AFTER REP. RICHARD NEAL SECURED $3 BILLION FOR BIOFUEL INDUSTRY, SON SECURED LOBBY JOB

After months of lobbying, the industry found a champion in Neal, the powerful chair of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Lee Fang
August 13 2020, 5:00 a.m.

https://theintercept.com/2020/08/13/richard-neal-biofuel-son/


LAST YEAR, the biofuel industry, scrambling for help from Washington, made a concerted push in Congress to secure a lifeline of taxpayer support.

The Trump administration had been providing waivers and less stringent requirements for refineries to produce biofuels under the Renewable Fuel Standard — a program that has existed since 2005 to encourage a shift towards synthetic fuel produced from organic matter. But a lapse in a key tax credit in 2018, combined with changes to the RFS, led to a series of ethanol plant shutdowns.
After months of lobbying, the industry found a champion beyond its traditional allies in the Iowa delegation in Rep. Richard Neal, the powerful chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees tax policy.


The Massachusetts Democrat, in a series of legislative maneuvers to maintain government spending levels, delivered a tax break to biofuel companies worth $3 billion per year. The tax credit has been hailed as a major success for the industry, which has faced an uncertain future as the Trump administration has tweaked EPA requirements on the refining industry to reduce incentives for ethanol production.

The provision provides refineries that blend biofuels, including soybean oil and corn-based fuels, with $1 per gallon in tax credits. It also provides a retroactive benefit to biofuel blenders to 2018, a move hailed by the industry.

The legislative gift followed a series of PAC donations from the largest ethanol and biofuel companies in America to Neal’s campaign, a tradition that enriches the campaign war chests of most legislators on the tax-writing committee. Industry lobbyists and PACs tied to the biofuel industry in total donated over $20,000 to the Neal campaign.

After the tax extension was passed as part of the omnibus bill signed last December, the biofuel industry forged even closer ties. Last month, Brendan Neal, the lawmaker’s son, was hired as a lobbyist for Trestle Energy, a California-based biofuel company specializing in low carbon production systems.

Brendan, a former aide to the Neal reelection campaign and a former official with TC Energy, the company formerly known as TransCanada, did not respond to a request for comment. Trestle Energy and Neal did not respond to a request for comment either.

A coalition of lobby groups active on the issue praised Neal for his focus on the issue.

“We thank the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee for his proposal to extend these tax policies through 2020,” wrote several industry organizations active on the push, including the Advanced Biofuels Association. “A three-year extension is a welcome proposal that all of us support.”

PARTY LEADERS INVESTIGATING ORIGIN OF ANTI-MORSE CAMPAIGN HELPED ORCHESTRATE IT, DOCUMENTS REVEAL

Massachusetts party leaders coached College Democrats ahead of the release of a letter outlining allegations against Alex Morse.

Eoin Higgins, Daniel Boguslaw, Ryan Grim



https://theintercept.com/2020/08/14/alex-morse-richie-neal-state-party/




AS THE PRIMARY in Massachusetts’ 1st Congressional District turned into a national story following allegations of misconduct against Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, the state Democratic Party declined to weigh in, citing its policy to remain neutral in contested primaries.

But behind the scenes, the state party had been coordinating with the College Democrats of Massachusetts to launch those very allegations, according to five sources within the state party and connected to the CDMA, a review of messages between party leadership and CDMA leadership, and call records obtained by The Intercept. The documents show that the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s executive director Veronica Martinez and chair Gus Bickford connected the students with attorneys: among them was the powerful state party figure and attorney Jim Roosevelt, who worked with the college group on a letter alleging Morse behaved inappropriately.





The Intercept reported on Wednesday that at least two members of the UMass Amherst chapter had been planning in some form or another to leverage Morse’s use of dating apps in the Pioneer Valley against him and in favor of his opponent in the primary, longtime incumbent and influential House Ways and Means Chair Rep. Richard Neal. On Thursday morning, in the wake of the revelation, Politico reported that Bickford was calling for an investigation “to examine the conduct of College Democrats who leveled the allegations against Morse.”


“They turned to the state party to help them, they thought they’d protect them, but instead the state party is trying to destroy them,” one member of the Democratic State Committee, or DSC, told The Intercept.

Martinez reached out to CDMA members repeatedly by phone and text from at least late July up to and including Thursday, records show. In text messages reviewed by The Intercept, Martinez takes an active role in directing the group on the strategy behind the letter before and after its release, including coaching on how to interact with the press.

