Today, Explained - The mail, man

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

The House of Representatives is cutting its vacation short to block changes at the United States Postal Service that could affect the integrity and outcome of the election. Rep. Gerry Connolly explains why he's going a step further and calling for the postmaster general to resign. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit connectsontario.ca. Back in April of this year, we brought you an episode titled Death Cab for the Postal Service. In it, we talked about what makes the USPS a singular institution, a great example of something the United States did right in a time when we're surrounded by examples of things we're doing wrong. But we also talked about some of the financial woes facing the United States Postal Service and the implications for our election this year. Shortly after that episode,

President Trump put a guy named Louis DeJoy in charge of USPS. DeJoy didn't have any experience within the institution, but he was a big political donor to Donald Trump. And since then, the crisis at the Postal Service has become dramatically worse and seems all but sure to have massive implications, not only on the integrity, but the outcome of our election. And the country is really beginning to notice. People are protesting, people are buying stamps for the first time in their lives, indie folk star Taylor Swift is tweeting about it, and most importantly, over the weekend, Nancy Pelosi decided to cut Congress's summer vacation short to deal with this mess.

Adam Clark Estes, you've been covering the story for Recode and Vox. When exactly did this get, like, end-the-summer-recess-level bad? There's been a slow build in dissatisfaction with the mail in recent weeks. A new story started to come out earlier in August that the new Postmaster General was slowing down the mail intentionally, taking cost-cutting measures and doing stuff like banning overtime. But I think it really hit its breaking point at the end of last week when news came out that the Postal Service had sent letters to 46 states and D.C. saying that election mail was probably not going to arrive on time for the election, which is a huge deal, obviously. And I think that that really mobilized people around the idea that slowing down mail can have like a really serious

consequence when the election comes around. And the slowdown appears to be intentional in coming from this new postmaster general who is a top Trump fundraiser and has no USPS experience. So what does he do when he comes in? What are the cost-cutting measures? The cost-cutting measures included putting an end to overtime, reducing the amount of transportation, so that's the number of mail trucks actually carrying mail. And essentially, he told workers, if at the end of the day, not all the mail has been delivered, just leave it on the mailroom floor and we'll get to it the next day. And that created a huge backlog. So the delays were getting longer and longer.

And that's just what we knew about in the beginning. The Postmaster General was not transparent about what he was doing. He didn't tell the postal unions what he was doing. And we've been hearing more and more about what's actually been happening. And in the last week or so, we've heard that hundreds of sorting machines have been taken out of post offices. These are the machines that can process millions of letters an hour. They're the same machines that would process ballots if they came in. And the new postmaster general has been taking them out of post offices and planning to dismantle them.

What exactly are these mail sorting machines and how important are they to getting the mail delivered? These mail sorting machines are huge proprietary pieces of equipment that are designed to handle letters. And, you know, they basically feed letters into the machines and they sort them. So these sorting machines let the Postal Service process huge amounts of mail, and it's about 30,000 pieces of mail per hour per machine. So needless to say, these machines really come in handy around high volume periods like an election. And we're expecting more mail-in ballots this November than the country's ever seen before.

Okay, so DeJoy is overseeing some serious changes at USPS in the weeks and months leading up to a presidential election, even though he's a big donor to the sitting president. He's not being transparent about the changes big donor to the sitting president. He's not being transparent about the changes. How about the sitting president? Has President Trump or his administration said anything about these slowdowns and how they could affect the election? It's important to point out that the Trump administration has been blocking funding for the Postal Service since the pandemic started. And that has continued. And Trump actually,

in recent days, said, Two of the items are the post office and the three and a half billion dollars for mail-in voting. 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. Was he acknowledging that this is intentional right there? What was that? It sounds like he was acknowledging it was intentional. It's hard how else to interpret what he's saying based on what's actually happening. Right. And maybe that scared a lot of people because this really heated up over the weekend. Is that fair? I think it definitely did, yeah. It started heating up when news broke on Friday that the Postal Service had sent letters to 46 states and D.C. saying that their mail-in ballots weren't going to get to the election boards on time,

essentially seemingly putting the entire election at risk, disenfranchising the vast majority of voters in the country. I think that was a bad moment. And things got worse because there had been a campaign building online. A lot of people had been sharing photos of these mailboxes being removed, accounts from postal workers about not being able to take overtime and mail sitting on the mailroom floor. And it feels like that outrage on social media just totally exploded after this news story hit on Friday. And the online outrage came to the real world. About 100 people protested outside of Postmaster DeJoy's house in Washington, D.C., essentially screaming

