WASHINGTON
(AP) — The U.S. Postal Service is warning states coast to coast that it
cannot guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election
will arrive in time to be counted, even if mailed by state deadlines,
raising the possibility that millions of voters could be
disenfranchised.
Voters and lawmakers in several states are also complaining that some curbside mail collection boxes are being removed.
Even
as President Donald Trump rails against widescale voting by mail, the
post office is bracing for an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots as
a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
The
warning letters sent to states raise the possibility that many
Americans eligible for mail-in ballots this fall will not have them
counted. But that is not the intent, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said
in his own letter to Democratic congressional leaders.
The
post office is merely “asking elected officials and voters to
realistically consider how the mail works, and be mindful of our
delivery standards, in order to provide voters ample time to cast
ballots through the mail,” wrote DeJoy, a prominent Trump political
donor who was recently appointed.
The
back-and-forth comes amid a vigorous campaign by Trump to sow doubts
about mail-in voting as he faces a difficult fight for reelection
against Democrat Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, members of Congress from both parties have voiced concerns
that curbside mail boxes, which is how many will cast their ballots,
have abruptly been removed in some states.
At
the same time that the need for timely delivery of the mail is peaking,
service has been curtailed amid cost-cutting and efficiency measures
ordered by the DeJoy, the new postmaster general, who is a former
supply-chain CEO . He has implemented measures to eliminate overtime pay
and hold mail over if distribution centers are running late.
The
Post Office released letters it sent to all 50 states and the District
Columbia on its website. While some states with permissive vote-by- mail
laws were given a less stringent warning, the majority with more
restrictive requirements that limit when a ballot must be cast were
given a more dire warning.
The
laws, the letter said, create a “risk that ballots requested near the
deadline under state law will not be returned by mail in time to be
counted.”
Many state officials criticized the move.
“This
is a deeply troubling development in what is becoming a clear pattern
of attempted voter suppression by the Trump administration,” Democratic
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said in a statement. “I am committed to
making sure all Virginians have access to the ballot box, and will
continue to work with state and federal lawmakers to ensure safe, secure
and accessible elections this fall.”
Kim
Wyman, the Republican secretary of state in Washington state, where all
voting is by mail, said sending fall ballot material to millions of
voters there is a “routine operation of the U.S. Postal Service.”
“Politicizing
these administrative processes is dangerous and undermines public
confidence in our elections,” she said in a statement. “This volume of
work is by no means unusual, and is an operation I am confident the U.S.
Postal Service is sufficiently prepared to fulfill.”
Meanwhile,
the removal of Postal Service collection mail boxes triggered concerns
and anger in Oregon and Montana. Boxes were also removed in Indiana.
In
Montana, postal officials said the removals were part of a program to
eliminate underused drop boxes. But after the outcry, which included
upset members of Congress, the officials said they were suspending the
program in Montana. It was unclear if the program was also suspended in
other states.
At
least 25 mail boxes were removed in mid-July in Montana with another 30
scheduled to be taken away soon, said Julie Quilliam, president of the
Montana Letter Carriers Association. She rejected the claim that the
boxes were removed because of low usage.
“Some
of the boxes scheduled to be removed from downtown Billings are nearly
overflowing daily,” Quilliam wrote in a Facebook message.
All
three members of Montana’s congressional delegation — two of whom are
Republican — raised concerns about the removal of mail boxes in letters
sent to Postmaster DeJoy.
“These
actions set my hair on fire and they have real life implications for
folks in rural America and their ability to access critical postal
services like paying their bills and voting in upcoming elections,” said
Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat.
Republican
Sen. Steve Daines and Rep. Greg Gianforte, also a Republican, raised
similar concerns in letters to DeJoy about the effect the removal of the
mail boxes might have on delivery times. All three asked for
information on how the agency decided which boxes to remove and whether
any more removals were planned.
“During
the current public health crisis it is more important than ever the
USPS continue to provide prompt, dependable delivery service,” said
Gianforte.
