President Trump is Sabotaging the US Postal Service

As discussed in a previous post, the U.S. Postal Service plays a hugely important role in the United States’ economy and was crucial to the founding of a nation. However, President Trump has been politicizing the Postal Service, cutting funding from it at its most crucial time, and trying to make the service worse, all ahead of the 2020 elections.

Even in the modern day, the Postal Service fulfills major roles for both the government and the private sector. Aside from delivering mail and packages at an extremely low cost (cross-country mail starts from 55 cents), it delivers IRS receipts, delivers Social Security checks, provides passport-processing services, delivers stimulus checks, handles mail-in voting, and so much more. It would not be a stretch to say that the USPS is a backbone of the U.S. economy.

Yet, since President Trump has appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, service has been deteriorating significantly. All throughout the campaign season, President Trump has been blasting the USPS for being a waste of money, not making a profit, and complaining of its inefficiency. And President Trump and his postmaster are deliberately sabotaging the service, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 elections, which will likely heavily rely on the USPS.

Some ways in which the Postal Service is being sabotaged by his administration include the deliberate removal of mail-sorting equipment from post offices to make mail sorting slower, closing some post offices, cutting back working hours for employees so mail takes longer to be handled, and generally allowing mail to be delayed significantly. Various USPS employees, such as those here, here, and here, have strongly suspected efforts to generally sabotage the service.

Trump, who has called mail-in voting “substantially fraudulent,” has refused to approve $25 billion in emergency funding for the USPS (at a time when the service is significantly sapped of money), or $3.5 billion for aiding election resources, and the GOP stimulus bill has included a whopping zero dollars for the Postal Service.

It isn’t difficult to see why Donald Trump and the GOP are trying to undermine the USPS at this crucial time. With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to rage across many parts of America, this November’s elections are likely going to rely heavily on mail-in voting. Trump, as mentioned above, is staunchly opposed against it (whether or not this is voter suppression is a topic for another time). Since mail-in voting is going to happen whether or not he likes it, manipulating the USPS is a convenient way for him to effectively render thousands, if not millions, of ballots worthless. As most states require ballots to arrive before November 3, having mail take longer to arrive could mean a large number of ballots arriving late, conveniently allowing them not to be counted.

As Republicans are generally more likely to believe the COVID-19 pandemic is less serious compared to Democrats, and thus more likely to vote in person, targeting the USPS can tilt the election in his favor. The destruction of the Postal Service is quite literally, a threat to American democracy. (Not to mention the thousands of rural Americans that will be affected by USPS service cuts and other downsides.)

To make matters worse, CNN has revealed that Postmaster General DeJoy has a financial interest in ruining the USPS and shows a major conflict of interest.

Luckily, these actions to sabotage the USPS has not gone unnoticed. Over 173 House Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, have called in on the Postmaster General to reverse the assault on the post office. And a new bill has been introduced to reverse these changes to the USPS.

Those who are voting by mail must mail in their ballots no later than October 20, or drop them off at a county office or dropoff box to ensure it is counted. The destruction of the USPS is a threat to American democracy and must be stopped at all costs. ◾️