Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said board members for the U.S. Postal Service should fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy or resign themselves amid controversy over planned changes he’s announced.
“The @USPS Board of Governors has a responsibility to serve the public interest. That means delivering the mail on time – not acting as accomplices for the Postmaster General’s partisan sabotage. If the Board won’t fire Louis DeJoy and reverse the damage, they should resign too,” Warren tweeted Friday.
The tweet came after a contentious hearing held by the GOP-led Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in which DeJoy, a major GOP donor and ally of President Trump, defended his proposed operational changes to the Postal Service amid claims from Democrats that they would impact the November election and prescription deliveries among other things.
DeJoy emphasized that he is postponing some of the changes until after Nov. 3 to avoid the appearance of impacting an election that is anticipated to rely heavily on mail-in ballots. However, the official decried the “false and unfair” narrative that he was trying to suppress the vote.
“Managing the Postal Service in an efficient and effective manner cannot succeed if everything is politicized,” DeJoy said, adding that he has never discussed the Postal Service with President Trump.
“I recognize that it has become impossible to separate the necessary long-term reform efforts we will need to undertake from the broader political environment surrounding the election, and I do not want to pursue any immediate efforts that might be utilized to tarnish the Postal Service brand, particularly as it relates to our role in the democratic process,” he said.
DeJoy added that ensuring mail-in ballots are delivered on time for the election this year is his “No. 1 priority.”
Democrats in Washington have indicated that despite DeJoy’s assurances and his decision to delay the changes, they have every intention of performing oversight over the agency.
Democrats have long voiced worries that DeJoy’s proposed changes, which include a staff shakeup, removing ballot drop-off sites, curtailing overtime for Postal Service workers and adjusting delivery policies, would impact timely delivery, but Republicans fired back Friday that their colleagues’ concerns were baseless.
“From what I’ve heard so far today, apparently the post office never had any issues, there were never any delays … until 65 days ago when you arrived, and then apparently all chaos has broken out,” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said.