Re: “Attack on Pope Leo, posting of Jesus image criticized,” April 14 news story

When in the course of human events, could someone have ever foreseen the time when the president of the United States would have to explain why he posted and unposted a picture of himself as Jesus? Will there be additional low points of this presidency before Congress realizes it is time to face the reality of the president¶¶Ňőap mind and protect what¶¶Ňőap left of the reputation of the office?

Cindy Robertson, Denver

Just when you think President Trump can’t get any crazier, he does (e.g., attacking Iran, insulting the pope, etc.). What will be the crisis du jour tomorrow? I think it¶¶Ňőap time for Congress to begin 25th Amendment proceedings. Please. Before it¶¶Ňőap too late.

Flint Whitlock, Denver

Let’s understand the impeachment clause

Re: “,” April 9 commentary

Kirsten Matoy Carlson is mistaken about the consequences of a guilty verdict by the U.S. Senate after an impeachment trial. She states, “If the person is convicted and removed from office, only then can senators vote on whether to permanently disqualify that person from ever again holding federal office.”

That is not what the Constitution says! states: “Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States…” There is only one vote.

Nowhere in the Constitution with regard to impeachment is there any reference or mandate that after conviction, senators “may” or “can” vote to bar the convicted person from holding federal office in the future. Legal scholars hinge that false opinion on their false understanding of grammar. The word “and” is a conjunction. It joins independent clauses, indicating a connection between the two, especially between items of the same type or class. Removal from office and barring from holding any other office are of the same class and type! In essence, the Senate is saying, “You violated your oath of office and the public trust, therefore you are removed from office and cannot be trusted in any federal office in the future.”

Tom Hubbard, Denver

Tax return takes nonsensical route to Ogden, Utah via USPS

I sent my tax return to the IRS in Ogden, Utah, via certified mail on March 13. It took a vacation and flew to Sarasota, Fla., then to Tampa, then back to Sarasota before making a leisurely trip to its original destination. It arrived there on March 27.

Using flying distance, an approximate 400-mile trip became a 3,550-mile journey.

Conspiracy theorists want to know whether the USPS has been tasked with delaying our refunds as long as possible. Or are they just practicing for what they plan to do with our ballots for the midterms?

Dee Nelson, Centennial

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For 80 years, the city of Loveland has been offering people the chance to give their Valentine’s messages some TLC with its Valentine re-mailing program.

What started as a cute nod to the city’s name has grown into an extravagant, on-brand season of celebrating this little holiday.

“Tłó±đ has a powerful ripple effect that reaches far beyond the cards themselves,” Mindy McCloughan, president and CEO of the Loveland Chamber of Commerce, said during a recent press conference to kick off this year’s festivities. “Locally, the program brings the community together.”

The remailing program began in 1946, when the local postmaster and a businessman came up with Loveland’s stamp-collecting oddity. It took a few years before they found the right combination of marketing it as “Tłó±đ Sweetheart City,” and gaining national recognition.

Here’s how it works: Anyone in the world can send a pre-addressed and pre-stamped Valentine’s card in a larger envelope to “U.S. Postal Service, 446 E. 29th St., Loveland, CO 80538” before Feb. 2, 2026. Volunteers — some from corporate sponsors, others who might come off the annual wait list for this opportunity — then carefully use a rubber stamp with this year’s winning original verse on the envelope. From there, the cards go to a specific post office in Loveland, where they get a postmark recognizing that it was mailed from Loveland.

It takes more than 150 volunteers over the course of two weeks, working in four- to five-hour shifts, to successfully operate the program, according to McCloughan. A core group of five seasoned volunteers oversees the stamping, plus handles any problems that require an experienced eye with a meticulous attention to detail.

When demand to volunteer exceeded the available spots, the team came up with the idea for a shadow program that allows wait-listers to observe the volunteers so that, like understudies, they can step in when there is availability. For those who want to volunteer, contact the Loveland Chamber of Commerce, but know that the combination of a decline in the amount of mail and the increase in volunteers means there may not be much need.

“At the program’s peak, more than 300,000 Valentine’s were received each year to be stamped with Loveland’s distinctive Valentine message,” said McCloughan, calling this the “largest Valentine’s remailing program in the world.”

