steiner, david USPO
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Postmaster General David Steiner speaks during an interview with the Associated Press at the United States Postal Service headquarters, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026, in Washington. (Mark Schiefelbein / Ap Photo/mark Schiefelbein)
By Steven Sloan
Sept. 28, 2026
Postmaster General David Steiner says he is “not political,” but his quick move to implement President Trump’s mail-voting restrictions has drawn criticism from Democrats and Republicans.
After the Supreme Court rejected the effort, Steiner said work stopped on a controversial voter-roll portal, while questions persist about the Postal Service’s independence.
The agency faces a $9-billion loss, a looming cash crunch and election-year worries over late mail ballots; Steiner urged voters to send ballots a week early.
WASHINGTON — Long before he was the top official at the U.S. Postal Service, David Steiner was a corporate executive surfing mid-oughts television when he came across Donald Trump on “The Apprentice.”
He was unimpressed.
“If that is leadership, if that’s what we’re telling people that our culture and our media portrays as leadership, we’re screwed,” Steiner, then the CEO of Waste Management, said during a 2007 speech at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. “If that’s leadership, count me out.”
“And for God’s sake,” he added to laughter, “if I have to get my hair to look like that, if I have to do that to be a leader, you can definitely count me out.”
Nearly two decades later, Trump has migrated from reality television to the presidency. And onetime detractors — Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, for example — now loyally execute his agenda.
Trump’s effort to use the Postal Service as a tool to reshape American elections is testing whether Steiner will follow a similar path.
Independent or a Trump ‘pawn’?
When Trump signed an executive order restricting mail ballots this year, Steiner moved quickly to finalize a rule implementing the measure, arguing he had little choice. But after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the effort, Steiner told The Associated Press that work had stopped on one of the plan’s most controversial elements, a government portal for voter rolls.
He refused to endorse the Republican president’s order as sound policy, saying he was focused on implementation and letting the courts ultimately decide the matter.
“I don’t get to decide what rules that are put on us that I decide to accept or not accept,” he said. “We are an independent agency of the executive branch.”
The episode prompted fierce criticism of Steiner for allowing Trump to deploy an agency designed to be shielded from politics.
Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state, called him a “Trump lackey.” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, recently asked Congress to deploy observers to ensure postal workers can scan envelopes holding mail ballots without disruption, saying the Trump administration “has attempted to weaponize federal agencies to interfere in our elections, and the leadership at USPS is going along with it.”
Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., accused Steiner of being a Trump “pawn” during a congressional hearing this summer. Dozens of congressional Democrats have pressed Steiner to reveal his interactions with the White House during the development of the mail ballot rule.
Some Republicans have joined in the criticism. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, incensed by abandoned mail, called for Steiner’s resignation and introduced legislation to block him from receiving a bonus.
During a lengthy interview, Steiner seemed surprised at points by his reception in Washington. He insisted he wasn’t a “political person” and said he had no intention of stepping down despite the criticism. He dismissed heated congressional appearances as “theater” at odds with more substantive private interactions on Capitol Hill.
Steiner was chagrined, however, at the mention of his 2007 remarks on Trump, delivered well before he launched a political career. Steiner recalled speaking at the university but said he didn’t remember his comments, acknowledging a tendency to be “flippant.”
“That’s funny,” he said. “I don’t recall it.”
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment on Steiner’s remarks or his stewardship of the Postal Service.
Steiner didn’t follow the traditional path to power in Trump’s Washington
The Postal Service dates to Benjamin Franklin, the first postmaster general, whose portrait and bust are displayed in Steiner’s office overlooking the Washington Wharf. The agency has more than 630,000 employees, dwarfing many Cabinet departments.
While the quickest way to top jobs in Trump’s Washington is often by writing big checks, the 66-year-old Steiner doesn’t appear to have followed that course. He has largely donated to Republicans but also gave to John Kerry’s Democratic presidential campaign in 2004. Unlike his predecessor as postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, Steiner was not a major GOP donor or Trump backer.
Born in Oakland, California, as one of eight children to a father who spent his career at Chevron, Steiner worked in corporate and securities law before moving to Waste Management in 2000. He became CEO in 2004 and ran the company for 12 years. He was also a longtime director at FedEx, where board chairman Brad Martin recalled him as “outcome oriented” and rarely political.
“He’s going to follow the rules. He’s going to follow the law,” Martin said. “I don’t recall us ever talking politics.”
By the time a headhunter contacted Steiner about the postmaster general job, he was largely removed from daily corporate life and initially demurred.
“I talked to my wife, and we both agreed I was happily retired,” he said.
