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The Club PUBlication  08/31/2020

8/31/2020

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At nearly $2K an ounce, a new gold rush

As the price soars, buyers expect people to start digging through their jewelry collections again.

By JOHN EWOLDT jewoldt@startribune.com
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GLEN STUBBE • glen.stubbe@startribune.com Enviro-Chem President Todd Meyer showed some of the gold he has purchased recently. Some of the precious metal will be melted down to bars.
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Gold was selling for about $950 an ounce. People hosted parties to sell old jewelry and waited in lines at stores. Ads everywhere shouted “We buy gold!”

When gold was at record highs in 2009, it was a heady time for “Gold Guys” Joe Beasy and Shane Maguire . Their Twin Cities-based business bought more than $300 million in gold from consumers, opened 18 stores in seven states and ran countless TV and radio ads.


By 2013, most of the stores across the country — many pop-ups — had lost their luster. The gold fever had broken.

Now with gold near an all-time high of $2,000 an ounce, some major local players are again seeing an increase in business and betting on consumers searching drawers and attics to cash in mismatched earrings, broken bracelets and wedding rings.

The Gold Guys and Pawn America will soon begin ad campaigns in various media markets for the first time in years. Gold Guys, which now has four stores in Minnesota and one in California, plans to start franchising its stores around the country in 2021.

“We’re at the cusp of major things for gold and silver,” said co-founder Beasy. “We shot some commercials two weeks ago, and you’ll see our smiling faces on TV by September.”

Not everyone shares his enthusiasm, partly because of the coronavirus pandemic.
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“The typical precious metals seller is very much over 50 years old, and a lot of them are scared to go out,” said Dan Wixon , owner of Wixon Jewelers in Bloomington. “But people are definitely coming back if they can make an appointment, and you put them in a private room and you have masks and cleansers.”

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GLEN STUBBE • glen.stubbe@startribune.com Antonio Vasseur melted down some used silver and copper connectors at Enviro-Chem, using the same process the company uses for silver, gold and other precious metals.
Experts such as Craig Hirschey, manager at W.E. Mowrey Refining in St. Paul, said the tepid response so far also is because most consumers don’t know that gold has risen to near record highs, and that silver is at a six-year high.

“By 2010, gold had grown to four times its value from $400 to $1,200 in eight years. Now it’s near $2,000, but because the price rose fast in eight months, it hasn’t had the same effect,” he said. “It’s still a good price, but most people aren’t aware of it.”

In a year when Americans have been faced with more than one crisis between the pandemic and unemployment and racial unrest, people might have missed news such as precious metal prices.

“The more affluent individual has discovered gold and silver,” said Doug Rooney , owner of Independent Precious Metals in Spring Lake Park. “The average person is worried about paying for groceries, gas and housing.”

Still, Pawn America will start to run ads on TV and digital platforms within two weeks.

“Our gold purchases have increased by double digits in the last three months,” said Brad Rixmann , president and co-founder of Pawn America. “A gold chain that was worth 200 bucks 10 to 15 years ago is now worth $800.”

Sue Aschenbeck of Plymouth earlier this year started shopping around several gold and silver items inherited from family members. A buyer at a gold and silver traveling show told her that a silver tray was worth nothing, but she was elated when Enviro-Chem in Rogers recently paid her hundreds of dollars for it.

“They told me in February that I might want to wait for prices to go up and they were right,” she said.

The number of consumers selling rings and silver tea sets is still a fraction of what it was a decade ago, said Todd Meyer , president of Enviro-Chem, which recycles and recovers industrial waste in circuit boards and X-ray films as well.

“People don’t have much left,” he said. “The older generations sold what they had lying around, but if you still have gold that you bought in the ‘80s or ‘90s, you’re definitely making money on it now.”

Dan Domino, an owner of King’s Ransom Gold & Silver in St. Paul, said his gold-buying business is up about 25% in the past few months.

“It’s pretty fun to be in the coin and gold business now,” he said. “I’m seeing the biggest jumps in people bringing in gold bullion, American Eagle gold coins and silver. Lots of platters and flatware.”

During the last gold rush, consumer experts and the Better Business Bureau warned consumers about buyers paying under market rates and underestimating the weight or purity of the precious metal, especially at pop-up, unlicensed dealers.