“Today, we continue to process approximately 100,000 Valentine’s annually,” she added.

This year, there were two contest winners for both card and verse — meaning there are two choices for the cards.

Tiffany Villavicencio, a Loveland native who has won previously, designed a card showing a sunset behind the lake with the verse, “For 80 years each Valentine’s Day, Loveland has found a unique way to say, we’re sending you love, thoughts & well wishes, from the Sweetheart City with hugs & kisses.”

Jeff Niedens also won with a design showcasing the town name and a backlit tree. His winning verse: “Beneath the old oak tree, the sun’s soft shining light, Our hearts grow steady, gentle, and bright. Heart intertwined like the branches above, Now and forever deeply in love.”

In a third contest, Corry McDowell won with artwork and verse for the stamp that goes on the back of cards, which reads, “In the Sweetheart City/Joy takes flight/80 Years of Love/shining bright” with an image of a child cowboy branding a tree with “80.”

In addition to the remailing, people can order one of these original cards (winner of the annual art contest) that is inscribed or blank through the Loveland Chamber of Commerce, then have it sent through the remailing program with the various stamps and postmarks.

Another option is to go to the historic post office downtown (601 Cleveland Ave.), where there is a charming, hand-painted mailbox inside to drop these special cards and letters for the distinctive postmarking. The deadline to get the stamping and postmarking for mail within the continental United States is Feb. 7, and Feb. 10 for mailing within Colorado.

Charles Lammers, tourism marketing manager for Visit Loveland, said “there is no way to gather exact figures for the total economic impact of Loveland’s annual Valentine season,” but did offer that the Loveland Sweetheart Festival — to be held on Saturday, Feb. 14, this year — brings in “anywhere between $700,000 to $1.3 million in revenue for the community.”

On the website, there are a plethora of “official” Valentine’s Day products from Loveland, such as cupcakes, beer, wine and coffee. There are even sweetheart deals on lodging during this special time.  has two packages: a one-night stay in a cozy cabin that includes dinner and breakfast for $350-$400 per couple or a two-night cabin stay with dinner, live music one night, and Sunday brunch for $550-$600 per couple. Trail rides are available for an extra cost and are weather dependent.  (Look for other package deals at participating hotels.)

More adventurous? Treat your honey on a ride in a red heart-shaped hot air balloon. in Loveland can make hearts soar with a $375-$1,200 ride in a basket that is held aloft by a red heart-shaped balloon.

Sweetheart Festival

And don’t miss the big day on Saturday, Feb. 14, when Loveland hosts the Sweetheart Festival. Here’s the schedule of events:

9 a.m. The Loveland Visitors Center opens. Purchase a limited-edition lock ($20), customize it and then attach it to the L-O-V-E sculpture just outside, or save it for the enormous heart-shaped sculpture in town by the lake.

9:30 a.m. The Sweetheart Classic Race starts at Fourth and Railroad streets. (Until Jan. 31, race fees range from $48.70 to $80.50, then will increase.)

10 a.m. The Sweetheart Festival begins in the Foundry Plaza.  Throughout the day, you can expect live ice sculpting demonstrations, live music, fire performers, food, a chance to see Miss Valentine, and “selfie stations” with backdrops like neon heart shapes for capturing your special moments.

11 a.m. The Little Miss Valentine and Little Mr. Cupid contest at the Rialto Theater. It’s open to ages 4 and under; registration opens Jan. 26 and costs $10.

11 a.m. The B Sweet Cupcakes shop opens. Get your fill of Sweetheart Cherry Chocolate Chip cupcakes.

12 p.m. The Grimm Brothers Taproom + Kitchen opens. Try the 15th edition of the Bleeding Heart, based on a German-style porter.

12 p.m. The Sweet Heart Winery opens. Order a glass of the Amador County AVA Barbera 2023, the official 2026 Valentine’s wine.

3 p.m. The group wedding (or vow renewal) at the Pulliam County Building. (The fee of  $160 per couple includes a gift bag with a keepsake lock, photo, marriage certificate and more.

