The Trump administration has asked Israel to stop settler attacks in the occupied West Bank, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. This comes amid outrage over a savage settler attack on Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine on Friday.
Published On 18 Oct 202618 Oct 2026
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New Delhi, India — India’s main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has returned to the streets of central New Delhi, leading dozens of members of parliament demanding the election chief’s resignation, as protests gather momentum.
Gandhi, heir to India’s most influential political dynasty, is seeking to turn a summer youth uprising into a broader challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decade-long dominance of Indian politics, putting the Hindu nationalist government under growing pressure.
In a press briefing on Monday, Gandhi said the Modi government had put the capital city “in jail”.
The youth-led “Cockroach” movement that forced out the education minister in July has also threatened to protest on Tuesday if it is not allowed to rally at Jantar Mantar in central Delhi, which was the focus of summer demonstrations.
Joining Gandhi’s Congress party, other opposition forces and the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) are thousands of students from left-wing organisations. As the government braces for further protests, security forces have been detaining thousands of students every day, with allegations of custodial violence casting a climate of fear over the capital.
India’s Election Commission, a supposedly autonomous body tasked with overseeing the world’s largest electorate, has been criticised after revelations that its chief, Gyanesh Kumar, frequently overruled concerns raised by the other two election commissioners about the integrity of changes to the voter database.
For months, India’s opposition parties have argued that the election commission is compromised, sabotaging elections at the behest of Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for its electoral benefit. The BJP denies the allegations.
Since June last year, the commission has been revising and updating statewide voter lists. It has since removed more than 130 million names, which critics say has disproportionately deprived minorities and other vulnerable groups in India of the right to vote.
Gandhi has called for the Chief Election Commissioner to be tried for treason. “We will not spare you,” he said, referring to Kumar, at his Monday press briefing.
Opposition politicians allege that protest rallies by leaders including Gandhi have been met with violent and brutal force, as seen in videos showing them being detained.
“[The protesters] came with love in their hearts, not hatred or anger,” Gandhi said, referring to a protest on Saturday. “They were beaten, both by cops and BJP goons.”
“Narendra Modi … cannot silence India’s voice. These cowards cannot intimidate us. They will have to step aside,” he wrote on X, calling on people from all walks of life to join the protest on Monday.
Analysts say circumstances this time around are starkly different to the summer protests, when CJP-led demonstrators demanded the resignation of then-Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
Asim Ali, a political analyst in New Delhi, told Al Jazeera that the mobilisation of the wider opposition would not stop, but the Modi government was unlikely to back down.
“The crackdown this time on students is making it apparent that it would be tougher for young protesters this time, and students can’t get beaten up and dragged violently daily,” he said. “Going forward, the opposition parties stand to be the front face of the protests, and they need to lead from the front.”
Since 1975, when then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed a state of national emergency suspending civil liberties, “India saw more civil politics grow into mainstream, where opposition parties were allowed space,” Ali said.
He added that after five decades, “those democratic gains have vanished – and there are no constraints on this government by independent institutions.”
Rasheed Kidwai, a political analyst, said he has seen New Delhi at the centre of “several big opposition political rallies, held in areas near the parliament, hosting hundreds of thousands of people,” when the police did not interfere, unlike the crackdowns this year.
Kidwai said that the violent detention of members of parliament, in particular, was worrying.
“We are seeing a big change from when politicians were more tolerant of dissent,” he added.
With an unprecedented security deployment in central New Delhi designed to prevent protest, youth leaders are turning to new tactics.
Neha Bora, the president of All India Students’ Association (AISA), a left-wing group affiliated with the Communist Party of India, has often tricked Delhi police in order to stage protests.
Bora, a post-doctoral student of theatre, came to national prominence for her fiery speeches in the July protests, becoming a leading face of the Gen Z movement challenging Modi’s Hindu nationalist politics.
Aditi Thakur, a 23-year-old student in the capital, has turned on notifications for all of Bora’s posts on social media. “A call to protest can come anytime, anywhere,” she told Al Jazeera.
Bora does not reveal when or where she is going to stage a protest until just 30 minutes before, to avoid detentions by the police. Her supporters are alerted via social media to join her at a given location in the capital.
On Sunday, she picked a congested street near central Delhi — and was able to jump several barricades to reach the heavily secured Parliament Street, before being chased down and dragged into a police van.
