All posts tagged "Usps"

The U.S. Postal Service has halted work on a computer system central to President Donald Trump's effort to limit mail-in voting.

Postmaster General David Steiner confirmed the stoppage Thursday in an interview with the Associated Press, just days after the Supreme Court rejected the president's executive order for this year's midterms.

"There's an injunction so we're not doing anything," Steiner told the AP....

While still under the leadership of Elon Musk, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) consulted with the leader of a little known arm of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), a memo obtained by Raw Story revealed — prompting legal and academic experts to warn of potential trouble ahead.

On March 19, Chief Postal Inspector Gary Barksdale issued a “situational update” to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), USPS’s law enforcement arm, about a meeting with DOGE, according to the memo, which Raw Story received through a Freedom of Information Act request.

In the memo, Barksdale reiterated former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s requests for assistance from DOGE as outlined in a March 17 letter to Congress, including help with “efforts to combat counterfeit postage.” ...

The United States Government Accountability Office has released a critical report about the U.S. Postal Service, bolstering the findings of a recent Raw Story investigation that details a dramatic spike in crime against letter carriers.

The Government Accountability Office found that “serious crime” — including homicides, assaults, burglaries and robberies — nearly doubled during a six-year span, from 656 in 2017 to 1,198 in 2023. Robberies alone grew nearly sevenfold between fiscal years 2019 through 2023, according to the report.

Raw Story found that letter carrier robberies skyrocketed by 543 percent between 2019 and 2022, coinciding with the timing of a 2020 Postal Service decision that effectively benched its uniformed police force of 450 officers. The decision resulted in the officers losing their mandate to patrol the streets where letter carriers deliver the mail and these robberies often occur. They’re now relegated to protecting postal facilities, such as mail sorting centers and post offices....

Amid nonstop grilling by U.S. senators about the nation’s shambolic mail system, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy had jokes.

After Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) relayed a constituent’s question about the manufacturing of ubiquitous blue mail boxes on America’s street corners, DeJoy cracked that Johnson's constituent wouldn't want to steal from one of those blue mailboxes … would they?

“Pardon?” Johnson said....

Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), who’s running for the U.S. Senate, had a check for almost $40,000 stolen from his campaign organization and cashed — the latest in numerous thefts from political campaigns.

A Raw Story review of Federal Election Commission records shows that the Banks for Senate committee attempted to pay a $39,328.60 bill to Steve Brown Direct Marketing, a campaign contractor. But the paper check the campaign marketing firm via the U.S. Postal Service in July was stolen in transit, the records indicate.

ALSO READ: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez takes 'victory lap' after making GOP see red over tiny green pins...

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....