Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-N.J.) demanded the firing of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in a new tweet. The firing would have to be done by the board of governors overseeing the Postal Service, where Biden picks now comprise a majority — although not all Biden’s selections for the board were Dems. (There’s a legal limit on how many board members can be from the same party.)
“It has been 20 days since the postal board gained a Biden majority,” Pascrell said. “They should fire louis dejoy now. He’s corrupt. I was the first member of Congress to demand dejoy’s firing and the firing of every dejoy toady on the board back on Jan 25 2021. There are no more excuses.” DeJoy has faced intense criticism throughout his time at the helm of the Postal Service; the criticism has included repeated calls for his departure from the role as the agency’s leader. There were, among other issues, significant drop-offs in the on-time delivery rates for various pieces of mail in 2020 — right as the nation was gearing up for a presidential election when substantial portions of the population were set to likely use mail-in voting. No systematic integrity problems with the eventual election outcome were discovered, but whether the Postal Service contributes to such hypothetical problems shouldn’t be an open question!
It has been 20 days since the postal board gained a Biden majority. They should fire louis dejoy now. He’s corrupt.
I was the first member of Congress to demand dejoy’s firing and the firing of every dejoy toady on the board back on Jan 25 2021. There are no more excuses.
— Bill Pascrell, Jr. 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@BillPascrell) June 1, 2022
New York state Attorney General Letitia James has also brought litigation against DeJoy over the agency’s plans to replace most of 165,000 delivery vehicles with gas-powered vehicles — a plan that the Postal Service, as led by DeJoy, launched without having first finalized the federally required review of the environmental impacts of the possibilities. An environmental review eventually emerged, but the analysis featured apparently serious faults. As summarized in a press release from James’s office, those behind this new legal action were hoping to obtain a court order stopping the Postal Service “from moving ahead with the purchase” until the agency fulfills the federal legal requirements regarding environmental reviews that it’s apparently flouted.
In relation to this issue, there’s also support for DeJoy’s departure in the Senate: “The climate crisis impacts every aspect of our lives—we can’t lock ourselves into gas-guzzling mail trucks for years to come… I’ll keep fighting to get rid of Louis DeJoy’s dangerously shortsighted mail delivery fleet plan—and to kick him out of USPS once and for all!” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said back in April. As reported on this site, James’s office says that the environmental review that eventually emerged covering the procurement of new vehicles “failed to properly consider air quality, environmental justice, and climate impacts of purchasing a primarily gas powered fleet” and “failed to ensure the scientific integrity of its analysis by relying on unfounded assumptions and failing to provide the source of the data it considered,” among some additional foundational issues.
