'Damage has already been done’: Top postal union official says she’s never seen anything like DeJoy’s mail slowdown

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced that he will suspend changes he was implementing at the U.S. Postal Service after a flood of anger from the public and elected officials on both sides of the political aisle.

With approximately 4 million prescriptions sent through the mail daily, slowing down the mail appeared to damage not only confidence in voting by mail but it put lives at risk for seniors and veterans seeking medications or the Social Security and pension checks they live on.

While DeJoy backed down from his mail slowdown and agreed to put the mail sorters back in place that he took away, the Michigan Postal Service Union president said that the damage has already been done.

According to MSNBC's Katy Tur, postal service employees say that there was "nothing routine" about what happened to slow down the mail.

Senior White House correspondent Shannon Pettypiece reported that the White House and Republicans are going to try and convince Americans that there is no war with the Post Office and that it's nothing more than a conspiracy the Democrats have cooked up. The problem, however, is that millions of Americans are experiencing the slowdown and have witnessed what the GOP is dismissing as a conspiracy.

MSNBC's Dasha Burns reported that she spoke to the president of the Postal Workers Union while in Kent County, Michigan about the mail changes, noting that in 27-years of working for USPS she has never once seen anything like this happen.

"She said those mail processing machines have already been removed here, she says there hasn't been any overtime pay and late trucks have not been able to go out, which means First Class Mail has been delayed, and a question she's been asking herself, why now?" reported Burns. "Despite the postmaster general walking back some of those changes for the voters I've been talking to, the damage has already been done.

"Those most concerned are Black voters here. That's also the population that has been most impacted by the virus," Burns continued. "Despite what I'm hearing from the community is folks are not planning to vote by mail, but instead go in person."

She interviewed Darrell Ross, a local restaurant owner in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who lamented that it's always the Black voters who end up being disenfranchised.

See the full report below: