USPS - and therefore, Americans - in danger

[Nick Casselli, the president of a Philadelphia postal workers union,] and his 1,600 members have been in a state of high alert since Louis DeJoy, a Republican megadonor and an ally of President Trump’s, took over as postmaster general in May. Overtime was eliminated, prompting backups.

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Hundreds of ballots in Wisconsin were left in tubs, unaccounted for, at the Milwaukee processing and distribution center during the state’s primary in April.

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Ohio ran a delayed primary election that was marred by widespread reports of mail slowdowns, especially in Northwest Ohio, prompting Secretary of State Frank LaRose to urge the Postal Service to devote additional resources to making sure ballots were delivered on time.

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[F]ive mail-sorting machines in the major Cleveland-area distribution center were dismantled in recent days.

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Seven mail-sorting machines were removed from a [...] processing center in West Philadelphia, causing further delays. Now, post offices are being told to open later and close during lunch.

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Similar accounts of slowdowns and curtailed service are emerging across the country.

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And this week, Mr. Trump said he opposed new postal funding because of his opposition to mail-in voting, which he complains will benefit Democrats and claims — without evidence — is riddled with fraud.

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For Ms. Brownworth, who was paralyzed four years ago, the mail is her lifeline, delivering prescriptions and checks and mail-in ballots to her Philadelphia home. But that lifeline has snapped. She said she had received mail just twice in the past three weeks, and she dreaded November’s election, worried that her ballot would suffer the same fate as the oxygen tube that she ordered three weeks ago — and that had still not arrived.

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In Ohio, where mail voting is likely to double, piles of undelivered mail are sitting in a Cleveland distribution center. In rural Michigan, diabetes medicine that used to arrive in three days now takes almost two weeks. In the Milwaukee area, dozens of trailers filled with packages are left behind every day.

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Democratic lawmakers have accused the president of sabotaging the Postal Service as a means of voter suppression and have started multiple investigations and demanded an end to delays. [...] On Friday, the postal services’s inspector general said she had opened an inquiry into Mr. DeJoy’s actions.

  NYT

She'll soon find herself canned like other agencies' inspector generals.

While Mr. Trump’s war on the Postal Service seems aimed at Democrats, few Americans rely more on the mail than rural residents, many of whom are Trump voters. As a result, there are also a number of Republicans uneasy about what’s happening with the agency, in particular three Republican senators from largely rural mail-dependent states who are facing competitive re-elections this fall: Steve Daines of Montana, Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine.

Susan Collins is concerned, I hear.

Mr. DeJoy has said he is trying to reform an organization with a “broken business model” facing a litany of billion-dollar losses and declines in mail volumes.

But voters and postal workers said the Postal Service was more than a business.

It's not a business at all. It's a service for American citizens.

Postal workers from small-town post offices to metropolitan distribution centers say they used to operate along a simple motto: Every piece, every day, meaning that they did not leave until all of the day’s mail went out the door.

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Postal workers say drivers are being sent out according to set schedules, whether or not all of the morning’s mail is ready for them, and delivery trucks now have strict cutoff times for when they have to be gone. They say they are already short on staff because of quarantines and the coronavirus outbreak, and limits on working overtime are pushing them further behind.