Postal
Service spokesperson Ernie Swanson said the Oregon removals were due to
declining mail volume and that duplicate mail boxes were taken from
places that had more than one. The Postal Service said four mail boxes
were removed in Portland this week.
“First-class
mail volume has declined significantly in the U.S., especially since
the pandemic,” Swanson said. “That translates to less mail in collection
boxes.”
Separately, the National Association of Letter Carriers, which represents 300,000 current and retired workers, endorsed Biden.
The
union said Trump has been hostile to the post office and has undermined
it and its workers while Biden “is – was – and will continue to be – a
fierce ally and defender of the United States Postal Service,” said
union president Fredric Rolando.
___
Hanson reported from Helena, Montana. Associated Press writers across the U.S. contributed to this report.
The mainstream media's favorable coverage of presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris is further proof that "if you’re conservative, you’re going to get beat up," former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told Fox News "Watters' World" in an exclusive interview airing Saturday at 8 p.m. ET. "I
don't know if it's so much a gender thing ..." Palin, the 2008 GOP vice
presidential candidate, told host Jesse Watters. "It’s like what Trump
faces all the time. It’s three against one: you have the Democrat Party,
you have the media and you have the RINOs in your own party that are
always, always trying to clobber you." Presumptive
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden announced the choice
of Harris to be his running mate Tuesday. Much of the ensuing media
coverage has highlighted the trailblazing nature of Biden's selection. Harris
is the first Black woman to appear on a major party ticket and only the
third woman --after Palin in 2008 and Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in
1984 -- to run for vice president. Some critics have pointed out major
differences in the media's treatment of Harris and Palin. "When
Palin ran, [liberal talk show host] Ed Schultz talked about a
'bimbo alert,' Harry Reid's [press secretary] called her 'shrill,' Donny
Deutsch on CNBC talked about her 'sex appeal' and Joe Biden called her
'good-looking,'" Fox News contributor and former White House press
secretary Ari Fleischer recalled on "The Daily Briefing" Thursday. "I'm
no different than any other conservative, I think, in offering myself
up to serve the people," Palin told Watters. "We expect it. I expect it.
And you just deal with it and it makes you work harder." Palin
also noted the irony of Biden choosing Harris to be his running mate
after, in Palin's words, Harris "kicked the crud out of Joe Biden in the
primaries. And then ... then they hook up as buddies. "That
always just kind of cracks me up," she added. "It’s like the
illustration of politics that [makes] people, you know, just shake their
heads, roll their eyes and say, 'God, come on, you guys. Where’s the
sincerity?'" Elsewhere in the interview, Palin advised Trump's
reelection campaign not to dive into "personal, petty stuff" and instead
focus on going after Biden and Harris on the issues. "They
are so extremely liberal. I can’t stress that enough," she
said. "People just need to do their own homework and find out what their
record is and what their view of the future is under a pretty much, I
guess you could say, the socialist-Marxist view that they desire. Let
their record speak for itself."
Start spreading the news: They're leaving "in droves." New York City was in far better shape when he was campaigning for the White House in 2016 than it is today, President Trump lamented in a Twitter message Friday. The president's tweet came amid media reports that residents have been fleeing the Big Apple. “It was showing signs of future problems, but was so good when I left 4 years ago!” the president wrote. Wealthy New Yorkers began leaving for their second homes in the suburbs and rural areas as the coronavirus overwhelmed the city in early spring -- but now many have started moving away for good, the New York Post reported this week. Moon
Salahie, owner of Elite Moving & Storing in New York City, told the
Post that 90% of his clients are moving to the suburbs. “People
are fleeing the city in droves,” he said. Many of his clients are
families with young children concerned about the coronavirus possibly
spreading in schools when classes resume. Oz Moving told Fox Business it has seen a “drastic” increase in quote requests, around 30% year over year. Ross Sapir, president of Roadway Moving, said for the last three months his company "couldn’t keep up with the demand.” Many New Yorkers are moving to Florida, California, Texas and North Carolina, Fox Business reported. A New York Post editorial that Trump retweeted in his post called the virus the “last straw" for those leaving. "New
Yorkers are fed up with the shootings and lootings, homelessness on the
streets, sub-par online schools, sky-high taxes and the sheer
obliviousness of pols like Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo,"
the editorial said.