On Thursday, the College Democrats posted a statement that apologized to Morse, adding, “We wrote the letter to Alex Morse’s campaign on the advice of legal counsel,” but did not specify who that counsel was.



The grandson of Franklin D. Roosevelt, attorney Jim Roosevelt is a major power broker within the state and national Democratic parties and contributed to Neal’s campaigns in 2008 and 2016, giving $1,000 and $500 respectively, according to records filed with the FEC. He has a history of tangling with the Bernie Sanders-aligned wing of the party. In 2016, he chaired the Democratic National Convention’s credentials committee, rejecting Sanders’s formal request to remove Barney Frank as the chair of the rules committee, after the Vermont senator deemed the former lawmaker too hostile to Sanders and his agenda. A year later, Roosevelt publicly rebuffed the suggestion by Sen. Elizabeth Warren that members of the DNC had tilted the presidential playing field toward Hillary Clinton’s campaign. A former CEO for health insurance giant Tufts Health Plan, Roosevelt will once again co-chair the credentials committee next week at the DNC.

Asked if anyone from the state party leadership ever reached out to him about concerns being expressed by College Democrats, Morse said: “Never.”

Neal was first elected as a representative in 1988, and as chair of Ways and Means, has influence over nearly every piece of legislation that passes through Congress. Morse, backed by Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement, has challenged him on his fealty to corporate donors. If Neal falls, the progressive Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, would be next in line for the committee gavel.

The would-be scandal broke into public view on Friday, August 7, when the Daily Collegian, UMass Amherst’s student newspaper, reported that the College Democrats had sent a letter to Morse barring him from future events, alleging that he had made students feel uncomfortable by abusing his position of power, making romantic advances, and engaging in sexual contact. Morse acknowledged in a statement that he had had consensual relations with adult students in the region in the past, defending his right to do so, while apologizing if any students felt uncomfortable. The mayor had previously been an adjunct professor at UMass Amherst, teaching a once-a-week course, and denied that he had ever slept with one of his students — behavior which is barred under the university’s policy. No allegation that he has done so has been put forward. (Today, UMass announced it had hired an independent attorney to investigate whether Morse violated university policies.)

The public condemnation was swift and fierce, but there was little evidence behind the allegations. No student has come forward to claim any form of harm. The College Democrats, which had claimed that Morse used their events to meet students, clarified this week that he had in fact only attended a single event throughout his campaign, which began in June 2019. That event was in October.

The allegations landed in part because there had long been rumors about Morse’s sexual life in Western Massachusetts political circles, the kind of vague insinuations that are often referred to as common knowledge, though without specifics. Earlier this year, a Capitol Hill Democrat who works closely with Neal’s staff on the Ways and Means Committee said they approached a senior Neal staffer to ask how serious the threat by Morse was to his boss. He wasn’t concerned, he replied, because the young mayor was known to have slept with college students and that information would emerge at the right time. That doesn’t mean, however, that Neal’s team played any role in surfacing those allegations, and he has denied having done so.

“I learned about the allegations against Mayor Morse the same way everyone else did, in the Daily Collegian last week,” Neal said in a statement Thursday. “I also want to be clear I will not tolerate my name being associated with any homophobic attacks or efforts to criticize someone for who they choose to love. That’s inconsistent with my character and my values.”

“Any implications that I or anyone from my campaign are involved are flat wrong and an attempt to distract from the issue at hand,” Neal added. “I have been and will remain entirely focused on the respective records of myself and Mayor Morse.”

It is undeniable, however, that the state Democratic Party was behind the emergence of the accusations.

The state party is supposed to be neutral in contested primaries. According to the organization’s bylaws, “no officer of the State Committee and no Chairperson of any subcommittee shall use their title or office to endorse and/or otherwise support any candidate prior to a contested Democratic Primary, and no staff member of the State Committee shall endorse or participate in any contested Democratic Primary campaign.” Martinez and Bickford’s decision to push Roosevelt on the group appears to be at odds with that rule.

A DSC member told The Intercept that in their view, the different roles Martinez, Bickford, and Roosevelt played in the development and release of the CDMA letter — as well as the ensuing attempts to cover up their involvement after the fact — make the state party’s hostility to Morse, a young gay man, hard to ignore.

“As a DSC member, it’s pretty angering that party resources and party staff were put into an effort to attack a gay candidate,” the member said. “I don’t know how we can have any trust with the LGTBQ community going forward.”

