US not overjoyed by postmaster Louis DeJoy’s assurances
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Washington — US President Donald Trump’s postal service chief tried to neutralise complaints by suspending his operational changes, but he failed to silence accusations that he is hampering the agency’s ability to handle voting by mail.
Postmaster-general Louis DeJoy’s retreat followed mounting pressure from Democrats, including an August 5 exchange with top lawmakers that Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer described as “heated”. Congress scheduled two hearings with DeJoy in the coming days and the House plans to vote on a postal-funding measure on Saturday.
At heart are concerns that Trump, running behind Democrat Joe Biden in polls, is mounting a politically driven campaign to hobble the US postal service. The president has repeatedly claimed — without evidence — that widespread mail-in voting leads to fraud; diminished capacity to deliver ballots could complicate vote-counting. Trump has also said the agency, in effect, subsidises deliveries for Amazon, a long-time target of the president’s ire.
DeJoy said on Tuesday that he was suspending removals of mail-sorting machines and blue collection boxes in various cities, moves that had been billed as overdue cost-cutting. He pledged that retail hours wouldn’t change, mail-processing facilities wouldn’t be shut and equipment would remain where it was. “Overtime has, and will continue to be, approved as needed,” he said.
But it remains unclear if any of his recent moves would be reversed.
“There are unanswered questions that certainly need to be clarified,” said former deputy postmaster-general Ronald Stroman, who was appointed in 2011 and resigned earlier this year. “You don’t want to reduce your flexibility ahead of a national election when you will have an exponential increase in the amount of absentee ballots,” he said on a call with reporters hosted by the Democracy Fund, where he is a senior fellow.
Besides clearing up the issue about what overtime “as needed” might mean and whether changes already made will be reversed, Stroman urged a commitment to processing and delivering all the ballots it receives each day.
Democrat lawmakers were even more vocal, setting the stage for what might be a rocky pair of hearings in coming days. DeJoy appears at the Senate’s homeland security and governmental affairs committee on Friday and the House committee on oversight and reform on Monday.
Saturday vote
“We want to roll it back,” House speaker Nancy Pelosi said of the proposed changes during an interview with Politico’s Playbook on Tuesday. She said the House ...
Postmaster-general Louis DeJoy’s retreat followed mounting pressure from Democrats, including an August 5 exchange with top lawmakers that Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer described as “heated”. Congress scheduled two hearings with DeJoy in the coming days and the House plans to vote on a postal-funding measure on Saturday.
At heart are concerns that Trump, running behind Democrat Joe Biden in polls, is mounting a politically driven campaign to hobble the US postal service. The president has repeatedly claimed — without evidence — that widespread mail-in voting leads to fraud; diminished capacity to deliver ballots could complicate vote-counting. Trump has also said the agency, in effect, subsidises deliveries for Amazon, a long-time target of the president’s ire.
DeJoy said on Tuesday that he was suspending removals of mail-sorting machines and blue collection boxes in various cities, moves that had been billed as overdue cost-cutting. He pledged that retail hours wouldn’t change, mail-processing facilities wouldn’t be shut and equipment would remain where it was. “Overtime has, and will continue to be, approved as needed,” he said.
But it remains unclear if any of his recent moves would be reversed.
“There are unanswered questions that certainly need to be clarified,” said former deputy postmaster-general Ronald Stroman, who was appointed in 2011 and resigned earlier this year. “You don’t want to reduce your flexibility ahead of a national election when you will have an exponential increase in the amount of absentee ballots,” he said on a call with reporters hosted by the Democracy Fund, where he is a senior fellow.
Besides clearing up the issue about what overtime “as needed” might mean and whether changes already made will be reversed, Stroman urged a commitment to processing and delivering all the ballots it receives each day.
Democrat lawmakers were even more vocal, setting the stage for what might be a rocky pair of hearings in coming days. DeJoy appears at the Senate’s homeland security and governmental affairs committee on Friday and the House committee on oversight and reform on Monday.
Saturday vote
“We want to roll it back,” House speaker Nancy Pelosi said of the proposed changes during an interview with Politico’s Playbook on Tuesday. She said the House ...