New York City's Democratic mayor, Bill de Blasio, left, was a
target of a blistering editorial about the Big Apple that President
Trump retweeted Friday.
Cuomo, a Democrat, acknowledged the problem during a news conference earlier this month. “We’re trying to get people to come back. They’re not coming back right now,” he said. Trump told the Post this week that his campaign team believes they can win New York, a normally deep-blue state. “Over the last six months what’s happened is insane,” the president told the Post. “So we’re going to try very hard to win New York and that will be the first time — is that since Ronald Reagan, I guess?” “I
will bring down taxes and I’ll make sure that New York City is a safe
place,” he added. “I mean, this is one of our cherished — this is a
cherished diamond of this country. And we can’t let this happen to New
York.”
Despite the best-friend bond Joe Biden touts with former President Obama, tensions have lingered between the two statesmen over their vastly different governing styles, according to a Politico report. To
start, a number of anonymously sourced quotes from Obama leaked out
throughout the 2020 Biden campaign where the former president allegedly
expressed doubts about his former running mates’ fitness for office. “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f--k things up,” one Democrat who spoke to the former president recalled him saying. When
lamenting his own diminishing relationship with the current Democratic
electorate, particularly in Iowa, Obama reportedly told one 2020
candidate: “And you know who really doesn’t have it? Joe Biden.” Some
Biden aides pointed out that, when Obama’s endorsement of Biden in 2020
finally did arrive, it didn’t have nearly the energy of his endorsement
of Hillary Clinton in 2016. “I don’t think there’s ever been
someone so qualified to hold this office,” Obama said of Clinton in 2016
in an endorsement video. “I believe Joe has all of the qualities we
need in a president right now … and I know he will surround himself with
good people,” Obama said in Biden’s endorsement video. And
while some senior Democrats credited Biden’s ties to Obama for his
strong relationship with Black voters, Biden has emphasized that he
earned their votes all on his own. He told aides after his South
Carolina primary win Obama hadn’t “lifted a finger” to help him. Going
back to 2016 when Obama glossed over Biden for Clinton when he
expressed interest in a presidential run, Obama aides tried to frame the
president’s snub as an act of compassion: Biden-- grieving the loss of
his son Beau in 2015 -- would not be mentally equipped to handle a
campaign. “But numerous administration veterans, including
loyalists to both Obama and Biden, remember it differently: Obama had
begun embracing Clinton as a possible successor years before Biden lost
his son, while the vice president was laying the groundwork for his own
campaign,” the Politico report read. Obama “had been subtly weighing in against,” Biden himself recalled in Promise Me, Dad, his 2017 book. “I also believe he had concluded that Hillary Clinton was almost certain to be the nominee, which was good by him,” Biden wrote. But
many credit their differences in leadership style for any perceived
tension. Biden loyalists and some Republicans found the formal,
scholarly statesman Obama had a hard time connecting with those in
Congress. “Negotiating with President Obama was all about the fact
that he felt that he knew the world better than you,” said Eric Cantor,
the Republican House majority leader from 2011 to 2014. “And he felt
that he thought about it so much, that he figured it all out, and no
matter what conclusion you had come to with the same set of facts, his
way was right.” Biden, he said, understood that “you’re gonna have to
agree to disagree about some things.” A former Republican leadership described Obama’s style as “mansplaining, basically.” Meanwhile, Obama’s camp reportedly rolled their eyes at the plainspoken, gaffe-prone Biden. “You could certainly see technocratic eye-rolling at times,” said Jen Psaki, the former White House communications director. White House aides reportedly mocked Biden’s frequent slipups and lack of discipline next to “almost clerical” Obama. They
would sneer at how Biden, “like an elderly uncle at Thanksgiving,”
would launch into anecdotes everyone in the room had heard before.