According to three sources with knowledge of the timeline, party leadership talked to the college group three weeks ago and then referred them to Roosevelt for assistance. The exact nature of that help, however, is a matter of some contention — details that could be illuminated by the forthcoming investigation. Bickford, according to Politico, said that the investigation would not begin until after the September 1 primary, so as not to influence the result.

“The Party was made aware of concerns of several members of organizations connected to the Party,” Martinez told The Intercept, claiming the party retained its neutrality in the contest. “We referred the individuals expressing these concerns to legal counsel and had no further involvement in the matter.” Bickford repeated this version of events to another source close to party leadership on Thursday afternoon, but did not respond to requests for comment.

According to multiple sources close to the state party and the College Democrats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, after Bickford and Martinez recommended him, Roosevelt took control of the process and led UMass College Democrats leadership in the letter’s composition. Reached by phone Thursday, Roosevelt told The Intercept he would not comment on work with clients.

Sources close to the college group told The Intercept that a number of members felt the best way forward was a private letter to Morse that would remain between the young mayor and the organization. Roosevelt dismissed that idea, telling the group that a public letter would be more effective. The leadership of the UMass Amherst College Democrats have denied privately that they leaked the letter, which was published on August 7, according to members of the chapter. Some of the leaders of the College Democrats were caught off guard when the article was published, according to the messages.

Some members of the group, however, had been trying to plant the story since at least April, when CDMA leadership began telling members of the high school affiliate about the group’s intent to sabotage the Morse campaign, according to three sources within the Massachusetts High School Democrats. Around the same time in April, Grace Panetta, a politics reporter at Business Insider, began to receive emails from a “creepyalexmorse@protonmail.com” email address. According to Panetta, the body of these emails contained the names and email addresses of three students involved with CDMA who could confirm the vague accusations against Morse, two of whom discussed a plan to sabotage the Morse campaign as far back as October 2019, as reported in The Intercept’s Wednesday article.

Panetta did not bite, sensing something off about the tip. A subsequent attempt to land the story in Politico in June also fell short. It wasn’t until the new strategy was developed — a private letter to Morse that solicited a response, both of which where published by the Daily Collegian — that the group was able to take long-running rumors about Morse and turn them into a potentially career-ending scandal.

COLLEGE DEMOCRAT CHATS REVEAL YEAR-OLD PLAN TO ENGINEER AND LEAK ALEX MORSE ACCUSATIONS

“This will sink his campaign,” predicted a College Democrat leader hoping to work for Rep. Richard Neal.

Ryan Grim, Daniel Boguslaw



https://theintercept.com/2020/08/12/alex-morse-college-democrats-chats/





THE LEADERSHIP OF the University of Massachusetts Amherst College Democrats began discussing an operation they believed could sink the campaign of Alex Morse for Congress as far back as last October, a plan they then helped engineer and which came to fruition on Friday, after the College Democrats sent a letter regarding Morse to the Daily Collegian, the school’s student newspaper.





The letter, sent three weeks before his primary challenge to Rep. Richard Neal, informed Morse that he was no longer welcome at College Democratic events, alleging he used such opportunities to socialize with students and later connect with them on social media in ways that made them feel uncomfortable. Message logs obtained by the Intercept — both from leaders of the College Democrats UMass Amherst chapter group as well as chats one of them had with Morse — shed new light on how this purported scandal was deployed. As a condition of obtaining the logs, The Intercept agreed to publish some of the chats and paraphrase others.

On Wednesday, following a statement by Morse, the statewide College Democrats chapter clarified that he had in fact only attended a single event during the course of his campaign. It was after that event in October 2019 that the leadership of the UMass Amherst chapter began to talk about leaking a story damaging to Morse, according to those online communications.
Timothy Ennis, the chief strategist for the UMass Amherst College Democrats, admitted in the chats that he was a “Neal Stan” and said he felt conflicted about involving the chapter of the College Democrats in a future attack on Morse. “But I need a job,” concluded Ennis. “Neal will give me an internship.” At the time, Ennis was president of the chapter, a post he held from April 2019 to April 2020, when he was term-limited out.


Leaders of the College Democrats group went beyond merely plans to leak. They also explicitly discussed how they could find Morse’s dating profiles and then lead him into saying something incriminating that would then damage his campaign.

That effort appears to have failed to generate the material they hoped for, but the group’s leaders did believe they held damning evidence they contemplated leaking: Instagram messages between Morse and Andrew Abramson, who in April became president of the organization. Ultimately, the College Democrats did not release any chats or any other specific claims against Morse, opting instead to level broader charges that he behaved inappropriately. Morse, who was an adjunct professor at UMass Amherst until the fall of 2019, has acknowledged having consensual relationships with students but has said that he has never had an inappropriate relationship with a student of his, and no such allegations have been made.

