August 18, 2020

The Postmaster General Will Suspend Some Mail Changes Until After the Election

Election advocates said those changes are part of a deliberate attempt to sabotage the agency.

Carolyn Kaster/AP

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Amid allegations that the Trump administration is sabotaging United States Postal Service ahead of the November election, postmaster general Louis DeJoy announced Tuesday that he was suspending some of the recent controversial changes that have likely contributed to significant postal delays around the country.

“To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded,” DeJoy said in a statement. 

According to DeJoy, the suspensions will apply to maintaining consistent retail hours, keeping mail processing equipment and blue collection boxes where they currently are, and preventing the future closures of mail processing facilities. But critics questioned its failure to address other agency changes that have likely contributed to the widespread mail delivery delays. Those include the directive for workers to leave late-arriving mail for the following day and the move to end the Postal Service’s longstanding practice of treating election mail with priority, no matter the postage rate—two changes election advocates warn could significantly disrupt mail-in voting. (For a look at how the agency’s changes have already disrupted mailing in Michigan, a key battleground state, read my colleague AJ Vicens’ report here.) It also wasn’t clear whether the agency would replace the blue collection boxes that have been already been removed.

In his statement, DeJoy addressed the sudden prohibition on overtime pay but was curiously vague. “We reassert that overtime has, and will continue to be, approved as needed,” he said while declining to outline the criteria for such approval.

The statement comes ahead of two congressional appearances that DeJoy, a Trump megadonor who was appointed to the position in May, will make over the next week amid intense bi-partisan criticism over the proposed changes, not to mention the president’s admission that he hopes to block congressional funding for the agency because he believes it will help boost his reelection chances.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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