This week, Donald Trump’s Postmaster General Louis DeJoy will begin implementing a plan to permanently slow down first-class mail services. That’s right, this is the next step in his continuing efforts to slash Post Office services, slow delivery times, and raise postage rates.
DeJoy’s well-documented conflicts of interest with his family business, investments in Postal Service competitors, as well as an FBI investigation into campaign finance violations made him unfit for his position from the start. And over the last sixteen months his gross mismanagement of USPS has caused scores of problems for those who depend most on reliable and efficient mail, especially the elderly, rural families and small businesses.
Slowing down the Postal Service has a real cost. For some it can be a life-and-death situation.
Our postal service delivers medicine to millions of Americans — a service that became even more vital in the midst of a pandemic. It delivers Social Security checks to seniors who rely on those benefits to survive. And increasingly it is also an important tool to strengthen democratic participation through mail-in voting.