President Joe Biden is expected to nominate three people to vacant positions on the US Postal Service Board of Governors, a move that will reshape the Board and put added pressure on US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, the Washington Post reports.
The nominees will be Ron Stroman, the Postal Service’s recently retired deputy postmaster general; Amber McReynolds, the chief executive of National Vote at Home Institute; and Anton Hajjar, the former general counsel of the American Postal Workers Union.
While Biden cannot fire DeJoy directly, he can appoint people to the Board who will provide oversight to the Postmaster General, whose job performance has been widely criticized. A Trump-era appointee approved by the Board that had a 5-2 Republican slant, DeJoy was widely viewed to have acted to sabotage USPS performance during the 2020 election, when mail-in ballots became vital due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The eleven-member board is made up of nine Presidential appointees, the Postmaster General and the Deputy Postmaster General. Only the Presidential appointees vote on who will be Postmaster General, meaning that with Biden’s appointments, Democrats will have a 5-4 advantage in that decision.
All six seats assigned to Presidential appointees were filled by Trump appointees, and five of the six will have terms that expire during the first Biden term. By charter, no more than five appointees may belong to the same political party.