USPS agrees to DOGE’s help with finding ‘further efficiencies’ : NPR

The top of the U.S. Postal Service has agreed to permit the DOGE group of President Trump’s billionaire adviser Elon Musk to assist discover “additional efficiencies” on the nation’s mail service, in line with a letter to congressional leaders launched Thursday.

Postmaster Basic Louis DeJoy signed the settlement with DOGE Wednesday night time, the outgoing USPS head confirmed within the letter, noting that the Postal Service — which has been present process a controversial 10-year reorganization since 2021 to attempt to proper its troubled funds — is “completely satisfied to have others to help us in our worthwhile trigger.”

Leaders of two USPS worker unions inform NPR that DeJoy assured them there are provisions within the settlement that forestall members of Musk’s group, referred to as the Division of Authorities Effectivity, from having unfettered entry to data within the information of the Postal Service’s more than half-million employees. NPR has not reviewed the settlement.

“We’re very a lot in help of that kind of safety, assuming that they adjust to it,” Brian Renfroe — president of the Nationwide Affiliation of Letter Carriers, the union for carriers in cities — tells NPR. “There’s motive for skepticism primarily based on what we have seen from a few of the different federal companies.”

Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Employees Union, says in a press release to NPR that the union representing postal clerks and different USPS staff “will use every part in our energy, together with each authorized software, to make sure that knowledge associated to worker data and knowledge on particular person prospects stays personal and out of the fingers of Elon Musk and his Muskrats.”

Spokespeople for DOGE and the USPS didn’t reply to requests for touch upon the settlement’s provisions.

It is not clear what DOGE will attempt to do whereas the USPS continues its “self-help” methods

This new association comes because the Trump administration faces greater than a dozen lawsuits over DOGE’s access to data at different federal companies amid a push to slash the U.S. authorities workforce and packages.

Till now, there had been no public signal that DOGE’s efforts had reached the Postal Service. In current months, nonetheless, Trump and his officers have suggested transforming the USPS, together with expressing help for privatizing the service and proposing to fold what Congress set as much as be an impartial company into the Commerce Division, a transfer that will doubtless be challenged in court docket.

These solutions, together with Musk’s broad makes an attempt to reshape the federal authorities, have drawn outcries from Democrats on Capitol Hill. Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia — the highest Democrat on the Home Oversight Committee, who released DeJoy’s letter — criticized the settlement DeJoy signed as a option to enable Musk to “infiltrate” the Postal Service.

“This capitulation may have catastrophic penalties for all Individuals — particularly these in rural and laborious to succeed in areas — who depend on the Postal Service day by day to ship mail, medicines, ballots, and extra. Dependable mail supply cannot simply be reserved for MAGA supporters and Tesla house owners,” Connolly mentioned in a press release.

It is not clear precisely what DOGE will attempt to do on the USPS. DeJoy’s letter emphasised that the Postal Service has been utilizing “self-help” methods to realize “effectivity positive aspects, value financial savings and income development.” These embrace, the postmaster basic famous, a voluntary early retirement program that was first announced in mid-January to Postal Service staff. This system is anticipated to scale back the USPS labor workforce by a further 10,000 individuals within the subsequent 30 days after an earlier lack of about 30,000 employees from fiscal 12 months 2021.

Nonetheless, requested by DOGE representatives for “the massive issues they might help” with, DeJoy mentioned he gave them an inventory of “intractable” points that he described as out of the Postal Service’s management and within the fingers of Congress. One is a longstanding dispute over how the Workplace of Personnel Administration calculates the Postal Service’s liabilities for pre-1970 pension advantages. DeJoy additionally pointed to the Postal Regulatory Commission, which Congress set as much as monitor the USPS, as “an pointless company” whose members “stand in the best way of the well timed and crucial adjustments required to succeed as a self-funded enterprise in a aggressive atmosphere.”

The postmaster basic, who had been a top Trump donor earlier than becoming a member of the USPS, has typically tussled with the fee over its criticism of his reorganization plan. In a press release responding to DeJoy’s letter, the PRC says it “has accomplished greater than its half to assist” the Postal Service whereas following the regulation to “be certain that USPS gives common service to all Individuals” and “safeguards honest competitors in package deal markets by stopping the Postal Service from abusing its monopoly place.”

As for whether or not DOGE could make any progress on the challenges dealing with the USPS, Renfroe, president of town mail carriers’ union, says he is taking a “wait-and-see” strategy.

“The way in which that the Postal Service accepts and processes and strikes and delivers mail is extremely complicated,” Renfroe provides. “I believe it might be utterly unreasonable, primarily based on what I learn about the best way DOGE seems to be at issues, for them to actually dig deep within the operations simply due to the complexity of it.”

Edited by Benjamin Swasey