Demolishing Louis DeJoy
In normal times, most people wouldn’t be able to name the postmaster general. We’ve always trusted the postmaster general to do the right thing, and we didn’t particularly think of the position as a partisan one. Then Louis DeJoy, a far-right megadonor and enabler of the Former Guy, came along and threw a wrench into the works at the United States Postal Service. The majority of us rely on the USPS, perhaps taking its erstwhile efficiency and services for granted. Postmaster General DeJoy has sought to sabotage the USPS from within. In fact, Rep. Marie Newman (D-IL) has noted that some of her constituents have gone weeks with no postal delivery at all.
DeJoy is a major investor in USPS detractors, so his interests do not lie with the public or with the agency he heads. Aligned with the previous president and without scruples, DeJoy has abused his position to drive business away from the USPS, thereby helping competing shipping entities in which he’s heavily invested. And of course we know that DeJoy sought to damage our postal service’s reliability during the 2020 election when Democrats embraced voting by mail. DeJoy put deleterious policies into place, and he now seeks to put even more into place. If you think the mail is slow and unreliable now, know that DeJoy hopes to worsen this already bad situation.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) and Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) have introduced the DEJOY (Delivering Envelopes Judiciously On-time Year-round) Act in their respective chambers. The goal would be to prevent further DeJoy-inspired service changes from going into effect. Sen. Heinrich has stated that “the U.S. Postal Service needs to be improving delivery rates — not walking them back to the days of the pony express.” We rely on the USPS for personal and business reasons, and we also rely on it to deliver voters’ ballots in a timely manner. A properly functioning postal service is crucial for our democracy and economy. Let’s urge our legislators to support this legislation and mitigate some of the damage that DeJoy has done to our esteemed United States Postal Service.
