Trump Deploys Armed Guards to Seize Control of the Mail Before Midterms

The U.S. Postal Service is moving to station additional contracted armed security officers at multiple mail-processing facilities nationwide, according to an exclusive RawStory investigation published Tuesday that cites internal agency communications.

Scholars, postal union leaders, and a former postal police official warn the step could signal broader efforts by the Trump administration to exert greater federal influence over the handling of mail-in ballots ahead of the midterms.

RawStory reviewed documents showing USPS approval for more than 12,000 hours of contracted security work per week at 18 facilities this month. Broader union notifications describe roughly 39,000 weekly hours supporting the equivalent of 972 full-time armed guards across 54 sites, 18 of which previously had none.

The added labor costs run into the tens of millions of dollars annually at a time when the agency recorded about $2 billion in net losses in its most recent financial quarter.

The development comes as friction over mail voting has heightened to a fever pitch thanks to Trump’s world’s persistent conspiracy theories about alleged voter fraud. Last month the Supreme Court ruled that states may continue counting mail ballots postmarked by Election Day even if they arrive later.

Trump has pressed a federal judge to lift a temporary block on an executive order that would expand USPS authority to screen who is eligible to vote by mail. James O’Rourke, an emeritus professor at the University of Notre Dame who studies the postal service, told Raw Story that such screening would represent “an unprecedented, potentially unconstitutional, involvement of the federal government in the administration of elections.”

Postal unions and their representatives frame the security contracts as part of a longer campaign that has already curtailed the role of the Postal Police Officers Association.

Those officers, once numbering more than 2,600 in the 1970s, have dwindled to 314 in the bargaining unit as of May 1. After a multi-year legal fight, USPS restricted them largely to facility grounds rather than street patrols that once protected letter carriers.

Frank Albergo, PPOA president and a retired postal police officer, told RawStory that restoring street authority would make private armed replacements unnecessary. He noted that letter-carrier robberies rose 543 percent over a recent three-year span, with some attacks involving guns or resulting in deaths — figures first detailed in a 2024 Raw Story probe.

Training disparities heighten the concern. Postal police officers complete 1,440 hours of instruction over nine months that include active-shooter response, use-of-force, and medical emergency protocols. By contrast, a CNN/Center for Investigative Reporting examination found many private armed guards receive only about 54 hours of training, 14 of them on firearms; fifteen states require no firearms training at all.

Albergo called the arrangement “a ticking time bomb.”

Union officials also pointed to a large Georgia processing warehouse that has seen four employee deaths in two years. The site was approved for at least 1,344 weekly security-guard hours in early 2024, yet lacks postal police presence. After the most recent fatality, a 45-year-old worker who collapsed during a medical emergency, American Postal Workers Union President Jonathan Smith criticized the absence of emergency phones and a protocol that requires on-site security to respond before outside medical services are summoned.

Attorney Arlus Stephens, who has represented the postal police union, described the 2020 reinterpretation of officers’ authority as a “nuclear weapon” in a pay and status dispute. He argued USPS would rather outsource security at high cost than reverse course.

Albergo and O’Rourke both linked the contracts to longer-running privatization debates. Trump has floated privatizing the Postal Service in both of his terms; a recent memo about meetings with the now-dissolved Department of Government Efficiency previously raised alarms among experts. O’Rourke said privatization remains possible if the president judges it advantageous, but that the more immediate goal appears to be “control” of the mail stream.

“If I get rid of the watchdog, the security, I can appoint anybody I want. This is a flat-out attempt to steal the next election,” he said.

The Raw Story account underscores a collision of labor, security, fiscal, and electoral pressures at an agency already under strain. Whether the expanded use of private armed contractors remains a narrow operational fix or becomes a lever for wider federal influence over ballot handling will be tested in the months leading to the midterms.