Day: August 18, 2020

The United States Postal Service will pause its cost-cutting policies after the recent moves sparked controversy and intensified fears that such measures might undermine the US elections this November.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said Tuesday in a statement that “to avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded.”

DeJoy’s announcement comes as changes to USPS’s operations faced increasing pressure from lawmakers, particularly Democrats, and voting-rights groups and the public, which are happening against the backdrop of President Donald Trump waging a campaign against mail-in voting.

As Recode’s …

The first night of the Democratic National Convention was not reflective of the revolutionary calls for structural change seen in last year’s Democratic debates, or the demands for radical change to American life that have emerged from ongoing anti-racist unrest. Instead, it was a moderate affair.

From policing to the Electoral College, systems under a microscope for the last several years eluded the toughest critiques last night. Instead, the event struck a markedly different tone, making the argument that the system isn’t broken, even though it feels like it.

The message was telegraphed by most of the night’s speakers, including …

The main order of business as Democrats gather for their virtual convention is to make their nominations for president and vice president official. But they’re also going to make a statement on what, exactly, their party stands for.

That will be in the platform — a written document of guiding principles and policy promises that Democrats are running on in 2020. The final version hasn’t yet been posted, but a draft is at this link. Delegates have been voting remotely on whether to approve the proposed platform, it’s certain to be adopted, and that result will be announced this …

On the first night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, I kept thinking back to the crescendo of Donald Trump’s inaugural address. “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” he said in 2017.

When Trump uttered those words, they rang strange. The unemployment rate was 4.7 percent. Poverty was falling. Violent crime was falling. The proportion of Americans with health insurance was rising. America had real and serious problems, from climate change to wage stagnation to child poverty to systemic racism. But it wasn’t the murderous dystopia Trump described.

Almost four years later, the word carnage …