The Better Business Bureau of Minnesota and North Dakota in the past year has received no complaints in the gold buyer category, with 400 inquiries. BBB trade practices manager Karen Thompson attributes that to the Minnesota Department of Commerce and some metro counties that began to require licenses for coins and precious metals dealers several years ago.

Despite the fact that many gold buyers are only seeing 10 to 50% of business now compared to 2012, many are expecting that to change.

“In turbulent times there’s always a flight to gold and silver,” said Rixmann of Pawn America.

John Ewoldt • 612-673-7633

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The Club PUBlication  08/24/2020

8/24/2020

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SNIFFING OUT COVID
Doctors and researchers are training dogs to detect if people are infected.
By FRANCES STEAD SELLERS Washington Post

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Photos by BONNIE JO MOUNT • Washington Post EVOLVING FIELD: Dixie is among the dogs being trained in a study that draws on neuroscience, chemistry, nanotechnology and animal cognition.
Blaze is one of nine dogs enrolled in a University of Pennsylvania study into whether dogs can detect a distinct smell in people infected with the novel coronavirus. His triumph on that early July day — selecting a can containing urine from a hospitalized coronavirus-positive patient over an array of alternatives — is a key step in a training process that may one day allow dogs to pick out infected individuals, including those who are asymptomatic, in nursing homes, businesses and airports, potentially screening as many as 250 people an hour.

Blaze’s success also marks an advance in the evolving field of olfactory disease detection — the concept that many illnesses, including emerging diseases, are characterized by distinct “odorprints” that can be identified by both dogs and artificial noses, which could be quicker, less invasive and more accurate than current clinical testing.
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GREENCASTLE, PA. – The black Labrador circled a giant horizontal metal wheel, sniffing the cans at the end of each spoke before stopping abruptly in front of one. Head up and ears pricked, Blaze froze, staring intently ahead.
“This is a major field of research worldwide,” said Kenneth Suslick, a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois.

Still, scientists are emphasizing the need to proceed with caution. “As eager as we are to put this out there, we want to make sure it is responsible, ethical, scientific and safe,” Otto said. “Done wrong, it could be more damaging than helpful.”
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Perdita Barran, a professor at the University of Manchester , also note that training dogs is time-consuming and expensive. “It doesn’t scale with the cost of dogs.”
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“That’s the grail!” exclaimed Cynthia Otto, director of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. “That’s amazing! Just amazing!”
The Penn team’s research, funded largely by private donations, is based on two established principles: that changes in our health often alter the way we smell; and that dogs, with 50 times as many smell receptors as people, make great biosensors with a proven ability to detect not only drugs and explosives but some diseases, such as hidden cancers; sudden shifts in blood sugar levels and parasitic, bacterial and viral infections.

The work, which draws on disciplines including neuroscience, chemistry, nanotechnology and animal cognition, also reveals how much we still don’t know about the way the sense of smell works.


“It’s very poorly understood,” said A.T. Charlie Johnson, a Penn physicist who was working with Otto before the pandemic to create an artificial nose that could sniff out early-stage ovarian cancer — a feat her dogs had already accomplished.

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There’s nothing new about the notion that diseases smell. In his aphorisms, written in 400 B.C., Hippocrates, the “father of modern medicine,” recognized a “heavy smell” in people suffering from certain illnesses. A sudden change in the way our breath or urine smells remains a reason to see a doctor.

That’s because human bodies constantly give off a cocktail of chemicals known as volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, in sweat, saliva, urine, breath and sebum that change when cells grow, as in the case of cancer, or when they die after being infected, for example, by a virus.

“With covid detection, you are not recognizing the virus,” Suslick said. “You are recognizing the volatile byproducts of cells dying because they have been infected.”

Several mysteries hover over the work at the training facility. “We don’t know what the dogs are finding, what the common denominator is,” Otto said.

The researchers have been changing the positive samples they are using as the work evolves. In early July, they were working with chemically deactivated urine. The dogs were later presented with heat-treated urine, as well as other secretions collected from T-shirts worn by recently tested people, some of whom have the coronavirus but are not sick enough to be hospitalized.

Despite distractions in one session, the trainees performed with stunning accuracy until one Labrador froze in front of a can containing a urine sample from a hospitalized patient who had tested negative for the virus.

It was one of the few mistakes of the day. Unless it wasn’t a mistake. Clinical tests give more than 10% false negative results and “the dogs may be better than the tests,” Nolan said.