7 p.m. The Sweetheart Ball at the Pulliam Building, starting at 7 p.m. Vintage 1940s attire is recommended for this throwback dance. Tickets are $75 to $99 per person and are available for purchase at .

The prolific and popular Colorado nature photographer, who died in 2023 at 73, is getting his very own stamp this month with Colorado Statehood, as the edition will be called.

The forever-stamp features a photo of Jagged Mountain, a picturesque thirteener located in the San Juan Mountain Range of southwestern Colorado shot by Fielder, with design by Derry Noyes, according to a statement.

The U.S. Postal Service will hold a free, public “first-day-of-issue” event at 9 a.m. , 1200 Broadway in Denver, with commemorative editions of the stamp. Attendees can RSVP at .

The location is no accident, as the release coincides with the opening of History Colorado’s own John Fielder exhibit,

Fielder’s exhibit, which features “sun-dappled valleys and … rugged slopes in our state’s colorful scenery,” according to museum officials, joins the museum’s full Colorado Collection of Fielder’s work, which he donated to the institution before his death for noncommercial, research and student use.

“As History Colorado members selected photographs for this exhibition, I was struck by their deep emotional connection to John Fielder’s work,” said exhibition developer and historian Katherine Mercier in a statement. “His powerful photos of Colorado’s mountains brought back personal memories of the state’s beauty and wonder. This exhibition is a love letter to John Fielder and his mountain photographs from History Colorado’s members.”

History Colorado’s 6,000-image Fielder collection can be accessed for free at , To RSVP for the Jan. 24 event or get more information on collector’s versions of the 20-stamp sheets, visit .

Alan Ritchey Inc., a trucking and distribution company based in Valley View, Texas, that it will lay off the 729 employees at the hub, located at 20500 E. Colfax Ave. in Aurora, on Feb. 28.

“This layoff will be permanent, and the Company’s operations will permanently cease. Affected employees are not represented by a union and bumping rights (that is, the right to avoid termination by displacing another employee) do not exist. However, employees may apply for positions at other Company facilities,” Robby Ritchey, the company’s CEO, wrote in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN, letter to the state on Tuesday.

Ritchey expressed regret in the letter that he couldn’t provide more notice, but added that the USPS informed the company on Dec. 29 that it would terminate its contract Feb. 28 and that it had refused to extend the performance period as it had done over the past year.

“Further, the Company could not foresee that the USPS would provide such short notice of termination, since we had previously been informed that USPS would modify and transition the facility to a USPS facility, a process that would take more than 61 days,” Ritchey wrote.

A phone call on Monday with the USPS failed to reverse the decision, and the company was left with no other options, he said.

The largest category of eliminated jobs involves packers and shippers at 443. There are also 163 forklift operators and 76 dock clerk operators who are losing their jobs.

The USPS announced it would switch to a system of regional transfer hubs to improve mail delivery as part of its that seeks to make the service financially stable and self-sufficient. It converted its Denver Peak Annex into the Denver Regional Transfer Hub and, in October 2024, Alan Ritchey began managing the facility.

In July, USPS Deputy Assistant Inspector General Mary Lloyd , stating that it lacked sufficient security measures to keep registered mail safe and recommending that the management contract be terminated at the end of 2025.

An April inspection found numerous packages cut open and with their shipping stickers and contents missing. Damaged packages were not turned over to USPS staff per protocol, and the number of damaged packages was much higher than at comparable facilities run in-house.

“We identified deficiencies that put mail at risk of theft and unauthorized handling,” according to the audit. “Postal Service management expressed concern that contract employees were opening PMOD (the Priority Mail Open and Distribute service) sacks to pilfer select medications.”

Normally, when a contract changes hands or operations are brought in-house, current employees are part of the transition. But the audit suggests that the USPS may not extend employment offers to the contract employees being let go.

A divided panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided Aug. 29 that laws regulating the trucking industry do not prevent the resort town from excluding UPS and FedEx.

“Tłó±đse statutes ordinarily preempt local trucking regulations, but exceptions exist for motor vehicle safety,” Judge Robert Bacharach wrote. “Do these exceptions allow a town to regulate trucking companies that frequently deliver goods in a pedestrian mall? We answer yes.”

