The Washington Post reported recently that President Trump planned to fire the governing board of the U.S. Postal Service and merge the agency with the Commerce Department, prompting the board to seek legal counsel. A White House spokesperson later denied that an executive order was in the works (though it would take an act of Congress to strip away the independence of the Postal Service and make these types of drastic changes).
This isn’t the first time the president has floated the possibility of making massive changes to the popular agency.
The president’s focus on the Postal Service initially stemmed from a feud with Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, whom the president accused of getting a sweetheart deal from the Postal Service. Though Bezos has since mended fences with the president, anti-government think tanks working closely with Trump and his administration (including the Heritage Foundation) have long supported privatizing the Postal Service.
During the first Trump administration, a White House report proposed cutting postal services and shifting legacy costs for retiree benefits to the federal government to make the Postal Service profitable before privatizing it. A later task force headed by then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin downplayed overt privatization but proposed cutting services and ending postal workers’ collective bargaining rights.