House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Sunday night that she is calling the House back into session a few weeks early to handle the crisis at the U.S. Postal Service. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) will outline the timing to House Democrats on Monday, but Axios reports that lawmakers will travel to Washington, D.C., on Friday and convene on Saturday.
Pelosi said the starting point will be a vote on the Delivering for America Act, legislation introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) that "would prohibit the Postal Service from dialing back levels of service it had in place" on Jan. 1. She added that the House will continue to fight for action on a bill it passed in May to provide billions in emergency funding to the USPS and finance other COVID-19 responses; the Senate adjourned last week without a COVID-19 relief bill of its own.
Democratic leaders said earlier Sunday that they had asked new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and Postal Service Board of Governors Chairman Robert "Mike" Duncan to testify before the House Oversight Committee on Aug. 24 about the changes DeJoy has ordered at the USPS that have slowed mail delivery. DeJoy is a major donor to President Trump's campaigns and former Republican National Convention finance chairman; Duncan is the former head of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) Senate Leadership Fund super PAC.
"The Postal Service is a pillar of our democracy, enshrined in the Constitution and essential for providing critical services: delivering prescriptions, Social Security benefits, paychecks, tax returns, and absentee ballots to millions of Americans, including in our most remote communities," Pelosi wrote in her letter to colleagues. "Alarmingly, across the nation, we see the devastating effects of the president’s campaign to sabotage the election by manipulating the Postal Service to disenfranchise voters." Democratic lawmakers say they have been flooded with complaints about postal service delays, and Trump said last week he opposes new USPS funding because it would enable voting by mail.