On October 5, Morse attended a College Democrats event at a local community college. Neal also appeared, and was introduced by Ennis, who was at the time enrolled in a journalism class Neal taught at UMass Amherst. Neal later told Ennis he was impressed by the event, Ennis claimed in the chats. Morse sat on a panel with Abramson. After the event, Morse reached out to Abramson on Instagram to say it was a pleasure meeting. (The two had previously matched on Tinder, Ennis said in the chats, but had never met up. To match on Tinder means both parties must swipe in the same direction in order to begin a conversation.)


Photo: Obtained by The Intercept


Photo: Obtained by The Intercept


“Thank you! Good to see you too,” Abramson said.

“How’s the rest of your weekend?” asked Morse.

“Pretty good I went home last night to surprise my mom for her birthday hbu?” Abramson said .

“Aw that’s nice. How was that? I had an event to go to last night to speak, then had a wine tasting at a friends house. Now I’m in North Adams to march in a parade,” Morse replied.

Abramson shared a screenshot of the exchange with friends. “Not overt but it’s very clear he’s not talking to me for no reason,” he said. “Like read that message. Also don’t mind me totally leading him on.” He added that he accepted the message request “because why not.”

“This will sink his campaign,” Ennis said, calling it part of a pattern of Morse dating students. That conversation with Abramson appears to be connected to the charge that underlies the College Democrats’ statement against Morse, when they said that Morse “sought out students that he met at our events privately on social media, in a manner widely understood by our generation to indicate intimacy.”

After Ennis concluded the chats with Abramson would sink Morse’s campaign, the conversation between Morse and Abramson continued for another several weeks.

During that same time period, Ennis was a student in Neal’s “The Politician and The Journalist” class at UMass Amherst, and had been open with other members of the College Democrats about hoping to land a job with Neal, The Intercept reported Tuesday. Ennis, in the chats, quipped that perhaps he should leak the information by including it in a paper for Neal’s class.

Also last fall, Ennis was driving through New Hampshire with Clare Sheedy, a fellow College Democrat, as both were campaigning for Pete Buttigieg. “He spoke very highly of Mr. Neal,” Sheedy told The Intercept. “What he said to me was he wanted Neal to be his ‘in’ to politics and work his way up from there.”

Sheedy asked what he thought of Morse, and Ennis told him he is known for dating students and had recently matched on a dating app, Tinder, with a fellow College Democrat, and chatted with him via Instagram.

In a statement to MassLive on Monday, Neal spokesperson Kate Norton denied any collaboration between the Neal campaign and the student group, adding that the Neal campaign “commends these courageous students.” The College Democrats also responded to allegations of cooperation with the Neal campaign on Sunday, writing on Twitter, “To suggest that our decision to send the letter to Mayor Morse was a quid pro quo with Rep. Neal, his campaign, or anyone else is untrue, disingenuous, and harmful.”

Asked about Ennis and Abramson, Norton reiterated her earlier statement, but added: “The young men you are asking about have no involvement with the Neal campaign.”

In the chats, Ennis also floated the possibility of leaking allegations against Morse to Politico, and, indeed, in June, the College Democrats did so, pitching the story to Alex Thompson, a political reporter at the outlet. Thompson reached out to the Morse campaign as part of his reporting, though ultimately did not run the story until months later, after the college paper ran it.


Photo: Obtained by The Intercept


After receiving the inquiry, Morse said he reached back out to Abramson — the only student Morse had communicated with after a College Democrats event during his campaign. Morse said he apologized if his outreach had made the chapter president uncomfortable, and Abramson blocked him.

Ennis said in the chats that he had learned from people who had graduated previously that Morse was on Tinder, sharing a screenshot of a profile from the year before. The profile is standard, dating-app fare, and does not include Morse’s title as mayor of the nearby town of Holyoke, a position he’s had since he was 22, nor does it mention his time as an adjunct at UMass, which ended last fall.


Photo: Obtained by The Intercept


Ennis said in the chats that Morse had never matched with him or messaged him, but discussed an effort to find him and match.

IN A STATEMENT that followed its initial letter, the College Democrats wrote, “The letter was written at the direct request of those affected by Mayor Morse’s behavior, and those individuals were involved in the writing process. The stories included in our letter are their stories. They have not spoken out individually about their personal experiences because they wish to remain anonymous.”

