John,

The United States Postal Service (USPS)—and democracy itself—must be saved from Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.

DeJoy is the first Postmaster General in two decades without postal experience, and he was appointed shortly after the Office of Budget and Management, under then-President Donald Trump, recommended privatizing the USPS.

Since his appointment, mail slowdowns and historic price hikes have made DeJoy’s claim that the USPS is in a “death spiral” a self fulfilling prophecy.¹

DeJoy sees mail service reductions as “inevitable” and says his price hikes aren’t speeding up the decline. He’s wrong. The combination of higher prices and slower delivery virtually guarantees the USPS will lose more customers. Since slowdowns started a little over a decade ago, and accelerated under DeJoy, first-class mail volume has shrunk by 28% to 46 billion pieces in 2023 from almost 64 billion pieces in 2014.²

Send a message directly to your members of Congress and the USPS Board of Governors demanding they stop mail slowdowns and price hikes, and restore 2012 delivery standards to save the post office now.

The Postal Service is a lifeline to people all over the country, especially folks living in remote areas such as rural and Indigenous communities. From medications and Social Security checks to voting by mail, these communities rely on the Postal Service every day. Slowing USPS service disproportionately impacts these communities the most because—unlike UPS and FedEx—the USPS is required by law to deliver all mail to all regions at a flat rate.

Private companies won’t build offices in rural and remote areas because it’s not profitable. So instead, these private companies often rely on the USPS for “last-mile delivery” to get mail and packages to remote areas specifically because it would be too expensive for them to do it any other way.³

That’s the point: the U.S. Postal Service is not the same as a private business. It’s a public good, and it must be around to serve people in remote as well as more populous areas.

When DeJoy has faced pressure from Congress and everyday people, we’ve won. This year, our movement, working with Congress, forced DeJoy to pause closures of USPS processing centers until at least January 2025, to help protect vote-by-mail in this crucial election year.

But that action alone is not enough—a recent PBS report aired concerns by election officials that the USPS is not delivering mail fast enough to ensure that mailed ballots are received in time and counted.⁴

Now it’s time to do more—this time to stop the new mail slowdowns set to hit rural communities the hardest, and demand service delivery be restored to 2012 standards to completely erase the damage done by Louis DeJoy.

Write to your members of Congress and the USPS Board of Governors today to tell them no more USPS delivery slowdowns and to restore delivery to 2012 standards.

Thank you for all you do,

Deborah Weinstein
Executive Director, CHN Action

¹ USPS says it wants to save $3 billion a year. Some rural mail delivery could get slower.
² A Decade of Facts and Figures
³ If the US Postal Service fails, rural America will suffer the most
⁴ Widespread problems with U.S. mail system could disrupt voting, election officials warn