Democratic Congresswoman Katie Porter of California has done it again. The plucky progressive with a penchant for percentages went viral for calling out corruption with the help of her trusty white board.
The latest subject of Porter's scrutiny was the United States Postal Service (USPS) and its head: Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.
If that name sounds familiar, it's because DeJoy generated national headlines ahead of the 2020 presidential election for changes he enacted that decimated the institution's efficiency and reliability. Americans across the country demanded that DeJoy, who donated $685 thousand to last year's Republican National Convention, be investigated for deliberately interfering with absentee ballots in an election with unprecedented numbers of mail-in votes.
DeJoy—who can only be removed directly by the USPS Board of Governors—hasn't improved the entity's performance following the momentous election, as Porter pointed out.
Watch below.
At a special hearing focused on the results of a USPS audit by its Inspector General, Porter highlighted the plummeting percentage of on-time deliveries largely beginning under DeJoy's tenure.
In comments to the Deputy Assistant IG for the audit, Melinda Perez, Porter said:
"The audit found that by the spring of 2020, mail delivery was right around 92 percent — that is 92 percent of the mail got there within the standard of on time. That dropped to 80 percent by the fall of 2020, and by January of 2021 was hovering around 61 percent. I realize this has gone up somewhat since then, but I wanted to ask you, when did Mr. DeJoy take over as postmaster? Do you know?"
Perez replied that DeJoy started in the Summer of 2020.
Porter continued:
"I'm a professor, and I used to do a lot of grading, and 92 is considered widely like an A-minus, 80 is considered hanging on, hanging on to the lowest possible B. 60 percent is at best a D-minus. The Postal Service delivers 48 percent of the world's mail. It is an institution, it is a civic treasure. And we let it get all the way, what you found, is we let it get all the way down to that D-minus level."
The proof was in the pudding, and social media users agreed that DeJoy needed to depart.
Meanwhile, they cheered Porter for calling him out.
Biden's recently-appointed nominees to the USPS Board of Governors saw Senate confirmation this past summer, strengthening the possibility that the Board—which is now composed equally of Democrats and Republicans—will look at the audit's findings and return DeJoy to sender.
