Congressional Democrats have asked Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a large donor to Donald Trump and other Republicans, to provide more information on cutbacks he ordered at the Postal Service last month.

“That’s sort of unheard of, right?” Mr Obama said in an interview with his former adviser, David Plouffe, on his Campaign HQ podcast. On Twitter, Mr Obama urged people to vote early in states where that is an option. Voting in some states opens in mid-September.
Mr Trump late last week said that not approving a financial lifeline for the postal service sought by Democrats would mean that “you can’t have universal mail-in voting, because they’re not equipped to have it”.
Congressional Democrats have asked Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a large donor to Mr Trump and other Republicans, to provide more information on cutbacks he ordered at the Postal Service last month. In a letter, they said the service seemed to be reversing a longstanding policy of prioritising election-related mail.
“The Postal Service should not make changes that slow down the mail or in any way compromise service for veterans, small businesses, rural communities, seniors, and millions of Americans who rely on the mail including significant numbers of people who will be relying on the Postal Service to exercise their right to vote,” wrote Ms Pelosi and five other top Democrats.
Representative Bill Pascrell, a Democrat from New Jersey, went further. He asked that his state’s attorney general launch a grand jury investigation to consider criminal indictments against Mr Trump and Mr DeJoy for “the subversion of New Jersey state elections”.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said he would order the November general election to be conducted mostly through the mail in a state that was one of the early US coronavirus hot spots.
The escalation in the dispute came after the Postal Service warned election officials in 46 states and the District of Columbia that state deadlines for requesting and casting mail-in ballots were “incongruous with the Postal Service’s delivery standards”.
“This mismatch creates a risk that ballots requested near the deadline under state law will not be returned by mail in time to be counted under your laws as we understand them,” USPS lawyer Thomas Marshall said in letters released on Friday (Saturday AEST) under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Postal Service says voters and election officials should allow at least seven days for a ballot to go through the mail.
By that standard, more than 20 states would not leave enough time for even a one-way mailing, according to state laws compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Because many states require a voter to first request an absentee ballot by mail, the back-and-forth mailings could take 15 days or more, depending on the class of mail.
The Postal Service changes and the Trump administration’s decision to withhold funding “is alarming and should be of grave concern to us all, particularly with the general election only months away”, Louisville, Kentucky, Mayor Greg Fischer said in a statement at the weekend. Mr Fischer, a Democrat, is president of the non-partisan US Conference of Mayors.
Bloomberg