That appeared to be true a few weeks later, when the dogs all alerted on a sample from a patient who had tested negative. They were so insistent — and consistent — that Otto went back to the hospital to learn more about the person’s history. It turned out the patient had previously tested positive, suggesting there may have been some lingering odor from the earlier infection.
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“There’s a phrase in dog training,” Otto said: “Trust your dog.”
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The Club PUBlication  08/17/2020

8/17/2020

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USPS appears to be retiring vital machines ahead of mail-in ballot surge

Cherlynn Low
·Reviews Editor
August 14, 2020, 11:00 AM CDT

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The United States Postal Service is reportedly retiring mail sorting machines. According to Postmaster general Louis DeJoy, the agency is in a “dire” financial situation, citing significant falls in mail volume, “a broken business model” and an inadequate management strategy as reasons for the “impending liquidity crisis.” Dejoy has been implementing changes since assuming the role in June, including organizational restructuring and a management hiring freeze, saying they’re meant to “strengthen the Postal Service.”

But there appear to be moves that he might have left out. Vice is reporting that the USPS is also retiring mail sorting machines around the country “without any official explanation or reason given.” The office of the USPS Inspector General and its media representatives have yet to respond to Engadget’s requests for confirmation.

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United States Postal Service high speed sorting equipment

According to internal documents obtained by Vice’s technology site Motherboard, close to 15 percent of the organization’s machines will be taken out of service. That’s a total of 502 machines around the country, and USPS workers Motherboard spoke with said the move would “slow their ability to sort mail.” An earlier report by CNN noted that the agency had begun removing these machines in June, and that it had initially intended to retire 671 machines instead of 502.

Motherboard added that the USPS presentation it obtained described this as an “equipment reduction,” rather than “mov[ing] equipment around its network” as a spokesperson had earlier said.

As part of the restructuring announced earlier this month, DeJoy said that mail processing operations will report to a newly created Logistics and Processing Operations organization that’s separate from area and district reporting structures. This change was made “to allow for improved focus and clear communication channels,” he wrote. The move has faced public criticism, with Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) calling it “sabotage” on Twitter. Connolly chairs the House subcommittee for government operations, which oversees the postal service.

More recently, DeJoy reportedly admitted in an internal memo that CNN obtained that the restructuring has led to “unintended consequences that impacted our overall service levels,” but reiterated that the changes were “necessary.”

Before the pandemic, the USPS had been delivering an estimated 146 billion pieces of mail a year, including 6 billion packages. But with the election looming and people stuck at home, voting by mail has become a topic of national debate and is expected to lead to a surge in volume. President Trump has questioned the post office’s ability to manage the anticipated influx, saying “how can the post office be expected to handle [this]?” He added, “That’s a tremendous strain on the post office. The post office loses a fortune, it has been for many many years, for decades. So now on top of it it has this.” To be clear, the USPS is not a for-profit business. It’s an independent agency of the federal government’s executive branch that serves the public.

DeJoy said in his opening remarks for the USPS board of governors “while I certainly have a good relationship with the President of the United States, the notion that I would ever make decisions concerning the Postal Service at the direction of the President, or anyone else in the Administration, is wholly off-base.” He added that “the Postal Service and I are fully committed to fulfilling our role in the electoral process.”

“If public policy makers choose to utilize the mail as a part of their election system, we will do everything we can to deliver Election Mail in a timely manner consistent with our operational standards,” he wrote. DeJoy also asked for election officials and voters to “be mindful of the time that it takes for us to deliver ballots.”

As the USPS continues to assess its operations to find ways to serve the public, removing mail sorting machines may lead to increased burdens on postal workers who might have to take on the previously automated task. It’s not clear if these machines might be replaced with newer models, or if the leftover machines are capable of picking up the slack. It’s clear the agency needs financial support to continue running without overworking its employees, especially with an election coming up
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The Club PUBlication  08/10/2020

8/10/2020

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Routine vaccines may cut virus risk

Mayo says COVID study limited, but shots needed.

By JEREMY OLSON 

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RENÉE JONES SCHNEIDER • renee.jones@startribune.com Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Gov. Tim Walz got a tour of Liberty Packaging from Jack Fiterman, a company vice president, in Brooklyn Park on Wednesday. Liberty Packaging has helped manage the state’s stockpile of disposable masks.
Vaccines for everything from influenza to measles provide partial protection against COVID-19, according to new Mayo Clinic research, suggesting that parents should get children up to date on shots before school this fall, and senior citizens should schedule their vaccinations before the winter flu season.

