Tag: Trump willing to damage the post office to suppress votes

How Trump, Mnuchin and DeJoy edged the Postal Service into a crisis

Washington Post logo

Soon after Louis DeJoy arrived at the U.S. Postal Service’s L’Enfant Plaza headquarters in mid-June, Mark Dimondstein, the veteran leader of the agency’s largest union, called to get on the new postmaster general’s schedule.

He had urgent matters to discuss: The coronavirus pandemic was forcing widespread absenteeism among his 200,000 members. Protective gear was running low. The post office needed a plan to handle a historic crush of mail-in ballots.

Dimondstein had spoken weekly with DeJoy’s predecessor, Megan Brennan. But it would take six weeks for him to get an audience with the new boss, and by then, the labor leader had other priorities: to halt the rapid-fire cost-cutting moves DeJoy ordered that were degrading the delivery of mail, medicine, food and other staples to a country homebound as the virus was surging again. Continue reading.

How Trump was able to shape the Postal Service board to enact a new agenda

Washington Post logo

Sen. Elizabeth Warren called on the Postal Service’s governing board Monday to oust Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and roll back the cost-cutting moves Democrats warn are designed to sabotage mail-in voting.

“That’s why we have a board of governors,” Warren (D-Mass.) told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “We need them to just get rid of Louis DeJoy and say, all those mailboxes they took out, all those [mail] sorting machines they took out, the no-overtime policy . . . we’re done.”

It is highly unlikely to happen. DeJoy, the North Carolina businessman and Trump campaign donor who arrived in June to make sweeping cuts to postal operations, was appointed by a board that is now controlled 4 to 2 by loyalists to President Trump. “We just got the board,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. Continue reading.

House accelerates oversight of Postal Service as uproar grows, demanding top officials testify at ‘urgent’ hearing

Washington Post logo

The House Oversight Committee announced a hearing for Aug. 24, inviting Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and Postal Service board of governors Chairman Robert M. Duncan

The House Oversight Committee will hold an emergency hearing on mail delays and concerns about potential White House interference in the U.S. Postal Service, inviting Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and Postal Service board of governors Chairman Robert M. Duncan to testify Aug. 24, top Democrats announced on Sunday.

Democrats have alleged that DeJoy, a former Republican National Convention finance chairman, is taking steps that are causing dysfunction in the mail system and could wreak havoc in the presidential election. The House had earlier not planned a hearing until September.

“The postmaster general and top Postal Service leadership must answer to the Congress and the American people as to why they are pushing these dangerous new policies that threaten to silence the voices of millions, just months before the election,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Oversight Chair Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said in a statement announcing the hearing. Continue reading.