Trump Attempts an Illegal and Unconstitutional Takeover of the U.S. Postal Service

Donald Trump is attempting to absorb the U.S. Postal Service into the Department of Commerce. It may no longer be true that whoever controls the mail controls information, but this is part of a larger pattern of Trump trying to bring independent agencies under his direct control in defiance of law.

The Washington Post reports:

President Donald Trump is preparing to dissolve the leadership of the U.S. Postal Service and absorb the independent mail agency into his administration, potentially throwing the 250-year-old mail provider and trillions of dollars of e-commerce transactions into turmoil. …

Trump’s order to place the Commerce Department in charge of the Postal Service would probably violate federal law, according to postal experts. Another executive order earlier this week instructed independent agencies to align more closely with the White House, though that order is likely to prompt court challenges and the Postal Service by law is generally exempt from executive orders. …

[T]he Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, the product of a crippling nationwide mail strike, led Congress to split the agency off into a freestanding organization, purposefully walling it off from political tinkering.

There is room for debate about the relationship between presidential and congressional power in dictating the structure and management of federal agencies. But Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution specifically grants to Congress the power to “establish post offices.”

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

© The UnPopulist, 2025

Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X.