President Trump should
be eligible for the Nobel Peace Prize after the "historic" agreement
between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, National Security Adviser
Robert O’Brien told “Hannity” Thursday. “He
brought forth the ... vision for Middle East peace to get an
Israeli-Palestinian peace plan back in play and he’s brought peace to
Afghanistan, at least between the U.S. and the Taliban,” O'Brien told
host Sean Hannity. “We haven't lost a soldier in Afghanistan since
February 29 in combat and we're going to be down to 5,000 troops in
Afghanistan. And now he's brought peace to Israel and the UAE. "I
mean, it's a pretty remarkable record of achievement. I don't know who
else would be in the running for a Nobel Prize if it's not President
Trump.” O’Brien described the Middle East deal as a “huge
accomplishment” for the president, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammad bin
Zyad and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “What courage
it took for those men to come together and what skill it took for the
president to bring them together to bring peace to the Middle East,” he
said. “The first time in 25 years that Israel and an Arab country have
signed a peace accord.” O'Brien echnoed White House senior adviser
Jared Kushner in saying that the Israel-UAE agreement, known as the
Abraham Accord, may be the first of many fruitful negotiations in the
near future. “I
think we're just getting rolling here,” he said. “The president's
already been in touch with other leaders in the region. His diplomats
and our team have been out talking to folks ... I think we're going to
see peace breaking out in a number of countries and even in some
different regions. I think we're going to see something interesting
happen in Serbia, Kosovo soon.” “The president’s known as a great dealmaker,” O'Brien added. “History is going to remember him as a great peacemaker.”
Joe Biden would rather have federal officers enforce his proposed nationwide mask mandate than have them work to quell the violence ravaging several U.S. cities, Ben Shapiro observed Thursday.
Shapiro,
who hosts "The Ben Shapiro Show" podcast, accused Democrats of the
supposed double standard on Twitter, responding to a news alert that
read "Joe Biden & Kamala Harris call for nationwide face mask
mandate." "Are
the same people complaining when federal law enforcement is sent to
stop destruction of federal property now proposing we send the feds to
yell at you about masks?" Shapiro wrote. During a conversation
with reporters after a coronavirus briefing on Thursday, Biden, who was
joined by his newly minted running mate Kamala Harris declared that “Every American should be wearing a mask when they’re outside for the next three months at a minimum." "Let’s
institute a mask mandate nationwide starting immediately and we will
save lives. The estimates are we will save over 40,000 lives in the next
three months if that is done," Biden emphasized. Shapiro,
an outspoken conservative commentator and Harvard Law School graduate,
questioned the "constitutional authority" for such a move. "Where
would they get the constitutional authority for this, and which federal
force would they activate to enforce it, exactly?" he wrote. Last month, President Trump said that while he is “a believer in masks” he’s leaving it up to state governors to decide whether or not to implement an order requiring people to wear them in public. During
the Thursday event, Biden took two questions from reporters, but
neither the former vice president nor Harris answered questions after
making their comments regarding the mask mandate. The mask mandate
was showcased in a TV commercial that the Biden campaign quickly turned
around on Thursday. In the 60-second spot, Biden also calls for
increased coronavirus testing, personal protective equipment for all
health care workers on the front lines of the battle against the
pandemic and more support for schools and child care programs. Fox News' Paul Steinhauser and Madeleine Rivera contributed to this report,
In a long statement and series of Twitter messages Thursday night, a Seattle
councilwoman tore into the city’s soon-to-depart police Chief Carmen
Best, claiming it was “no accident” that “right-wing” figures such as President Trump and Attorney General William Barr were sorry that Best planned to step down. “They
recognize the service [Best] has provided the capitalist class in
pushing back against the Black Lives Matter movement at the height of
its power,” socialist Councilwoman Kshama Sawant wrote, according to Seattle’s KIRO-TV. Best,
who has been Seattle’s police chief since August 2018, revealed in an
email Monday that she planned to retire, effective Sept. 2. Her
announcement came after the Seattle City Council voted to slash the