People showed a 28% reduction in COVID-19 risk if they received the PCV13 pneumonia vaccine in the past year compared with those who didn’t, and a 43% reduction if they received the polio vaccine before travels to at-risk locations, the study showed.

While the population-based study has limitations and was posted online Tuesday without peer review, Mayo officials said there is little harm in using the results to encourage people to seek shots that are recommended anyway.

“Make sure you get your scheduled vaccines,” said Dr. Andrew Badley, an author of the study and a leader of Mayo’s COVID research task force. “Not doing so is not doing everything you can to reduce your risks.”

The recommendation comes as Minnesota leaders wrestle with the dilemma of wanting to reopen K-12 schools this fall while facing a rising rate of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.

Gov. Tim Walz will unveil his school reopening plan Thursday, but he made reference during a press briefing Wednesday to a “decision matrix” that will guide districts on whether to reopen with live classrooms, online sessions or a mix. The guidance is expected to give schools discretion, depending on COVID-19 levels in their communities.

“Our guiding principles are to keep our children and our staff in the buildings safe,” Walz said. “Our second goal right behind that is to get our children back in the schools, especially our littlest learners, if at all possible.”

The governor on Wednesday highlighted 4 million protective masks that are being distributed to help people comply with Minnesota’s new indoor mask mandate.

The Minnesota Department of Health on Wednesday reported nine COVID-19 deaths and 681 infections with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes the infectious disease. That brings the state’s totals to 1,589 deaths and 52,947 known infections.

The state reported 310 people hospitalized with COVID-19, and 143 of them needing intensive care. Those are both highs for the month of July.

Cases have been increasing for weeks, initially among teenagers and young adults but now among older, higher-risk individuals who are more likely to need hospital care, said Kris Ehresmann, state infectious disease director.

“As we have feared, we are seeing our hospitalizations begin to increase and I don’t think it’s just a blip,” she said.

Pushing vaccinations:
The irony of other vaccines slowing the COVID-19 spread is that they are being used at lower rates this year. Fears of infection prompted people to cancel regular checkups and vaccinations, even before the statewide 51-day shutdown that lasted until May 18.

A survey by the Minnesota Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics estimated a 30% to 40% decline in childhood immunizations so far during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“As back-to-school planning is underway and certain restrictions are hopefully being lifted, it is more important than ever to ensure vaccinations are up to date to protect your children and community,” said Dr. Keith Stelter, president of the Minnesota Medical Association.

Health officials are planning campaigns to increase pediatric vaccinations as well as flu shots, because of concerns that a combined surge of COVID-19 and flu cases could overrun hospitals this winter.

Mayo researchers teamed with a data-analysis company in Massachusetts called nference, and they reviewed records from 137,000 people in the Rochester area to compare COVID-19 outcomes by vaccination.

A surprising good-news finding is that every age group had a vaccine that was recommended for them and yielded a protective benefit, said Venky Soundararajan, a founder of nference, which also has partnered with Mayo on hot-spot county level tracking of COVID-19 testing data.

“There seems to be one, if not more than one, non-COVID, FDA-approved, readily available vaccine that may well have a protective effect in mitigating SARS-CoV-2 infection in each of these age cohorts,” he said.

The MMR vaccine is generally given in two doses to children before grade school. The researchers found a 3.1% COVID-19 positivity rate among 53 people who had received that vaccine in the past year and a 5.5% rate among 94 people who hadn’t. That was a 44% difference.

The COVID-19 rate was 1.57% among 190 seniors who received the geriatric flu vaccine within a year, compared to 2.1% among 257 who didn’t — a 26% protective benefit.

The research showed the most protection for people who had received vaccinations within one year, but some protection if they had received them in five years.

Some vaccines did not show a statistically measurable benefit, possibly due to the small sample sizes of some of the groups in the study and the limits of studying a population in one geographic area. The lack of benefit from the BCG tuberculosis vaccine could be due to its limited use in Rochester, Badley said.

Trained immunity:
Exactly why some vaccines work even if they don’t target the SARS-CoV-2 virus is unclear, but it probably has to do with the concept of “trained immunity,” Badley said. Vaccines could prompt the immune system to become more reactive and effective.

“If you think of the immune system like your muscles,” Badley said, “you have to exercise your muscles to make them work most effectively. That essentially is what trained immunity is.”

