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Dear Friend,
The U.S. Postal Service is due to go bankrupt by the end of the summer due to the pandemic—but Donald Trump is blocking funding, and called the post office a "joke."1
Now he has just named one of his top donors as the new head of the U.S. Postal Service—putting the survival of this longtime service in mortal danger.2
Shutting down the postal service would throw more than 500,000 workers onto unemployment—and undermine our efforts to expand vote-by-mail before the November election. Demand Progress is fighting to save the U.S. Postal Service, but we need your help to reach as many people as possible.
Will you donate to Demand Progress to help save the U.S. Postal Service—and our democracy?
There is no understating the damage that Trump’s donor friend Louis DeJoy can do as postmaster general.
When Trump installed an ally as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency’s work ground to a halt.3 Under the Trump administration’s lead, the Environmental Protection Agency has reversed more than 100 rules, and has frozen the enforcement of the regulations still in place.4
Now Trump has his hands on the U.S. Postal Service, a 200-year-old cornerstone of our democracy.
The postal service is buried in debt due to a 2006 law intended to bankrupt it out of existence by placing ridiculous requirements on its budget.5 Now the agency is trying to negotiate with the White House for a new line of credit, but Trump has already said that he won’t allow it unless the service agrees to exorbitant price hikes and new business practices that would be unsustainable.6
In other words, Trump has laid out a plan to end the post office as we know it—and the new person in charge is bound to help him implement that plan.
Unlike FedEx and UPS, the postal service delivers mail to every postal address in the country, no matter how remote or hard to reach. It provides important communication avenues for the 14.5 million Americans who don’t have broadband. Millions more receive their prescriptions through the mail.7
The post office is America’s favorite agency, with 91% of people wanting to keep it in business.8 We need to capitalize on that energy now and stop Trump from killing the postal service and undermining our elections.
Will you donate today to save the postal service and our democracy from Donald Trump?
Thank you for taking action in this urgent moment.
Robert Cruickshank,
Demand Progress
Sources:
1. Politico, "Trump: Postal service is a 'joke' that must raise prices to get bailout money," April 24, 2020
2. The Washington Post, "Top Republican fundraiser and Trump ally named postmaster general, giving president new influence over Postal Service," May 6, 2020
3. The New York Times Magazine, "Mick Mulvaney’s Master Class in Destroying a Bureaucracy From Within," April 16, 2020
4. The New York Times, "The Trump Administration is Reversing Nearly 100 Environmental Rules. Here's the Full List.," May 6, 2020
5. The Week, "How George Bush broke the Post Office," April 16, 2018
6. Politico, "Trump: Postal service is a 'joke' that must raise prices to get bailout money," April 24, 2020
7. Vox, "If the US Postal Service fails, rural America will suffer the most," April 16, 2020
8. About USPS, "U.S. Postal Service Tops List Again as Americans’ Favorite Government Agency," April 15, 2020
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