Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Election mail will be delivered 'fully and on time,' DeJoy vows

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy

The postmaster general being sworn in before he testified at a virtual Senate hearing.

Handout/Getty Images

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy promised on Friday that the Postal Service would fulfill its "sacred duty" to deliver election mail this fall and said he was "extremely highly confident" that even mail-in ballots sent close to Election Day would be delivered on time.

In the first of his two appearances before Congress this month, the embattled postmaster sought to tamp down public outcry over cutbacks and to rebut allegations by Democrats and voting rights groups that he's collaborating with President Trump in an extraordinary effort to undermine the integrity of the election.

DeJoy, a major Trump donor who became the nation's top postal official 10 weeks ago, testified to a Republican-majority Senate committee that he is not working on behalf of the White House. And "the insinuation is quite frankly outrageous," he declared, that he is out to ruin the central exercise of American democracy with policy changes rendering impossible the timely delivery and return of an unprecedented tens of millions of absentee ballots sure to be cast because of the pandemic.


"There have been no changes in any policies with regard to election mail for the 2020 election," he said during a virtual hearing of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "The Postal Service is fully capable and committed to delivering the nation's election mail fully and on time."

He also pledged at one point that USPS would treat all ballot applications and returned voter envelopes as first class mail, which has top delivery priority, even if it is marked and paid for as slower service.

DeJoy, a former logistics executive, also testified he has not spoken with President Trump, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin or White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows about postal service changes and has not faced political pressure to reduce capacity for election mail.

The president has stoked concerns by deriding the Postal Service as a "joke" and repeatedly claiming without evidence that too many votes cast away from polling places will produce a fraudulent election. "The honorable thing to do is drop the Mail-In Scam before it is too late!" he tweeted last week, one of dozens such missives since the spring.

"The board's committed, the postal workers are committed, the union leadership is committed to having a successful election," DeJoy testified.

His recently implemented cost-cutting policies including cutbacks on overtime, reduced extra-delivery trips and removal of sorting machines and mailboxes. The changes spurred widespread anxiety about ballot delivery — especially as images went viral of truckloads of removed mailboxes, a roundup he said he did not know about in advance,

"When I found out about it," he said, "and looked at the excitement it was creating, I decided to stop it and we will pick it up after the election, but this is a normal process that has been around, it's been around 50 years."

A group of 90 House Democrats called on the Postal Service's board of governors in a letter Wednesday to rein in DeJoy and consider firing him if he did not reverse more cost-cutting moves than just those he said on Tuesday would be suspended until after the election. And on Friday six state attorneys general sued him and the Postal Service in federal court, alleging that changes at the USPS amounted to voting rights violations.

Adding to concerns over election readiness, the Postal Service last month warned 46 states their voters are at risk of being disenfranchised, since their deadlines for requesting and returning ballots are incompatible with mail delivery standards.

This notice had nothing particularly to do with the extraordinary circumstances of 2020, DeJoy said, and a similar letter is sent before every national election.

"This was not a change from anything we have done in previous years," he said. "It was just more detail and more emphasis put on it partly because of the expected rise in vote by mail and also because of the pandemic."

Asked if he supports voting by mail, DeJoy revealed that he plans to use the process to cast his ballot in North Carolina, which has no-excuse absentee voting. "I've voted by mail for a number of years," he said. "The Postal Service will deliver every ballot and process every ballot in time that it receives."

DeJoy is set to testify before the Democrat-led House Oversight and Reform Committee on Monday.

And on Saturday, the House is scheduled to interrupt its summer break long enough to vote on legislation that would deliver $25 billion to the USPS to address its budget troubles and also countermand many of the recent organizational changes. The Senate has no plans to vote on the measure.

Read More

Could Trump’s campaign against the media come back to bite conservatives?

US President Donald Trump reacts next to Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk, after speaking at the public memorial service for right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on September 21, 2025.

(Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Could Trump’s campaign against the media come back to bite conservatives?

In the wake of Jimmy Kimmel’sapparently temporary— suspension from late-night TV, a (tragically small) number of prominent conservatives and Republicans have taken exception to the Trump administration’s comfort with “jawboning” critics into submission.

Sen. Ted Cruz condemned the administration’s “mafioso behavior.” He warned that “going down this road, there will come a time when a Democrat wins again — wins the White House … they will silence us.” Cruz added during his Friday podcast. “They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly. And that is dangerous.”

Keep ReadingShow less
A stethoscope lying on top of credit cards.

Enhanced health care tax credits expire at the end of 2025 unless Congress acts. Learn who benefits, what’s at risk, and how premiums could rise without them.

Getty Images, yavdat

Just the Facts: What Happens If Enhanced Health Care Tax Credits End in 2025

The Fulcrum strives to approach news stories with an open mind and skepticism, striving to present our readers with a broad spectrum of viewpoints through diligent research and critical thinking. As best we can, we remove personal bias from our reporting and seek a variety of perspectives in both our news gathering and selection of opinion pieces. However, before our readers can analyze varying viewpoints, they must have the facts.

There’s been a lot in the news lately about healthcare costs going up on Dec. 31 unless congress acts. What are the details?

The enhanced health care premium tax credits (ePTCs) are set to expire at the end of 2025 unless Congress acts to extend them.

Keep ReadingShow less
Congress Bill Spotlight: No Social Media at School Act

Rep. Angie Craig’s No Social Media at School Act would ban TikTok, Instagram & Snapchat during K-12 school hours. See what’s in the bill.

Getty Images, Daniel de la Hoz

Congress Bill Spotlight: No Social Media at School Act

Gen Z’s worst nightmare: TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat couldn’t be used during school hours.

What the bill does

Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN2) introduced the No Social Media at School Act, which would require social media companies to use “geofencing” to block access to their products on K-12 school grounds during school hours.

Keep ReadingShow less
A portrait of John Adams.

John Adams warned that without virtue, republics collapse. Today, billionaire spending and unchecked wealth test whether America can place the common good above private gain.

John Adams Warned Us: A Republic Without Virtue Cannot Survive

John Adams understood a truth that feels even sharper today: a republic cannot endure without virtue. Writing to Mercy Otis Warren in April 1776, he warned that public Virtue cannot exist in a Nation without [private virtue], and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.” For Adams, liberty would not be preserved by clever constitutions alone. It depended on citizens who could restrain their selfish impulses for the sake of the common good.

That insight has lost none of its force. Some people do restrain themselves. They accumulate enough to live well and then turn to service, family, or community. Others never stop. Given the chance, they gather wealth and power without limit. Left unchecked, selfishness concentrates material and social resources in the hands of a few, leaving many behind and eroding the sense of shared citizenship on which democracy depends.

Keep ReadingShow less