk also said in March that Amtrak and USPS were top targets for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which the president selected him to lead and which has pushed to dismantle numerous government agencies and laid off nearly 300,000 federal employees.

"I think logically we should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized," Musk said. Trump has also expressed support for privatization.

Respondents to Thursday's poll expressed support for a number of steps that could strengthen the U.S. Postal Service's finances, including 77% who backed making office supplies available for purchase in post offices, 72% who supported the selling of hunting and fishing licenses, and 60% who supported making magazines and newspapers available for purchase.

"The survey results indicate that the outlook is good in our ongoing fight against privatizers trying to sell off our public Postal Service for profit," said the APWU. "We should remain steady in our message—the U.S. Mail Is Not for Sale!"

'A blatant conflict': Trump just made 'aggressive step' toward fundamentally changing USPS

Story by Jake Johnson, 

Common Dreams
• 22h •


REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque© provided by AlterNet

President Donald Trump and the U.S. Postal Service's leadership have reportedly agreed to appoint a FedEx board member to succeed Louis DeJoy as postmaster general, heightening concerns that the administration is pushing the independent mail agency toward privatization.

The Washington Postreported late Tuesday that Trump and the USPS Board of Governors are expected to name former Waste Management CEO David Steiner to lead the Postal Service. Steiner is currently the lead independent director at FedEx, a Postal Service competitor.

Brian Renfroe, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers—a union representing nearly 300,000 active and retired letter carriers—called the decision to place Steiner at the head of the USPS "an aggressive step toward handing America's mail system over to corporate interests."

"Private shippers have been waiting to get USPS out of parcel delivery for years," said Renfroe. "Steiner's selection is an open invitation to do just that. This isn't just bad policy—it's a direct assault on the workers who keep the mail moving and the public connected. The damage will hit rural communities hardest, where the Postal Service isn't just a convenience—it's a lifeline. And make no mistake: If this appointment stands, it threatens 7.9 million jobs tied to the postal industry and service to over 300 million Americans."

"The board has the responsibility to do what is best for USPS," he added. "This decision is not only a failure in that responsibility but shows open contempt for the work of America's letter carriers and the public good."

"The Trump administration has been relentless in its attempts to privatize America's most trusted institution, both outwardly and behind the scenes."

The USPS Board of Governors—which is currently comprised of two Democrats, two Republicans, and an independent—is ultimately responsible for appointing the head of the mail service, who cannot be directly fired by the president.

The Post reported Tuesday that postal governors, who are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, submitted three postmaster general finalists to the White House in recent days, including Steiner.

"Trump has the power to immediately reshape the [postal board] with five appointments: The board has four vacancies, plus a seat that is occupied temporarily," the Post noted. "Trump announced plans to nominate Anthony Lomangino, a GOP financier, to one of those roles."

Earlier this year, Trump considered but soon dropped a plan to fire every member of the postal board and bring the USPS under the direct control of his administration. The president has also spoken openly about privatizing the mail service, saying in the wake of his 2024 election win that "it's an idea that a lot of people have liked for a long time."

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement Tuesday that "the Trump administration has been relentless in its attempts to privatize America's most trusted institution, both outwardly and behind the scenes."

"If these reports are true, it is a blatant conflict of interest and an attempt by President Trump to install a handpicked loyalist who he believes will put his interests over what may be best for the Postal Service and the American people," Connolly said of Steiner's selection. "The American people deserve a postmaster general who will stand up for an independent, fair, and accessible Postal Service and who will work with Congress to ensure Americans in all communities nationwide can continue to rely on this public service to deliver mail, medications, ballots, and more without prejudice."

 

US Postal Workers Throng to 500 Rallies to Save the Postal Service

By Alexandra Bradbury

March 30, 2025

Source: Labor Notes

“Whose Postal Service?” workers chanted in New York City: “The people’s Postal Service.” (Photo: Jenny Brown)

From big cities to small towns, postal workers organized hundreds of rallies across the country in the past week to defend a beloved public service—and the nation’s largest union employer—against privatization and DOGE attack.