Judge Gregory Phillips disagreed with his colleagues. Dissenting from the 2-1 opinion in favor of Vail, Phillips wrote that the truck ban cannot be logically tied to pedestrian safety, since Vail still allows similar trucks driven by a city contractor, 106West Logistics, on the malls.

“Indeed, the amended ordinance restricts neither delivery vehicle size nor delivery vehicle frequency. Instead, it regulates based on the owner of the vehicle,” Phillips noted.

In 2022, Vail passed an ordinance prohibiting delivery trucks from entering Vail Village and Lionshead Village, to make those areas friendlier to pedestrians. Trucks had to leave their cargo at loading docks, where small 106West carts would then pick it up and deliver it.

The ordinance initially made an exception for commercial mail carriers, like FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service. But in 2023, Vail began cracking down on them as well. The Colorado Motor Carriers Association sued to stop that crackdown. Because trucking is federally regulated, towns can impose their own rules only when public safety is jeopardized, it noted.

The industry group won a victory in late 2023 when U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney blocked enforcement of the ban, finding it had been enacted to maintain mountain aesthetics rather than save lives. She, too, questioned why 106West¶¶Ňőap vehicles were allowed.

That ruling was appealed to the 10th Circuit, which sided with Vail. In a statement this week, the Town of Vail said it remains “committed to providing a safe environment for everyone.”

“Tłó±đ 10th Circuit¶¶Ňőap opinion directing the district court to dissolve a preliminary injunction that barred the town from fully enforcing its loading and delivery regulations is a significant step forward in Vail’s ongoing efforts to reduce vehicular-pedestrian interactions,” it said.

The 10th Circuit¶¶Ňőap three-judge panel decided that Sweeney was “substituting her own judgment about better ways to enhance safety” when she determined Vail was not focused on safety because it allows other trucks on the malls. “Connection to safety isn’t lost just because a more expansive restriction might have been more effective,” the judges wrote.

“We’re not policymakers, but the town’s leaders are. Those leaders presumably enjoy expertise when deciding how to address safety concerns. Recognition of that expertise leaves us little room to second-guess the leadership’s policy choices based on our policy preferences.”

The Town of Vail is represented by David Goldfarb, Josh Marks and Abbey Derechin with Berg Hill Greenleaf Ruscitti in Boulder. The CMCA’s lawyers are James Eckhart, Shannon Cohen and Adam Smedstad at Scopelitis Garvin Light Hanson & Feary in Indianapolis.

The CMCA’s lawyers did not respond to BusinessDen’s request for comment on the ruling.

Read more from our partner,

Vicki Lyn Stuart, 64, was arrested Nov. 6 after Mesa County residents contacted election officials in late October about their ballots being rejected for signature discrepancies despite never having voted.

All of the ballots were stolen from the same U.S. Postal Service mail route, and Stuart was a substitute carrier on the route when the ballots were delivered.

Investigators with the say Stuart stole 16 ballots, three of which made it past the signature review process and were cast in the election.

Stuart pleaded guilty to identity theft and forgery, both felonies, as part of a plea agreement. Prosecutors dismissed other charges of identity theft, forgery and attempting to influence a public servant.

Her attorney did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday night.

Another Mesa County woman charged in the scheme, Sally Jane Maxedon, is set to appear in court on July 15, court records show.

The attorney general’s office received 24,473 complaints last year, which surpassed the previous record of 20,390 set in 2023. The top category with around 1,670 complaints in each of the past two years involves retail sales — everything from defective products to impossible-to-cancel subscriptions.

Professional services represented the second biggest category of complaints and unlike retail, which was flat, incidents rose by nearly 30%. Complaints in that area centered on warranties, shoddy workmanship, and problems tied to legal and other professional services.

Real estate sales and services complaints, which had ranked 10th on the 2023 list, shot up to the third spot, going from 520 to 1,272 complaints, a 145% increase.

Consumer advocates have focused more attention on questionable practices like the use of algorithms that reduce rent competition and undisclosed charges or junk fees that zing renters after the fact, such as fees for package delivery or for moving out. Weiser has pursued action against real estate companies like RealPage and GreyStar alleging their practices harm consumers. The increase in complaints may reflect greater awareness as well as firms trying to push the limits of acceptable behavior.

