New York
Cnn
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President Donald Trump said he is seeking to change US Postal Service, including the granting of the Secretary of Commerce Authority on what has been an independent organization for more than 50 years. Is an action that can be a first step towards privatization that can End how Americans receive critical deliveries including online purchases, prescription medicines, checks and votes by voting.
Washington Post reported for the first time late Thursday, citing numerous anonymous sources that President Donald Trump planned to distribute the US Postal Service Board and to place the agency under direct control of the Department of Trade and Secretary Howard Lutnick. Wall Street Journal also reported on Friday on the plan to distribute the commission, citing government officials.
Other countries have privatized their postal services in the past. But a plan to privatize the old 250-year service that envisions the formation of the United States can dramatically change the way Americans receive deliveries, and even who would be able to receive service. Current law requires the USPS to provide all the addresses, even rural ones that are very expensive for a private business to serve profitable. Even many online purchases treated by private companies such as the United Parcel service depend on the postal service to handle the “last mile” of home delivery.
Trump did not immediately report any move to distribute the board, but in Lutnick’s oath at the afternoon ceremony on Friday he confirmed that he wants to see changes in the agency as well as a supervisory role for Lutnick.
“Well, we want to have a well -functioning post office and I didn’t lose to make USPS as part of the Department of Trade.” There will remain the postal service and I think it will work much better than it has passed over the years . ”
Trump admitted that Lutnick was “looking” by reforming the postal service, citing the “Big Business Instinct” of the Secretary of Trade.
Trump did not say On Friday if he was interested in privatizing the service, which is something for which he has expressed support in the past.
Earlier in the day, a White House official told CNN that there would be no executive order that distributed the governors board, which turned out to be true, at least at the moment. But the Post reported that the Governing Board is taking the threat that it is being distributed seriously enough to hold an urgent meeting on Thursday to hold external advice with instructions to sue the White House if the President would remove the board members or try to change status I independent agency.
Trump has already moved to fire other members of federal governing agencies, such as the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, leaving them agencies without the minimum number of members needed to act for provided protection to public members.
In December, then President Trump said that USPS privatization is not “the worst idea I’ve ever heard”.
“Next to an idea that many people have liked for a long time,” Trump said at a press conference in his Mar-A-Lago wealth in Florida. “We’re seeing it.” Trump threw previous plans to try to privatize the service in 2018 during his first term.
A working group for postal reforms during Trump’s first administration argued that the current system is “unstable” and that “a private postal service with independence from Congress could manage the decline of first grade post as it continues to offer necessary services for American communities. ”
While the report predicted that “a private operation would be stimulated to innovate and improve services to Americans in each community”, it seemed to signal that the current demand for universal service for any US address could be lost.
“Major changes are needed in the way the postal service is financed and the level of service that Americans have to expect from their universal service operator,” the report argued. “A private postal operator that gives a post -weekly mail a week and in more central places (not delivery of the door) would function at fundamentally lower costs.”
But it is unlikely that Trump will be able to privatize the agency without the approval of the Congress, given many federal laws that control the independent quasi service. Among those laws is one that requires universal distribution, as well as an illegal one of a strike by USPS employees. With a 630,000 -person labor force, 91% of whom are covered by union contracts, USPS is the largest united employers of the country.
If those laws are to remain in the country in a privatized postal service it is not known.
One of the main service unions, the US Post Workers Union, issued a statement that exploded the idea of distributing the Governor or Privatization Board.
“It would be a savage, illegal attack on a preserved national treasure, provided for in the Constitution and created by Congress to serve every US home and equally,” the 200 -member Union statement said. “Sultdo attack on postal service would be part of the state of oligarch billionaire, not only to the postal workers representing our union, but millions of Americans who rely on the critical public service our members offer daily.”
The service has lost money for years, but recently reported $ 144 million net income for the last three months of 2024. It was the first lucrative quarter from April to June 2022. He posted a loss Net of $ 9.5 billion in fiscal year ending last September, from a loss of $ 6.5 billion last year.
The volume of the first class post has fallen for years after people found other ways, including email, texts another electronic communication by replacing letters, and online payments by replacing checking checks to pay bills. But the increase in online shopping has resulted in a significant increase in package volumes.
USPS is one of the most popular parts of the Federal Government, according to a study of 9,400 Americans from the Pew Research Center last July, which gave it a 72%approval rating, shortly after the National Park service, which was the most agency of known, and a little forward nasa. Both Democrats and Republicans surveyed were much more positive than negative about the Agency.
Despite denials from the White House that there is no intention of taking USPS control, privatization opponents are not secured.
“We remain very concerned,” said Brian Renfroe, president of the National Association of Literal Carriers, one of the other major unions representing 200,000 active service workers, told CNN on Friday. “The destruction of every part of the public service we offer, any road to privatization will have a result of the end line for clients, it will cost more, and it will take more time to get there.”
The popularity of TH and the degree of approval for the postal service is the reason that efforts to privatize it failed during Trump’s first administration, Renfroe said.
“The people of this country, despite their political conviction, love postal service,” he told CNN on Friday. “No matter what way they voted, what they did not vote for was the destruction of the postal service.”
Correction: A previous version of this story mistakenly reported which President of the Supervisory Board Trump is thinking of distributing. The USPS governors’ board is the Board of Governors.
This story has been updated with additional reports and contexts.