However, the study only proved a relationship between vaccination and lower COVID-19 rates, not cause and effect. So it’s possible that people who seek up-to-date vaccinations are simply healthier or more likely to follow public health guidelines that reduce their risks.

Ehresmann encouraged people to wear face masks per the statewide mandate, and to consider their responsibilities before putting themselves in high-risk situations such as crowded bars.

Child-care workers have picked up the virus in bars and introduced it in their workplaces, she said, and the number of new infections in long-term care jumped from 40 on Tuesday to 82 on Wednesday.

Among all COVID-19 deaths in Minneota, 76% have involved residents of longterm care facilities, who are at greater risk due to their ages or health problems. People 70 or older now represent 9% of all known COVID-19 cases in Minnesota but 80% of the state’s deaths.

Daily cases in long-term care had been pushed into the teens earlier this summer, but are increasing as workers carry the virus with them. People can be infectious 48 hours before symptom onset, Ehresmann said.

“You can’t always know if someone is infectious,” she said, “or if you yourself are infectious.”

Walz on Wednesday toured Liberty Packaging, a Brooklyn Park business that makes corrugated boxes and has helped the state manage its stockpile of 4 million disposable masks. One million masks have already been sent to local chambers of commerce so that businesses can outfit shoppers with them rather than lose sales.

Mask-wearing might be “cumbersome” but plant workers wear them for entire shifts on hot days, said Mike Fiterman, chairman of parent company Liberty Diversified International. He encouraged people to “wear these masks and socially distance so we don’t become the issue that’s going on in Florida, the issue that’s going on in Arizona.”

Staff writers Chris Snowbeck and
Glenn Howatt contributed to this report.
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The Club PUBlication  08/03/2020

8/3/2020

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THE NEXT ELECTION BATTLEGROUND:
THE POST OFFICE

Story by MICHAEL D. SHEAR, HAILEY FUCHS AND KENNETH P. VOGEL • New York Times • 

Associated Press photo

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In tweet after all-caps tweet, Trump has warned that allowing people to vote by mail will result in a “CORRUPT ELECTION” that will “LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY” and become the “SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES.” He has predicted that children will steal ballots out of mailboxes. On Thursday, he dangled the idea of delaying the election instead.

Members of Congress and state officials in both parties rejected the president’s suggestion and his claim that mail-in ballots would result in widespread fraud. But they are warning that a huge wave of ballots could overwhelm mail carriers unless the Postal Service, in financial difficulty for years, receives emergency funding that Republicans are blocking during negotiations over another pandemic relief bill.

At the same time, the mail system is being undercut in ways set in motion by Trump. Fueled by animus for Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and surrounded by advisers who have long called for privatizing the post office, Trump and his appointees have begun taking cost-cutting steps that appear to have led to slower and less reliable delivery.

In recent weeks, at the direction of a Trump campaign megadonor who was recently named the postmaster general, the service has stopped paying mail carriers and clerks the overtime necessary to ensure that deliveries can be completed each day. That and other changes have led to reports of letters and packages being delayed by as many as several days.

Voting rights groups say it is a recipe for disaster.

“We have an underfunded state and local election system and a deliberate slowdown in the Postal Service,” said Wendy Fields, executive director of the Democracy Initiative, a coalition of voting and civil rights groups. She said the president is “deliberately orchestrating suppression and using the post office as a tool to do it.”

Kim Wyman, the Republican secretary of state in Washington, one of five states where mail-in balloting is universal, said Wednesday on NPR’s “1A” program that “election officials are very concerned, if the post office is reducing service, that we will be able to get ballots to people in time.”

During his eulogy Thursday for Rep. John Lewis, former President Barack Obama lamented what he said was a continuing effort to attack voting rights “with surgical precision, even undermining the Postal Service in the run-up to an election that is going to be dependent on mailed-in ballots so people don’t get sick.”

Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general, defended the changes, saying in a statement that the ban on overtime was intended to “improve operational efficiency” and to “ensure that we meet our service standards.”

DeJoy declined to be interviewed. David Partenheimer, a spokesman for the Postal Service, said that the nation’s post offices had “ample capacity to adjust our nationwide processing and delivery network to meet projected election and political mail volume, including any additional volume that may result as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

A plunge in the amount of mail because of a recession — which the United States entered into in February — has cost the Postal Service billions of dollars in revenue, with some analysts predicting that the agency will run out of money by spring. Democrats have proposed an infusion of $25 billion. On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Republicans, who are opposed to the funding, of wanting to “diminish the capacity of the postal system to work in a timely fashion.”

