USPS postmaster general resigns abruptly amid rumors of conflict with DOGE



Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has abruptly resigned from the U.S. Postal Service amid talks of conflict with the Department of Government Efficiency.

On Monday, DeJoy issued a statement confirming his resignation after almost five years at the helm. He claimed that under his leadership, the USPS transformed from "an adrift and moribund organization" to one with a "path toward financial sustainability and high operating performance."

"I believe strongly that the organization is well positioned and capable of carrying forward and fully implementing the many strategies and initiatives that comprise our transformation and modernization," DeJoy said.

He described his time at the agency as a true "pleasure" and the "crowning achievement" of his professional life. He also noted that he had already warned the board of governors in February to begin looking for his replacement.

'His absence will leave the agency vulnerable to a dramatic and disruptive takeover by the Trump Administration.'

In 2020, DeJoy left the private sector, where he made millions in logistics, to run the USPS at the behest of President Donald Trump, who was then in his first term.

Though Time characterized DeJoy as a supporter of Trump and "a GOP megadonor," the outlet likewise hinted that he acted as a roadblock for the Trump agenda: "DeJoy’s allies fear that his absence will leave the agency vulnerable to a dramatic and disruptive takeover by the Trump Administration."

Trump has made no secret of his dissatisfaction with the USPS. Last month, he called it a "tremendous loser for this country," and reports have swirled for months that he is considering either merging the agency with the Commerce Department or privatizing it altogether.

Though the USPS managed to turn a $1 billion profit in the most recent quarter, it lost a whopping $9.5 billion in 2024 alone and another $6.5 billion the year before.

Elon Musk and the DOGE have since stepped in, attempting to help rid the USPS of waste. To that end, DeJoy announced earlier this month that the USPS would trim its workforce by 10,000 by encouraging employees to take a voluntary early retirement.

DeJoy also pledged further cooperation with the DOGE's cost-cutting plans. "I signed an agreement with the General Service Administration and DOGE representatives to assist us in identifying further efficiencies," DeJoy wrote in a letter to members of Congress on March 13.

"This is an effort aligned with our efforts, as while we have accomplished a great deal, there is much more to be done. We are happy to have others to assist us in our worthwhile cause."

Behind the scenes, however, DeJoy and the DOGE representatives had difficulty getting on the same page, Time indicated. The DOGE agents wanted more control over the agency than DeJoy was willing to accept, and as a result, DeJoy became "uncooperative" with them, a source told Time.

The DOGE did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

Now, less than two weeks after encouraging some of his employees to take an early retirement, DeJoy decided to take an early retirement himself. Time suggested that he may have done so to prevent further conflict with the DOGE.

Deputy Postmaster General Douglas Tulino will act as interim postmaster general until a permanent successor can be found, DeJoy indicated in his statement, and a search firm has already been assigned to the task.

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The Postal Service is bleeding cash, but the DOGE can stop the hemorrhaging



The Department of Government Efficiency is teaming up with the U.S. Postal Service, and it’s a good thing. Last week, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told Congress he had reached an agreement with the DOGE to root out inefficiencies and help the service address “big problems” — most of which are financial. As an initial cost-cutting gesture, the USPS is reducing its workforce by 10,000 through a voluntary early retirement program.

The DOGE certainly has its work cut out for it. The USPS lost an astounding $9.5 billion in fiscal year 2024 and is projected to lose an additional $60 billion to $70 billion by 2030. However, most of this spending is wasteful — not essential — which positions the service, through proper reforms, to recover and once again deliver for taxpayers and consumers.

Small cuts, combined with more significant reforms, add up. It’s time for the DOGE to start trimming the fat.

One place to start is the service’s electric vehicle purchases. The USPS is eager to replace most of its aging fleet of more than 200,000 mail trucks, which, according to the latest iteration of a 2021 deal with supplier Oshkosh Corp., will cost nearly $10 billion for a fleet of roughly 100,000 vehicles, including 66,000 EVs.

Going back to gas

This agreement is a financial disaster. EV deliveries are already behind schedule, and according to DeJoy, taxpayers and consumers are paying anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 more per EV than for their gas-powered counterparts — and even that may be an underestimate.

