Louis DeJoy, the embattled postmaster general, defended his first two months overseeing the Postal Service to a Senate committee Friday morning and said he was “extremely highly confident” that even mail-in ballots sent close to Election Day would be delivered on time.
“We will scour every plant each night leading up to Election Day,” Mr. DeJoy said in response to a question from Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, as he testified for over two hours before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Mr. DeJoy, a major donor to President Trump, said he was not working on behalf of the White House and called allegations that he was intentionally trying to slow mail-in balloting ahead of the 2020 election “outrageous.”
“There has been no changes to any policies with regard to election mail,” Mr. DeJoy told the lawmakers, adding, “The Postal Service is fully capable and committed to delivering the nation’s election mail fully and on time.”
Mr. DeJoy is at the center of a firestorm as recent cost-cutting measures at the Postal Service — including reducing overtime and removal of mail-sorting machines — have led to delivery delays and fueled concerns that the post office might not be able to handle a crush of mail-in ballots for the 2020 election in the midst of a pandemic.
Mr. Trump has stoked those concerns by deriding the Postal Service as a “joke” and repeatedly questioning the legitimacy of mail-in voting. “The honorable thing to do is drop the Mail-In Scam before it is too late!” he wrote on Twitter last week.
Mr. DeJoy had announced on Tuesday that he would suspend many of the changes underway until after the election, including curtailing post office hours and removing postal boxes. But that has done little to mollify Democrats and voting-rights advocates who want him to reverse changes that have already taken effect. Even as Mr. DeJoy tesitified on Friday, six state attorneys general sued him and the Postal Service in Federal District Court, arguing that changes at the service were an attempt to disenfranchise voters.
Mr. DeJoy pushed back against what he called a “false narrative” that he was trying to meddle in the 2020 election by slowing delivery of ballots. “The insinuation is quite frankly outrageous,” he said. He said he had “never spoken to the president about the Postal Service, other than to congratulate me when I accepted the position” in May.
But Mr. DeJoy said that he did have “dramatic” changes in store for the service, which he said had suffered from years of mismanagement and inefficiencies.
Asked by Senator Tom Carper, Democrat of Delaware, about a Washington Post report that he was considering drastic price increases for packages; additional post office and processing plant closures; and higher prices for service to Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, Mr. DeJoy confirmed the broad outlines.
“We are considering dramatic changes to improve the service to the American people, yes,” Mr. DeJoy said, later adding that he would “like to be liberated on pricing”because “it’s a very, very competitive market out there now.”
And he forcefully defended changes he initiated to try to shave overtime and transportation costs. He said agency statistics when he arrived showed that 12 percent of the trips mail carriers made each day were running late and that thousands of extra trips were being made to account for missed mail — performance that he argued would be unacceptable at private delivery services like FedEx.
Implementing the changes had been rockier than expected, he conceded, but Mr. DeJoy downplayed the costs.
“We had some delays in the mail and our recovery process in this should have been a few days but it’s amounted to be a few weeks,” he said. “But the change I made was run to our schedule.”
Still, Mr. DeJoy tried to distance himself from some of the changes, saying that many of them were underway before he took the job in June.
“This is a normal process that’s been around 50 years,” he said.
Senator Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the committee, helped Mr. DeJoy defend his actions, saying, “This isn’t some devious plot.”
Mr. DeJoy’s comments did not mollify some Democrats, including Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, who said Mr. DeJoy owed Americans “an apology.”
“Your decisions have cost Americans their health, their time, their livelihoods, and their peace of mind. I believe you owe them an apology for the harm you have caused,” he said.
Mr. DeJoy, who repeatedly emphasized that he has been on the job for less than 70 days, threw some at Congress, as well as the body responsible for overseeing the agency, for failing to approve reforms he said were necessary for the Postal Service to become solvent.
“Had Congress and the commission fulfilled their obligations to the American people concerning the Postal Service, I am certain that much of our cumulative losses that we have experienced since 2007 could have been avoided, and that the Postal Service’s operational and financial performance would not be in such jeopardy,” Mr. DeJoy said.
For nearly 25 minutes on Thursday night, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was at the center of the political world.
A nominee for the first time since his initial campaign for the presidency in 1988, Mr. Biden laid out a case for the importance of a post-Trump America.
He never mentioned President Trump’s name. But the former vice president quickly made an appeal to voters who aren’t predisposed to support him, saying that he would try to win them over as president.
