No Ode to DeJoy: Trump Turncoat Pushed Out as Postmaster General

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy resigned in disgrace on Monday after five years of leading the United States Postal Service (USPS) into deeper financial ruin.

Reuters first reported on Monday afternoon that DeJoy had abruptly announced his resignation from his position as Postmaster General, effective immediately. In a statement, DeJoy said he would “pass the baton to Deputy Postmaster General, Doug Tulino, until the [Postal Board of] Governors name my permanent successor.”

Media reports in recent months had suggested that President Trump was already planning on firing the Postal Board of Governors, putting DeJoy’s job in peril.

DeJoy was first selected as Postmaster General in 2020 by the Trump-appointed Board of Governors, but he failed to deliver on promises to right the financial ship at USPS. When President Biden entered office, DeJoy reportedly told his allies behind closed doors that his intention was to keep his job throughout Biden’s tenure. His actions at USPS during the Biden administration reflected this goal.

DeJoy was caught on tape in 2024 patting himself on the back for the “biggest insourcing ever” of USPS’s labor force and asking his “comrades” at the postal union to celebrate him for the union-friendly action:

“Getting rid of all that, bringing a lot of stuff in house… For a unionized operation, which we are, right, 100 percent unionized, that has successfully––I wouldn’t say successfully––but has outsourced a lot of operations. Alright? We’re probably going to do the biggest insourcing ever in America, in terms of what we’re doing,” DeJoy said at the meeting. “I was actually with our supervisors union yesterday. I said, ‘Comrades, how come you’re not celebrating me?’”

To further his “insourcing” efforts, as pointed out by the Washington Times, DeJoy converted 125,000 part-time employees into full-time workers. He then went out and hired more part-timers, adding 30,000 careerists to the employment rolls over three years and increasing the size of the unionized workforce.

Despite the Postal Service’s mandate to be self-sustaining, the Postal Service reported a $9.5 billion loss in Fiscal Year 2024, according to the U.S. Postal Service’s own year end financial report. This follows a $6.5 billion loss in Fiscal Year 2023 and significantly eclipses earlier projections that the postal service would lose $8 billion in Fiscal Year 2024. These losses come despite DeJoy’s claim that his “Delivering for America” restructuring plan would see the Postal Service break even in 2023 and post a $1.7 billion surplus in 2024.

After DeJoy’s resignation on Monday, American Postal Workers Union (APWU) President Mark Dimondstein released a statement sympathetic to his comrade, arguing that the postmaster “was forced out by a presidential administration that is intent on breaking up and selling off the public Postal Service.” Dimondstein said DeJoy “respected the unions” and insisted that USPS should “remain the People’s Postal Service” even with DeJoy gone.

This is not the first time union bosses have spoken about DeJoy with high praise. Last year, after securing a new contract that included not only future pay raises but also retroactive pay raises for unionized postal workers, National Association of Letter Carriers President Brian Renfroe credited DeJoy personally for the deal. Renfroe noted that the deal was the union’s largest wage increase since 2006.

Louis DeJoy is the perfect example of what the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was made to address: an entrenched bureaucrat mismanaging federal operations and serving as a drain on taxpayer dollars. The Trump administration was right to send him packing.