Even Thakur couldn’t catch her, she told Al Jazeera, laughing. “These are guerrilla times, but peacefully. If the government cracks down on us, we also need to adapt,” she said. “It is a fun cat-and-mouse chase every day. I’m hooked on it.”
The Gandhi-led Congress is also adopting similar measures, holding flash rallies at unannounced venues, then running away from police.
A defining feature of the July protests – a watershed moment for wrestling concessions from the government – was Gen Z’s humour in the face of police brutality.
Now, protesters are prepared for a more serious confrontation, even if demonstrations remain peaceful, say analysts.
“We are seeing that humour changing more into anger this time,” Asim Ali said.
The biggest challenge for the government is disruption in central New Delhi, which, Ali said, the government cannot allow on a daily basis. The area is home to most federal government offices, as well as being a major business hub.
Protesters know that too, and that gives them leverage.
“We are seeing this movement grow into a bigger anti-government, anti-Modi movement,” Ali said.
India’s capital is bracing for a second day of protests after thousands of people, including the leaders of the “cockroach” youth movement and opposition politicians, were detained amid a major crackdown on demonstrators.
Abhijeet Dipke, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) leader, called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “bully” shortly after he was released on Sunday. Thousands of other protesters, some of whom are members of left-wing student groups, were released on Sunday after the Supreme Court called their detention “illegal”.
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“Modi, as PM, is an embarrassment to India. Never has this country seen a bigger coward and bully,” Dipke said in a post on X.
The protesters are demanding that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar resign over a revision of voter lists that they say disproportionately benefits Prime Minister Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Millions of voters, including Muslims, have been deleted from the rolls in a process marred by technical errors and a perceived lack of transparency.
The protests erupted across several Indian cities after an investigation by the Indian Express newspaper found that two election commissioners objected to many of Kumar’s decisions. India’s Election Commission is a constitutional body with three members, and decisions are taken by majority.
Ahead of Saturday’s protests, the capital, New Delhi, was turned into a fortress with tens of thousands of police and paramilitary forces deployed, trains and metros suspended, and markets and major roads blocked, to prevent protesters from reaching Jantar Mantar – a designated protest site close to India’s parliament. Jantar Mantar was sealed off.
Jantar Mantar was the site of the July protest that led to the resignation of Education Minister Dharmesh Pradhan. That protest, also led by the CJP, was triggered by a string of exam paper leaks.
Security forces also set up checkpoints on major roads and entry points across the city of 20 million people, checked buses and inspected vehicles searching for protesters.
Barricades and concrete blocks disrupted traffic, while anti-riot vehicles equipped with tear-gas launchers guarded key routes.
More than 30,000 police and paramilitary personnel were deployed across the city, according to local media, and mobile internet services were suspended across several areas of the capital to stop people from online mobilisation efforts by the CJP and other youth groups.
Police detained CJP founder Dipke, as well as his associates, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, from an airplane upon arrival in New Delhi from Mumbai.
Dipke shared a video on his Instagram channel, showing a team of police officers entering the Air India plane after it landed. As they came closer, he said: “I have come to get arrested. I am not afraid of you guys.”
In another video shared by Ranka, Dipke said: “This is dictatorship”.
Delhi police also detained YouTuber Dhruv Rathee and Neha Bora, the national president of the All India Students’ Association (AISA), a leftist group affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).
Some opposition politicians, as well as former chief ministers – Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal, Arvind Kejriwal of Delhi, and Pinarayi Vijayan of Kerala – were also detained, television channels showed.
Despite the unprecedented crackdown, small protests took place elsewhere in the city, including at the popular crafts market “Dilli Haat”. But police also ended up quashing these protests and detaining journalists trying to cover the demonstrations.
Besides New Delhi, some 600 people were also arrested in Mumbai, India’s financial hub, over the protests, according to the ANI news agency.
On Sunday, police officials said all detainees had been released.
The CJP leaders were released on the condition that there would be ‘no breach of peace’ for a year.
Speaking to reporters at a press conference in New Delhi on Sunday afternoon after their release, Saurav Das, the group’s co-convenor, slammed the police for “arriving like mafia dons” and “abducting” them on their plane.
After his release, Rathee said he was “KIDNAPPED.”
Several journalists from news outlets, including Scroll.in, Newslaundry and others were detained. They have all since been released, but Newslaundry said some of their reporters’ media equipment was seized during the detention.
The Committee to Protect Journalists told Al Jazeera on Saturday that it was deeply concerned by reports of journalists being temporarily detained.