“Whose Postal Service?” workers chanted in New York: “The people’s Postal Service.”

“U.S. Mail Is Not for Sale” was the rallying cry March 20 at 250 rallies organized by the Postal Workers (APWU). “Fight Like Hell” was the theme March 23 for another 210 rallies led by the Letter Carriers (NALC).

A hundred people came out to the NALC rally in St. Petersburg, Florida, covering all four corners of the busiest intersection in town, said Roger Ezra Butterfield, a recently minted steward in APWU.

“I’ve been going to pickets for about 15 years, for farmworkers, for nurses, but I’ve never seen such a positive reception,” Butterfield said. “The ratio of getting flipped off to getting cheered on was heavily in our favor. There was so much honking, people shouting ‘We love postal workers!’ It was incredibly exciting.”

A hundred and twenty showed up for the APWU rally in Des Moines, Iowa, said letter carrier Margo O’Neill. “We were fired up,” she said. “More than anything I was glad to have the chance to express solidarity with APWU. I’m glad we can start working together.” Mail handlers and rural carriers came too: all four major postal service unions were represented.

BOTTOM-UP PLANNING

The NALC’s “Fight Like Hell” events were originally meant to be contract rallies, after letter carriers voted down a pitiful contract offer in January.

It was a breakthrough for the union’s bottom-up reform movement when NALC leadership agreed to call a national day of action. After a couple zigs and zags, the national even got on board with the date backed by the Build a Fighting NALC caucus—a Sunday, when most members are off work.

An energetic demonstration in Detroit, possibly the first that NALC Branch 1 has ever organized, drew 300 enthusiastic letter carriers and family members. “This is my first rally—and it won’t be my last,” one worker told longtime Labor Notes editor Jane Slaughter, who called it the most encouraging rally she had been to since Trump took office.

Three hundred turned out in the pouring rain in Seattle, where speakers included a federal worker from the Environmental Protection Agency and a veteran of the 1970 postal strike.

DOWNSIZE AND PRIVATIZE?

Foreboding clouds have hung over USPS since the reelection of Trump, who during his first term made no secret of his ambitions to downsize and privatize the service. His Postal Board of Governors back then appointed as Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Trump campaign fundraiser from the private logistics sector.

While protests have stalled some parts of DeJoy’s 10-year plan of drastic cost-cutting and reorganization, he has managed to enact others, and until recently vowed he wasn’t going anywhere. But in February he announced he would be leaving, though he didn’t set a date.

Days later the Washington Post broke the news that Trump was on the verge of signing an executive order to bring the currently independent USPS under the Commerce Department, an illegal move that would presumably curtail union rights. Unlike other federal workers, postal workers since their 1970 strike have enjoyed full collective bargaining rights and the protections of the National Labor Relations Act.

The executive order still hasn’t arrived—but the threat set many dominos tumbling. The Postal Board of Governors held an emergency meeting and hired its own lawyers. DeJoy opened the door and invited DOGE in to help him hack away at specific parts of USPS, including workers’ retirement and a regulatory commission he doesn’t like. Wells Fargo investment analysts put out a memo drooling over postal privatization opportunities.

And the NALC leadership rushed the economic part of the contract into expedited arbitration, abandoned noneconomic issues, and refocused its “Fight Like Hell” rallies to emphasize the new threats.

CONTRACT FALLOUT

The day after the rallies, March 24, NALC President Brian Renfroe announced that the arbitrator had awarded a deal on March 21. The raises are barely improved—where the rejected offer had raises of 1.3 percent each year, the forced-upon-members contract has 1.3 percent the first year, 1.4 the second, and 1.5 the third.

Letter carriers, fresh off the energy of their rallies, were furious.