at him for slowing down their mail and for seemingly trying to sabotage the election. Over the weekend, the Trump administration tried to redirect blame towards the Democrats for not funding the USPS. And Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, told Jake Tapper on Sunday that this narrative of machines being taken out of post offices told Jake Tapper on Sunday that this narrative of machines being taken out of post offices basically wasn't true, that that wasn't happening. If they were not part of an already scheduled reallocation, it's not happening. It's not a new initiative by this postmaster general. And when we look at this, it's all about efficiency, but you have a normal system

of changing it out. And he also said that machines wouldn't be taken out between now and Election Day. Of course, that totally contradicts everything we've heard from postal workers, the postal unions. And there's one particular moment in this interview where the topic of mail fraud comes up, and I think that that gets right at why this postal service issue is so problematic. But there's no evidence of widespread voter fraud. There's no evidence that there's not either. That's the definition of fraud, Jake.

What does that even mean? He's saying that the fact that there's no evidence that there isn't fraud means there's fraud? Is he high? What I think this mail fraud discussion highlights is that regardless of how bad the slowdown with the U.S. Postal Service is right now, this is all serving to sow distrust in the Postal Service and make people think twice about voting by mail. And during the pandemic, that's the safest way for a lot of people to vote. And mail-in ballots stand to swing the election to one side or the other. So not trusting the mail is essentially leading people not to trust the

American electoral system in 2020. And I'm guessing that brings us to Congress cutting short its vacation. As early as the spring when the first CARES Act went through, Democrats have been fighting for funding for the Postal Service and funding that President Trump has not wanted to give them. They have continued that and they were trying to get $25 billion into the latest coronavirus relief package that did not get passed before Congress went on recess. And it was around the same time that others in Congress like Jerry Connolly and Carolyn Maloney were calling on DeJoy to come and testify before Congress in September. And while these protests are happening outside DeJoy's house, you're getting calls for Congress to return from their August recess to do something about the Postal Service, to pass funding or somehow force these new policies to stop. And Nancy Pelosi announced on Sunday that that would happen. So they're expected to come back later this week and get to work on this.

What can Congress do about this? I mean, this doesn't feel like something that the Democrats should be concerned about or the Republicans should be concerned about. It feels like something just every American should be concerned about right now. What action can be taken to reverse this calamity? Congress can do a couple of things. The big thing is Congress can give money to the Postal Service. The Postal Service has been asking for it for months and they need it. Another thing is that Congress could pass a law that would force the Postmaster General. The Postal Service has been asking for it for months and they need it. Another thing is that Congress could pass a law

that would force the Postmaster General to stop these new policies, go back to the way the mail was before he took over when it was still functioning pretty well. There have also been calls to investigate DeJoy. There are states that are threatening to sue the Postal Service to reverse some of these policies. States plan to bring lawsuits,

and there's also discussion of the FBI getting involved. But from everyone I've talked to, the most immediate thing that could happen would be an infusion of cash from Congress for the Postal Service. The Postal Service is asking for $25 billion to make it through the election and to stay alive as an organization.

Something that a lot of people don't think about is that the U.S. Postal Service could just go away. And this might be the moment that some Republicans have been really wanting, which is to privatize the Postal Service, to turn it into a business. But it's not. It's a public service. People depend on the Postal Service for their medications. They depend on it for their paychecks. And it's unthinkable that the U.S. Postal Service would stop existing. But if things continue the way they're going now, I think it's a possibility.

After the break, I'll speak with Representative Jerry Connolly about what exactly Congress can do to ensure the Postal Service is left alone to play its part in the 2020 election. I'm Sean Ramos for him. It's Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained,

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Can we just start by having you say your name and who you represent? I'm Jerry Connolly. I represent the 11th District of Virginia, which is Northern Virginia. And I chair the Government Operations Subcommittee, which is the subcommittee of jurisdiction over the Postal Service. Thank you. And Congressman, where does y'all are coming back to work this week, breaking your August recess to do something about this crisis at the United States Postal

Service? What's the plan? What do you want to do? We need a bill that rolls back the delivery service delays that the Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, has implemented in the last month that will have the effect of slowing down the delivery of ballots and requests for ballots in a critical election. But we also need to do a few other things there. We need to fund the Inspector General because we're asking the Inspector General's office to investigate whether these were legal changes, whether they have a deleterious effect, which we know they do, on the election. And we also need to make sure that all ballots are treated as first-class mail this election cycle, because that's another change that Joy has implemented that could risk a lot of ballots being treated like commercial mail.

Of course, before y'all took this recess, Congress was having a pretty tough time coming to consensus on relief for the coronavirus, for the pandemic. Considering that, how hard do you think it's going to be to find consensus on this issue of maintaining the integrity of our election? Well, Trump, I think personally, has made it very difficult for Republicans. If there is disruption in mail delivery of any kind, the first victims of that disruption live in rural America, where the postal resources are already stretched thin. They're the ones who may find their ballots at risk, their medical equipment not delivered, their prescriptions late.

