Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic leaders will summon the House back in session this coming week to confront President Donald Trump’s attempts to undermine the U.S. Postal Service, she announced Sunday night.
The House is expected to vote as early as Saturday, Aug. 22, on a proposal to block the Trump administration’s plan for overhauling the Postal Service. This is weeks earlier than Pelosi and the House Democratic leaders had originally planned to return to Washington. But the revised House schedule comes amid a national uproar over a crisis within the Postal Service ahead of a national election that will see an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots.
Democrats have grown increasingly alarmed that Trump is using the coronavirus pandemic to force service cutbacks at USPS ahead of Nov. 3. Democrats allege Trump’s appointee to lead the Postal Service, Louis DeJoy, has overseen substantial operational changes to the agency that has led to backlogs and service interruptions — an immense concern as millions of Americans prepare to receive and return their ballots through the mail.
Trump has long alleged, without evidence, that mail-in voting perpetuates election fraud.
“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 said in a letter to fellow House Democrats on Sunday.
“That is why I am calling upon the House to return to session later this week to vote on Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman [Carolyn] Maloney’s ‘Delivering for America Act,’ which prohibits the Postal Service from implementing any changes to operations or level of service it had in place on January 1, 2020.”
www.politico.com/news/2020/08/16/pelosi-house-vacation-postal-service-396627