Postmaster General Louis DeJoy recently announced his intention to step down after five years on the job. “As you know, I have worked tirelessly to lead the 640,000 men and women of the Postal Service in accomplishing an extraordinary transformation,” he wrote to the agency’s governing board.
DeJoy offered no reason for his departure. He cast a bit of shade at Congress, some of whose members have castigated his performance in hearings. Being postmaster general, he noted, “is a demanding role made more difficult by the devastating condition I found the Postal Service in when I arrived and the almost unceasing resistance to change — without offering any viable solutions — from stakeholders motivated by both parochial and political purposes. The simplest and most obvious ideas and solutions receive illogical and irrational scrutiny.”
President Donald Trump is reportedly planning to fold the Postal Service, an independent agency throughout U.S. history, into his second, nonconsecutive administration. Trump would issue an executive order to fire the Postal Service’s governing board and then place the mail agency under the Commerce Department.