The implication that the letter was the collective work of the members of the chapter is false, however. It was written by leadership without input from the members, according to messages provided to The Intercept from the organization’s GroupMe chat. The day after the Daily Collegian published the letter, a member of leadership sent the following message: “Hello everyone. I’m sure some of you saw the article about Alex Morse and letter udems and other orgs sent to his campaign. I’m sure many of you are confused and even disappointed. If anybody needs support or wants to talk about it the udems eboard is here for you.”

A follow-up post included a link to the story. Five days later, specific allegations have yet to surface.

Abramson declined to comment, and neither Ennis nor the College Democrats responded to requests for comment. Daniel Marans of HuffPost contacted the College Democrats for further comment on Wednesday to ask whether or not their letter was motivated by Ennis’s or anyone else’s political ambitions, posting their response on Twitter.

The student group denied Ennis’s professional ambitions played a role in the crafting of the strategy. Marans also asked if Morse had indeed declined a request to fund the organization, as the mayor had told The Intercept on Tuesday. The organization offered HuffPost a selectively edited email regarding a donation from the Morse campaign, quoting the campaign as saying it would “get back to us shortly.” A copy of the full email was provided to The Intercept. It reads: “Hi Hayley — will get back to you shortly on sponsorship. We’ve been committing a great deal to COVID related organizations and want to make sure we honor those activities first. Sorry for delay.”

Ro Khanna Announces 'No' Vote on DNC Platform Over Exclusion of 'Moral Issue of Our Time'—Medicare for All

"I will be voting 'No' on the platform because when we say that healthcare is a human right," says the progressive congressman from California, "we must truly mean it—and fight for it."



Jake Johnson, staff writer



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/13/ro-khanna-announces-no-vote-dnc-platform-over-exclusion-moral-issue-our-time

Congressman Ro Khanna, co-chair of the California delegation to the Democratic National Convention, announced in an op-ed for Common Dreams Thursday that he is voting against the 2020 Democratic platform over its failure to endorse Medicare for All, joining what has become a significant delegate revolt against the party's refusal to commit to guaranteeing healthcare as a human right even amid a global pandemic.

"History teaches us that the Democratic Party has sometimes faced an issue so great that it alone should be the yardstick for measuring the wisdom of voting for or against the platform," writes Khanna, pointing to fights over civil rights and the Vietnam war in the party's 1948 and 1968 platforms, respectively.


"In my view, 2020 presents us with another such issue," adds Khanna, who served as national co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign. "I believe that moving away from a profit-based healthcare system is the moral issue of our time. And in the final analysis, because of that belief, I could not vote for a platform that lacks a clear statement supporting Medicare for All."

"I will be voting 'No' on the platform because when we say that healthcare is a human right, we must truly mean it—and fight for it," the California Democrat continues. "I believe if we remain stuck on such concepts as 'affordable' when talking about solutions to healthcare accessibility, we are badly constrained inside a limited debate."

Coming from the head of the nation's largest state delegation to the Democratic convention, Khanna's announcement has the potential to substantially boost the ranks of the more than 750 delegates who are publicly opposing the Democratic platform over its exclusion of Medicare for All.

Voting on the Democratic platform began earlier this month, and the 750+ delegates—including some delegates for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden—cast their votes against the aspirational document earlier this week.

"While we think it's vital that we elect Joe Biden to stave the destruction that has occurred these past three disastrous years under President Trump and his administration, we will work to ensure that we hold our party accountable to create a country which works for all of us, not just the few," more than two dozen North Carolina delegates said in a statement Tuesday announcing their no votes on the Democratic platform.

Khanna told Common Dreams that he is "inspired by the delegates who are voting no," calling them "the force and energy behind our party."

"They are the future," said Khanna. "I stand in solidarity with them. We will prevail."

As Common Dreams reported, the DNC Platform Committee late last month overwhelmingly rejected an amendment by longtime single-payer advocate Michael Lighty—a Sanders delegate from California—that would have added a Medicare for All plank to the Democratic platform.

In its current form (pdf), the platform includes a nod to "those who support a Medicare for All approach" but does not endorse a single-payer system. The vote against the Medicare for All amendment came just two weeks after a study by advocacy group Families USA found that the Covid-19 pandemic has kicked at least 5.4 million Americans off their insurance.




"Covid-19 makes Medicare for All an urgent moral imperative," Khanna told Common Dreams. "Millions have lost their jobs. They shouldn't lose their healthcare. After this crisis, it should be self evident that a person's health care should not depend on their job."


