Postmaster general must go
In just four abysmal months as postmaster general, Louis DeJoy has done what 230 years of rain, sleet, snow, war and dark of night could not: bring the venerable U.S. Postal Service to its knees.
If there’s one piece of mail he really should deliver immediately, it’s this: his resignation letter.
The longer DeJoy remains postmaster general, the more he threatens to undermine the functioning of the postal service and endanger mail-in balloting in the November elections.
Because of the pandemic, Americans in record-breaking numbers are expected to vote by mail in this election. As Rachel Hinton, chief political reporter for the Sun-Times, reported on Thursday, some 350,000 Illinois residents have requested mail-in ballots in the last two weeks. A historic 1.45 million Illinois voters — one in every four — are likely to choose the mailbox over the ballot box.
Every one of those voters deserves a postmaster general who will honor, respect and deliver their vote. Yet DeJoy can’t be trusted.
Undermining the mails
Since taking office in May, DeJoy has done nothing — by intent or incompetence — but slow the nation’s mail. He has yanked important sorting equipment from postal facilities, removed public mailboxes and suspended overtime pay for workers, even as the mail piles up.
Every action taken by DeJoy has neatly served President Donald Trump’s publicly stated desire to stifle mail-in balloting in order to improve his chances on Election Day. At minimum, DeJoy is unduly shaking the public’s confidence in the integrity of mail-in voting.
On Tuesday, in addition, the U.S. House Oversight Committee announced that it will investigate DeJoy, a major Trump fundraiser, for allegedly pressuring employees in his former North Carolina company, New Breed Logistics, to make campaign donations to his hand-picked list of GOP candidates from 2004 to 2014 — and then reimbursing the workers by paying them bonuses.
Circumventing federal limits on campaign contributions in this way, by secretly using employees as pass-throughs, is a felony.
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-New York, who is chair of the House Oversight Committee, has called on the postal service’s Board of Governors to suspend DeJoy, which beats doing nothing. But if he will not resign, the board should just fire him.
The odds of that happening, unfortunately, are about zero. We know that. The Board of Governors is controlled by five Trump appointees.
“He has 100% board support,” William Zollars, a Republican governor of the board told the Washington Post. “From a logistics and operations standpoint, Louis DeJoy is as good as it gets.”
That is simply false, as any mail carrier can tell you. This is a fellow who warned the nation’s election officials in August that mail-in ballots would no longer automatically be moved as priority mail — shortly after he cut post office hours across several states.
Benefiting personally
At the same time, DeJoy has fed off the postal service even as he has starved it. He owns a $30 million stake in XPO Logistics, a company whose longstanding business with the postal service took a substantial upturn once he became postmaster general.
According to the New York Times, the postal service has shelled out $14 million to XPO Logistics and its related companies since July, compared with $3.4 million during the same time span a year ago, and $4.7 million in the summer of 2018.
Even in a Trump administration chock-full of incompetents, misfits and truth-stretchers, DeJoy and his misdeeds have stood out. He must go.
The clouds of corruption around him are too thick. The mismanagement, willful or otherwise, is too great. The Nov. 3 election, which will rely heavily on mail-in balloting, is too near.