Arthur B. Sackler, who runs the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, a group representing the biggest bulk mailers, said the changes were concerning even though his organization did not take a position on voting by mail.

“Like any other mail, this could complicate what is already going to be a complicated process,” Sackler said. “A huge number of jurisdictions are totally inexperienced in vote by mail. They have never had the avalanche of interest that they have this year.”

Many states have already loosened restrictions on who can vote by mail: In Kentucky, mail-in ballots accounted for 85% of the vote in June’s primary. In Vermont, requests for mail-in ballots are up 1,000% over 2018.

Michigan voters had requested nearly 1.8 million mail-in ballots by the end of July, compared with about 500,000 by the similar time four years ago, after the secretary of state mailed absentee ballot applications to all 7.7 million registered voters.

In the suburban Virginia district of Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, a Democrat who leads the House subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service, 1,300 people voted by mail in a 2019 primary — last month, more than 34,000 did.

“We are worried about new management at the Postal Service that is carrying out Trump’s avowed opposition to voting by mail,” Connolly said. “I don’t think that’s speculation. I think we are witnessing that in front of our own eyes.”

Erratic service could delay the delivery of blank ballots to people who request them. And in 34 states, completed ballots that are not received by Election Day — this year it is Nov. 3 — are invalidated, raising the prospect that some voters could be disenfranchised if the mail system buckles.

In other states, ballots can be tallied as long as they are postmarked by Election Day, but voting rights groups say ballots are often erroneously delivered without a postmark, which prevents them from being counted.

The ability of the Postal Service “to timely deliver and return absentee ballots and their work to postmark those ballots will literally determine whether or not voters are disenfranchised during the pandemic,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

But Trump — who himself has repeatedly voted by mail in recent elections — has set in motion changes at the Postal Service that could make the problem worse.
A series of Postal Service documents titled “PMGs expectations,” a reference to the postmaster general, describe how Trump’s new leadership team is trying to cut costs.

“Overtime will be eliminated,” says the document, which was first reported by the Washington Post. “Again, we are paying too much overtime, and it is not cost effective and will soon be taken off the table. More to come on this.”

The document continues: “The USPS will no longer use excessive cost to get the basic job done. If the plants run late, they will keep the mail for the next day.”
Another document, dated July 10, says, “One aspect of these changes that may be difficult for employees is that — temporarily — we may see mail left behind or on the workroom floor or docks.”

With the agency under financial pressure, some offices have also begun to cut back on hours. The result, according to postal workers, members of Congress and major post office customers, is a noticeable slowdown in delivery.

“The policies that the new postmaster general is putting into place — they couldn’t lead to anything but degradation of service,” said Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union. “Anything that slows down the mail could have a negative impact on everything we do, including vote by mail.”
In mid-July, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, and Connolly wrote a letter to DeJoy raising questions about the ban on overtime and the other changes.

“While these changes in a normal year would be drastic,” the lawmakers wrote, “in a presidential election year when many states are relying heavily on absentee mail-in ballots, increases in mail delivery timing would impair the ability of ballots to be received and counted in a timely manner — an unacceptable outcome for a free and fair election.”

Trump has been assailing the Postal Service since early in his presidency, tweeting in 2017 that the agency was becoming “dumber and poorer” because it charged big companies too little for delivering their packages.

The president has repeatedly blamed Bezos for the financial plight of the Postal Service, insisting that the post office charges Amazon too little, an assertion that many experts have rejected as false.

In the past three years, Trump has replaced all six members of the Postal Service Board of Governors.

In May, the board, which includes two Democrats, selected DeJoy, a longtime Republican fundraiser who has contributed more than $1.5 million to Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, to be postmaster general. According to financial disclosures, DeJoy and his wife, Aldona Wos, who has been nominated to be the ambassador to Canada, have $115,002 to $300,000 invested in the Postal Service’s major competitor, UPS.

Two board members have since departed. David C. Williams, the vice chairman, left in April over concerns that the Postal Service was becoming increasingly politicized by the Trump administration, according to two people familiar with his thinking. Ronald Stroman, who oversaw mail-in voting and relations with election officials, resigned in May.

One of the remaining members, Robert M. Duncan, is a former Republican National Committee chairman who has been a campaign donor to Trump.


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