So I think there's the possibility of common ground here. I think there are a lot of Republicans deeply concerned about what's happening. Whether they have the courage to act is always the, you know, million-dollar question with them. But in this particular case, they're going to get blamed. Public support for the Postal Service is extremely high, and public angst about the shape of the post office with these new changes, also extremely high. You fool around with that at your peril. What's the backup plan if Republicans in Congress choose to fool around with that, if they choose to disregard the amount of angst we're seeing in the country. I mean, Taylor Swift is tweeting about this, right?

Yeah. It's not a secret that the Postal Service was vulnerable and needed revenue stabilization. We had it in the first CARES Act. We have it again in the HEROES Act. The Republicans in the Senate were willing to go along with most of it. And it was Trump who threatened to veto the bill if any postal assistance was in there. So we're not willing to do that again in the second round. And I think Trump realizes he's on very shaky ground. So we've got public opinion with us. We've certainly got lots of sunshine through media attention. We're going to have a hearing, and we're going to call the Postmaster General to that hearing to account for what he's doing. We've asked for Inspector General investigations. I've asked for a flash report from the Inspector General so that we can get it in real time.

But ultimately, if the Republicans refuse to go along, we have a Republican majority Senate. And don't forget, Trump can veto anything we pass. You've gone a step further and called for Postmaster General DeJoy to resign. Yes. Has he responded to that? No, but President Trump has defended him as doing a good job. Now, Mr. DeJoy is a political crony of the president. He's a big Republican donor. He has no credentials for the job of Postmaster General, which oversees billions of mail pieces every year, which hires and employs 630,000

employees and delivers service to every household and every business in America every day. That breaks a tradition with the Postal Service where we've tried to professionalize the leadership and depoliticize it. But Mr. DeJoy immediately set about to implement measures he knew full well would have the effect of delaying the delivery of mail ballots, if not reversed. At the end of the day, though, Postmaster General DeJoy does not answer to Congress but to the president. That's my understanding. Is that correct? No. The Postmaster General, by law, reports to the Postal Board of Governors. Okay. And that's why I wanted to have the Postal Board of Governors, not just the Postmaster

General, come before our committee and be held to account. Ultimately, however, the Constitution vests the creation and vague management of a postal service with the Congress of the United States. So we ultimately have authority, and that's why we need willing collaborators on the Republican side of the aisle in the Senate to reverse these as quickly as possible. That being said, if Congress deems that the Postmaster General is acting, let's say, with nefarious intent to prevent the USPS from executing this election in good faith, can it do something to replace the Postmaster General? Can it do something to force his hand? Well, I mean, Congress could pass a law to supersede all existing legislation and direct the appointment of a new postmaster general. That's not going to happen between now and November 3rd. That's why I've called for his resignation. We need to start over. The president's

made no secret of the fact that he believes voting by mail is an existential threat to his reelection. And he's bound and determined to do everything he can to disrupt that from happening. Congressman, I think a lot of people are feeling this real severe angst right now. They're asking, how can this even happen when we need this institution most? You know, there seems to be this concerted effort, right? Packages have slowed down. These sorting machines are disappearing. People are freaking out over these locked mailboxes. I just wonder, how confident are you that Congress can take the appropriate action right now to reverse these moves to ensure the integrity of the election?

I think it's really important, Sean, that in the analysis of what's going wrong, we separate political sabotage from the underlying capacity and capability of the Postal Service. This isn't an act of God. It isn't something inevitable because of the economy or the pandemic. This is a deliberate strike at capability, and we have to reverse that. And the public has to know who to hold responsible. The more sunshine and the more relentless pressure the public, the media, and those of us in Congress who are advocates for the Postal Service can bring to bear, we are going to reverse these decisions. We are going to guarantee the integrity of the election, including voting by mail.

Representative Connolly, I thank you for your time. Appreciate it. My great pleasure. Thank you, Sean. Congressman Jerry Connolly represents the 11th District of Virginia. We reached out to the Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, to ask about the USPS's recent removal of sorting machines and also to hear his response to Representative Connolly's call for him to resign. We didn't hear back by publishing time. If you're feeling petrified the Postal Service can't handle the amount of absentee ballots there'll be this year, I just want to let you know that the number of ballots USPS might need to deliver for this election

still pales in comparison to the amount of mail it processes every Christmas. That's not to say you shouldn't be worried right now, but I just wanted to remind you that if properly funded and managed, delivering ballots this election is not beyond the capacity of the United States Postal Service. This is Today Explained. you