“Just as police personnel are doing their jobs, journalists are also doing theirs. A free and independent press is essential to democracy,” Kunal Majumder, the CPJ’s Asia Pacific programme coordinator, said.
Aban Raza, a 37-year old visual artist based in New Delhi who was detained on Saturday, said the “entire experience has left her shocked and angry”.
“We are protesting for the right to vote. It affects all of us. So why is the police suspicious of us and treating us with so much aggression? This makes me angry,” she told Al Jazeera.
Together with three other protesters, including economist Jean Dreze, Raza managed to get close to Jantar Mantar on Saturday morning.
“As soon as we reached close enough to the protest site, we started unfurling our banners which called for the resignation of Election Commission chief Gyanesh Kumar and for free and fair elections. But within minutes, police officials approached us, began tearing our banners and dragging us towards a bus to detain us,” she told Al Jazeera.
“We tried to resist as the police dragged us inside the bus. Both my arms feel very sore today,” she said.
Raza says that some of those detained were not even protesters.
“They were people who had just been picked up whilst they were going about their day. One person was going to the Gurudwara, another was going to meet his wife and they got detained. Most of these people were working class people,” she said.
Raza, who was released on Saturday night, said she is going back to protest on Sunday.
Youth leaders have struck a defiant note, pledging to keep up protests in New Delhi. Some members were detained on Sunday.
The group’s co-convenor Saurav Das, who was released from detention on Sunday, said in a post on X: “After Modi-Shah [Amit Shah, India’s home minister] turned Delhi into a fortress and unleashed what can only be described as a war against their own citizens, one thing has become abundantly clear: Gyanesh Kumar is at the very heart of this government’s survival.”
“But we the young generation will continue to demand accountability. We shall neither be intimidated nor silenced. We are not backing down. We are returning with full strength!” he added.
The CJP has also announced protests in other Indian cities including Mumbai for Sunday evening.
Meanwhile, Neha Bora, the national president of the All India Students’ Association, began a protest on Sunday afternoon in central Delhi.
“Our peaceful protest has started at RK Ashram. Join us here and stand with us!” she said on X.
But shortly afterwards, Bora and several others were detained.
The INDIA Bloc – India’s opposition alliance led by the Indian National Congress – has participated in protests alongside the youth-led groups, demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Kumar.
The Bloc is expected to hold a protest on Monday in the capital.
“Yesterday, we held a comprehensive meeting with various leaders to prepare for this march,” Congress general secretary K C Venugopal told reporters on Saturday.
“Gyanesh must go. There will be no backing down,” he added.
Congress party leader and the leader of the opposition in parliament, Rahul Gandhi, has been spearheading a campaign against the election commissioner for months. He was briefly arrested last week over the election protest in New Delhi.
“Modi government has turned the ‘Mother of Democracy’ into a ‘Muzzled Democracy’!” Congress party president Mallikarjun Kharge posted on X.
“Detentions, arrests, jails, lathis [batons] and pellets cannot deter the people of India. Since the days of our freedom struggle, the youth have been at the forefront of shaping the nation’s destiny.”
The protests intensified after the Indian Express reported last month that two election commissioners had questioned Kumar’s revisions that removed roughly 130 million names from voter lists.
The BJP says that of the 130 million names deleted from voter lists, 28 million are dead, 63 million have relocated, 10 million are duplicates and 30 million could not be traced by officials.
The ruling party has also said its electoral success reflects Modi’s popularity and India’s economic growth, and accuses opposition parties of spreading misinformation.
But these protests have become a larger question of democracy and the right to dissent under the Modi government.
While the government had briefly engaged in talks with the youth groups during the July 2026 protests, it has taken a much more hardline stance against demands targeting constitutional and electoral authorities.
The BJP’s officials have also characterised the protests and online opposition as a concerted political effort to destabilise the government rather than highlight legitimate public grievances.
On Saturday, BJP spokesman Sambit Patra dismissed the demonstrators as “anarchic elements” and said that “their flop show has been completely demolished”.
“What is happening at Jantar Mantar, what you can see on TV and a few social media handles, is not India’s story. India is calm and going ahead under good governance,” he told reporters.
Critics and analysts interviewed by Al Jazeera argue that conceding to demands for the election chief’s resignation would validate opposition accusations of vote theft and project weakness for a prime minister sensitive to his political aura.