In 2022, Congress appropriated for the USPS $3 billion in taxpayer dollars for EV purchases, including $1.29 billion for vehicles and $1.71 billion for charging infrastructure.

When factoring in this one-time subsidy and the Postal Service’s own investment, switching to an all-gas fleet could save nearly $1 billion annually over the next decade. Fortunately, Oshkosh appears open to renegotiating the contract.

If Oshkosh doesn’t play ball, however, lawmakers may step in. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) have introduced the “Return to Sender Act” to recoup taxpayer money wasted on these EV purchases.

Ending Saturday mail deliveries is another straightforward way to cut costs. The USPS currently delivers mail Monday through Saturday, with some packages delivered on Sundays. Shifting to a five-day delivery schedule could reduce costs and improve worker morale. The USPS itself proposed this change in its 2013 “Five-Year Business Plan,” estimating savings of $1.9 billion per year — roughly $2.6 billion today after adjusting for inflation — amounting to about one-third of the service’s average annual losses in recent years.

USPS makes … television?

Beyond these major cuts, the USPS continues to waste money in baffling ways.

The service has ventured into television production, premiering a show called “Dear Santa, The Series” in 2022. This isn’t even its first attempt at TV. The USPS also produced “The Inspectors,” a show that struggled with mediocre ratings. While the costs of these productions remain unclear, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance Foundation plans to file Freedom of Information Act requests to uncover the figures.

TPAF will also investigate the USPS’ suspicious — and increasingly bleeding — check-cashing and money-order operations in addition to the agency’s public relations spending on gratuitous programs like its thin-skinned responses to op-eds and an official podcast.

Small cuts, combined with more significant reforms, add up. In all, the USPS can save more than $7 billion per year with a few common-sense spending cuts. It’s time for the DOGE to start trimming the fat.

One Dem clutches pearls after US Postal Service aligns with DOGE to remedy 'broken business model,' exit 10,000 workers



U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy enraged Democrats Thursday by revealing he has struck a deal with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to tackle some of the inefficiencies that have left the Postal Service a financially nonviable organization with a "broken business model" that "experienced close to $100 billion in losses and was projected to lose another $200 billion."

DeJoy, who was appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term in office, noted in a letter to congressional lawmakers that the USPS has been undergoing a transformation from a "battered government bureaucracy with substantial financial losses destined for collapse" to a functional and financially sound organization.

The USPS, an organization with 635,000 employees, reported a net loss of $9.5 billion in fiscal year 2024 and and a net loss of $6.5 billion in 2023. The organization warned last year that unless it continued to cut costs or received a taxpayer-funded bailout, it was headed for extinction.

DeJoy underscored in his letter that "the rescue activities and pace of change required to transform this organization far exceeds most normal turnaround efforts. The scale of our daily work is unprecedented and extraordinary, our infrastructure was greatly deteriorated due to years of underinvestment, and our operating practices were for a postal environment of long ago that were never adjusted as the times and our business changed."

The USPS has managed to cut some costs in recent years, in part by renegotiating air and ground transportation contracts, which saved the service $10 billion annually; by reducing the headquarters workforce by 20%, which saved the service over $200 million annually; and by canning 30,000 workers since 2021. These and other changes helped pave the way for the USPS to turn a profit of nearly $1 billion in its most recent quarter — its first time in the black since the pandemic.

Despite these successes, DeJoy indicated that he has accepted additional help from the DOGE to go the distance.

'We should privatize everything we possibly can.'

"I signed an agreement with the General Service Administration and DOGE representatives to assist us in identifying further efficiencies," wrote DeJoy. "This is an effort aligned with our efforts, as while we have accomplished a great deal, there is much more to be done. We are happy to have others to assist us in our worthwhile cause."

In addition to exiting 10,000 workers over the next 30 days through a voluntary early retirement program, DeJoy highlighted a number of issues that, if resolved with the help of the DOGE, could save the USPS billions of dollars. Among the issues identified were the:

  • "mismanagement of our self-funded retirement assets and the actuarial miscalculations of our retirement obligations," which apparently result in several billions of dollars of unnecessary additional charges each year;
  • mismanagement of the postal workers' compensation program, which apparently results in roughly $400 million in excessive annual charges;
  • estimated $6 billion to $11 billion cost of unfunded mandates imposed on the service by legislation; and
  • "burdensome regulatory requirements restricting normal business practice" and the Postal Regulatory Commission, which DeJoy said was an "unnecessary agency that has inflicted over $50 billion in damage to the Postal Service" and stands "in the way of the timely and necessary changes required to succeed as a self-funded enterprise in a competitive environment."