police department budget, including Best’s own salary. “I
hate to see her go,” Sawant quoted Trump as saying about Best. The
president made the remark at a news briefing Tuesday, according to a White House transcript. “In
the face of mob violence, she drew the line in the sand,” Sawant quoted
Barr as saying about the departing chief. Barr also made the comment
Tuesday, according to the Justice Department website. The
council’s Monday action came as backers of the “Defund the police”
movement across the U.S. seek to reduce or even eliminate funding for
the nation’s police departments, pointing to what they say is a history
of police mistreatment of African-Americans and other minority groups. In
her statement Thursday, Sawant claimed the council’s cut of $3 million
from the city’s police budget – expected to result in the loss of 100
officers through layoffs and attrition – represented a 2% reduction but
was a far cry from the 50% slash that some Democrats on the council had
promised protesters weeks earlier. But that 2% cut “was too much for Best,” Sawant wrote. “Best
also cried foul at the City Council curbing bloated police executive
pay to allow the funds to instead be used for Black and Brown community
needs, saying the 7 percent cut to her over quarter-of-a-million-dollar
($294,000) salary, ‘felt vindictive and punitive,’” Sawant wrote. Before
the proposed cut, Best’s salary was 45% above the national average for
police chiefs while nine of the city’s top police executives were paid
higher salaries than all 50 U.S. governors, Sawant claimed, according to KIRO. ‘Earthquake in American politics’ The
councilwoman claimed that Best and other police chiefs around the U.S.
have stepped down in recent weeks because the Black Lives Matter
movement “has been nothing short of an earthquake in American politics,
exposing the endemic racism and police violence of U.S. capitalism and
putting mayors, police chiefs and political establishments across the
country on the defensive.” Sawant, 46, is a native of India and
former software engineer who has served on Seattle’s city council since
2014, representing the Socialist Alternative party. In early July, Sawant called for the overthrow of capitalism, including the seizure of Fortune 500 companies.
Kshama Sawant speaks in Seattle, Nov. 4, 2013. (Associated Press)
On Tuesday, Best described the council’s budget cut
as a betrayal of the city’s police department, which had been working to
emerge from federal oversight after the U.S. Justice Department in 2012
detected a pattern of unconstitutional use of force. “The council gave us $1.6 million to make sure we hire the best and the brightest and the most diverse and brought them on," Best said Tuesday.
"And less than a year later, we’re going to just turn them all away. It
feels very duplicitous. I have my convictions. I cannot do that.” Seattle
has been among the top cities for frequent protests and rioting since
the May 25 death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis. In late July, Best lashed out against rioters after an explosive device left an eight-inch hole in a wall of a city police precinct building. “What we saw today was not peaceful,” Best said at the time,
according to the Seattle Times. “The rioters had no regard for the
public’s safety, for officers’ safety or for the businesses and property
that they destroyed.”
There will be "a development" Friday in Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham's investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation, Attorney General William Barr told Fox News' Sean Hannity in an exclusive interview Thursday. Barr
said that the development would not be "earth-shattering," but would be
"an indication that things are moving along at the proper pace as
dictated by the facts in this investigation." "There are two
different things going on, Sean," Barr said. "I said the American people
need to know what actually happened, we need to get the story of what
happened in 2016 and '17 out. That will be done. "The
second aspect of this is, if people crossed the line, if people
involved in that activity violated criminal law, they will be charged.
And John Durham is an independent man, highly experienced, and
his investigation is pursuing apace. There was some delay because of
COVID, but I'm satisfied with the progress and I've said there are going
to be developments, significant developments, before the election. "But
we're not doing this on the election schedule," Barr added. "We're
aware of the election. We're not going to do anything inappropriate
before the election. But we're not being dictated to by this schedule. "What's dictating the timing of this are developments in the case."
CNN’s Scott Jennings once again took liberals to the cleaners on the Abrego Garcia case, the ‘Maryland man...