But Sanjay Kapoor, editor of Hard News Magazine and a political analyst, told Al Jazeera on Saturday that most people coming to the protests do not want Modi’s BJP to continue to govern.
“Modi’s government has begun to lose a lot of credibility at the moment,” he said.
“BJP is afraid that the ground has shifted dramatically against them and they would find it very difficult to come back to power.”
On Saturday, the United Nations Human Rights Office expressed concerns over mass detentions before and during the protests.
“We call on the authorities to ensure that the right to peaceful assembly is fully respected and fulfilled,” UN Human Rights spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan said in a statement.
He also urged authorities to engage in “meaningful dialogue” to address the “broadly held” concerns expressed.
Amnesty International told Al Jazeera that the detentions signal the Indian government’s desperate attempts to “suppress critical voices”, while Human Rights Watch said that “instead of addressing legitimate citizen concerns, institutions expected to uphold rights appear to be under the stranglehold of rising authoritarianism.”
The Indian mission to the UN in Geneva, however, called the global concerns “misplaced” and said they constitute “an unwarranted interference in the internal affairs of India”.
It stressed that the right to peaceful assembly was guaranteed by India’s Constitution.
“As in every democracy, Indian citizens exercise this right subject to reasonable restrictions in the interest of public order.”
The White House is expanding its campaign against international workers, targeting elite study and work visa holders with restrictions and a new investigation.
On Thursday, the Trump administration announced a probe into whether Stanford, Caltech, UC Davis and other universities across the country have been abusing a special visa used by international scholars and students to do research and work in the U.S. It is also suspending Microsoft, Adobe and six other tech companies from how they sponsor employees who are in the country under a highly skilled worker visa program.
The White House’s concern is that schools and companies are too quick to bring in people from outside the U.S. The moves rattled Silicon Valley executives and California educators who see easy access to the smartest, hardest-working people in the world as one of America’s greatest competitive advantages.
Vice President JD Vance said the universities being investigated are overusing J-1 visas to bring in students and researchers from abroad. The international scholars then take jobs and grants that could go to Americans.
“They are using these visas way too much,” he said. “They are using them to undercut the wages of American grad students and American researchers, and it simply has to stop.”
Harvard, Yale, Brown, the University of Pittsburgh, Arizona State and MIT will also be investigated.
Labor Department Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito said subpoenas have been served and “nobody will be getting a free pass because their name is carved into an expensive building.” Many universities have buildings named for foreign donors.
While most of the companies targeted for the tech visa restriction were Indian, Vance called out Microsoft.
“There’s been no company, unfortunately, in the United States that has abused this system more than Microsoft,” Vance told reporters at a White House news conference.
Vance said the company has abused the permanent labor certification program, which he argued has enabled Microsoft to hire international talent that is then paid less to replace American workers.
The new development suspends Microsoft from applying for green cards for workers who come to the U.S. on H-1B visas and later apply to become permanent residents.
American technology giants have relied on the H-1B visa program for decades to bring in thousands of skilled foreign workers they cannot find locally. Critics have accused the program of being riddled with fraud and abuse.
The administration’s power move came the same day President Trump awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to two prime examples of international talent who came to the U.S. on student and work visas: Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella and Tesla’s Elon Musk.
Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini were also on the list of companies that will no longer be able to apply for permanent residence status for their H-1B employees.
Microsoft defended the use of H-1B and said in a statement that it looked forward to sharing additional information with the administration. In a post, it said that of the thousands of H-1B visa applications it submitted in the last fiscal year, 80% were to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees.
“They equal only 1% of our U.S. workforce. They are not new arrivals to our country,” the company said. “Microsoft only files H-1B petitions for those who meet the rigorous standards of this visa category.”
There’s a limit of 85,000 H-1B visas issued in a fiscal year, and they are selected through a lottery system. Last year, Microsoft was the third-largest beneficiary of the program, with 6,258 H-1B visas, according to data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Amazon led the list, employing more than 13,000 H-1 B visa holders; Adobe had 777 approved applications.
The Thursday announcement has sparked confusion among technology workers and companies. Immigration lawyers point out that the action is not a blanket suspension of green card applications for all employers, but a targeted enforcement freeze on the Permanent Labor Certification program for the eight named corporations.
Proponents of H-1B note that Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies are founded or run by immigrants, and the efforts to thwart H-1B have already started stifling talent flow and startup creation.
