US Postmaster General David Steiner Said to Want Out Amid Financial Strain

The head of the United States Postal Service has told people close to him that he is deeply discouraged in the job and wants to step down, according to four individuals familiar with his thinking.

Postmaster General David Steiner, who assumed office in July 2025 after the White House pushed out his predecessor, has voiced frustration that neither the White House nor Congress has helped address the mail service's long-standing financial troubles, those people said.

The agency has simultaneously found itself at the centre of a national argument over the federal role in elections. In March, President Donald Trump directed the Postal Service to act as a clearinghouse for mail ballots. On Monday, the Supreme Court blocked the agency from carrying out key parts of that plan, a significant setback for the White House.

Those pressures came to a head at a contentious Senate hearing in June, where lawmakers from both parties pressed Steiner on weak delivery performance, the ballot restrictions and his pay. The session left him furious, the people said. In subsequent conversations, he described the role as thankless, cautioned that the agency's finances were growing more dire without federal aid, and said he wanted to leave.

"The message was, this isn't what he signed up for, and he didn't come on board to get beat up like this," one of the people said.

The Postal Service rejected the account, calling it "absolutely zero validity," but declined to address specific incidents. It did not respond to a request to interview Steiner.

The postmaster general leads an independent agency of 630,000 employees and is hired and evaluated by a bipartisan board of governors nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate — a structure meant to shield the mail service from political interference. Steiner, a former FedEx board member and former chief executive of Waste Management, told board members during hiring that he intended to serve about two years, the people said.

Since taking office, he has repeatedly warned lawmakers that without new funding the Postal Service would have to cut delivery days and close unprofitable post offices, mostly in rural, Republican-leaning areas. Legislators largely rejected those proposals, and mail and package companies objected to steep rate increases intended to reduce losses.

Trump has been more involved with the Postal Service than his predecessors, pressing it to raise parcel rates, intervening in the selection of the postmaster general and seeking to impose mail-in voting restrictions. That involvement has at times made the agency and its leaders the target of intense congressional scrutiny.

At the June hearing, Steiner clashed with Committee Chair Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, over years of financial losses, and with Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, who accused him of being a "pawn" in Trump's plans to restrict voting access. Steiner defended the president's proposal, saying states would want the information to ensure the ballots they believe they are sending out are the ones actually sent. Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri also urged Steiner to forgo his bonus because of service problems. Steiner earns an annual salary of $346,780, according to postal financial disclosures, and received a 2025 relocation bonus worth half his salary.

The four people said it was unclear how much congressional questioning over the ballot rules contributed to Steiner's frustration, noting he had already considered resigning in late 2025 over the agency's difficult finances. In an effort to lift his morale and win White House backing for his restructuring plans, Trump donors in the mailing industry arranged a December 2025 trip for the postmaster general to play golf with the president at one of his Florida resorts, the people said.