Pelosi to recall House for Postal Service vote

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday (August 16) she's calling U.S. lawmakers back to Washington this week to protect the Postal Service ahead of an election where nearly half of all voters could cast ballots by mail.

Democrats have accused President Donald Trump of trying to hamstring the cash-strapped Postal Service to suppress mail-in voting.

And they are calling on Trump-appointed Postal Service chief, Louis DeJoy, to testify about a wave of cost cuts that have slowed mail delivery across the country.

Critics are warning the cuts could disrupt the counting of ballots come November.

But Trump defended DeJoy and his actions at a press conference on Saturday (August 15):

"He's a fantastic man who wants to he wants to make the post office great again. You ever hear the expression? He wants to make the post office great again? The post office is a catastrophe."

In a letter to lawmakers Sunday, Pelosi said the House would vote to prohibit the Postal Service from implementing any changes to services it had in place at the beginning of the year.

Beyond Congress, states like Virginia, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Washington are also weighing legal action to stop the Postal Service from making changes that could affect the election outcome.

Voting by mail is nothing new in the United States - one in four voters cast ballots that way in 2016.

But Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that a surge in mail-in voting would lead to fraud.

A senior Democratic aide said House lawmakers would likely return on Saturday to vote on the Postal Service bill.

"I'm demanding that [Republican Senate Majority] Leader [Mitch] McConnell go into regular session..."

U.S. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also called on Sunday for the Senate to reconvene.

But a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader McConnell said there were no scheduling updates.

DeJoy did not respond to a request for comment.

But White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told CNN on Sunday that the administration feared a surge in mail-in voting could delay election results and leave the naming of the new president to Pelosi, the speaker of the House.