Consumers also appear to be struggling more with , where complaints went from 808 to 1,205, or more than 50%. Banks, government agencies, tech support, online retailers, delivery firms — the list of businesses being impersonated is long.

Weiser notes that the prevalence of social media accounts combined with the rise of artificial intelligence technology now allows scammers to take voice recordings or photos and use them to craft highly customized and believable messages.

More broadly, scammers can gain personal information, such as the name of a target’s bank, and then combine it with a spoofed or false caller I.D. number, overcoming the normal caution people might show.

“Stay nervous,” Weiser advised. “When someone contacts you by phone, text, or social media, don’t assume what is being said is real. You have to start from the opposite assumption. Assume it isn’t true.”

His advice is to hang up or ignore an email or text and then directly contact the supposed source of the call if there is any doubt. Don’t use the number provided in a text, email or showing up on the caller ID.

Weiser notes that the record number of complaints not only points to too many consumers being treated unfairly but also to greater public awareness of the website his office runs to gather complaints . He also noted that his office has been able to secure $500 million in “refunds, restitution, credits, and debt relief for Colorado consumers” since he took office.

The Colorado Public Interest Research Group, or CoPIRG, also released a list of tips on Monday to help consumers better secure their data. One is to , which can prove especially helpful in the event of a disaster or an emergency evacuation.

Given how much sensitive personal data is floating around on the dark web after data breaches, consumers are urged to freeze credit reports with all three national bureaus. That will block attempts by scammers to set up new credit lines or loans under a victim’s name. The task takes about 30 minutes and is free of charge, but fewer than one in 10 consumers have ever implemented a freeze. U.S. PIRG .

Under the Colorado Privacy Act, consumers have the right to install a browser tool that automatically blocks the sale of personal data by any websites visited. For Google Chrome, the extension is called Privacy Badger. CoPIRG has on how to install and use the extensions.

Federal leases are in place in 27 of the Colorado’s 64 counties, so terminations could reach far and wide. But the greatest impacts are likely to be felt in three cities — Denver, Fort Collins and Lakewood.

“While the federal government carries large leases in office buildings, the impact of such decisions won’t be uniform and will depend upon which cities have a higher exposure to them. With the current environment of the office market, this is another wrinkle for office landlords who will have to reevaluate their future rents and leasing strategy,” said Vivek Sah, director of the Franklin L. Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business.

Building owners with the most wrinkles to work out will be those in markets with a lot of surplus capacity, like downtown Denver, where more than a third of the office space is sitting vacant, or Lakewood, where a disproportionate share of leasing activity comes from federal agencies.

The federal government rents a net 4.1 million square feet of commercial real estate in Colorado, largely office space, with some warehouse space and specialty facilities like laboratories, and it directly owns 6.8 million square feet in 87 buildings, . The portfolio is so large that 274 workers help manage and maintain it.

About 90% of the federal leases are in six counties — Denver, Larimer, Jefferson, Arapahoe, El Paso, Boulder and Adams.

Total square footage of existing government leases shows about 4.4 million square feet. Denver has the most federal leases at 913,988 square feet or just over a fifth of the state’s total. Fort Collins has 853,699 square feet or 19% of the total. Lakewood has 663,248 square feet or nearly 15% of the state total.

Other cities with sizable federal leases include Colorado Springs, Aurora, Centennial and Golden.

What makes Lakewood especially vulnerable is that it is also home to nearly two-thirds of the space that the federal government owns in Colorado — the 4 million square feet of buildings on 623 acres at the Denver Federal Center, the largest collection of federal agencies outside the Washington, D.C., area.

DOGE, in addition to terminating leases, is also looking to sell government real estate with two goals: generate money for federal coffers and put parcels, which are often in prime locations, to a higher economic use. The Denver Federal Center, in whole or part, could find itself on the market.

One scenario to justify holding the Federal Center would be to bring more workers onto the campus, which in turn could spell trouble for surrounding office buildings. A high share of Lakewood’s office space is under federal leases. But until this year, that concentration wasn’t viewed as a form of putting all your eggs in one basket.

