The nation’s postal carriers and workers are not going down without a fight, as they’ve made abundantly clear with hundreds of rallies around the country in recent days, and as the head of the nation’s largest postal workers union made very clear on today’s BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this link.]
Over the weekend, in hundreds of cities large and small around the country, unionized postal workers rallied outside of USPS facilities — often joined by Democratic lawmakers — to send the message that they don’t intend to be privatized by Donald Trump, Elon Musk and his DOGE Bros. The Administration, in cahoots with Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, have been suggesting as much in recent days.
Despite the U.S. Constitution‘s mandate for a national postal service (originally stood up by the first Postmaster General, Benjamin Franklin, in 1775), Trump and Musk have been hinting that they hope to privatize the U.S. Postal Service. “It’s been just a tremendous loser for this country,” Trump declared at one point during Lutnick’s recent swearing-in ceremony. “Tremendous amounts of money that they’ve lost,” he added.
But the independent agency is not funded by taxpayer dollars. It is funded by the individuals who use its services, delivering mail six days a week to every address in the nation at the same price. It is not supposed to be a money maker, even though, as my guest notes, it sometimes does nonetheless.
We’re joined today by MARK DIMONDSTEIN, President of the American Postal Workers Union. They have been sending out a big flashing red siren that Trump and his wrecking crew of billionaires are hoping to privatize the Post Office, to offer fewer services at a more expensive rate, with hundreds of thousands of good public jobs lost in the bargain.
“We are really seeing a struggle between Wall Street and Main Street. Wells Fargo just put out a report about how great it would be for investors if the Postal Service was privatized because package rates would go up,” Dimondstein tells me. “What they want is their hands on the public till, the public commons, the public money so they can make private profit. But that doesn’t do any good for the hundreds of millions of customers, the people of this country, that use the Postal Service. It’s in the interest of the people to have a public entity based on service, not business. Based on service, not profit. But it’s in the interest of a few wealthy billionaire investors that want to get their hands on this public money.”
“They are on a mission. They see an opportunity,” he charges. “But their power is going to buck up against the power of the people of the country, who, no matter who they voted for in the last election, support the public United States Postal Service.” In fact, the USPS is perhaps the most popular federal institution in the nation.
Dimondstein has much more insight on today’s program, on the cost to not only its workers, but the country at large if the Postal Service is privatized, along with ways that it could bring in much more money and provide far more services to the public in every corner of the country if the agency’s hands weren’t tied by Congress.
He also breaks the news during today’s program that the controversial Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy — originally appointed by Trump during his first term — had just announced his immediate resignation. Despite the various cuts and organizational restructuring that DeJoy brought to the USPS during his term, Dimondstein actually came to his defense today. Somewhat.
“DeJoy was not a privatizer,” the union leader argues. “He was forced out by this administration, in our view, precisely for that reason. He was not a privatizer. He was trying to uphold, to the best of his viewpoint, the public institution, the public mission.” He argues DeJoy was, therefore, in contradiction with Trump, Musk and DOGE, who simply want to tear down the Service and sell its pieces off to the highest bidder. “That’s not about efficiency. That’s about how to rip off the public sector and move it into the private sector.”
In the meantime, Dimondstein tells me, “The message is very clear. The US Mail is not for sale. Hands off the public Postal Service. It belongs to the people, not the billionaires.”
“We are going to have to send a message as workers, united with the people of the country, to these privatizers and these billionaires: No, you’re not going to pick our pocket. You’re not going to turn this over to the private sector. You’re not going to turn it over and laugh all the way to the bank at our expense. So anything the good listeners can do to help, we welcome it. It belongs to you, the people. Keep it, it’s yours.”
THEN… An update from over the weekend regarding the Trump Administration’s shutdown of the Voice of America and its sister networks around the globe just over a week ago. The silencing of VOA last week — for the first time since it first began airing as an American counter to Nazi propaganda spreading across Europe in early 1942 — has been an indescribable loss of real news and information to more than 300 million listeners each week in more than 60 languages. The loss is particularly acute for those in autocratic nations where most sources of independent media have been entirely closed down. Now, VOA is as well, thanks to American autocrat, Trump.
We reported on the Administration’s shutdown of VOA last week. First in my interview with its Chief National Correspondent, Steve Herman, and later in the week with a focus on some of those who were inspired toward freedom by VOA’s coverage during the darkest days of the Cold War, and on reporters for the service who have been jailed and/or tortured around the world over the years for their work.
Over the weekend, as first reported by Herman at his personal website, a lawsuit [PDF] was filed by several VOA journalists and the worldwide nonprofit journalism organization, Reporters Without Borders. Herman notes that the lead plaintiff, VOA’s White House Bureau Chief, Patsy Widakuswara, “grew up under a dictatorship in Indonesia” and that “Some of the other plaintiffs…are among nearly 50 VOA journalists whose J-1 visas are being cancelled [now that they’ve been placed on administrative leave,] and must leave the country within 30 days. At least six of those face going home to authoritarian countries where they could be jailed, or worse.”
That, as Reporters Without Borders’ 2024 World Press Freedom Index finds that “The United States ranks 55th out of 180 countries and territories…having dropped an alarming 10 spots from [just] 2023.”
I regard the closure of VOA as a huge canary in the coal mines for press freedoms — and many others — in this country right now, as we discuss at the close of today’s program…
Ode to the king of the eyesores