“It’s only going to probably hurt some companies and hurt the best and the brightest that are coming here,” said Devashish Mitra, professor of economics at Syracuse University. “It’s like throwing the baby with the bathwater.”
The J-1 investigations follow other actions, making it more difficult for international students to come to U.S. campuses. This year, the Department of Homeland Security said it wanted to end a “duration of status” visa policy that lets students stay in the U.S. through the completion of their programs and limit stays to four years. A federal judge blocked the change, and the government is appealing.
The Trump administration has also proposed charging colleges $70,000 per student for Optional Practical Training, which lets international students work in their fields of study for a limited number of years after graduation. Students now pay about $500.
In a statement, a Stanford spokesperson said the campus “complies with all applicable visa laws, including those relating to J-1 visas. We will cooperate with the investigation.”
A UC Davis spokesperson said the university “carefully complies with all federal laws and regulations for visas and looks forward to working with our federal partners to confirm compliance.”
A Caltech spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
About 275,000 people started J-1 programs in 2025, down from 301,694 in 2024, according to State Department data. Trainees and temporary summer workers, such as au pairs and summer camp counselors, also use the visa to enter the U.S.
Most were not at universities, with a majority working summer jobs.
The Trump administration’s crackdown has started to dissuade students from coming to the U.S., with experts expecting a drop in their registration when data for 2025 are released next month.
New research scholars fell 27% from 2024 to 17,622, about half the 2015 total. Most new research scholars in 2025 came from China, followed by South Korea and India.
California drew the most research scholars, 3,211. It ranked second behind New York for all new J-1s in 2025, with 23,167.
The State Department vets applicants and approves sponsors. Research scholars can stay up to five years
Sarah Spreitzer, vice president and chief of staff for government relations at the American Council on Education, said she had found little information about what the new probes would cover. But she said the federal government already has tools “to identify fraud, both in the granting of the visa and then also tracking the person through the Department of Homeland Security.”
“I think that all of these things are focused on bringing fewer international students into the United States, and we have been seeing that impact,” she said, expecting “a huge drop in our international enrollment this year, given everything going on.”
A record fine on the Swiss bank highlights U.S. regulators shifting focus to fill anti-money laundering gaps.
This article appears in the October issue of Global Finance Magazine.
A record $125 million fine handed out to UBS by U.S. regulators in August could herald increased scrutiny of banks.
How banks react to stricter compliance with anti-money laundering laws will be key as U.S. foreign policy and enforcement go together.
“As sanctions and tariffs continue to define U.S. foreign policy, this trend will likely continue. The U.S. and European banks are intertwined the most with the global economy, so the probability of them being under increased scrutiny is likely,” said Salar Ghahramani, associate professor of business law and international law & policy at Penn State Abington.
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) settlement resolves allegations made by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Johann Scholtz, senior equity analyst for Morningstar, suggests that the fine is a result of the market that the Swiss bank targets.
“These banks are particularly exposed to the risk of fines and regulatory intervention just by virtue of their business model. Banking, politically connected individuals, banking high-net-worth people, I think it exposes them to particular risk from an anti-money laundering perspective,” Scholtz said.
The fines were for not sufficiently monitoring 61,500 foreign exchange transactions and not flagging suspicious activity. The record amount is partly because UBS Group AG was fined $14.5 million in 2018 for similar activities with regulators discovering that remedial action had not been taken.
“The 2018 fine may have convinced the UBS board that they were standing on very shaky PR and legal grounds due to the previous track record, likely propelling them to agree to the terms of the fine,” added Ghahramani.
Although there is no current political push to modify AML laws, the UBS judgement may constitute shifting priorities by U.S. regulators.
“The direction of AML regulations in the U.S. seems that it’s becoming more outcome-focused and less of a tick-box exercise. They really want banks to prove that they have a robust system in place rather than just ticking boxes,” Scholtz said.
How can banks protect themselves? By updating their risk management systems to ensure compliance through internal audits. The technical description of UBS’ settlement was unduly specific. Blaming an error in AML surveillance data feeds, a lack of verification of account holder addresses, no reliable unique identifier to match transactions, an absence of any exception queue and errors in the Excel spreadsheet used for foreign exchange transfers
“The announcement brings closure to this legacy matter. UBS has cooperated fully with its regulators and has made significant investments to remediate and strengthen its AML program in line with leading industry practices,” A UBS spokesperson said.
Nic Wirtz is a contributing writer based in Guatemala.
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.
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.
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.
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.