Pressure stepped up against postal cuts

WASHINGTON－Democrats have stepped up pressure against a cost-cutting campaign by US President Donald Trump's handpicked US Postal Service chief that they fear will hold up mail-in ballots in November's election.

As several states consider legal action against the cost cuts, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling lawmakers back in a bid to shore up the postal service.

Top Democrats in Congress on Sunday called on Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and another top postal official to testify this month at a hearing looking into a wave of cuts that has slowed mail delivery across the country. The trend is alarming lawmakers ahead of the Nov 3 election when up to half of voters could cast ballots by mail.

Democrats have accused Trump, who is trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in opinion polls, of trying to hamstring the cash-strapped postal service to suppress mail-in voting.

Trump has repeatedly and without evidence said that a surge in mail-in voting would lead to fraud. Voting by mail is nothing new in the United States, as one in four voters cast ballots that way in 2016.

Several Democratic state attorneys general said they were in discussions about potential legal action to stop postal service changes that could affect the election outcome.

"It is outrageous that Donald Trump would attempt to undermine the US Postal Service for electoral gain," Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healy said in a telephone interview, adding that the Republican president's actions raised constitutional, regulatory and procedural questions.

Healy added that counterparts in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, North Carolina, Washington and other states were conferring.

Pelosi, the country's top elected Democrat, said on Sunday that she was calling the Democratic-controlled House back to Washington later this week to vote on legislation to protect the postal service from what she called Trump's "campaign to sabotage the election by manipulating the postal service to disenfranchise voters".

A Trump donor

A senior Democratic aide said House lawmakers would likely return on Saturday to vote on the bill, which would prohibit changes to postal service levels that were in place on Jan 1 this year.

Congressional Democrats also called on DeJoy, a Trump donor, and Postal Service Chairman Robert Duncan to testify at an Aug 24 hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said the postal service's board of governors should remove DeJoy if he "refuses to come before Congress".

DeJoy did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump said on Thursday he had held up talks with Congress over a fresh round of coronavirus stimulus funding to block Democrats from providing more funds for mail-in voting and election infrastructure.

Trump later walked back on those comments, saying he would not veto a bill that included funds for the postal service.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told CNN on Sunday that Trump was open to $10 billion to $25 billion in new postal funding. The House approved $25 billion in a bill passed in May.

Mark Dimondstein, head of the 200,000-plus-member American Postal Workers Union, said on Sunday the postal service's Republican-dominated governing board sought more than $25 billion.

Appearing on Fox News, he said the service required emergency funds because of the coronavirus pandemic-driven economic slowdown, pointing out that it received no funds in a stimulus package passed in March.

Meadows told CNN's State of the Union that the White House feared a surge in mail-in voting could delay election results and leave the naming of the new president to the speaker of the House.

"A number of states are now trying to figure out how they are going to go to universal mail-in ballots," Meadows said. "That's a disaster where we won't know the election results on Nov 3 and we might not know it for months and for me that's problematic because the Constitution says that then a Nancy Pelosi in the House would actually pick the president on Jan 20."

Agencies - Xinhua