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Louis DeJoy has resigned as Postmaster General effective Monday.
DeJoy’s five-year tenure ended just days after the United States Postal Service (USPS) made a deal with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to enable mass cost cuts at the courier, including axing 10,000 jobs.
Last month, DeJoy announced his intent to step down from his role, enabling the USPS board of governors to identify his successor. He had given no timetable regarding his exit. In the interim, deputy Postmaster General Doug Tulino will fill the role until a successor is named.
Ahead of DeJoy’s resignation, postal workers nationwide held protests on Sunday as the state of the USPS remains up in the air and the government agency preps the job cuts.
Tacking on the tagline, “Hell No” to dismantling the Postal Service, local branches of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) hosted the rallies across more than 200 U.S. cities in opposition to reorganizational mandates, which the union says threatens the courier and its 635,000 employees.
On Tuesday, the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association (NRLCA) will follow up the NALC’s protests with a rally of its own on Capitol Hill amid a potential privatization of the USPS. The union will be calling on Congress to ensure that the Postal Service remains an independent agency free from political influence.
Sunday’s mass protests and Tuesday’s upcoming rally reflect both unions’ concerns about the possible jeopardization of jobs, as well as the carrier’s ability to serve all American communities—especially those in rural areas.
“This is about preserving the American value of universal mail service. If we allow privatization to take root, it would be a devastating blow to rural America and to the men and women who proudly serve as postal workers,” said Don Maston, president of the NRLCA in a statement. “These aren’t just jobs; they’re lifelines for millions, especially in rural communities. We cannot allow the Postal Service to be dismantled for the benefit of corporate interests.”
More than 100 rural letter carriers are supposed to be represented at the rally in D.C., alongside members of the NRLCA, NALC, the American Postal Workers Union and National Postal Mail Handlers Union. Four House members—two Democrats and two Republicans—are also scheduled to address the gathering.
Earlier this month, outgoing DeJoy told Congress that USPS plans to make the job cuts through a voluntary early retirement program. DeJoy engaged both DOGE and the General Service Administration to assist with additional cost-cutting initiatives at the federal courier.
The involvement of DOGE creates a further level of uncertainty, in the wake of the department’s mass layoffs at multiple agencies including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
Both President Donald Trump and senior advisor Elon Musk, who is the de facto head of DOGE, have publicly asserted that there will be changes at the USPS.
President Trump has said the USPS could be merged within the Department of Commerce. A Washington Post report indicated that the president would sign an executive order to fire all the USPS board members as part of a merger—a move that had both NALC and the American Postal Workers Union up in arms—but no decision has been made on that yet.
Trump has previously entertained the idea of privatizing the USPS, a possible outcome that Musk has publicly backed.
In a March 17 letter to Congress in response to the concerns over DOGE’s involvement, DeJoy entailed that there was a possible future in which the USPS would provide its services to other federal agencies to enhance the agency’s profitability.
According to DeJoy, the courier’s post office buildings, logistics capability, delivery services, vehicles, buildings and stocking locations can help other agencies reduce costs.
“I believe there are billions of dollars annually that will benefit us and significantly reduce government-wide cost,” DeJoy said.
The letter also indicated that DOGE would review leases on nearly 31,000 post office locations to determine whether they should be renewed.
“Landlords are well aware of the political difficulties we face when moving or consolidating a retail location even when approximately half of our current retail Post Offices fail to cover their cost of local operations,” DeJoy said. “Future lease renewals be even more difficult to support financially.”
Much of the current administration’s insistence on changing the makeup of the USPS stems from its inability to turn a profit—a problem the courier has largely endured for the better part of 15 years amid the decline of first-class mail and a shift to more costly parcel delivery.
In 2024, the Postal Service lost $9.5 billion, with $6.6 billion alone being tied to workers’ compensation and unfunded liabilities for its retirement plans. Although DeJoy established the 10-year Delivering for America plan in 2021, the courier failed to reach its breakeven goals for 2023 and 2024.
DeJoy says he has engaged DOGE to assist in the possible overhaul of the worker retirement plans, a look into “excessive” workers’ compensation costs and “unfunded congressional mandates” that have ballooned the liability payments.