He condemned bigotry. He yoked the Trump administration’s failures in its coronavirus response to the economic crisis and the financial fragility that millions of people are facing, months into the pandemic, with no clear end in sight.
He urged people to consider the weight of the election.
Elsewhere in a campaign that’s playing out virtually, Mr. Trump called in to the Fox News show hosted by his friend Sean Hannity. Mr. Trump mocked the Democratic convention. He told Mr. Hannity, who had asked whether the president had plans to verify that voters were valid on Election Day: “We’re going to have everything. We’re going to have sheriffs and we’re going to have law enforcement and we’re going to have hopefully U.S. attorneys, we’re going to have everybody. And attorney generals.”
The threat of sending law enforcement to polling sites might be the type of inflammatory statement that Mr. Trump sometimes makes before abandoning the idea and moving on. Or it could be something he’s seriously considering.
Either way, juxtaposed against Mr. Biden’s call to civic action, the casual remark about a voter intimidation tactic made for as stark a comparison about the two cases being made by the nominees as Americans have seen.
Mr. Biden’s speech accepting his party’s presidential nomination capped one of the most extraordinary Democratic National Conventions in history.
The final night hammered home the campaign’s message of the reunification, and its depiction of Mr. Biden as a big-tent candidate for a big-tent moment.
Here are four moments that defined the last night of the convention.
Biden called for national healing.
All week long, Democratic speakers struck a tone of urgency, not contenting themselves with the campaign cliché that “this is the most important election in our lifetimes.” Instead, they warned starkly about the very future of American democracy.
In his speech, Mr. Biden returned to those themes.
“This is a life-changing election,” Mr. Biden added. “This will determine what America is going to look for a long time.”
Former rivals warmly embraced Biden’s candidacy.
In a final convention show of unity, Senator Cory Booker played host to a “Hollywood Squares”-type reunion of seven former presidential candidates, who offered their favorite memories of Mr. Biden, with some occasional comic relief from Senator Bernie Sanders.
“You can think of this sort of like ‘Survivor’ on all of the people who have also ran,” Mr. Booker said. (Before moderating the tributes and recollections for Mr. Biden, Mr. Booker had a question for Mr. Sanders: “Why does my girlfriend like you more than me?”)
Julia Louis-Dreyfus added a comedic touch.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the actor and Emmy-winning star of “Veep” who was Thursday night’s M.C., peppered her transitions with breezy but cutting comedy.
Ms. Louis-Dreyfus set the tone early when bantering with Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate. The two intentionally mispronounced Vice President Mike Pence’s name — a jab at the conservative pundits and politicians who regularly mangle Senator Kamala Harris’s given name.
A tribute to John Lewis, and a call to action.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta paid tribute to Representative John Lewis of Georgia, saying that the civil rights leader’s life story and passion for making “good trouble” represented the ideal the Democratic Party has been reaching for over the past week.
“He walked gently amongst us, not as a distant icon but as a God-fearing man who did what he could to fulfill the as-yet-unfulfilled promise of America,” Ms. Bottoms said. She made particular note of Mr. Lewis’s signature issue, voting rights.
Six states and the District of Columbia filed a joint lawsuit against the Postal Service and the postmaster general on Friday, alleging that recent operational and policy changes had been illegal and were “designed to undermine” the agency’s ability to operate effectively as millions of Americans plan to vote by mail during the pandemic.
The lawsuit was announced Friday morning as the postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, a major donor to President Trump, was in the middle of testifying to a Senate committee about widespread concerns over the operation and integrity of the Postal Service.
Facing backlash over concerns that the cost-cutting measures were slowing the mail and could imperil the November election, Mr. DeJoy said on Tuesday that the Postal Service would suspend its operational changes until after the election.
But in announcing Friday’s lawsuit, Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania attorney general, asserted that Mr. DeJoy had not addressed some of the lawsuit’s core concerns and called for “detailed information” on how the agency would reverse what he said were “illegal changes.”
“Pres Trump and Postmaster DeJoy might say they’re backing down but, in CA, we’re not going to take their word for it,” Xavier Becerra, the attorney general of California, one of the six states suing Mr. DeJoy, wrote on Twitter.
Friday’s lawsuit — filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania by Pennsylvania, California, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina and the District of Columbia — argues that the changes at the Postal Service impede state efforts “to conduct free and fair elections in the manner plaintiff states have chosen.”
