“…In
an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo, Trump came out and
said it: he wants to starve the United States Postal Service to destroy mail-in
voting. Claiming that mail-in voting favors Democrats, he said: ‘Now they need
that money in order to make the post office work so it can take all of these
millions and millions of ballots... Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means
they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting,
they just can’t have it.’
“The president’s acknowledgement that he is
deliberately sabotaging an institution established in the Constitution to steal
the election provoked outrage. He is tampering with an election by attacking
mail-in voting even as he and Melania Trump have requested mail-in ballots for
themselves. And the USPS does not simply handle ballots, it also handles many
aspects of our lives: packages, medicines, and so on—things vital to our
economy and way of life. ‘When the president goes after the Postal Service, he’s
going after an all-American, highly approved-by-the-public institution,’ House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said.
“The attack on the USPS dovetails with the push of
the Trump administration to privatize the USPS, a push launched shortly after
Trump took office. This week we learned that Trump’s new Postmaster General,
Louis DeJoy, retains at least $30 million in holdings of the company XPO
Logistics, a private competitor to the USPS, and that on the same day in June
that he got rid of a large number of shares of Amazon, he bought stock options
at a lower price. Amazon would be hard hit by the disintegration of the USPS. ‘The
idea that you can be a postmaster general and hold tens of millions in stocks
in a postal service contractor is pretty shocking,’ said former director of the
Office of Government Ethics Walter Shaub.
“But the bottom line is that, until the Senate
decides to do something about it, the House is powerless to fund the USPS to
help it survive the economic crisis sparked by the coronavirus pandemic. In the
$3 trillion Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES)
Act the House passed in May, there was a $25 billion support for the USPS. But
the Senate declined to take up the HEROES Act. When the Republicans could not
agree on a new measure at the end of July, the Democrats began to negotiate
directly with the White House, which proposed a more limited, $1 trillion bill.
Democrats suggested a compromise at $2 trillion, but the White House has
refused to budge. With this stalemate, Congress has gone on vacation for the
rest of the month, while negotiators continue to try to reach a deal.
“Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) noted that DeJoy's
new regulations are slowing the mail dramatically. He tweeted: ‘Here is the
truth and I need you to spread it: the voters need to take control. Voters need
to [vote by October
22] if using USPS.’…” (Heather Cox Richardson).
NPR reports:
ReplyDelete“‘While President Trump has long railed against mail-in voting, falsely claiming it leads to rampant fraud, he appeared to confirm Thursday morning that he opposes Democrats’ proposed boost in funding to the U.S. Postal Service for the express purpose of making it harder to expand voting by mail.
Truthout reports:
“President Donald Trump proclaimed Wednesday that the U.S. Postal Service doesn’t have the capacity to handle an unprecedented increase in mail-in ballots because it lacks funds that his administration is blocking, remarks that were immediately viewed as an open admission of election sabotage by a president who has previously called USPS ‘a joke.’”
The Washington Post reports:
“Trump’s attack on the Postal Service is now a national emergency.”
“Bottom line: President Donald Trump has admitted that he is starving the U.S. Postal Service of funding in an attempt to sabotage voting by mail efforts in hopes of stealing the 2020 presidential election.” (Patheos)