President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is vetting candidates to replace Postmaster General Louis DeJoy even though Trump won’t have direct authority to fire him, according to four people familiar with the conversations, an early signal of the incoming administration’s plans to exert control over — or privatize — the nation’s mail service.
The postmaster general serves at the pleasure of the Postal Service’s independent governing board, so unlike with most other federal agencies, the new president can’t order the post vacated. But that panel has enough vacancies that Trump and Senate Republicans eventually may be able to stock it with loyalists to reimagine the agency at the White House’s behest.
Trump declared in December that he was “looking at” taking the massive federal agency private, and some of the Postal Service’s largest customers and vendors have begun to prepare for much of the agency’s mail- and package-handling work to be outsourced to the private sector.