"The DOGE team was gracious enough to ask for the big problems that they can help us with," added DeJoy.

The postmaster requested that lawmakers get on board and engage with the USPS and the DOGE representatives "that need to adapt to the critically necessary changes involved and to correct for the deficiencies of the past that can and must be corrected."

The prospect that the DOGE will work with the Postal Service to ensure it not only survives but thrives has angered a solitary Democrat who figured this was the proverbial hill he would die on.

Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, stated, "The only thing worse for the Postal Service than DeJoy's 'Delivering for America' plan is turning the service over to Elon Musk and DOGE so they can undermine it, privatize it, and then profit off Americans' loss."

Although there was no explicit mention of privatization in DeJoy's letter, Connolly might have been referencing Musk's suggestion last week that "we should privatize everything we possibly can," including the post office.

"This capitulation will have catastrophic consequences for all Americans — especially those in rural and hard to reach areas — who rely on the Postal Service every day to deliver mail, medications, ballots, and more," added Connolly.

Brian Renfroe, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, indicated that he was aware of the agreement between the USPS, the GSA, and the DOGE, stating, "We will continue closely monitoring the situation and will fight like hell against any attack on the rights and privacy of NALC members."

Renfroe noted, however, that the policy changes the postmaster proposed in his letter "are needed to improve the Postal Service's financial viability," adding the NALC welcomes "anyone's help who can influence Congress and the Administration to finally enact them."

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Congress moves to address postal carriers' safety concerns amid nationwide robbery trend



Congress will introduce new legislation Wednesday that aims to address postal carriers' safety concerns amid a nationwide robbery trend, the Associated Press reported.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), the legislation's lead sponsor in the House, will introduce the Protect Our Letter Carriers Act this week to respond to a recent uptick in robberies targeting postal workers.

TOMORROW \u27a1\ufe0f the Protect Our Letter Carriers Act will be introduced in Congress to protect letter carriers from violent crime while they are on the job. #EnoughIsEnough
— (@)

Fitzpatrick stated that the bipartisan legislation "provides resources to protect our dedicated postal service workers while making sure we are punishing criminals to the fullest extent of the law," the AP reported. If passed, it would speed up the replacement of the U.S. Postal Service's mailbox keys, known as "arrow keys," with electronic versions to deter thieves. According to the AP, the updated keys will have no value to crooks.

According to Brian Renfroe, the president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, the bill would also require 93 U.S. attorneys to assign a prosecutor to pursue postal crimes. Renfroe noted that the legislation will reexamine sentencing guidelines for various postal crimes.

Renfroe addressed NALC members and supporters in Oklahoma City last month about the uptick in robberies, calling the incidents "unacceptable ... appalling ... and out of control."

"Nearly every day, we learn of another incident of violence against a letter carrier," he stated. "Targeted armed robbery, assault, shootings — and yes, even murder — has become part of our job."

According to records obtained from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and reviewed by the AP, postal carrier robberies increased 30% last year, and the number of robberies that resulted in injury doubled.

USPS spokesperson Jeff Adams told the news outlet that letter carrier robberies dropped 19% over the past five months. He noted that there has been a 73% increase in arrests for letter carrier robberies so far in fiscal year 2024.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy stated, "We have been unrelenting in our pursuit of criminals who target postal employees and the U.S. mail. The efforts of our postal inspectors and law enforcement partners have yielded positive results."

At a rally held in Jacksonville, Jim Thigpenn, the president of the USPS North Florida Branch 53, explained that the attacks on postal carriers are not random.

"Every single neighborhood [has been affected]; we've had situations where it happened on the Northside, and then a half hour later, it happened on the Westside in one day," he explained. "This is just not tied to a certain side of town or anything like that. It's more of a targeted type of situation."

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