After U.S. postal workers got a letter advising how to work during epidemics, hurricanes and civil unrest, social media posts spun the guidance into a conspiracy theory: Surely this was a sign of an approaching crisis or confirmation that President Donald Trump would impose martial law, they said.
“So does the USPS postal service know something that we don’t?” asked one speaker in a TikTok.
“Letter signals that an impending crisis of civil unrest or an epidemic could be imminent!” said an X post. “Government prepping while we’re in the dark?”
Some posts speculated that the USPS letter is a sign that President Donald Trump will impose martial law.
The Jan. 5 memo from Deputy Postmaster General Doug Tulino is real. An American Postal Workers Union representative sent us a copy to confirm its authenticity. A U.S. Postal Service spokesperson said the letter was reissued; we found similar ones from 2020.
The letter says if essential workers aren’t exempted from local or state curfew orders or travel directives during emergencies, postal workers are governed by federal law and can continue to work during local or state curfew orders or travel directives. The letter instructs employees and contractors to carry an “essential service provider letter” explaining that they are exempt from restrictions that they can give to law enforcement should their activity come under question.
The Jan. 5 letter does not mention any specific crisis or current event and does not mention immigration enforcement, Trump or martial law, despite social media posts’ attempts to tie it to those topics.
Many of the social media posts are dated after Jan. 7, when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Renee Good, a U.S. citizen, in Minneapolis. Protests against ICE intensified after the shooting.
The speaker in a TikTok video speculated about whether the letter was related to ICE, asking, “Is the stage set? Is it a powder keg ready waiting to go?”
The U.S. Postal Service website shows employees received similar letters in March, June, July and December of 2020 for the same purpose. Many states had travel or other restrictions because of the pandemic and some cities experienced civil unrest during protests after the murder of George Floyd, a Minneapolis man, by a police officer.
Postal workers said in January social media post comments that they had also gotten such letters during hurricane season or snowstorms.
Although Trump threatened Jan. 15 to invoke the Insurrection Act in response to Minneapolis protests, legal experts told PolitiFact in 2025 that invoking the Insurrection Act would not create what is commonly understood as martial law.
Trump has not said he will impose martial law, which typically means suspending civil law while the military takes control of civilian functions such as courts. The U.S. imposed martial law in Hawaii after the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and President Abraham Lincoln declared martial law in certain parts of the country during the Civil War.
We rate the claim that a postal service letter sent to employees is a sign that Trump will impose martial law False.
