SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
On this day 250 years ago, the Continental Congress appointed the first postmaster general of the United States - Benjamin Franklin. David Steiner is the latest person to hold the office. He is the 77th postmaster general. Before taking office last week, he served on the board of FedEx, a personal detail that reignites some worries about postal reforms that some fear could limit or end rural mail service. The Midwest Newsroom's Nick Loomis has more on that. And a note - USPS is a financial supporter of NPR.
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NICK LOOMIS, BYLINE: Gwen Smith walks from her front door to her mailbox and back six days a week. It's about a quarter mile.
GWEN SMITH: I would say it's a relatively short trip to the mailbox for us rural folks.
LOOMIS: She lives outside Scottsbluff, Nebraska, with her husband, Alan, who is recovering from surgery for liver cancer. He also suffers from diabetes, arthritis and the lingering effects of West Nile virus. The former Navy corpsman gets most of his medications through the mail from Veterans Affairs.
ALAN SMITH: Did you find anything?
G SMITH: We got a parcel and a bill.
A SMITH: Oh.
LOOMIS: Former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy curtailed rural mail service with his Delivering for America plan, which he introduced in 2021 to stem annual losses in the billions. Still, the deficits persist, and mail delivery is slower due to a reduction in work hours, collection time changes and the consolidation of processing facilities. Alan Smith worries about those changes and cuts made to many other government programs.
A SMITH: It feels to me like it's coming at me right and left. They're trying to destroy everything that supports me staying alive and functioning.
LOOMIS: President Trump has suggested privatizing the Postal Service in both of his terms. Most recently, he has said it could be brought under the Department of Commerce. Congress set up the agency to be independent of the White House in 1971, and undoing that would require further legislation. Even though this Congress has mostly adhered to Trump's agenda, the Postal Service is a touchy political subject for lawmakers from rural states, like Republican Congressman Mike Flood of Nebraska.
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MIKE FLOOD: Can it be modernized? Absolutely. Should it be privatized? I'd have to be sold on what the plan was before we went anywhere near that because I know people in rural Nebraska rely on the Postal Service in its current form.
LOOMIS: And currently, the Postal Service self-finances and generally does not count on tax dollars to fill its budget gaps. Elena Patel of the Brookings Institution says it might be time to reconsider that because it provides a public service.
ELENA PATEL: We should be willing to compensate the Postal Service for doing that, and we do not currently. We don't come close to offsetting the costs of the USO for the Postal Service.
LOOMIS: USO is the universal service obligation, which requires the Postal Service to deliver to every address in the U.S. six days a week, even those on long-distance, low-density rural routes that don't generate much revenue. Patel says those costs would likely shift to taxpayers if the USO continued under privatization.
PATEL: I think that people in the administration think this is the right thing to do. I'm not sure that the American people or American business owners think that.
LOOMIS: She says the exceptions might be private shipping companies and their investors. In February, Wells Fargo wrote a report outlining, among other things, how mail and parcel delivery could be divvied up among the government and private companies like FedEx and UPS. A Wells Fargo spokesperson said in a statement that it was not recommending privatization. However, the American Postal Workers Union thought the report was controversial enough to release an ad about it.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: This is the Wall Street memo that the White House doesn't want you to see - a path to privatization of the Post Office.
LOOMIS: Union president Mark Dimondstein says the timing of the ad coincides with the 250th anniversary of the Postal Service and the arrival of the new postmaster general, David Steiner, whose appointment was backed by Trump, as reported by The Washington Post.
MARK DIMONDSTEIN: It's the old saying, you know, the fox guarding the henhouse.
LOOMIS: Steiner left the board of FedEx to take the job, but a Securities and Exchange Commission filing shows he retained company stock worth millions. The Postal Service Board of Governors chairwoman told NPR that Steiner is in the process of divesting from, quote, "prohibited stocks." And in his first message to postal workers, Steiner tried to dispel rumors about the changes he would bring.
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DAVID STEINER: First, I do not believe that the Postal Service should be privatized or that it should become an appropriated part of the federal government.
LOOMIS: Postal unions say they welcome the statement but will be watching Steiner's actions. Rural customers will likely do the same.
For NPR News, I'm Nick Loomis in Lincoln, Nebraska. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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