Trump is sabotaging the mail — and it threatens to undermine the election

Donald Trump has had a vendetta against the U.S. Postal Service throughout his time in office, but it only took center stage after he realized that the Postal Service would be an essential part of the elections because voting by mail is more important during the coronavirus pandemic. But while Trump’s efforts to destroy the Postal Service have only ramped up in the past couple months, destroying things is one of his areas of greatest competence, so there’s very real worry about voting by mail in November, and, as a result, about the elections as a whole.

“It seems like they’re just trying to turn customers away from the post office,” the president of the Cincinnati American Postal Workers Union local told The New York Times. A West Virginia American Postal Workers Union (APWU) local president had a related view, saying: “It’s like they’re setting us up for failure.”

Trump installed Louis DeJoy, a major Republican donor with no postal experience, as postmaster general, to do the damage, and DeJoy has moved quickly. Friday night, news broke that DeJoy had ”overhauled” top Postal Service leadership and consolidated power around himself. That followed DeJoy cutting overtime and changing policies to make it more likely that mail would be delivered late. Some routes have missed delivery altogether under DeJoy’s program of sabotage. Continue reading.