In the wake of what DeJoy calls a “restructuring,” the agency’s inspector general has now hinted at these policy changes. And DeJoy will testify in both the Senate and the House in the coming days, following demands from Democrats he appears.
The USPS is accused of being safe guardians of millions of Americans’ votes, and has a growing sense of distrust on all sides. Every day a bill is marked too late when a birthday card arrives later than expected is another day for voters to ask: Will the Post Office have the task of holding these elections?
For the two months of his tenure, postal workers and election observers have been closely watching DeJoy and questioning to what extent he will serve Trump’s interests in the 2020 election. The events of the week served to highlight exactly how his synchronization with his boss can to be.
“He’s a fantastic man,” Trump said when asked Saturday night during his news conference at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, if he supports DeJoy’s changes at the bureau. “He wants to make the Post Office great again.”
A new kind of postmaster
A successful businessman and Republican donor, DeJoy is known among friends for his take-no-BS attitude. His wife, Polish-born Aldona Wos, was the U.S. ambassador to Estonia under George W. Bush and is currently awaiting confirmation as ambassador to Canada.
Relatively unknown outside GOP circles in North Carolina, DeJoy became part of the president’s big circle of unofficial advisers in his role as a productive lender for Trump. DeJoy was tapped as the financial chairman for the 2020 Republican National Convention in Charlotte, a high-profile position generally reserved for trustees as financial brokers.
DeJoy was the preference for Trump when the agency’s board of directors tapped him earlier this year to run the centuries-old Postal Service like a private company, and one source close to DeJoy said he was easily persuaded to accept it. Unlike several recent postmasters general who came up through the agency, DeJoy is a government novice whose connection to the post is primarily commercial.
The agreements between Trump and DeJoy do not end there. Both are New Yorkers who are known for speaking out and ignoring the rules. DeJoy’s North Carolina home, where Trump attended a fundraiser in 2017, looks like a castle – complete with a rotunda, a two-story kitchen, and a staircase painted with 24-karat gold leaf.
Most importantly, DeJoy shares the president’s view that the government should be approached more as a business, and he seems to have little patience for bureaucratic niceties. That aspect comes through in DeJoy’s memo to Post Office staff, which is remarkably blunt in assessing the agency’s problems (“Over the years, we’ve grown undisciplined in our schedules. for mail and parcel processing “) and assesses with Trumpian fanfare that the changes are part of a” transformative initiative. ”
That my-way-as-the-way attitude has made the Postmaster General’s office transparent. In a change from previous practice, USPS election officials say election-related e-mails are not treated as first-class, even when states pay for bullying – a costly policy change if states prepare for a larger-than-expected number of post-in ballots.
The problem, according to the letters, lies with the scheme of the states, not with the Post Office itself.
Disrupt the mailbox
The forthcoming approach has already taken action from several states, illustrating the impact DeJoy has had on officials across the country worried about holding an election at unusual times.
That belligerent tone reflects the way Democrats on DeJoy zeroed in on him as a partisan stalking horse for suppressing the vote. Democrats in Congress have voiced their opposition to the USPS cuts following what were described as “heated” talks with DeJoy earlier this month. In that meeting, Democrats demanded that the cuts be reintroduced, with the need for a fully functioning Post Office before the election.
“[T]he President, his coroners and Republicans in Congress continue their fierce attack on the Postal Service and their role in ensuring the integrity of the elections in 2020, “said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic leader Sen. Chuck Schumer in a joint statement. statement Friday.
DeJoy and the Post Office have also been criticized by the NAACP for “disrupting the machinery of democracy. A union of postal workers, the National Association of Letter Carriers, also took a sweep at Trump’s USPS.” Friday that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, NALC President Frederic Rolando, said their decision was “in part informed by what we have seen from the current Administration regarding the Postal Service.”
At the Aug. 7 board meeting of the Postal Service Board, DeJoy dismissed the idea that he was a puppet of the president.
“While I certainly have a good relationship with the President of the United States, the idea that I would ever make decisions regarding the postal service in the direction of the President, or anyone else in the administration, is completely off-base. ,” he said.
Yet Trump seems ready for his appointment and his decisions at the Post Office.
“He’s a very good businessman. He’s very successful. And I know he wants to lose at least a little less money to the Post Office than – they’ve lost so much money in decades. No one has ever – lost anything like the Post Office. And he wants to make it successful, “Trump told reporters at his Bedminster club last week, adding,” Let’s see what he can do. “
Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on August 16, 2020. It has been updated to note that Louis DeJoy will testify before Congress.
CNN’s Marshall Cohen and Ellie Kaufman have contributed to this story.
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