“Federal and state governments are considered high-quality tenants. They were considered to be very low risk and very attractive,” Sah said.

Given the choice between renting to a tech startup with a great idea but an uncertain future or a stable agency with the full backing of the federal government, most landlords would sign on the dotted line with the agency, he said. Now all bets are off.

Some landlords, however, may have been underpricing their rents in exchange for stability and could potentially benefit from freeing up space that has been locked down for years, if not decades, said Ben Jacobson, a partner at Forman Capital in Delray Beach, Fla.

But the outcome all depends on how much available supply a given market has. A Dallas landlord would likely stand to benefit more than one in Manhattan.

If building owners start losing important and once-stable tenants, long-suffering lenders may say enough, causing more office space to come onto an oversupplied market.

The three biggest federal tenants in downtown Denver are the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 8 office, with 176,000 square feet at 1595 Wynkoop; the Internal Revenue Service with 125,000 square feet of space at 1999 Broadway, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Region 8, with 86,809 square feet at 1670 Broadway.

None of the three can claim to be favorites of the new administration, and on Thursday, the Denver office of the IRS experienced layoffs, part of a larger elimination of 7,000 probationary workers.

The largest federal lease in Denver not downtown is an FBI field office with 175,155 square feet at 8000 E. 36th Ave.

Unlike federal contracts, which allow for cancellation at the government’s convenience, federal real estate leases typically carry a “firm term” or a date until which rent must be paid, the Miami-based law firm . That doesn’t mean the GSA won’t seek an out, a practice that became more common after the pandemic reduced the need for space.

“The lack of a legal right to terminate the lease doesn’t mean that the government won’t attempt to do so anyway. There have been a number of situations recently in which the government seeks to terminate for its convenience, seeking lessor (landlord) consent to an early termination,” Holland & Knight warned.

Of the 180 leases that the federal government has in Colorado, more than a third, or 65, have a termination date that has already passed, and another 17 have a termination date stretching from the end of February to the end of 2026, according to an analysis of GSA leases using a spreadsheet provided by the real estate firm CBRE.

Adding to the confusion of how many leases will be terminated, DOGE objectives of selling off the federal real estate portfolio and bringing remote workers back to the office five days a week would suggest more, not less, leased space is needed.

The wild card will be how many workers DOGE will eliminate from the federal payroll. The state has 57,000 federal civilian workers, including U.S. Postal Service employees, with 29,500 of that total located in metro Denver, according to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.

Even with all the uncertainty, Ethan Edmiston, an agent specializing in government-leased assets at Matthews Real Estate Investment Services, in El Segundo, Calif., said he remains more bullish about leasing to the public sector than the traditional market.

“Considering the number of federal workers and the need to lease space as a reduction in costs for these government organizations, I predict that we will see a change in the government lease landscape, not the disappearance of this market,” Edmiston said.

Updated at 11:45 a.m. Monday to correct the square footage of governmental leases in Fort Collins.

“We want to have a post office that works well and doesn’t lose massive amounts of money,” Trump said. “We’re thinking about doing that. And it’ll be a form of a merger, but it’ll remain the Postal Service, and I think it’ll operate a lot better.”

Trump made the remarks at the of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. He called the move a way to stop losses at the $78 billion-a-year agency, which has struggled to balance the books with the decline of first-class mail.

“He’s got a great business instinct, which is what we need, and we’re looking at it, and we think we can turn it around,” Trump said of Lutnick. “It¶¶Ňőap been just a tremendous loser for this country, tremendous amounts of money that they’ve lost.”

Here are some things to know about U.S. Postal Service operations:

What¶¶Ňőap the history of the USPS?

The Post Office was created during the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1775, when Benjamin Franklin became the first postmaster general. In 1872, Congress named it an executive branch department. But that changed after an eight-day postal strike over wages and benefits in 1970, when President Richard Nixon signed the Postal Reorganization Act, which made it an independent, self-financing agency called the U.S. Postal Service.

In recent years, as it¶¶Ňőap sometimes struggled to stay afloat, the Postal Service has from Trump and others that it be privatized.

Who works for the USPS?