He changed his mind, he said, during a visit to the beaches of Normandy, feeling a sense of civic duty.
Now at the Postal Service, he earns about $346,000 in annual salary along with a relocation bonus that amounts to half his salary, far less than the $17 million in compensation he earned during his final year at Waste Management. His current role is designed to exist one layer removed from the political process, reporting to a board of governors that is selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
He was hired in 2025 by a board that was made up of five members, three of whom were Democrats. All but one were appointed by President Joe Biden. That makeup could change as four Trump nominees — all Republicans — await Senate confirmation. Steiner can be fired only by the board.
Steiner said he first met Trump along with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at the board’s urging after he was already selected as postmaster general. Since then, he described a minimal relationship with the White House.
“We don’t fly on the radar,” he said.
That is, until Trump revived his effort in March to crack down on mail voting. Steiner said he “wasn’t in on the development piece” of the order and first saw it about a month before it was signed.
“They gave it to us to say, ‘Have your lawyers look at it, and how do you operationalize it?’” Steiner said.
The portal spurred a massive development effort inside the Postal Service while some states criticized it as federal overreach. A whistleblower report released by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., argued the system was hastily built and riddled with errors, though Steiner said he was confident it could have been unveiled around Sept. 15.
“The heavy lifting was clearly, clearly the IT work,” Steiner said.
Challenges ahead for the Postal Service
Though the Supreme Court dispensed with the rule, the dynamics for the Postal Service don’t get easier.
The agency posted a $9 billion net loss last year, and Steiner has warned it could soon run out of cash unless Congress lifts a $15 billion borrowing cap. Political hurdles have prevented potential cost savings from cutting service or closing some post offices.
And while Trump’s executive order won’t take effect, the Postal Service will still play a critical role in this year’s elections. There are mounting concerns that mail ballots could be rejected for late postmarks. Steiner encouraged voters to get their ballots in a week before the election to avoid problems.
The Postal Service is a rare corner of government still viewed favorably with more than half of Americans, 56%, saying it was doing an “excellent” or “good” job in a Gallup poll conducted last year. That could change if the agency is seen as increasingly political.
Steiner, however, said Americans will judge the Postal Service by their experience of it.
“What they care about is when they get that wedding invitation after the wedding or when they send a package and it disappears,” he said. “If we want to have the trust of the American public, let’s be the best service provider. Everything else is noise.”
Sloan writes for the Associated Press.
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Most Recent Post
October 7, 2026/
USPS Hires Security Service With History of Human Rights Abuse
Nearly 1,000 armed guards have descended on the United States Postal Service, deploying to at least 55 facilities across the country ahead of Election Day.
The security officers were contracted through multinational private security company Prosegur, according to a Raw Story investigation.
Prosegur has a history of alleged human rights violations, including an incident as recent as 2024 in which the company’s Brazilian subsidiary reportedly prevented indigenous people from accessing food and medical care at a nearby town, per an assessment by the Ethics Council of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund.
Prosegur’s guards are currently located at USPS facilities in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Indianapolis, Phoenix, San Diego, and Tampa, according to internal memos obtained by Raw Story.
One postal contractor that spoke with the digital outlet said she was “alarmed” that the armed security guards were predominantly confined to “deep blue states or swing states.”
Frank Albergo, the executive director of the Postal Police Officers Association union, said that the armed guards were deployed at facilities with more than 1,000 employees.
“No one from the postal service will be supervising these armed guards. It will be completely a private contractor who controls these armed guards, so you basically have private contractors in and around ballots without any federal control. To me, that’s crazy,” Albergo told Raw Story.
“It just could be a red flag. Will it have an impact on the election? Who knows? But you certainly could argue that it has an effect,” Albergo continued. “It might give Trump an excuse to call into question the integrity of the election. That’s the problem. It’s the perception of it.”
Cathy K. Purcell, a senior public relations representative for USPS, told The New Republic Thursday that the introduction of armed guards at its facilities “has absolutely nothing to do with elections.” She noted that the deployments have been “ongoing since last year.”
“These guards are deployed to provide security and act as a deterrent to criminals or employees who may wish to compromise the mailstream or potentially harm the people inside our facilities,” Purcell wrote in a statement. “Our use of armed and unarmed guards at these key government facilities is consistent with the use of armed and unarmed guards at other critical local, state, and federal government buildings such as hospitals and schools.”
Yet those with knowledge of Prosegur and its practices are still suspicious. Mark Ungar, a political science professor at the John Jay School of Criminal Justice in New York who has researched private security firms such as Prosegur, suggested to Raw Story that the company’s presence could afford the Trump administration a retroactive alibi.
