Bipartisan lawmakers demand action after Raw Story mail crime investigation

ALSO READ: Fury as fourth postal worker dies at flagship USPS facility that has no phones

As United States Postal Service letter carriers face increasing violence and assaults on the job, the police officers who could protect them have been sidelined by the government, a new Raw Story investigation revealed.

With letter carrier robberies skyrocketing by 543 percent between 2019 and 2022, the issue has spurred a bipartisan group of Congress members to introduce legislation aimed at providing more secure mailbox equipment and better protecting letter carriers.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), who introduced the Protect our Letter Carriers Act last week, said Raw Story's investigation should urge Congress to turn the bill into law.

“The concerns highlighted in this story only increase the urgency needed in Congress to pass the bipartisan Protect our Letter Carriers Act," Fitzpatrick said in a statement to Raw Story. "The United States Postal Service must have the resources to update its outdated arrow keys and harden mailboxes. We must also increase the prosecution and lengthen sentences of individuals arrested for assaulting and robbing letter carriers. I will do whatever is necessary to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass this crucial piece of legislation.”

A 2020 statute reinterpretation by the Postal Service curtailed uniformed postal police officers' ability to patrol the streets where mail crimes typically occur, restricting them to working on postal property such as post offices and distribution centers. Meanwhile, the number of postal police officers overall has shrunk from a high of more than 2,600 in the 1970s to about 450 officers today.

In a phone interview with Raw Story, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said mail theft is "rampant" in her district and is an issue she's heard about across the country from her colleagues. Postal police officers aren't currently "doing any good being confined to postal property," Norton said.

"The spike in mail crime only reinforces my notion that we need to have postal police go wherever the crime is," Norton said.

If postal police officers began patrolling the streets again, there would be "a better chance of restricting crimes for the Postal Service," said Norton, who is a co-sponsor of the House version of the Postal Police Reform Act alongside Reps. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), Ken Calvert (R-CA) and Bill Pascrell (D-NJ).

Calvert himself lost nearly $10,000 in campaign cash last year because of mail theft, Raw Story first reported.

"I think the bill has a good chance of passing not only because of what we're experiencing in the district but because this issue is nationwide," Norton said.

There's a Senate version of the Postal Police Reform Act, as well, introduced by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Susan Collins (R-ME), along with 10 other co-sponsors, including Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD).

“Postal carriers routinely deliver lifelines to Marylanders and others across the country. They should not be left vulnerable to dangerous situations that leave them and mail recipients in potential danger – from theft and the lost items," Cardin told Raw Story in a statement. "This is a growing problem that Congress should address, preferably in partnership with the USPS.”

Read Raw Story's full investigation: Letter carriers face bullets and beatings while postal service sidelines police

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Trump hit with ridicule as National Guard stands at Reflecting Pool: 'Protect from algae?'

The Trump administration has reached the stage of its Reflecting Pool saga where soldiers stand watch over a pond full of algae, and the internet has decided that image needs no embellishment to be devastating.

Video circulating Saturday, licensed through FreedomNews.tv, shows National Guard members in uniform posted along the edge of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool while tourists wander past and cleanup equipment idles nearby. The footage spread quickly, and so did the mockery, much of it from across the political spectrum.

Former RNC chair Michael Steele cut to the obvious question. Responding to a clip of the deployment, he asked simply, "Protect it from what, the algae?" Steven Huffman, posting the same scene, narrated it like a military success story, joked that the Guard and local police "have been dispatched to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to guard the algae" before concluding, "As you can see at the end of this clip, the algae is safe. Well done."

Others leaned into the absurdity of the optics. Physician Carolyn Barber wrote, "Rest easy, America. The National Guard has been deployed to ensure no one breaches the heavily defended algae pond at the Lincoln Memorial. The republic endures." Advocate Melanie D'Arrigo tied it to the administration's spending habits, predicting that "next thing you know, the algae will need a $600 million ballroom."

Beneath the jokes ran a more pointed critique about resources and motive. The account Republicans Against Trump labeled the scene "your tax dollars at work," framing armed troops at a decorative basin as a waste dressed up as security. Security researcher Robert Graham connected the deployment to the broader enforcement pattern that has accompanied Trump's vandalism claims, noting that "in support of Trump's conspiracies about his failures caused by sabotage, multiple police departments and the National Guard are now issuing citations merely for touching the water."