“It’s functionally the same contract that we all just voted down,” said O’Neill. She thought Renfroe might have trouble winning his next election after this. “One thing that rang true in a lot of people’s minds immediately is that UPS with [Teamsters then-President] James Hoffa Jr., he forced through that contract that they had voted down [in 2018] and then he ended up getting voted out.”

She has been helping build a local chapter of the Build a Fighting NALC caucus. “We have made so many connections with letter carriers across the state,” she said, giving as an example the town of Ames, which turned out 50-60 people for the NALC rally—impressive for a branch with just 30 members. People in rural communities, whatever their politics, rely on the postal service.

“It’s really heartening to see people standing up and see resistance even in these small pockets of Iowa,” O’Neill said. “I know there are a lot of people out there who are really upset with the union and just want to leave the union. We’re offering an alternative and saying, ‘Don’t leave the union. We need all hands on deck to make it better—either push leadership to take our side or find a new leadership.’”

In Seattle, “the members of Branch 79 that showed up, showed that they cared to fight and cared to win, and they had the gumption to win,” said letter carrier C. Moline. “Brian Renfroe has shown time and time again that he doesn’t have that, and that’s why he should step down. But he won’t step down, and that’s why we’re going to have to take him down.

“All the pride I feel about our rally is about equal to all the shame I feel about this man.”

The union election is next year. Two candidates have been gathering steam to challenge Renfroe for the presidency. And bargaining has taken so long that the NALC will be back at the table at next year, too. This contract is retroactive to 2023 and expires in 2026.

WOLF AT THE DOOR

A national day of action is not so novel in the APWU. Members rally regularly, most recently last fall when bargaining kicked off. But turnout was higher this time: at least double, for instance, in Tampa.

“There’s a feeling in the air that something is different,” said Butterfield. Local union leaders have been projecting urgency: texting members, asking stewards to talk about the threat, holding town halls on all three shifts in the distribution plant. Still, there’s also skepticism: people say “I’ve been hearing about privatization my entire career, and it hasn’t happened yet.”

“The boy who cried wolf metaphor been raised,” Butterfield said. “Our local president is saying this is very different: the wolf is at the door.”

The Wells Fargo memo bluntly suggests mass layoffs, doubling postal prices, selling off half the post offices, and eliminating the central mandate that USPS must provide universal service at universal rates. “You can send a postcard from rural Alaska to Tampa, Florida, for less than a dollar,” Butterfield said.

The APWU is still in bargaining, working under an extension of its recently expired contract. At last summer’s convention, members passed a resolution that the union should answer the United Auto Workers’ call to line up contract expirations around May Day 2028; this would be the contract in which to get that done.

The Rural Carriers (NRLCA) also rallied March 24 in Washington, D.C.

FOX ENTERS HENHOUSE

Contrary to what he had said about sticking around to make a smooth transition to his replacement, Postmaster General DeJoy announced his immediate resignation on March 24. Washington Post reporting suggested he was pushed out for not giving DOGE complete access.

“He let the fox into the henhouse and said, ‘Why don’t you just do the dishes,’” Moline said. “That’s not how this works.”

Meanwhile the administration’s attacks on workers in the rest of the federal sector are reaching a fever pitch. The latest executive order, issued March 27, is meant to eliminate the limited collective bargaining rights that federal workers have had. Four current bills in the House would dismantle additional union rights, like dues deduction and paid time for stewards.

“Forcing our representatives to go on record opposing legislation like that would be a good step,” said O’Neill. “The most important thing is that we organize, talk to the people we work with, discuss what privatization would mean for us—for the city letter carrier, and for our families that don’t live in cities.”

“While [Trump] has us looking at policies of hate and discrimination and prejudice, what he’s doing is he’s distracting us from the real picture,” said New York Metro Area APWU President Jonathan Smith at the March 20 rally. “And the real picture is corporate greed.

“Do not ever believe that this fight is about white versus black. It’s about rich versus poor. It’s about the haves and the have-nots… Who built this country? It wasn’t people in suits. It was people in coveralls.”

Jane Slaughter and Jenny Brown contributed reporting.