DC wrangles with USPS crisis
WASHINGTON — Facing a public backlash over mail delays, the Trump administration scrambled to respond Monday as the House prepared an emergency vote to halt delivery interruptions and service changes that Democrats warned could imperil the November election.
The Postal Service said it has stopped removing mailboxes and mail-sorting machines amid an outcry from lawmakers. President Donald Trump flatly denied he was asking for the mail to be delayed even as he leveled fresh criticism on universal ballots and mail-in voting.
“Wouldn’t do that,” Trump told reporters Monday at the White House. “I have encouraged everybody: Speed up the mail, not slow the mail.”
Embattled Postmaster General Louis Dejoy will testify next Monday before Congress, along with the chairman of the Postal Service board of governors.
To address the crisis at the Postal Service, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling the House back into session, setting up a political showdown amid growing concerns that the Trump White House is trying to undermine the agency ahead of the election.
Pelosi cut short lawmakers' summer recess with a vote expected Saturday on legislation that would prohibit changes at the agency. The package will also include $25 billion to shore up the Postal Service, which faces continued financial losses amid declines in firstclass and business mail, even as costs have increased significantly because of the coronavirus pandemic. The agency has had to pay for personal protective equipment and increased sick leave for workers who became ill or chose to stay home in fear of the virus.
Dejoy, a former supply-chain CEO who took over the Postal Service in June, has sparked nationwide outcry over delays, new prices and cutbacks just as millions of Americans will be trying to vote by mail to avoid polling places during the coronavirus outbreak.
Trump on Monday defended Dejoy, but also criticized postal operations and claimed that universal mail-in ballots would be “a disaster.”
“I want to make the post office great again,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends.” Later at the White House, he denied asking for a mail-delivery slow down.
Trump told reporters he wants “to have a post office that runs without losing billions and billions of dollars a year.”
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost told Trump that this was not the time to make changes at the U.S. Postal Service, since Americans are preparing to vote this fall, a significant portion of them by mail.
In a three-page letter Monday obtained by The Dispatch, Yost tells his fellow Republican, “These changes so close to the election are certain to give rise to litigation, which in turn will create a sense of chaos and uncertainty that will likely roll right into the early voting period — thereby delegitimizing the thousands of winners of the November contests.”
Yost readily acknowledged the need to get the postal service’s fiscal house in order, but urged Trump to wait until after the election.
“Voters who decide to rely on states’ absentee voting laws, whether in Ohio or elsewhere, deserve to know that their votes will be counted. Regardless of how one feels about universal mail ballots, these absentee ballots are already the law and rely on an effective (if not a cost-efficient) United States Postal Service.”
Pelosi’s decision to recall the House carries a political punch. Voting in the House will highlight the issue after the weeklong Democratic National Convention nominating Joe Biden as the party’s presidential pick and pressure the Republican-held Senate to respond. Senate Majority Leader Mitch
Mcconnell sent senators home for a summer recess.
“In a time of a pandemic, the Postal Service is Election Central,” Pelosi wrote Sunday in a letter to colleagues, who had been expected to be out of session until September. “Lives, livelihoods and the life of our American Democracy are under threat from the president.”
At an event in his home state of Kentucky on Monday, Mcconnell distanced himself from Trump’s complaints about mail operations. But the Republican leader also declined to recall senators to Washington, vowing the Postal Service “is going to be just fine.”
“We’re going to make sure that the ability to function going into the election is not adversely affected,” Mcconnell said in Horse Cave, Kentucky. “And I don’t share the president’s concerns.”
On Monday, two Democratic lawmakers called on the FBI to investigate whether Dejoy or members of the independent Postal Board of Governors may have committed a crime in slowing the mail.
Reps. Ted Lieu of California and Hakeem Jeffries of New York cited reports that mail-sorting machines were being dismantled and policy changes have delayed mail delivery. “It is not unreasonable to conclude that Postmaster General Dejoy and the Board of Governors may be executing Donald Trump’s desire to affect mail-in balloting,” they wrote in the letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats, meanwhile, urged the Postal Board of Governors to immediately use their authority under a 1970 law to reverse operational changes put in place last month by DeJoy. If he declines to cooperate, “you have the authority, under the Postal Reorganization Act, to remove the postmaster general,” the senators said in a letter to the board.
Congress is at a standoff over postal operations. House Democrats approved $25 billion in a COVID-19 relief package but Trump and Senate Republicans have balked at additional funds for election security.
The Postal Service said Sunday it would stop removing its distinctive blue mailboxes through mid-november following complaints from customers and members of Congress that the collection boxes were being taken away.
The legislation being prepared for Saturday’s vote, the “Delivering for America Act,” would prohibit the Postal Service from implementing any changes to operations or level of service it had in place on Jan. 1, five months before Dejoy took office.
Dispatch Public Affairs Editor Darrel Rowland contributed to this story.