House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Democratic leaders are reportedly considering cutting the chamber’s August recess short and bringing it back into session amid the unfurling U.S. Postal Service crisis.
Democratic sources told Politico on Saturday that the House, which is currently in recess and has no votes scheduled until mid-September, could return to vote in the next two weeks.
During an emergency leadership call on Saturday afternoon, Pelosi and other top Democrats — which include House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) — discussed possibly cutting the chamber’s August recess short, according to Politico.
Sources familiar with the discussion told Politico that Democrats seek to address organizational issues at the Postal Service in the coming weeks. One option under consideration is voting on a modified version of a bill introduced by House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) earlier this week. The modified bill would reportedly halt the USPS from instituting a planned organizational overhaul, which critics argue would hamper mail-in voting ahead of the November election.
On Friday, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) tore into President Trump and Republicans for waging an “all-out assault on the Postal Service and its role in ensuring the integrity of the 2020 election.” Pelosi and Schumer’s scathing statement came after Trump made his efforts to cripple the Postal Service explicit, saying that he opposes funding to save it. Trump has repeatedly claimed that mail-in voting leads to voter fraud.
“The President made plain that he will manipulate the operations of the Post Office to deny eligible voters the ballot in pursuit of his own re-election,” Pelosi and Schumer said in a joint statement. “The President’s own words confirm: he needs to cheat to win.”
The President has also thrown his support behind Louis DeJoy, a businessman and Trump donor who was recently appointed postmaster general, who Democrats believe is overhauling the Postal Service’s operations to help Trump win in November.
“The Post Office is a catastrophe,” Trump said during a press conference on Saturday. “And obviously if you’re going to do these millions of ballots out of nowhere, (DeJoy is) going to obviously need funding. But the Democrats aren’t willing to provide other things and therefore they’re not going to get the funding for that.”
