Thread by @doctorow

After decades of a grinding bipartisan war of attrition waged by Congress against the US Postal Service, the US mail is now under direct assault from Trump and his crony, the new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy.

pluralistic.net/2020/08/11/nor…

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Destroying the post won't just take down America's linchpin for the elections, which must be held by postal vote lest they spark raging pandemic outbreaks - it also destroys the linchpin of the US's emergency plans for dealing with such outbreaks.

pluralistic.net/2020/03/25/nat…

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The assault on the postal service is brazen. On @NPR's @MorningEdition, @NoelKing spoke with Iowa Postal Workers Union president Kimberly Karol, who reported that the mail-sorting equipment at her post office has been removed.

npr.org/2020/08/11/901…

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Karol describes how the postmaster general is circumventing his legal obligations to seek public comment on substantive changes to this self-funding, taxpayer-owned, centuries old service.

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I hold out hope that this may be his undoing. The MO of trumpland grifters is running across the river on the backs of alligators and assuming that if they move quickly enough, they won't lose a leg.

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But the administrative branch is bound by procedures: notice, comment, rule publication, explaining your reasoning. Obama understood this - his abuses of authority survived judicial review because he knew how to paper them over.

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Trump, by contrast, is a rich blowhard who's used to firing anyone who tells him he can't have his way, and he's packed his cabinet with would-be mob bosses who take the same approach.

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And even plute-friendly judges that Trump - and other war criminals, like GWB - appointed actually care about this i-dotting and t-crossing proceduralism, and they actually get a little zetz of civic virtue dopamine when they knock back trumpland's crayon-scrawl plots.

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You can read it in their decisions, like, "Look at me, I am a textualist! That means I care about punctuation! Just like Thomas Jefferson!"

Image:
Tim1965, modified
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Unit…

CC BY-SA:
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