Tag: USPS

Commentary: The U.S. Postal Service’s Religious Liberty Fiasco

Minnesota Sun Staff

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has been hauled into court plenty of times, having experienced its fair share of administrative and election law cases. But now, America’s mail carrier faces fundamental questions over religious tolerance at the post office.

USA Today Supreme Court correspondent John Fritze reports: “Gerald Groff, a former mail carrier in Pennsylvania, sued the U.S. Postal Service after it required him to work Sunday shifts delivering packages. Groff, who resigned in 2019, is a Christian and believes Sundays should be dedicated to worship, court records show.” The Supreme Court has chosen to take up the case, and the holding could expand employees’ rights to obtain religious accommodations.

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Elise Stefanik Alleges USPS Workers Stole Her Campaign Mail, up to $20,000 in Donations

Just the News

New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik on Friday alleged that United States Postal Service workers stole up to $20,000 in campaign contributions and illegally opened her mail to do so.

“On four separate occasions between June 2022 and November 2022, packages sent by Elise for Congress containing campaign contributions were ripped open and the contents stolen while in the custody of USPS or its contractors,” her lawyers wrote to Postmaster General Louis Dejoy in a letter the Daily Wire obtained. “Three of these incidents occurred in a single week.”

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White House Unveils Nancy Reagan Stamp, ‘Important Part of One of the Most Pivotal Presidencies’

Admin

Acommemorative postage stamp of former first lady Nancy Reagan was unveiled Monday in a White House ceremony attended by surviving family, historians and first lady Jill Biden who remarked of the portrait-size image on display, “Isn’t this stamp just beautiful.”

When the stamp officially goes on sale next month, Reagan becomes the sixth first lady to have one created in her likeness, following Eleanor Roosevelt, Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison and Lady Bird Johnson.

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Postal Service Legislative ‘Fix’ Will Dump Workers on Medicare

Admin

A bill to “fix” the troubled United States Post Office (USPS) is on the verge of passage in the Senate but does it solve more problems than it creates? The Postal Service Reform Act of 2021, H.R. 3076 was scheduled for a vote earlier this month but was blocked by Senator Rick Scott (R-Florida) on a procedural technicality.  “We can’t afford to add stress on our already enormous national debt with poor financial planning, which I think this bill absolutely does,” Scott said of the bill.

Now it’s back and on track for a vote in the Senate.

The biggest financial liability facing the USPS is the legal requirement to fund 75 years of retirement health benefits in advance for its workers. Congress has found a way around that by dumping the future postal workers on to Medicare.

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Postal Police Officers Association Chief: Government Defunded Postal Officers While Mail Crimes Soared

Peter D'Abrosca

“The Postal Inspection Service data revealed that mail theft reports soared by 600% over three years, from about 25,000 in 2017 to roughly 177,000 through August of 2020,” Frank Albergo said. “But when asked to explain the apparent explosion in mail theft, the Inspection Service backtracked and said the figures might be inaccurate.”

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U.S. Postal Service Workers Are Having a Lot of Vehicle Accidents, but Not Reporting Them: Report

Minnesota Sun Staff
Shot of USPS vehicles

The U.S. Postal Service had more than 144,000 vehicle crashes and more than 300,000 industrial accidents over the last five years, but most were not properly reported in the required tracking systems, according to a new investigative report by the service’s internal watchdog.

The report last week by the inspector general laid bare the extent of accidents — there were nearly $130 million in repairs since 2016 — as well as a laissez faire culture inside the Postal Service for ensuring required documentation for crashes and workplace accidents in the Employee Health and Safety and Solution for Enterprise Asset Management (SEAM) systems.

“Of the 147,192 nationwide accident repair-related work orders completed in SEAM, 108,126 (73 percent) did not have corresponding accident reports in EHS,” the report said. “Also, there were 23,301 (14 percent) accidents not reported in EHS within 24 hours of notification of the accident/injury.”

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USPS Monitoring Americans’ Social Media Accounts in ‘Covert’ Operation

Minnesota Sun Staff

The U.S. Postal Service’s law enforcement division is running a covert operation tracking and collecting Americans’ social media posts, Yahoo News reported.

The postal service’s Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) monitored social media accounts for “inflammatory” posts and protest plans, according to an internal document obtained by Yahoo News. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) investigated Parler and Telegram accounts that referenced protests that were supposed to occur on March 20 for the so-called International Day of Protests, the document showed.

