How Joe Biden finally got the upper hand on Louis DeJoy
“Why hasn’t President Biden fired corrupt Postmaster General Louis DeJoy?” It’s a question that’s been asked often in 2021. The answer is simple: Biden literally can’t do that. It’s not just the rules, it’s the law. Biden could announce that DeJoy is fired, and DeJoy would just laugh, and have the courts confirm that Biden indeed can’t do that.
There was only ever one path Biden could take for firing DeJoy, and it’s a complex one that’s left the most antsy of activists less than satisfied. Only the Postal Board can fire DeJoy, and that’s forced Biden to undergo the lengthy and painstaking process of replacing members of the Postal Board until a majority of them were willing to fire DeJoy.
Biden seemed to have DeJoy cornered earlier this year, when he replaced all the Postal Board members he was allowed to replace. Biden seemed to have the math. But then it turned out Postal Board member Ron Bloom, a Democrat who was appointed by Trump in 2019, was a closet ally of DeJoy. And so Biden still didn’t have the votes.
But now Biden has reached a point on the calendar where he’s legally allowed to get rid of Bloom and one other troublesome Postal Board member, and so Biden has done precisely that. He’s also promptly nominated two new Postal Board members who are each a lock to vote against DeJoy. That means that once they’re confirmed, DeJoy will be fired.
Senate Republicans will of course use procedural tools to drag out Biden’s new Postal Board nominees for as long as possible. But as we keep seeing, that’s a finite process. Once the Republicans inevitably run out of procedural tools, Biden and the Democrats end up getting their nominee confirmed.
So now Louis DeJoy is finally toast. Will it take weeks? Will it take a few months? It depends on just how many procedural tricks Senate Republicans are willing to waste their time rolling out. But again, there are a finite number of these tricks. DeJoy is finished. And Biden has now baked in another victory that a whole lot of media pundits insisted would never happen.
