Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced on Tuesday that he would suspend changes implemented at the USPS until the election, Politico reports.
"To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded," DeJoy said in a statement.
DeJoy said that “mail processing equipment and blue collection boxes will remain where they are” and that “overtime has, and will continue to be, approved as needed.”
It’s unclear whether changes already implemented since he took over would be rolled back.
DeJoy also said that the USPS would expand its election mail task force, adding that “leaders of our postal unions and management associations have committed to joining the task force.”
Order didn’t come from Trump:
Sources told Politico that the order to suspend changes was “absolutely not” from President Donald Trump.
“They felt the heat. And that's what we were trying to do, make it too hot for them to handle,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the outlet.
The move came as DeJoy is scheduled to testify before the Senate on Friday and the House on Monday.
On Tuesday, a group of Democratic state attorneys general also announced that they would sue over the changes at the USPS.
Democrats skeptical:
"While it is a positive development that the Postmaster General says he will be temporarily rolling back some of these harmful changes as I have demanded — there are still too many unanswered questions," Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees the USPS, said in a statement. "The American people deserve to know whether he will be returning sorting machines he already removed from facilities across the country, the details of any changes he is leaving in place and any future changes he plans to enact."
“We want to roll them back,” Pelosi said of the changes. "This pause only halts a limited number of the Postmaster’s changes, does not reverse damage already done, and alone is not enough to ensure voters will not be disenfranchised by the President this fall.”