The 1970 reorganization gave workers pay raises and the right to collective bargaining, helping generations of Americans, especially Blacks and other minorities, move into the middle class. Today, the USPS employs about 640,000 workers tasked with delivering mail, medicine, election ballots and packages across the country, from inner cities to rural areas and even far-flung islands. They remained on duty during the , when the American Postal Workers Union says more than 200 postal workers died.

Who runs the USPS?

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Republican donor who owned a logistics business, was appointed to lead the U.S. Postal Service during Trump’s first term in 2020. He has faced repeated challenges during his tenure, including the pandemic, surges in and through cost and service cuts. He announced a 10-year turnaround plan last year, but earlier this week said he plans and asked the Postal Service Board of Governors to begin looking for his successor.

Who serves on the U.S. postal board and how are they selected?

The board is made up of up to nine members, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. No more than five members can come from the same political party.

The current chair is Amber F. McReynolds, a former election official from Colorado. The vice chair, Derek Kan, worked in the first Trump administration. Both were appointed by President Joe Biden.

Three vacancies on the board remain after the Senate failed to vote on Biden’s nominees to fill those seats. Biden appointed four of the current six governors and Trump two.

The board has the power to hire and fire the postmaster general. Both that person and a deputy postmaster also serve on the board.

How is the USPS funded?

Since the 1970 reorganization, the USPS has been largely self-funded. The bulk of its annual $78.5 billion budget comes from customer fees, according to the Congressional Research Service. Congress provides a relatively small annual appropriation — about $50 million in fiscal year 2023 –- to subsidize free and reduced-cost mail services.

Amid challenges that include the decline in profitable first-class mail and the cost of retiree benefits, the Postal Service accumulated from 2007 to 2020.

Last year, DeJoy announced a 10-year plan to modernize operations and stem losses, warning customers to expect as the Postal Service seeks to stabilize its finances.

Critics, including members of Congress from several states, have said that the first consolidations slowed service and that further consolidations could particularly hurt rural mail delivery.

How does President Trump view the USPS?

Trump has been a critic of the Postal Service since his first term in office. In 2020, he threatened to block it from COVID-19 relief funding unless it quadrupled the package rates it charges large customers like Amazon, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos. Bezos also owns The Washington Post, whose coverage rankled Trump.

More recently, Trump mused in December about privatizing the service given the competition it faced from Amazon, UPS, FedEx and others.

“It¶¶Ňőap an idea a lot of people have had for a long time. We’re looking at it,” the president said.

An emailed memo titled “Fork in the Road” went out on Jan. 28 to many of the nation’s 2.2 million federal civilian employees, giving them an option to send back the word “resign” or “resign and retire” by Thursday, Feb. 6. It follows warnings from the Trump administration that remote and hybrid work arrangements are ending, except for those needing special accommodations.

The military, U.S. Postal Service, and Transportation Security Administration, and other workers considered important to national security aren’t eligible to resign. But a large share of the nearly 40,000 or so civilian federal workers in Colorado face a looming deadline on whether to stay or go.

“We are telling our people to proceed with caution. If you are considering resigning, make sure you discuss it with a financial adviser. Don’t jump at this,” cautioned Tim Snyder, National Vice President for the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) District 11, which includes Colorado and surrounding states.

The AFGE is the nation’s largest union representing federal workers, with about 800,000 members, and it has urged members to say no until there is further clarification. The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents about 150,000 federal workers, is firmly on the no side, while the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), which represents about 80,000 federal employees, has called the offer “reckless” and urged rejection.

The unions argue the deferred resignation program violates the Administrative Procedure Act, that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) lacks the legal authority to make such a sweeping offer and that funds to pay resigning workers beyond March 14 aren’t secure yet.

Beyond that, the AFGE and other groups what they consider administration efforts to politicize the civil service and replace career employees with “unqualified political flunkies loyal to the president, but not the law or Constitution.”

Elon Musk and his team at the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) argue the moves will streamline government operations, lower costs, and reduce unnecessary overhead while avoiding abrupt layoffs in the months ahead. The resignation program is partly modeled after one offered to employees of Twitter, now X, when Musk took over in 2022, down to the use of the phrase “Fork in the Road.”

