The head of the U.S. Postal Service has asked DOGE to find a way to slash the number of loss-making local post offices it runs.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told congressional lawmakers in a letter on Monday that the long-struggling mail agency called in Elon Musk’s Department Of Government Efficiency to help get its finances above water through “reviews” of retail center leases, retirement plans, and workers' compensation costs, among other things.
DeJoy said the Postal Service’s real estate portfolio of nearly 31,000 retail centers has become increasingly burdensome and in need of cutting, with “approximately half” of the country’s post office locations failing to “cover their cost of local operations.”
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The postmaster general added that future lease renewals could be “even more difficult to support financially” due to issues such as ownership consolidation, rent increases, and urban development.
The Daily Beast has reached out to USPS for comment on its plans for unprofitable post office locations.
The Postal Service also enlisted DOGE’s help in dealing with unfunded congressional mandates, leveraging post office locations to better serve federal agencies, and combating counterfeit postage, which DeJoy claims has cost the agency about $1 billion.
“These are the only initiatives that I have requested and authorized the DOGE team to assist on thus far, and only the data and information required to pursue these initiatives will be provided to the DOGE team members,” DeJoy wrote, vowing to report any expansion of scope to Congress and to uphold the agency’s status as “an independent establishment of the Executive Branch.”
“It is important to me that Congress and the public understand that the DOGE engagement is not expansive but directed,” DeJoy said. “I am not averse to offers of help that move us in the direction we are already traveling. Similarly, I am not averse to assistance in pursuit of knocking down obstacles we do not control.”
The postmaster general also rejected suggestions that his efforts to address the agency’s financial burdens were a form of “bailout” or “intended surreptitiously to make the organization more suited to privatization.”
In response to DeJoy’s letter, Democrats in the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent Chairman James Comer a letter urging an immediate hearing on the Trump administration’s plans for the Postal Service.
“The Postmaster General is trying to rewrite history after cutting a backroom deal to turn the keys of the Postal Service over to Elon Musk and DOGE,” Rep. Gerald Connolly said in a statement. “This letter is rife with contradictions and does nothing to assuage concerns about his ‘agreement’ with DOGE.”
Connolly said DeJoy could not recognize the independence of the Postal Service “while putting out the welcome mat for DOGE to forcefully and unlawfully implement his favored reforms behind Congress’s back and at the expense of Americans’ mail service and the agency’s independence.”
Last week, DeJoy told Congress that he was planning to slash 10,000 jobs from the Postal Service through a voluntary early retirement program in cooperation with DOGE and the General Services Administration.
