Louis DeJoy, the U.S. postmaster normal, attends a 2022 occasion on the Postal Service headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Pictures
cover caption
toggle caption
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Pictures
The pinnacle of the U.S. Postal Service has agreed to permit the DOGE staff of President Trump’s billionaire adviser Elon Musk to assist discover “additional efficiencies” on the nation’s mail service, in response to a letter to congressional leaders launched Thursday.
Postmaster Normal Louis DeJoy signed the settlement with DOGE Wednesday evening, the outgoing USPS head confirmed within the letter, noting that the Postal Service — which has been present process a controversial 10-year reorganization since 2021 to attempt to proper its troubled funds — is “completely happy to have others to help us in our worthwhile trigger.”
Leaders of two USPS worker unions inform NPR that DeJoy assured them there are provisions within the settlement that stop members of Musk’s staff, often called the Division of Authorities Effectivity, from having unfettered entry to info within the data of the Postal Service’s greater than half-million workers. NPR has not reviewed the settlement.
“We’re very a lot in assist of that kind of safety, assuming that they adjust to it,” Brian Renfroe — president of the Nationwide Affiliation of Letter Carriers, the union for carriers in cities — tells NPR. “There’s motive for skepticism primarily based on what we have seen from a number of the different federal businesses.”
Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Staff Union, says in an announcement to NPR that the union representing postal clerks and different USPS workers “will use every part in our energy, together with each authorized device, to make sure that knowledge associated to worker info and data on particular person prospects stays non-public and out of the fingers of Elon Musk and his Muskrats.”
Spokespeople for DOGE and the USPS didn’t reply to requests for touch upon the settlement’s provisions.
It isn’t clear what DOGE will attempt to do whereas the USPS continues its “self-help” methods
This new association comes because the Trump administration faces greater than a dozen lawsuits over DOGE’s entry to knowledge at different federal businesses amid a push to slash the U.S. authorities workforce and applications.
Till now, there had been no public signal that DOGE’s efforts had reached the Postal Service. In latest months, nevertheless, Trump and his officers have prompt reworking the USPS, together with expressing assist for privatizing the service and proposing to fold what Congress set as much as be an impartial company into the Commerce Division, a transfer that may doubtless be challenged in courtroom.
These strategies, together with Musk’s broad makes an attempt to reshape the federal authorities, have drawn outcries from Democrats on Capitol Hill. Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia — the highest Democrat on the Home Oversight Committee, who launched DeJoy’s letter — criticized the settlement DeJoy signed as a option to enable Musk to “infiltrate” the Postal Service.
“This capitulation can have catastrophic penalties for all Individuals — particularly these in rural and laborious to achieve areas — who depend on the Postal Service every single day to ship mail, drugs, ballots, and extra. Dependable mail supply cannot simply be reserved for MAGA supporters and Tesla house owners,” Connolly stated in an announcement.
It isn’t clear precisely what DOGE will attempt to do on the USPS. DeJoy’s letter emphasised that the Postal Service has been utilizing “self-help” methods to realize “effectivity beneficial properties, value financial savings and income progress.” These embrace, the postmaster normal famous, a voluntary early retirement program that was first introduced in mid-January to Postal Service workers. This system is predicted to scale back the USPS labor workforce by a further 10,000 individuals within the subsequent 30 days after an earlier lack of about 30,000 staff from fiscal 12 months 2021.
Nonetheless, requested by DOGE representatives for “the massive issues they may also help” with, DeJoy stated he gave them a listing of “intractable” points that he described as out of the Postal Service’s management and within the fingers of Congress. One is a longstanding dispute over how the Workplace of Personnel Administration calculates the Postal Service’s liabilities for pre-1970 pension advantages. DeJoy additionally pointed to the Postal Regulatory Fee, which Congress set as much as monitor the USPS, as “an pointless company” whose members “stand in the way in which of the well timed and essential adjustments required to succeed as a self-funded enterprise in a aggressive surroundings.”
The postmaster normal, who had been a high Trump donor earlier than becoming a member of the USPS, has usually tussled with the fee over its criticism of his reorganization plan. In an announcement responding to DeJoy’s letter, the PRC says it “has finished greater than its half to assist” the Postal Service whereas following the regulation to “make sure that USPS supplies common service to all Individuals” and “safeguards honest competitors in package deal markets by stopping the Postal Service from abusing its monopoly place.”
As for whether or not DOGE could make any progress on the challenges dealing with the USPS, Renfroe, president of town mail carriers’ union, says he is taking a “wait-and-see” method.
“The best way that the Postal Service accepts and processes and strikes and delivers mail is extremely advanced,” Renfroe provides. “I believe it will be fully unreasonable, primarily based on what I find out about the way in which DOGE appears to be like at issues, for them to essentially dig deep within the operations simply due to the complexity of it.”
Edited by Benjamin Swasey