In his op-ed Thursday morning, Khanna stresses that he plans to "do everything possible to help end the disastrous presidency of Donald Trump, and that means emphatically supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris."

Khanna also notes that there is much "progress embodied in the platform," including its support for a $15 federal minimum wage.

But, Khanna writes, "I will cast my one vote of 'No' for every person who has had to ration medication to afford food, or who has lost a loved one because a procedure that a doctor said was needed was not covered in an insurance plan."

"I want my party, the Democratic Party, to address this moral problem with clarity of moral purpose," Khanna concludes. "We are now long past the time when our country should face the cruel injustice of a system that denies healthcare as a human right. And when we face it, we can change it—with Medicare for All."

Asked what it will take to get Medicare for All onto the legislative agenda under a Biden presidency, Khanna told Common Dreams that "ultimately, politicians do not make history but committed movements do."

"This is the time the American people are open to the need for guaranteeing healthcare for everyone," said Khanna. "If we continue to mobilize, we can secure a vote in the House and the Senate and send a bill to Joe Biden's desk."

Cornel West to Anderson Cooper: I won't lie for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alLHlJWza8w

'Silence Is Complicity': GOP Condemned for Doing Nothing as Trump Openly Touts Sabotage of Postal Service

"Donald Trump knows that if the people are heard in November, he and Republicans up and down the ballot will lose," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren. "This is what we're up against—and this is why we have to fight back with all we've got."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/13/silence-complicity-gop-condemned-doing-nothing-trump-openly-touts-sabotage-postal




Voting rights advocates on Thursday took aim at Republicans in Congress for remaining silent in the face of President Donald Trump's open admission that he is blocking funding for the U.S. Postal Service with the express purpose of stopping an expansion of mail-in ballot access ahead of the November elections.

Echoing comments he made during a press briefing Wednesday, Trump told Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business Thursday morning that Democrats "need that money in order to make the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots."


Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, tweeted that Trump is "openly touting his agenda to defund the post office to prevent people from voting amid a pandemic...[e]ven at the expense of veterans getting their medicine by mail and all of the other grave harms.""Now, if we don't make a deal, that means they don't get the money," the president said. "That means they can't have universal mail-in voting, they just can't have it."

"How many Republican senators will confront him on this?" Gupta asked. "Silence is complicity."

Listen to Trump's comments:


In a statement, Stand Up America founder and president Sean Eldridge said Trump is "saying the quiet part out loud" by admitting that he's blocking Postal Service funding in an effort to hinder mail-in voting.

"His continued efforts to cripple the USPS are a clear attempt to sabotage the election and suppress the vote in the middle of a pandemic," said Eldridge. "Congress must act now. "If Senate Republicans gave a damn about the future of our democracy, they would demand that the Trump administration return to the negotiating table on a Covid-19 relief bill that protects our elections and funds the post office."

During his press briefing Wednesday evening, Trump vowed to continue blocking Democrats' demand for $3.5 billion in election assistance funding for states and $25 billion for the Postal Service, calling the requests "ridiculous."




Trump also praised Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Republican donor to the president who has imposed sweeping changes to Postal Service policy that have caused major mail backlogs across the United States, prompting concerns about timely delivery of mail-in ballots in November.

"Donald Trump knows that if the people are heard in November, he and Republicans up and down the ballot will lose," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted Thursday. "This is what we're up against—and this is why we have to fight back with all we've got."




On Wednesday afternoon, House Democrats introduced a bill that would reverse DeJoy's new policies and bar any further operational changes until the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. It's not clear when the legislation could get a floor vote in the House.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), one of the bill's co-sponsors, stressed the urgency of congressional action to save the Postal Service in a tweet Thursday, warning that "we have a five alarm fire in this country."

"The president is on TV brazenly, corruptly, and deliberately sabotaging the USPS," wrote Connolly. "Congress must provide the Postal Service the financial resources needed to ensure a smooth process of mail-in ballots for the November election."

Jana Morgan, director of the Declaration for American Democracy—a coalition of over 160 progressive advocacy organizations—said in a statement Thursday that "all eyes are now on Senate Republicans."

"We call on Majority Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans to make the right move," said Morgan. "Stop enabling President Trump and immediately pass $3.6 billion in safe election funding and reforms, in addition to the $25 billion needed to keep the post office up and running."

MAJORITY of Joe Biden Voters Support him because He's not Donald Trump

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GERiTvB-1sc