US postal workers – and many who depend on them – may have sighed in relief when the Trump-appointed postmaster general,Louis DeJoy, resignedlast month. Now, postal workers and others fear the worst is to come.
Many feared DeJoy, a prolificTrumpdonor and trucking logistics executive whopusheda 10-year consolidation plan at the agency, would be the man who would finally dismantle theUnited States Postal Service(USPS). Now the service is facing off with an empowered Trump andElon Musk, his billionaire backer and chainsaw-wielding leader of his government job-cutting “department of government efficiency” (Doge).
At stake, supporters argue, is the very existence of a service woven into US society, which can be traced back to 1775. “These are real threats. The hounds are at the door,” said Don Maston, president of the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association, the unionrepresentingmore than 130,000 mail carriers in rural America.
Workers and labor unions at the USPS are sounding the alarm and calling for public awareness of the threats of dismantling and privatizing the agency by theTrump administration.
In March, the USPS reached anagreementwith Doge to cut billions of dollars from its budget and finalize a voluntary retirement buyout program announced under the Biden administration to cut 10,000 employees. The Washington Post hasreportedindustry executives are preparing for government efforts to outsource mail and package handling and long-haul trucking routes, and offload leases for unprofitable post offices.
“There are other organizations on the chopping block right now, and it is just an amount of time before they get to us. So we just need to get the message out and get ahead of them to say ‘hands off the post office’,” said Tameka Brown, a rural letter carrier inLouisianaand president of the Louisiana Rural Letter Carriers’ Association. “We are the lifeline for a lot of American people, so to feel that your job is being threatened, it’s heart-wrenching.”
DeJoy’s cuts are already affecting service, especially in rural areas and states. Wyoming, for example, looks set to lose allafternoon mail pickup.
Brown warned that if the postal service is privatized, the services it provides would be eliminated or offered at much higher prices by private companies.
“We touch American lives every day,” added Brown. “You’re linked to us throughout your whole life in one way or the other. They need to keep their hands off the post office. Through the rain, sleet, snow and through Covid, we were there. We didn’t miss a day.”
Doge was even too much for DeJoy, whoreportedlyleft after clashing with its staff over access to the agency.
Last month, Muskvoiced supportfor privatizing the USPS. The idea has been praised on the right, including bystaffat the Heritage Foundation, whichorganizedProject 2025, and by Trump: “It’s an idea that a lot of people have liked for a long time. We’re looking at it,” he saidlast year.
Maston of the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association said Trump had been “floating balloons, seeing what he can get away with and what the reaction is going to be” over his interest in privatizing the USPS. But Trump also seems cautious. The postal service is popular with Americans, and especially rural Americans.
“It’s not the US PostalBusiness, it’s the US PostalService,”said Maston. “It’s owned by we, the people, you and I and every other American.
“The postal service is the No 2 most trusted and loved government agency. The threats and the attacks by the current administration and Elon Musk, it’s all just for a bottom line and to make something that they can make a profit off of, another piece of the pie.”
Marc Mancini, a letter carrier in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and shop steward with the National Association of Letter Carriers, said the USPS was already under intense strain. “The way I feel they’re going about it is they’re trying to save money by squeezing more and more out of workers. So you’re getting a lot more pressure from management, upper management, to have the carriers run faster and move quicker,” he said.
He noted any changes to the independence of the USPSmust be madeby Congress, but he said he was worried that the Trump administration might try to skirt around the proper channels.
“I think a lot of people cling to the hope that because of that, Trump and Doge cannot fully implement a full privatization of the post office, but I don’t think Trump really cares much for what the constitution says or what the laws are,” Mancini added. “He’s already making threats that if judges rule against them, he’s going to remove them. So I think the threat of privatization should be taken a lot more seriously.”
No permanent replacement has yet been named for DeJoy. The Washington Postreportedin February 2025 that Trump was considering dissolving the leadership of the USPS by executive order and absorbing the agency into the US Department of Commerce.
The White House rejected the report of a planned executive order, though the presidentsaidit was being looked into it. Trump claimed during the swearing-in ceremony of US Department of Commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, that the USPS was a“tremendous loser for this country”.
The merger proposal wascharacterizedby unions representing USPS workers as an attack on the workers, postal services and the people who rely on them.
Brian Renfroe, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said the USPS was far from being a “loser”. “It is a public service that does not operate on taxpayer dollars. It’s self-sustaining. It is paid for. It’s funded solely by revenue from people that mail things,” he said.
The USPSlost$9.5bn in fiscal year 2024. Indisputably, it faces huge challenges, although80%of its continued net losses are due to factors outside management’s control. Revenue losses by the agency are not entirely due to operation costs, but from liabilities for pensions and retirements that require policy changes to alleviate, such as enablingbetter pension investments.
“It’s challenging during a period of modernization where they’re trying to change and improve their network, but you have to still provide service every day. It’s almost like rebuilding a ship while you’re crossing the ocean,” said Renfroe. “Maintaining that network and public service where everyone, no matter where they live, receives the same postal services for the same price is ultra important, and that is really where the problem comes in with privatization. That would be virtually impossible to maintain in a privatized model.”
Postal workers have held rallies around the US in recent weeks, including those organized by theNational Association of Letter Carriers, theAmerican Postal Workers Union, theNational Postal Mailhandlers Unionand theNational Rural Letter Carriers’ Association. Of the 640,000 workers at the USPS, about91%are union members.
Legislation has also recently been introduced in theHouseandSenatewith Democratic and Republican support to oppose privatization of the USPS.
Tim Thomason, vice-president of the West Virginia chapter of the National Rural Letter Carriers Association and a retired mail carrier of 33 years who served out of the Princeton, West Virginia, post office, argued that rural communities rely on the postal service even more as many private mail services do not serve them because doing so is not profitable.
“Those folks rely on us. I took medicine to disabled people. I pulled cars out of ditches. I changed flat tires. It wasn’t just about being the mailman. I felt like I was part of our community,” he said. “If it is torn apart, then we lose the universal service and and I think that the people that I delivered mail to are the ones that are hurt.”
The USPS did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A senior White House official claimed “the Trump administration is not considering privatization of the USPS”.
The official added in an email: “Doge is actively assessing ways to cut waste, fraud and abuse while eliminating the presence of DEI in the USPS. The president is committed to ensuring no disruptions to the critical mission of the USPS.”