TRUMP’S ILLEGAL ACTIONS AGAINST THE US POSTAL SERVICE

…Trump is against the US Postal Service

Trump opposes $25 billion emergency funds sought by the US Postal Service

President Trump on Thursday said he opposes both election aid for states and an emergency bailout for the US Postal Service because he wants to keep many Americans from voting by mail.  He thinks nothing of putting at risk the nation’s ability to administer medications to seniors or ballots for the Nov. 3 elections.

Trump has been attacking mail balloting and the integrity of voting by mail for months.  But his latest broadside makes explicit his intent to stand in the way of the needed money to help state and local officials to administer elections during the coronavirus pandemic.  With nearly 180 million Americans eligible to vote by mail, the president’s actions could usher in widespread delays, long lines and disenfranchising of the voters this fall.

Trump said his sole purpose is to prevent Democrats from expanding mail-balloting, which he has repeatedly claimed, as usual, without evidence, would invite widespread fraud. The president has previously admitted that he believes voting by mail would allow more Democrats to cast ballots and hurt Republican candidates, including himself.  How he feels this is a legal way of acting is beyond me.

In his interview with Fox Business Network’s, Maria Bartiromo, Trump said he opposes the $25 billion emergency injection sought by the US Postal Service.  This includes the Democratic proposal to provide $3.6 billion in additional election funding for the states. Both of those requests have been tied up in congressional negotiations over a new coronavirus relief package that could save many American lives.

“They need that money in order to make the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” said the president, claiming again that mail ballots would be “fraudulent,” one of more than 80 false attacks he has made against the election’s integrity just since March.  This has been confirmed according to The Washington Post who’s Fact Checkers have now said that Trump has passed the 20,000 mark for the number of miss leading or false statements he’s made since he became president.

“If we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money,” Trump added. “That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. They just can’t have it.” 

Trump knows that many of his supporters think that "universal mail-in voting," means that all Americans would be "required to use mail-in voting," which is also false.

So, Trump is trying, out in the open, to go against one of the key areas of the original US Constitution which specifically lists the US Post Office as a needed organization for a democratic nation.

Trump has since told reporters at the White House that he would not veto legislation that has funding for the US Postal Service, but he added that “the reason the post office needs that much money is they have all of these millions of ballots coming in from nowhere and nobody knows from where and where they’re going.” 

Just another pile of crap from the president.

If Democrats agree to a deal, the president continued, “the money they need for the mail-in ballots would be taken care. If we agree to it. That doesn’t mean we’re going to agree to it.”  Now that's pure Trumpism.

Trump’s remarks prompted a swift outcry from Democrats and even some real Republicans, (of which there seem to be only a few remaining).  All of this, while voting-rights advocates denounced what they described as “An unprecedented threat by a sitting president to undermine the election for his own political benefit.”

“The president is afraid of the American people,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). “He’s been afraid for a while. He knows that, on the legit, it’d be hard for him to win.”

“Pure Trump,” offered Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, in response to the president’s remarks. “He doesn’t want an election.”  (Because Trump always follows the polls.)

As Trump has lagged in all the polls, well behind Biden, the president and his allies have increased their false questioning of the integrity of the vote.  And they have intensified their actions in the courts, revealing their far-reaching strategy of restricting the mail-in voting and the challenging of the results if he loses.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) and conservative groups are actually going after their unprecedented effort to limit expansion of mail balloting before the November election.  They are spending tens of millions of dollars on lawsuits and advertising aimed at restricting those who receives ballots and those who remains on the voter rolls.

The Republican party is also working to train as many as 35,000 poll-watchers to monitor both in-person voting and ballot counting, mostly in the key battleground states.

And the RNC and Trump campaign advisers are now mapping out their post-election strategy.  This strategy includes “how to challenge mail ballots without postmarks, as they anticipate weeks-long legal fights in an array of states”.  This is according to some people willing to talk that are familiar with the plans, but who obviously spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

The campaign is using their money for their plans to have many lawyers ready to mobilize in every state and they expect that legal battles could play out after Election Day in such states as Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan and Nevada, the same under anonymity people said.

Trump’s claims about voting-by-mail have of course, also been echoed by Trump's Attorney General, William Barr, who has repeatedly said, also without evidence, that mail-in voting could lead to a “high risk” of fraud and interference by foreign countries.

It must be noted here, that previous voting-by-mail fraud has only been found in 0.0008% of past elections.  And the number of fraudulent ballots has never affected the outcome of any US election.

At the same time, changes put in place at the US Postal Service, of course, by a top GOP donor, have sparked mail delays across country.  This has sparked fears that ballots will not be delivered in time to count in November.

Many of the president’s critics have said that he crossed a line with Thursday’s remarks by admitting his willingness to hold back funds necessary to make the election both secure and accessible to all Americans.  “If they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it,” he said.

Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, described Trump’s statements as a “line in the sand” that Congress must not let him cross.  “It is outrageous,” Weiser said. “It is an attack on the very foundations of our democratic system. And he’s daring people to let him get away with it or to stand up to him. The gauntlet’s been thrown down, and people now need to stand up for our system.”

It was good to see that Trump’s opposition to the $3.6 billion in election funding could has put him at odds with some Republicans, including Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).  Blunt, has indicated that his support for some additional federal money to help the states carry out the vote during the pandemic.  “We need to have enough money to do our best to be sure that the November elections are held safely and results are available,” Blunt told reporters.

Democrats have proposed more election money for the states, saying the resources are necessary to pay for a wide range of preparations to assist both in-person and mail voting in the health crisis.  “We have to make it easier and doable,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), a top advocate for the additional election funds.

State and local officials say they need money for protective equipment to prevent Corona infections among poll workers, and sanitizing supplies for polling locations.  This is along with paper stock, printing costs and high-capacity ballot scanners for an expected surge in mail-in voting.

Roxanna Moritz, the auditor and commissioner of elections in Scott County, Iowa, said she may have to choose between offering early-voting satellite locations and paying for a second or even third round of mailing voters absentee ballot request forms.

“Depending on my budget I usually do early voting satellites at five libraries for three full weeks,” Moritz said. She said she received $19,000 in funding from the first relief bill, but “$19,000 goes real quick” when you’re purchasing plastic shields and protective equipment for the more than 60 polling locations her office opened in the primary.

Moritz said she doesn’t understand the president’s position on mail balloting, given how many Republicans are also likely to vote absentee.  “At some point in time, the Trump administration or the Republican Party is going to have to realize that if there are 60 to 75% of people voting by mail, those are their voters, too,” she said.

Tom Ridge, a Republican and former homeland security secretary under George W. Bush, said in an interview that with “absolutely no historical anecdotes” for the type of massive fraud that Trump claims could occur, it’s impossible not to conclude that the president’s real concern is his expectation for losing.

“To subvert the process and discredit the use of absentee ballots is a shameful exercise,” Ridge said.

GOP Rep. Tom Cole, who hails from rural Oklahoma and once oversaw the state’s elections systems as secretary of state, said Thursday that he was not concerned about fraud in the election.  “That just doesn’t happen to the degree that a lot of people seem to think it does,” he said, adding that election administrators are “a very able and honorable group of public servants and usually have operations that are above reproach.”

Trump’s opposition to funds for the Postal Service comes as the agency is in a precarious spot. It has struggled with its finances for years as volumes of first-class and marketing mail, the agency’s most profitable items, have steadily declined.

The onset of the pandemic turned that challenge into a full-blown crisis. The economic shutdown caused a steep drop in mail volumes, and postal leaders originally predicted the agency could run out of money by October.

Congress agreed in an early round of pandemic relief spending to grant the Postal Service $13 billion in emergency funding, but Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said they would reject any proposals that included direct aid, instead agreeing to a $10 billion loan.

The House approved $25 billion in postal aid in April, and a bipartisan bill in the Senate introduced by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) would do the same, along with stripping conditions from Treasury’s loan.

On the Senate’s final day of the summer session, the few Republicans on hand did not want to comment on Trump’s latest assault on the Postal Service.

“I have no comment on that,” Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) said as he left the near-empty chamber.

As he entered the floor, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ignored a question about funding for the Postal Service.

At least one Republican senator on Thursday spoke out against the president’s opposition to funding for the agency. Sen. Susan Collins told the Portland Press Herald that even before his remarks, she sent a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy demanding an explanation for the service cuts she’s been hearing about in her state.

“And so I do disagree with the president, very strongly, on that issue,” said Collins, who is facing a tough reelection bid. “The Postal Service is absolutely essential, particularly to a large, rural state like ours.”

In a letter to postal workers Thursday obtained by The Post, Postmaster DeJoy said he remains committed to returning the Postal Service to solvency but also said he intends to protect service for the fall election.

He confirmed recent reports of delivery delays but called them “unintended consequences” of shifts that ultimately will improve service. We are working feverishly to stabilize this,” he said, adding: “This will increase our performance for the election and upcoming peak season and maintain the high level of public trust we have earned for dedication and commitment to our customers throughout our history.”

Trump told reporters Thursday that he would not tell DeJoy to reverse changes that have slowed the mail, saying, “I want the post office to run properly.”   Yeah, Right.

Trump’s rhetoric on mail voting has frustrated his advisers, who say the president is often incorrect and could discourage their own voters.

“In mail-in voting, there isn’t an inherent political advantage to either party. There never has been and there never will be,” Tom Ridge, former Republican governor of Pennsylvania said. “The advantage goes to the party that is most effective in identifying those voters.”

It only we had a president that would agree with that idea.

Copyright G. Ater 2020