Tag: Trump willing to destroy the U.S. postal service to better his re-election chance

Postal Service didn’t examine service impacts before making cuts, IG report says

House panel investigation of postal changes is ongoing

The independent watchdog of the U.S. Postal Service has issued a report criticizing service reductions implemented in June and July under Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, asserting that there was no consideration of the effects the cutbacks would have before they were put in place.

“No analysis of the service impacts of these various changes was conducted and documentation and guidance to the field for these strategies was very limited and almost exclusively oral,” the report, dated Monday, says. “The resulting confusion and inconsistency in operations at postal facilities compounded the significant negative service impacts across the country.”

The inspector general’s report said that the operational changes implemented by DeJoy soon after he landed the top postal job in June may have met legal requirements, but the execution was flawed and definitively resulted in delays to mail delivery. Continue reading.

Third U.S. judge bars Postal Service delivery cuts before November presidential election

Washington Post logo

A third federal judge has ordered the U.S. Postal Service to halt changes that have delayed mail delivery nationwide, handing the latest judicial rebuke to unilateral service cuts that critics allege would suppress mail-in voting in November’s elections.

In a pair of injunctions, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of Washington, D.C., sided with the states of New York, Hawaii and New Jersey and the cities of New York and San Francisco. The judge also sided with 15 voters and voter registration groups in a separate suit. The voter suit argued that resulting mail delays would deny thousands of people the constitutional right to vote. The cities and states alleged that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy disrupted operations without first submitting changes to the Postal Regulatory Commission, and told Congress he had no intention of returning removed collection boxes or high-speed sorting equipment.

The opinions Sunday and Monday were the latest by a court to conclude that Postal Service changes were likely to risk the timely delivery of election mail and hinder state responses to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Continue reading.

Trump And DeJoy Lose Again In Sweeping Decision By Federal Judge

A federal district judge in New York ruled Monday that the U.S. Postal Service has to treat election mail as a priority, another loss for Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in the courts. The judge, Victor Marrero, also ordered that overtime and extra deliveries had to be permitted by the USPS as election mail demands. This came in a suit brought by several candidates for office and New York voters against Donald Trump and DeJoy.

Marrero blasted USPS leadership and Donald Trump in his ruling. “They have not provided trusted assurance and comfort that citizens will be able to cast ballots with full confidence that their votes would be timely collected and counted,” the 87-page opinion states. “Rather, as detailed below, their actions have given rise to management and operational confusion, to directives that tend to generate uncertainty as to who is in charge of policies that ultimately could affect the reliability of absentee ballots, thus potentially discouraging voting by mail.”

This comes as previous federal and state courts have slapped DeJoy over Postal Service sabotage. Another federal court in Washington state blocked DeJoy’s operational changes, ordering a halt to the transportation schedule he’s imposed that has resulted in delivery delays across the country. Marrero ordered that all election-related mail—including voter registration materials, absentee or mail-in ballot applications, polling place notifications, blank ballots, and completed ballots—has to be treated as first-class or priority express mail. The USPS has to file weekly, public reports informing the court and the public of its performance. Continue reading.