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California Senators Call on Biden to Ban the Sale of Gasoline-Powered Cars in the U.S.

The Center Square

California’s two U.S. Senators, both Democrats, are calling on President Joe Biden to ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars in the United States.

Sens. Diane Feinstein and Alex Padilla sent a letter to Biden urging him to “follow California’s lead and set a date by which all new cars and passenger trucks sold be zero-emission vehicles.”

Last September, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who now faces a potential recall election, signed an executive order banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars in California by requiring all new cars and trucks being sold in the state to be zero-emission vehicles by 2035. Currently, electric vehicles account for less than 3 percent of all vehicle sales in the U.S.

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Pennsylvania Postal Worker Denies Recanting Claims of Mail-in Voter Fraud

Minnesota Sun Staff

A postal service worker in Pennsylvania is disputing House Democrats’ claims that he recanted allegations that his supervisors ordered employees to back-date mail-in voting ballots after Election Day.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said in a statement on Tuesday that Richard Hopkins, a postal worker in Erie, Pa., retracted his story during interviews with investigators from the U.S. Postal Service’s office of the inspector general.

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USPS Worker Caught Fleeing to Canada with Undelivered Ballots

Minnesota Sun Staff

A U.S. Postal Service carrier was caught allegedly trying to cross the Canadian border with undelivered mail, including several absentee ballots, according to The Buffalo News.

Brandon Wilson was stopped while crossing Peace Bridge from New York into Canada at around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, The Buffalo News reported.

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USPS Sweeps Discover Thousands of Absentee Ballots in Pennsylvania and North Carolina

Corinne Murdock

  After conducting internal sweeps, the United States Postal Service (USPS) discovered over 2,000 more mail-in ballots for Pennsylvania and North Carolina on Thursday. D.C. Federal District Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered twice-daily postal center sweeps after a reported 300,000 ballots were reported as undelivered. Workers accrued about 40,000 mail-in ballots altogether…

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Michigan USPS Whistleblower: Late Mail-in-Ballots Are Being Stamped as Received on November 3

Minnesota Sun Staff

A mail carrier who works for a post office in Traverse City, Michigan blew the whistle Wednesday on what he called a “sketchy” directive from his supervisor.

“We were issued a directive this morning to collect any ballots we find in mail boxes, collection boxes—just outgoing mail in general—separate them at the end of the day so they could hand stamp them with the previous day’s date,” the whistleblower told Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe.

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Election Experts Warn Voters to Stop Sending in Ballots, Vote in Person Amidst USPS Delays

Minnesota Sun Staff

Election and postal experts have warned Americans to stop voting by mail as delays continue to hamper the postal system one week before the election.

With just seven days of voting left before the Nov. 3 election, sending a ballot through the United States Postal Service (USPS) system would risk a late delivery, election experts told the Washington Post. The week of Oct. 16 was the 14th straight week where more than 10% of first-class mail delivery was delayed.

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Florida USPS Worker Accused of Stealing Mail-in Ballots

Minnesota Sun Staff

A Florida US Postal Service worker is accused of stealing a mail-in ballot, dozens of political flyers and 4 prepaid debit cards in a scheme that may have started nearly two years ago, federal authorities said Monday, the The New York Post reports.

Crystal Nicole Myrie, “embezzled letters, postal cards, and mail which came into her possession intended to be carried or delivered by her,” according to a criminal complaint.

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Absentee Ballots Found in Wisconsin Ditch

Minnesota Sun Staff

Three trays of mail, including absentee ballots were found in a Wisconsin ditch Tuesday, according to Police. Police are now investigating how the mail ended up there.

The Outagamie County Sheriff’s Office said the mail was found around 8 a.m. Tuesday morning near the intersection of highways 96 and CB, and was immediately returned to the U.S. Postal Service, Fox News reported.

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Commentary: USPS Leadership Must Stamp Out Multi-Billion Dollar Losses

Minnesota Sun Staff

America’s mail carrier was once a shining example of governmental innovation, being at the cutting edge of technological achievements such as using planes and trucks to haul mail cross-country. But the United States Postal Service (USPS) has fallen far and fast over the past couple of decades, accumulating more than $70 billion in debt since 2007.

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