The complaint further alleges that undelivered mail and packages have piled up, in some cases leaving dead animals and rotting food inside mail processing plants. Checks from the state pension office and benefits are delayed in Delaware. Medicine for those in rural North Carolina communities has been at least two weeks late. And in California, one 77-year-old with asthma complained of not receiving her inhaler for three weeks, when it usually would have been delivered in three to five days.
It was the latest in a series of lawsuits taking aim at the recent changes in mail delivery. Fourteen other states jointly filed a separate lawsuit against Mr. Trump, Mr. DeJoy and the Postal Service on Tuesday. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Urban League also filed suits this week.
Asked for comment about Friday’s lawsuit, a spokesman for the Postal Service referred to Mr. DeJoy’s written and oral testimony at Friday’s hearing, in which he said he was “fully committed to preserving and protecting the Postal Service’s proud tradition of serving the American public in a nonpartisan fashion” while also insisting “it remains critically important for the Postal Service to reform.”
Susan Beachy contributed research.
We spoke with Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, about her party’s national convention, which starts Monday. (This conversation has been edited and condensed.)
Tell me a little bit about what Americans should expect from the Republican side next week.
You’re going to see a lot more of real people and a policy-driven discussion about the difference that the Trump administration has made in people’s lives and the things that they’ve done during the past four years, and then a preview of what the president is going to do when he’s re-elected.
So, what’s the second-term agenda?
You’re going to see a tribute to America as we talk about the greatness of this country, a tribute to our history, our heroes, and it will be very aspirational.
Is there a central message Republicans want voters to take away from next week?
Democrats are featuring Hollywood celebrities who play real people, and the Republican convention will be about real people. We don’t need to hire actors to play real people. The Trump administration has always been about average everyday working Americans and their story. We don’t need screenwriters. We don’t need fiction. We’ll talk about real America and celebrate that.
There have been plenty of real people featured on the Democratic stage, though.
There’s not a lot of interaction. It’s all Zoom.
A notable number of Republicans spoke on the Democratic stage. What do you make of that?
Former Republicans.
What about John Kasich, the former Ohio governor who ran for the Republican nomination in 2016?
Kasich has classic Trump derangement syndrome. He’s not liked this president since the minute he was the nominee, even to the degree of not even coming onstage in his own state when it hosted the convention in 2016.
It’s sad to watch them be part of a convention and a platform that is, in fact, ushering in socialism and fundamentally transforming the United States of America, as we know it.
So you’re saying that if you are speaking at a Democratic convention, you’re not really Republican anymore?
That’s what I think.
In a Democratic convention that was relatively short on surprises, a big one that packed an emotional wallop came from a young man who is still years away from being old enough to vote.
“Hi, my name is Brayden Harrington, and I’m 13 years old,” he began somewhat haltingly, “and without Joe Biden I wouldn’t be talking to you today. About a few months ago, I met him in New Hampshire. He told me that we were members of the same club.”
“We ——” a nation held its breath for nearly six seconds as Brayden struggled to get the word out “—— stutter.”
Mr. Biden had a debilitating stutter as a child, and he has befriended young people he has met through the years who stutter as well.
Brayden’s two-minute speech was a remarkable display of vulnerability and courage, and it reminded viewers who may have winced at Mr. Biden’s uneven performances that there can be more important qualities in a public speaker than clear and controlled cadences.
He talked about how Mr. Biden had made him feel more confident and hopeful about what he could accomplish. Then he wrapped up his remarks in a way that eloquently captured Mr. Biden’s core message.
“We all want the world to feel better,” he said. “We need the world to feel better.”
Facebook spent years preparing to ward off any tampering on its site ahead of November’s presidential election. Now the social network is getting ready in case President Trump interferes once the vote is over.
Employees at the company are laying out contingency plans and walking through postelection scenarios that include attempts by Mr. Trump or his campaign to use the platform to delegitimize the results, people with knowledge of Facebook’s plans said.
Facebook is preparing steps to take should Mr. Trump wrongly claim on the site that he won another four-year term, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Facebook is also working through how it might act if Mr. Trump tries to invalidate the results by declaring that the Postal Service lost mail-in ballots or that other groups meddled with the vote, the people said.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, and some of his lieutenants have started holding daily meetings about minimizing how the platform can be used to dispute the election, the people said. They have discussed a “kill switch” to shut off political advertising after Election Day since the ads, which Facebook does not police for truthfulness, could be used to spread misinformation, the people said.
