Tag: Trump voter suppression
Poll: USPS should be run like a public service, not a business, Americans say 2-to-1
The Postal Service continues to rate favorably despite recent delivery backlogs and President Trump’s ongoing attacks on mail voting
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was brought on, in part, to use his extensive private-sector experience to make the nation’s venerable mail service more efficient.
But the net effect of DeJoy’s operational changes has been a slowdown in the pace of mail delivery. It may be no surprise, then, that a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll showed that Americans, by a more than 2-to-1 margin, reject the notion that the U.S. Postal Service should be “run like a business,” to use a phrase prevalent in conservative policymaking circles.
Instead, most said the USPS should be run as a “public service,” even if doing so would cost the government money. Continue reading.
DeJoy’s Postal Service policies delayed 7 percent of nation’s first-class mail, Senate Democrat’s report says
The postmaster general suspended some cost-cutting maneuvers but not the moves experts say are behind the worst problems
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s controversial midsummer operational directives delayed nearly 350 million pieces, or 7 percent, of the country’s first-class mail in the five weeks they were in effect, according to a new report published Wednesday by the Senate’s top Democrat in charge of postal oversight.
A month after taking charge of the U.S. Postal Service, DeJoy implemented stricter dispatch schedules on transport trucks that forced workers to leave mail behind and prohibited extra mail trips, leading to well-documented bottlenecks. Managers under him also cracked down on overtime, which postal workers commonly rely on to complete routes, though DeJoy has denied having a role in those cutbacks.
The report portrays an agency whose leadership was barely prepared to implement the new policies, did not anticipate the upheaval they might cause and is still trying to find its balance as the November election draws near and millions of people continue to experience longer wait times for their mail and packages. Continue reading.
‘It’s a cover-up’: White House accused of hiding Mnuchin’s role in recruiting postmaster general
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday accused the Trump White House of covering up the role Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin played in recruiting Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Republican donor with no prior experience working for the U.S. Postal Service.
In a letter to Robert Duncan, chairman of the USPS Board of Governors, Schumer wrote that as part of his investigation into DeJoy’s selection and unanimous appointment in May, his office “learned of the role Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had with the Postal Board of Governors, including through meetings with individual governors as well as phone calls with groups of governors, which has not been previously disclosed by the board.”
“This administration has repeatedly pointed to the role of [executive search firm] Russell Reynolds to defend the selection of a Republican mega-donor with no prior postal experience as postmaster general while at the same time blocking the ability of Congress to obtain briefings from the firm and concealing the role of Secretary Mnuchin and the White House in its search process,” the New York Democrat wrote. Continue reading.
Supreme Court denies GOP request, allows R.I. pandemic-related relief on mail-in ballots
The Supreme Court on Thursday rebuffed the Republican Party and allowed a consent decree to go forward so that Rhode Island voters during the coronaviruspandemic could cast mail-in ballots without in-person witness verification.
It was the first time the justices had agreed to a pandemic-related voter relief effort. But they explained in a short, unsigned order that state officials had agreed to relax the rules and that the change already had been implemented during the June primary.
Unlike “similar cases where a state defends its own law, here the state election officials support the challenged decree, and no state official has expressed opposition,” the order said. “Under these circumstances, the applicants lack a cognizable interest in the state’s ability to enforce its duly enacted laws.” Continue reading.
Postal Service overhauls leadership as Democrats press for investigation of mail delays
Lawmakers want the inspector general to examine Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s cost-cutting measures and investments
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s mail service, displacing the two top executives overseeing day-to-day operations, according to a reorganization memo released Friday. The shake-up came as congressional Democrats called for an investigation of DeJoy and the cost-cutting measures that have slowed mail delivery and ensnared ballots in recent primary elections.
Twenty-three postal executives were reassigned or displaced, the new organizational chart shows. Analysts say the structure centralizes power around DeJoy, a former logistics executive and major ally of President Trump, and de-emphasizes decades of institutional postal knowledge. All told, 33 staffers included in the old postal hierarchy either kept their jobs or were reassigned in the restructuring, with five more staffers joining the leadership from other roles.
The reshuffling threatens to heighten tensions between postal officials and lawmakers, who are troubled by delivery delays — the Postal Service banned employees from working overtime and making extra trips to deliver mail — and wary of the Trump administration’s influence on the Postal Service as the coronavirus pandemic rages and November’s election draws near. Continue reading.
Federalist Society Co-Founder Calls For Trump’s Impeachment For Proposing To Postpone Election
Steven Calabresi is not among the usual slate of conservative critics of the president. He doesn’t appear on MSNBC to lambast the Republican Party or write denunciations of the White House for The Bulwark. But in a new piece for the New York Times published Thursday, he offered a blistering rebuke to President Donald Trump’s suggestion on Twitter that he may seek to delay the November election.
Calabresi started with his Trumpist bona fides, confirming that he’s not inclined to criticize the president:
I have voted Republican in every presidential election since 1980, including voting for Donald Trump in 2016. I wrote op-eds and a law review article protesting what I believe was an unconstitutional investigation by Robert Mueller. I also wrote an op-ed opposing President Trump’s impeachment.
Then he continued, cutting to the heart of the matter:
But I am frankly appalled by the president’s recent tweet seeking to postpone the November election. Until recently, I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats’ assertion that President Trump is a fascist. But this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate.
Trump tests GOP loyalty with election tweet and stimulus strategy
President Trump is testing the loyalty of his Republican allies on Capitol Hill at a time when his weak job approval numbers have GOP lawmakers increasingly concerned that he may lose reelection and drag down their Senate majority with him.
Senate Republicans have largely stuck by Trump during his tumultuous time in office.
While they criticize the president from time to time, they mostly avoid publicly confrontations, even though a good number of GOP lawmakers are willing to express their critical judgments privately. Continue reading.
How the Failed Trump Effort to Create a ‘National Voter Database’ Could Actually Help the GOP Dominate in Future Elections
The following article by Steven Rosenfeld was posted on the AlterNet website July 5, 2017:
Looking beyond the buffoonish politics of the moment exposes the darker reality of what Kobach is really up to.
Many people who believe in expanding voting rights are marveling at the clumsy bid by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach for doing the one thing that was guaranteed to deeply offend almost every top state election official—demanding they fork over their detailed statewide voter files to create a national voter database.
Before Kobach’s attempted data grab—which as of Thursday, 41 states said no way to—he was already known throughout the small world of state election administrators and lawyers as an unabashed vote suppressor and white nativist, helping groups to file numerous anti-immigrant lawsuits and author anti-immigrant laws. So it didn’t surprise many election insiders when he sent out a letter, as chair of Trump’s “election integrity” commission, demanding copies of their statewide voter databases, post-haste, including data that’s protected, like Social Security numbers. Continue reading “How the Failed Trump Effort to Create a ‘National Voter Database’ Could Actually Help the GOP Dominate in Future Elections”