That last point captures why the images resonate. Over the past two days a 67-year-old cyclist has been arrested and another visitor reportedly cited, both for making contact with a pool the president insists was sabotaged by chemical-wielding vandals. The simpler explanation, that a rushed and overpriced renovation bloomed green and shed its paint, requires no soldiers at all. The administration has chosen the version with troops, and the country is watching armed service members guard standing water while critics ask the question no one in the White House seems willing to answer: guard it from what?

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Evidence shows Trump admin caused Reflecting Pool damage it blamed on sabotage: ex-insider

An ex-GOP lawmaker has heard enough about phantom left-wing saboteurs at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and he is pointing at the only suspects who fit the evidence: the people Trump hired to clean it.

In a series of posts and a new video, former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger dismantled the administration's vandalism narrative by accepting one piece of it. Yes, he conceded, chemicals were used on the pool. The catch is who used them and why. "Just for those who are saying there was chemical sabotage to peel the paint in the reflective pool, you're right," Kinzinger wrote. "It's just, you guys did it to kill the algae."

His central claim cuts straight through the conspiracy theory. "The Trump administration dumped hydrogen peroxide to kill the algae and it stripped the paint," he said in the video, adding bluntly in a follow-up that "it was literally the people who painted it. They poured peroxide in it." In other words, the corrosive chemicals Trump blamed on radical leftists were the cleanup crew's own attempt to rescue a basin that had turned green within days of its multimillion-dollar makeover.

Kinzinger backed the point with a quick search result showing that highly concentrated, industrial-grade hydrogen peroxide acts as a strong oxidizer capable of breaking down the binder in paint and causing it to bubble and peel. That is the same outcome now floating across the surface of the pool, which the president has described instead as a deliberate "knife or blade" attack and a "250 foot long gash" carved into a national monument.

The contrast with how some Trump allies want to treat the matter is stark. Kinzinger was responding in part to commentator Jeff Storobinsky, who suggested that anyone "causing damage at the reflecting pool should face the same consequences of those who stormed the Capitol on 1.6." Kinzinger's reply amounts to a warning that such a standard would land on the administration itself, since by his account the damage was self-inflicted maintenance, not an assault by outsiders.

His broader frustration was with a movement he says cannot tolerate the idea that its leader made a mistake. They are "unable to see a flaw in their God king," Kinzinger wrote Saturday, choosing an elaborate sabotage story over the simpler truth that a rushed, overpriced renovation failed on its own. The peeling paint, in his telling, is not evidence of a crime. It is evidence of a cover story falling apart in real time.

Trump lets loose new details on Reflecting Pool damage: 'Many people have been arrested'

Donald Trump returned to his favorite subject Saturday evening, and his account of the great Reflecting Pool conspiracy grew more elaborate with every sentence. In a lengthy Truth Social post, the president announced that "many additional people have been arrested" over what he called "the disgraceful Vandalism of our beautiful Reflecting Pool," then offered a list of crimes that has expanded well beyond the algae and peeling paint that started the whole saga.

According to Trump, the vandals did not merely tamper with the water. They "took some form of knife or blade" and carved a "250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade," and they "poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool." He framed the alleged sabotage as an insult to history, writing that the damage was "a true affront to both Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and should be dealt with accordingly." He added that he met with contractors and may be "forced to release and drain much of the water" to complete repairs.

The president also delivered a characteristic burst of self-praise wrapped around a shaky history lesson. He claimed the pool "hasn't looked or worked like this since 1922, when it was originally built," insisted his version "worked perfectly, including the mirror like finish," and declared it had never been "so beautiful as it was just one week ago." That timeline quietly undercuts itself, since a structure that worked perfectly a week ago would most likely not need to be drained and repaired now.

What Trump did not provide, once again, was evidence. The only confirmed arrest so far is David Hearn, a 67-year-old cyclist and former Olympian charged with a misdemeanor after he touched a piece of paint that had already come loose, an accusation he denies. A second man was reportedly cited for putting his hand in the water. Neither episode resembles a knife-wielding chemical attack on a national monument.

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