As Democrats built toward their nomination of Joseph R. Biden Jr. and President Trump called into Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, federal election regulators released the latest fund-raising figures in the race on Thursday night.
America First Action, a leading super PAC supporting President Trump’s re-election, took in $13.4 million last month, those filings showed. Roughly three-quarters of that came through the group’s dark-money sister nonprofit, making the origins of the cash untraceable.
The biggest gift with a name attached to it — a $2 million one — came to the group from Patricia J. Duggan of Florida, a prominent Scientologist who has poured hundreds of millions into the church.
A super PAC supporting Mr. Biden, Priorities USA Action, reported taking in $6.9 million in July, with roughly 40 percent of that coming from its comparable dark-money arm that does not disclose donors.
Big donors supporting Mr. Biden through that group last month included Seth MacFarlane, the creator of “Family Guy,” who contributed $700,000, and the hedge-fund billionaire James Simons, who gave $2 million, according to the filings.
Thursday was a filing deadline with the Federal Election Commission, America’s election watchdog. But as robust disclosures were processed and made public by the agency in recent days, there was one newly registered candidate for president for whom no data had posted as of early Friday: Kanye West, whom Republican activists have sought to help put on the ballot as a third-party candidate in several states.
Since he left the White House in 2017, Stephen K. Bannon has promoted himself as a political provocateur still fighting for an underclass left behind by open borders and free trade, even as he forged a financial relationship with a fugitive Chinese billionaire and traveled the world to dole out advice on running populist movements.
Mr. Bannon also stayed connected to President Trump, giving the impression he was quietly counseling the president from afar in recent months as his re-election campaign stumbled.
But Mr. Bannon’s self-made image as a champion of people the president has called “the forgotten men and women” was shattered on Thursday when he was arrested on charges of defrauding donors to a campaign to privately fund a wall on the United States’ southern border with Mexico, one of Mr. Trump’s signature political promises.
Pledging publicly not to take any of the proceeds for themselves, Mr. Bannon and the other suspects instead siphoned hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for travel, hotels, personal credit card debt and other expenses, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said.
Mr. Bannon was arrested on the yacht of the Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui off the coast of Connecticut early Thursday, becoming the latest person linked to Mr. Trump to be indicted during his presidency. Mr. Bannon pleaded not guilty in a hearing on Thursday afternoon in Manhattan.
The president sought to distance himself from the ill-fated wall fund-raising campaign that led to Mr. Bannon’s indictment. “I didn’t like that project,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Thursday in the Oval Office. “I thought that was a project that was being done for showboating reasons.”
In a warm, encyclopedic tribute to her family Wednesday night, as she formally accepted the vice-presidential nomination, Senator Kamala Harris skimmed past any discussion of her father, Donald J. Harris, a Jamaican-born professor of economics at Stanford University.
The reason is common to many of Ms. Harris’s generation: She is a child of divorce, raised by a single mother who became her most profound influence.
As Ms. Harris has stepped into the national spotlight, Dr. Harris, now 81 and long retired from teaching, has remained mostly silent. His only recent comments about her, published on a Jamaican website run by an acquaintance, express a combination of pride in his daughter and bitterness over their estrangement.
He scolded her in a letter, which has since been removed from the site, for joking in an interview that, growing up in a Jamaican family, it was natural that she had smoked marijuana. “Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty,” he wrote.
Dr. Harris did not respond to requests for comment.
Despite his low profile in the election cycle, Dr. Harris is not an obscure figure. He was the first Black scholar to receive tenure in Stanford’s economics department, and a prominent critic of mainstream economic theory from the left.
The Stanford Daily, reporting in 1976, described him as a “Marxist scholar,” and said there was some opposition to granting him tenure because he was “too charismatic, a pied piper leading students astray from neo-Classical economics.”
One of his former students at Stanford, Robert A. Blecker, now a professor of economics at American University, said Dr. Harris’s work questioned orthodox assumptions about growth — for instance that lower wages would increase employment rates, or that lower interest rates always result in increased investment.
“He was certainly very outspoken and prominent in the profession at onetime, but not in a public way,” Dr. Blecker said. “He was certainly not shy. When I saw Kamala grill Judge Kavanaugh at his hearing,” during his confirmation for the U.S. Supreme Court, “I saw echoes of her father grilling someone in a seminar.”
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