WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he is weighing a move that would absorb the U.S. Postal Service, an independent agency, into the Department of Commerce, a sweeping change that comes as his administration looks to overhaul the U.S. federal government.

Asked about a move to shift the agency into the Commerce Department, Trump said the idea he is considering “will be a form of a merger, but it will remain the Postal Service, and I think it will operate a lot better than it has been over the years,” in remarks from the White House on Friday.

“It’s been just a tremendous loser for this country, tremendous amounts of money they’ve lost, and we think we can do something that will be very good, and keep it a very similar way,” Trump said of the USPS. “But whether it’s a merger or just using some of the very talented people that we have elsewhere so it doesn’t lose so much, it’s losing a tremendous amount of money.”

Trump made his remarks alongside Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, just moments after he was sworn in as the new head of that department.

The Washington Post first reported Thursday that Trump was preparing an executive order that would dissolve the Postal Service leadership and absorb the agency into the Commerce Department, citing unidentified people familiar with the plans.

A White House official said earlier Friday before Trump’s remarks that no such executive order was being prepared.

The board overseeing the Postal Service plans to retain counsel to prepare for a possible fight should Trump move to absorb the independent agency into his administration, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The panel held a special meeting Thursday, during which it discussed revising its budget to hire outside lawyers, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing a matter that isn’t public. The move was made for precautionary reasons and the board was not aware of a specific plan by the administration to take over the Postal Service, the person said.

Mail service has long been considered one of the bedrock responsibilities of the U.S. government. Benjamin Franklin was named the first postmaster general a year before the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the Constitution explicitly gives Congress power to establish post offices and postal roads.

A 1970s law signed by President Richard Nixon established the Postal Service as an independent agency of the executive branch, outside the president’s Cabinet. The service has been largely self-funded ever since, relying on revenue from services to fund its operations, though it has long been plagued by financial challenges.

Unions representing postal workers said carrying out the reported preparations would amount to an illegal and unconstitutional maneuver that could jeopardize guaranteed mail delivery for tens of millions of American households.

“Firing the USPS’ leadership and transferring control is an outrageous, hostile and above all, unlawful takeover of an independently operated public institution,” Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, said in a statement Friday. “Postal customers who live and work at the 167 million addresses served six and sometimes seven days a week by the USPS should be very concerned about this act of piracy.”

The agency has been plunged into turmoil since the election as Trump mused publicly about possibly trying to privatize the service, which has a workforce of more than half a million people.

“There is talk about the postal service being taken private,” Trump said during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago in December. “Not the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

USPS took in $79.5 billion in revenue last year, according to its website. But, saddled with obligations like pension funding, the agency has been losing money fairly consistently for many years. Between 2007 and 2023, the postal service lost $98 billion.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy earlier this week asked the board to initiate a succession process after serving five years at the helm of the agency. He was appointed by the board during Trump’s first term in June 2020, shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic led to a sizable uptick in mail-in ballots in that year’s presidential election.

His tenure was fraught from the start. Trump claimed without evidence that widespread voter fraud in mail-in ballots helped former President Joe Biden win the 2020 election. Trump later went on to encourage his supporters to utilize the option ahead last year’s contest.

Less than a year into the job, DeJoy launched a sweeping, 10-year plan to modernize the agency and bring it to financial stability. But its financial woes continued. It lost another $9.5 billion last year.

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