Alright, let's talk about this. https://twitter.com/WillMcAvoyACN/status/1294391310179328001?s=20

So you may be wondering how Donald Trump was so swiftly able to take control of the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service, considering it is an 11 member board serving seven year terms. I was too. All the current members of the board were appointed by Trump.

The board is supposed to work this way: Nine members are appointed by the President and approved by the Senate. Those nine members then elect a Postmaster General, who will also sit on the board. The ten then elect a Deputy. No more than 5 members can be of the same party.

But when Obama left office, there were no active Obama appointees on the USPS Board of Governors. As such, Trump along with the GOP controlled Senate, were able to appoint enough members to make the board functional again, and bend it to their whims.

Now you might this this was another case of Republican obstruction, but that wasn't the case. While there have been some in the GOP who have called for the Postal Service to be privatized, there have traditionally been enough rural Senators around to ensure the board is filled.

No, in this case Obama's nominations to the Board of Governors were held up by a single Senator:

Bernie Sanders.

Sanders had objected to two of Obama's nominees on behalf of the Postal Worker's union: Mickey D. Barnett and James C. Miller, the two Republicans Obama nominated.

Again: Obama was required to nominate Republicans in order to maintain balance of the board.

Now, Sanders was notably fearful of the possibility that the USPS would reduce services. The Postmaster General at the time had floated the possibility multiple times, and perhaps Sanders felt preventing a quorum on the BOG would prevent that from occurring.

This information was broken by Bill McAllister of @LinnsStampNews in 2015. You can read his story here: https://www.linns.com/news/us-stamps-postal-history/2015/september/u-s--postal-service-board-of-governors-could-shrink-to-one-membe.html

Since this has been sent to me a couple times, in the interest of fairness I will include it here, though I've not verified all the information in it. I cannot find a source that Sanders blocked the nomination of Crawford, for example. https://twitter.com/GunnelsWarren/status/1294315873101066241

Of course, no one is questioning Sanders motivations here, only the results, which are undoubtedly worse that what even he could have reasonably expected.

This is a lesson in unintended consequences.