“The federal workforce is expected to undergo significant near-term changes. As a result of these changes (or for other reasons), you may wish to depart the federal government on terms that provide you with sufficient time and economic security to plan for your future–and have a nice vacation,” states a , the federal government’s human resources arm.

Federal workers who resign can take another job while collecting their federal pay, with some rare exceptions, but it isn’t clear how the conflict of interest prohibitions will be enforced. If the government shuts down at some point, the OPM clarified that resigning workers remain eligible for any backpay under existing federal laws.

Paid leave can also be made to match a federal employee’s retirement date if they are retiring in 2025. Federal employees are generally eligible for early retirement if they are over age 50 and have worked for 20 or more years at a federal job.

Resignations are completely voluntary and don’t preclude a worker from reapplying for a federal job in the future. Resignations, which are contingent on management approval, are expected within 72 hours, according to the FAQ.

Although a wide net is being cast for resignation offers, union representatives and labor lawyers say the program appears primarily targeted at remote workers who don’t want to return to the office. Several agencies and their workers have negotiated agreements broadening telework since the pandemic and trying to unwind those will likely result in litigation.

“The purpose of the Trump executive orders to remove employees who do not return to the office in person and to offer a deferred resignation is clearly to massively reduce the size of the government,” said Michael Fallings, a partner at the law firm Tully Rinckey in Austin, Texas.

Estimates of federal employees who telework, meaning they are mostly remote with a dedicated space at an office, or fully remote, range from 10% to 15% of the total, with Colorado on the higher end of that range. About hold jobs that require them to be on-site every day of the week, and of the remainder, 60% of the hours worked are on-site or in the office, according to the AFGE.

Compared to private sector buyouts, which sometimes provide a week or two for every year of service, eight months of paid leave with no work requirements appears generous, especially for newer hires. But employment lawyers say federal workers will be abandoning well-established protections if they accept, with no recourse if things go wrong. And there is a lot that could go wrong.

“There is a lot of confusion on everyone’s behalf,” said Holly Franson, a partner with the Wick Law Office in Denver who represents federal workers. “This is not a buyout. This is a way of culling the size of the government workforce without complying with the rules and regulations in place to protect workers.”

Normally, when federal government workers are being “removed,” the official term for terminated or fired, they must be provided with a reason and given a chance to respond. If a reduction in force or layoff is underway, not specific to that worker, another set of rules must be followed. No such protections are in place for workers in the deferred resignation program, attorneys said.

Workers who resign will be placed on administrative leave. But by going that route, the program violates existing rules on who can be placed on administrative leave, how much they can be paid during leave, and stricter provisions on leave that came out of the first Trump administration, Franson said.

“I think they are trying to force people to make a hasty decision, a life-changing decision,” Snyder said.

Agency managers will have several decisions to wrestle with, including who to keep and who to let go; whether to backfill empty positions, shift tasks to current workers, or eliminate tasks, Franson said, adding that some positions will be very hard to backfill.

Some agencies involved with administration priorities, such as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, have issued blanket exemptions. Others, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, one of the largest federal employers in metro Denver, are expected to have a high share of exemptions.

Another concern is accommodating the workers who do come back to the office full-time given that many agencies have reduced their space, Franson said. Estimates of what share of workers will resign versus what share will stay range widely, but more office space and office equipment will likely be needed.

“The vast majority of workers don’t prefer to come in five days a week. They prefer a hybrid solution,” said an assistant management professor at the University of Denver. “But we aren’t in an economic environment where most employees can balk completely and quit.”

The Great Resignation, where employees could easily switch jobs, is over. But plenty of state and local positions remain open in Colorado, the kind that could appeal to mission-minded federal workers, said Shane Evangelist, CEO of NEOGOV, the parent company of .

The job board, around since 2000, hosted about 40% of the local and state government positions filled over the past two years, Evangelist said. And right now it has about 15,400 openings in Colorado.

“Federal may be firing but state and local is hiring,” Evangelist said. “If you want to continue to serve the community, there are plenty of opportunities.”

Law enforcement, engineering, and information technology are some of the job categories where state and local governments struggle the most to find qualified applicants, he said.