Trump’s Vendetta Against Post Office Will Cause Major Mail Delays

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Attribution: AFP via Getty Images

by Laura Clawson

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.

These changes have already affected one election, with Michigan’s primary seeing some voters not get their absentee ballots in time, even when they’d requested the ballots far in advance. Congressional Democrats have pushed back on the changes, including concerns about the Postal Service in their negotiations over the next coronavirus stimulus—but with Trump committed to sabotage, that has been one of the major sticking points in those negotiations. House Democrats have called DeJoy to testify, but that won’t happen until September if he shows up at all.

Even some Republicans are concerned. Four Republicans were among the 84 House members who signed a letter saying it’s “vital that the Postal Service does not reduce mail delivery hours, which could harm rural communities, seniors, small businesses, and millions of Americans who rely on the mail for critical letters and packages.”

DeJoy claims that the changes he’s making at the Postal Service—changes that have already had such negative effects on mail delivery—won’t harm its ability to deliver ballots. But he’s already laying the groundwork to shift the blame, saying that “we cannot correct the errors of the Election Boards if they fail to deploy processes that take our normal processing and delivery standards into account.” But this comes as he’s slowing down “normal processing and delivery standards.”

There’s a race on now: Does the time between now and November give DeJoy more time to do even more damage to the Postal Service and undermine the elections? Or does it give the public and congressional Democrats time to push back and make Trump and DeJoy rethink the wisdom of destroying the most popular part of the federal government just before an election?

Reprinted with permission of The Daily Kos.

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Professor Mike

Professor Mike is a left-leaning, dog loving, political junkie. He has written dozens of articles for Substack, Medium, Simily, and Tribel. Professor Mike has been published at Smerconish.com, among others. He is a strong proponent of the environment, and a passionate protector of animals. In addition he is a fierce anti-Trumper. Take a moment and share his work.
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3 years ago

How are we the people allowing this? If police assault a black man riots abound. Thousands of people march. Trump lies, cheats, steals and all we do is write about it on FB. That’s some f*cked up shit dude.

Bill Formby
Reply to  Timmy Mahoney
3 years ago

I agree Timmy. “The People”, meaning us should be storming the White House demanding that Trump keep his grimy paws off our postal service. While it does have its flaws it has been the time tested way of communication among people in this country for well over a century and a half. It is the way many low income people are able to keep in touch with their families. I think Trump is just pissed because some companies are getting rich off the mail order business and he is not.

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