DeJoy is still actively advancing and even plans to launch a new 10-year plan for the agency in the coming days, several sources familiar with his plans told CNN, and will meet with the Postal Board of Governors on Tuesday, when he meets publicly. for the first time since Biden took office.
Getting rid of DeJoy is not a clean process. The president does not have the power to remove the Postmaster General. Only the Postal Board of Governors – made up of members appointed by the President and confirmed in the Senate – have the competence to do so, and DeJoy continues to count on the support of the board appointed by Trump.
But Biden has the power to nominate board members and send them to the Senate – now led by Democrats – for confirmation. Some lawmakers want Biden to go beyond filling empty seats and take drastic action, sacking the entire board.
“(V) During the devastating fire of the Trump regime, the USPS Board of Governors was silent,” Deputy Bill Pascrell, a Democrat from New Jersey, wrote in a letter to Biden in January. “Your abandonment cannot now be forgotten.”
Complaints about the postal service began shortly after he was appointed by Trump with a mandate to cut costs and make things work more efficiently. The post office drew attention for all the wrong reasons in the months leading up to election day, in an electoral cycle with an unprecedented number of votes in the mail.
Now, Americans are still complaining about the slow delivery. Lawmakers asked the Postmaster General to resolve constituents’ complaints of delays in ordering medicines by mail and credit card bills. And public outcry on social media over Christmas cards that arrive months after the season, packaging warnings warning of “unforeseen delays” and missing tracking numbers that offer no idea of a delivery date have continued to plague the USPS in last months.
In his letter to Biden, Pascrell noted that the president has the power to dismiss board members “for just cause”, although this is not clearly defined. So far, the new government has not responded to Pascrell’s letter.
With only six of the nine seats filled, the current board of governors consists of two Democrats and four Republicans. Before stepping down in December, Trump tried to solidify his grip on the board by appointing a fifth Republican member, but the nomination did not make it through the Senate before Biden took office.
Biden now has the power to stack the board with advocates of his agenda and vision for the giant agency. With three seats open and two more members over the term limit, Democrats are calling on Biden to do just that, and to nominate a new list of board members who could eventually topple DeJoy.
Post Office spokesman David Partenheimer did not directly respond to CNN’s request to comment on calls for DeJoy’s dismissal, saying instead that the postmaster and others are working aggressively “to drive improvements at” the agency to “offer a better service to all Americans in all families.”
The White House declined CNN’s request for comment, but during the White House press conference on Monday, press secretary Jen Psaki dodged a question when asked whether Biden believes the general postmaster should hold his position and whether the president would change the composition of the board to facilitate its removal.
“Well, as I understand it, there are a lot of vacancies now on the post office board, or vacancies … that, of course, would work through a personal process. I don’t think there’s anything more about that, about that for you, “Psaki told reporters at a press conference at the White House.
A source close to Biden’s transition team told CNN that the government was receptive to suggestions from board members, but any movement in the nominations did not seem imminent. Five days after taking office, Biden appointed a Democrat as the new chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission – a role that does not require Congressional oversight.
Judges block changes to DeJoy and Biden’s requests
DeJoy emerged from obscurity last summer, raising alarms with aggressive new strategies that toppled the USPS months before the country was set to vote by post in unprecedented numbers. Federal judges across the country issued unprecedented decisions to temporarily block DeJoy’s changes from being implemented before the elections.
In one of those decisions in September, a New York federal judge ruled that the agency must prioritize electoral correspondence and reverse some important policy changes imposed by DeJoy. The judge also called “managerial failures” at the agency that he said undermined the public’s faith in postal voting.
Critics linked DeJoy, a Republican mega donor, to Trump and his repeated rhetoric undermining postal voting. Eventually, a DeJoy in trouble suspended some of the changes until after the election.
Biden, meanwhile, campaigned to save the Post Office and, days after taking office, signed an executive order ordering federal officials to devise a plan to convert all 225,000 Post Office vehicles into electric “zero-emission vehicles”. A USPS source told CNN that this change would save millions of dollars in maintenance fees for the USPS, but there was still no clear indication of where the money would come from to actually implement the change.
Some people close to the Post Office also fear that additional moves to help the agency will not happen quickly enough because the government has long since promised to resolve it across the government. But time is running out – a terrible financial report conducted by the USPS estimated a net loss of $ 9.7 billion in 2021, another major blow to an already weakened agency.
CNN’s Devan Cole contributed to this report.