Thread by @torrHL

"Congressional Democrats are pressing @JoeBiden to install new governing board members, creating a majority bloc that could oust DeJoy, a Trump loyalist whose aggressive cost-cutting over summer has been singled out for much of the performance decline."

washingtonpost.com/graphics/2021/…

"pandemic set off a chain reaction of crises:

Package volumes swelled as Americans leaned into online shopping to limit outings. DeJoy’s summer overhaul hobbled long-held delivery protocols and jettisoned hundreds of sorting machines just as the pandemic was flattening its staff

"DeJoy’s support of GOP causes & million-dollar donations to Trump raised suspicions about how his postal changes might compromise ballot delivery.

Through it all, USPS financial position worsened:

It lost $9.2 billion in 2020, despite collecting $73.2 billion in revenue."

"Change came rapid-fire w/ DeJoy:

One month in, he slashed overtime hours, prohibited late and extra mail delivery trips, and set stricter delivery schedules."

"More than 7.5 percent of the first-class mail was late in the five weeks that followed, data shows, after the agency weathered pandemic-related disruptions in the months earlier without service suffering."

"USPS processed a staggering 135M mail-in ballots, a tide that political analysts say helped Biden carry Georgia and other swing states.

It also moved more than 1.1 billion packages during the holiday season, was that driven up by UPS and FedEx turning down business."

"Members of both parties in the House and Senate introduced legislation Monday to repeal that requirement and allow the Postal Service to pay off health-care costs annually, as most private corporations and government agencies do."

"The Postal Service, Partenheimer said, favors integrating retiree health-care costs into Medicare, which would shift tens of billions of dollars worth of obligations off the mail service and onto taxpayers."

"That repeal, combined with elevated package volumes and a new postage rate hike, could be enough, some experts say, to put the Postal Service on more stable financial footing and stave off more congressional intervention."

CC: @jmmohr @tminus5