House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is calling the House back early from its summer recess to vote on legislation meant to block changes at the USPS, the Associated Press reports.
The move comes amid increased tensions surrounding the election cycle, where vote by mail has been a top concern due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Those concerns have further been escalated due to the Trump administration’s perceived efforts to undermine the U.S. Postal Service, concerns that Pelosi herself mentioned in her letter to colleagues.
“Alarmingly, across the nation, we see the devastating effects of the President’s campaign to sabotage the election by manipulating the Postal Service to disenfranchise voters,” Pelosi wrote. “Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, one of the top Trump mega-donors, has proven a complicit crony as he continues to push forward sweeping new operational changes that degrade postal service, delay the mail and—according to the Postal Service itself—threaten to deny the ability of eligible Americans to cast their votes through the mail in the upcoming elections in a timely fashion. These delays also threaten the health and economic security of the American people by delaying delivery of life-saving medicines and payments.”
“Lives, livelihoods and the life of our American Democracy are under threat from the President,” she added.
The bill being considered is U.S. Representative Carolyn Maloney’s “Delivering for America Act,” which would stop USPS from implementing any changes to operations or level of service that it had in place on January 1 of this year.
Pelosi, as well as Maloney (D-NY), who chairs the House Oversight Committee, has called for DeJoy and Chair of the Postal Service Board of Governors Robert Duncan to testify at a hearing on August 24 about the mail delays, The New York Times reports.
Representatives Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) have also both called on the FBI to investigate whether DeJoy or members of the Postal Board of Governors committed any crimes in delaying the mail.
“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, according to the AP.