Outside a Baltimore mail facility, Democrats and union leaders issue call to action

"The Postal Service is in great trouble," said Sherry McKnight, president of the Baltimore-based Local 181 chapter of the American Postal Workers Union. "I'm asking you to stand with us. March with us. Be there with us so that we will be assured that the Postal Service will still be there for years to come."

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said the event was part of a new strategy to channel public furor over U.S. Postal Service delivery delays that could threaten mail-in voting in the November election. Democrats hope to pressure the Trump administration, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and Senate Republicans into reversing operational changes that have slowed mail service by as much as a week.

"We're going to turn up the heat," Van Hollen said. "It's going to make it really hard to continue down this road."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., a close ally of Van Hollen during his 14 years in the House, has encouraged her Democratic colleagues to stage similar events at Postal Service locations around the country Tuesday.

Van Hollen will hold a news conference outside Postal Service headquarters in downtown Washington, joined by other members of Congress from the national capital area, including the District and northern Virginia.

Republicans have derided the Democrats' outrage as a partisan "manufactured crisis."

Van Hollen and Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., were joined Monday by Reps. Kweisi Mfume and John Sarbanes, Baltimore Mayor Bernard "Jack" Young, and Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson of Baltimore City, all Democrats. Each took a turn vilifying DeJoy as leading a sabotage campaign designed to undermine one of the country's most well-regarded public institutions.

"The foolishness must end," Mfume said.

Added Sarbanes, "When you attack the Postal Service, you are attacking American families, plain and simple."

In DeJoy's short but contentious tenure, his cost-cutting directives to forbid extra trips, limit overtime and remove 10% of the agency's mail-sorting machines have contributed to delays in mail delivery.

Union officials said rank-and-file letter carriers are pushing back against the directives but need the public's help to persuade the Postal Service leaders to end them.

Democratic lawmakers said their offices have been deluged by frustrated citizens waiting on mail, including veterans who were missing medications and seniors whose Social Security checks hadn't arrived.

The stakes for timely delivery of mail are heightened as voters in the vast majority of states prepare to cast ballots through the Postal Service this fall, in part to lessen the spread of the novel coronavirus. The agency warned 46 states and D.C. that last-minute ballots could arrive too late to be counted for the November election.

"This is an attempt to stop people's ability to vote by mail, and that's what we're fighting against," said Jermaine Jones, president of the Metropolitan Baltimore Council AFL-CIO Unions, which represents postal workers. "The cavalry is coming," he said, "and we're not going to stand by and let this happen."