Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is now coming for the post office.
The New York Times reports that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, appointed by Donald Trump in his first term and an advocate for privatizing the U.S. Postal Service, has made a deal with DOGE to assist in “identifying and achieving further efficiencies.”
DeJoy said in a letter Thursday that DOGE was “an effort aligned” with his own work in shrinking the USPS, noting that since the 2021 fiscal year, he had shrunk the postal service’s workforce by 30,000. DeJoy plans for a “further reduction of another 10,000 people in the next 30 days” as part of a one-time voluntary retirement program.
Musk also believes that the USPS should be privatized along with Amtrak, telling a tech conference last week that “[w]e should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized.” Trump has in the past suggested privatization as well as merging the USPS with the Commerce Department, and recently moved to cement his control of the agency.
Privatization has been flatly rejected by Democrats and unions, who say that it would raise prices, hurt postal workers, and negatively impact rural communities, who are served by USPS thanks to the Constitution and federal law. Representative Gerald Connolly, the ranking member on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, criticized the DOGE deal Thursday in a statement.
The deal would have “catastrophic consequences for all Americans — especially those in rural and hard-to-reach areas — who rely on the Postal Service every day,” the statement said.
The “only thing worse for the Postal Service,” Connolly said, would be if Musk took over USPS, allowing him “undermine it, privatize it, and then profit off Americans’ loss.”
DOGE taking aim at the USPS is a worrying move, as private companies don’t serve many rural areas. Countless Americans depend on the postal service for medicine delivery, agricultural deliveries, and other business-critical services. Severe cutbacks would neglect the needs of Americans and create a less trustworthy service, ultimately setting the state for privatization.
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