“The Trump administration is clearly taking every step they can to control voting, and they’re going to use the Postal Service to do that,” Ungar said. “Any contract with Prosegur, any way that removes accountability from the American people of the Postal Service, which they’re already doing, I think, is concerning at the very least.”
Since the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump has repeatedly argued that the Postal Service should be dismantled to prevent mail-in voting—a practice that he has repeatedly accused of fraud despite zero evidence and his own apparent preference to vote by mail.
The Supreme Court buoyed one of Trump’s more aggressive voter suppression efforts in August, permitting the White House to move forward with new mail-in voting requirements and an executive order that transferred control of the mail-in voting process to “Trump lackey” (according to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold) Postmaster General David Steiner.
The judiciary decided the following month, however, that the new requirements would not affect the 2026 midterm cycle, effectively thwarting Trump’s eleventh-hour attempt to create a conservative edge in the race to control Washington.
Yet Steiner has already attempted to flex the power of his position. On Wednesday, Steiner informed the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that, under a new rule, the USPS would not offer ballot services to states that refused to hand over their voter rolls to the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, the president promoted mail-in voting to his supporters on Monday, urging them to cast their ballot however possible, briefly reversing course on his performative opposition to mail-in voting in the face of what looks like it will be a blue tsunami next month.
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- martindvasquez.substack.com
- https://martindvasquez.substack.com › p › usps-david-steiner-is-breaking-the
USPS David Steiner is Breaking the Law & Must Be Jailed Before He ...
- Aug 23, 2026And he is not entitled to use the United States Postal Service as a tool for undermining an election that belongs to the American people, not to him, not to the Postmaster General's office, and not to any president who seeks to control how citizens cast their votes. The courts must act. Congress must act. And Steiner must be stopped. Sources:
- Postal Employee Network
- https://postalemployeenetwork.com › news › 2026 › 08 › 03 › illinois-congressman-calls-for-removal-of-postmaster-general-over-effort-to-implement-trumps-election-mail-executive-order
Illinois Congressman Calls for Removal of Postmaster General Over ...
- Aug 3, 2026WASHINGTON — 8/3/26 - Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, today called on the Postal Service Board of Governors to remove Postmaster General David Steiner, accusing him of using the U.S. Postal Service in an effort to implement President Trump's election mail executive order, which federal courts have twice held ...
- Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi
- https://krishnamoorthi.house.gov › media › press-releases › krishnamoorthi-calls-removal-postmaster-general-over-effort-implement-trumps
Krishnamoorthi Calls for Removal of Postmaster General Over Effort to ...
- Aug 3, 2026WASHINGTON — Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, today called on the Postal Service Board of Governors to remove Postmaster General David Steiner, accusing him of using the U.S. Postal Service
Postal Times
https://postaltimes.com › usps-hires-security-service-with-history-of-human-rights-abuse
USPS Hires Security Service With History of Human Rights Abuse
2 days agoProsegur has a history of alleged human rights violations, including an incident as recent as 2024 in which the company's Brazilian subsidiary reportedly prevented indigenous people from accessing food and medical care at a nearby town, per an assessment by the Ethics Council of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund.
Yahoo
https://www.yahoo.com › news › politics › articles › usps-hires-shady-armed-security-160211824.html
USPS Hires Security Service With History of Human Rights Abuse - Yahoo
2 days agoProsegur has a history of alleged human rights violations, including an incident as recent as 2024 in which the company's Brazilian subsidiary reportedly prevented indigenous people from accessing ...
Business & Human Rights Resource Centre
Prosegur sent the BHRRC a statement about allegedly serious and ...
Oct 3, 2024...In response to recent reports linking Prosegur to alleged human rights violations, the company clarifies the following: • Prosegur categorically rejects the accusations and reaffirms its strong commitment to the respect and promotion of human rights. In fact, the company provided concrete and ...
NewsBreak
'What the hell?' Shock as USPS gets armed guards from firm ... - NewsBreak
Between 2021 and 2023, Prosegur's security guards were accused of "serious and systematic human rights violations" while guarding Agropalma's land. They were accused of forcefully blocking local Indigenous communities from accessing their ancestral burial grounds, fishing, and traveling to nearby towns for medical attention and food supplies.
PROSEGUR.COM
https://www.prosegur.com › en › about › sustainability › social › human-rigths
Human Rights | Sustainability | Prosegur.com
Action Possible Human Rights violations detected and processes that have proven to be deficient or improvable for the protection of Human Rights are corrected. In addition, every three years and on a voluntary basis, Prosegur uses third parties to provide services in the review of the management of Human Rights due diligence.
MSN
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