Free Republic

JERSEY CITY, NJ — Amid a rash of mail thefts from post offices in North Jersey, the federal government has offered a reward for a thief who they say actually dressed as a mailman to steal. "We're offering up to a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of a suspect who impersonated a USPS letter carrier to steal mail from apartment buildings in Jersey City, NJ," the U.S. Postal Inspection Service wrote in a post on Wednesday. Mail has been reported stolen this year including from public mailboxes in Glen Rock and Fort Lee. Several Glen...

A Carson woman, who is a former U.S. Postal Service employee, is facing decades in prison after pleading guilty to bank fraud. Mary Ann Magdamit, 31, who worked as a letter carrier at the Torrance Main Post Office, stole checks, debit and credit cards from the mail from at least 2022 through July 2025, according to a press release from the United States Department of Justice. Magdamit pleaded guilty Monday to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. She's been in federal custody since July 1. Federal prosecutors allege she would activate the stolen bank-issued cards online and use...

US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has signed an agreement with the Department of Government Efficiency and the General Services Administration to work with the US Postal Service In a letter DeJoy sent to Congress on Thursday, he said DOGE teams will “assist us in identifying and achieving further efficiencies,” saying the Elon Musk-led agency will focus on improving the management of USPS retirement assets and the Workers’ Compensation Program, as well as addressing the agency’s legislative mandates and regulatory requirements.

House Oversight Committee Democrats are panicking over comments President Donald Trump made Friday about reforming the U.S. Postal Service. While Trump has not established a specific plan, he criticized the Postal Service and talked about how it might be improved upon during the swearing in of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. “We want to have a post office that works well and doesn’t lose massive amounts of money, and we’re thinking about doing that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “And it will be a form of a merger, but it’ll remain the Postal Service, and I think it’ll operate...

The U.S. Postal Service’s multibillion-dollar program to purchase electric mail delivery trucks is severely delayed, another bungled EV program to further tarnish Joe Biden’s presidency. The Washington Post reports that the U.S. Postal Service’s ambitious plan to modernize its aging delivery fleet with electric vehicles is significantly behind schedule. The $10 billion project, which received $3 billion in funding from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, is a crucial part of outgoing President Joe Biden’s climate change agenda.

The U.S. Postal Service has temporarily suspended accepting mail headed to Canada due to the strike by Canada Post workers. It is asking customers to refrain from mailing items addressed to Canada, until further notice. The move by the U.S. Postal Service comes after some 55,000 Canada Post workers walked off the job more than two weeks ago.

The union’s Georgia president, whose name appears at the bottom of the letter, claims it was sent without his permission: ‘I had no idea they were sending out a letter with my name.’If former President Donald Trump wins November’s election, he would pose an “existential threat” — at least according to a letter apparently from the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), obtained by The Federalist.“If Donald Trump wins the upcoming election, it could prove an existential threat to our union and our contract,” the letter reads. “Your vote matters: consider how the consequences could affect you, your job, and...

Postal contractor Midwest Transport Inc. is winding down... An Illinois-based trucking and logistics company, which contracted with the U.S. Postal Service to haul mail has notified over 650 employees, including more than 480 drivers, that the carrier is ceasing operations ... Former truck drivers for Midwest Transport Inc. (MTI), headquartered in Robinson, Illinois, told FreightWaves that they received telephone calls from their regional managers late Thursday notifying them the company was winding down operations. ... According to an email sent to MTI employees and drivers about the closing late Friday, which was obtained by FreightWaves, the company stated that postal...

The holiday season came and went, and it appears the U.S. Postal Service did a good job. Yes, there were some reports of letter carriers getting swamped with packages here and there. And, yes, there were citizen complaints about delivery delays and mail theft. But on the whole, the USPS delivered in late 2023. There was no systemic crack-up as there was in December of 2020, when bad weather, sick mail workers and other factors slowed holiday cards and gifts for days and even weeks.

Jesse Morgan drove a tractor trailer for a contractor working for the U.S. Postal Service. Shortly after the 2020 election, Morgan made these claims at a press conference held by the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society: On October 21, 2020, Jesse drove his truck and trailer from Bethpage, New York, to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, loaded with as many as 288,000 completed ballots. In addition, there were two large trays of mixed mail, bound for Lancaster. Those were in the front of the trailer. Jesse drove the trailer to Harrisburg, but was not allowed to unload. After a six-hour wait,...

U.S. District Judge Rodney W. Sippel on Tuesday sentenced the former president of a local postal workers union to five years of probation and six months of house arrest for embezzling $80,000. Scott E. Rodgers, 51, was also ordered to repay the money. Rodgers embezzled a total of $80,756. From 2016, when he became president of Postal Mail Handlers Local 314, to April 2020, Rodgers made four unauthorized ATM withdrawals from the union account and used the union debit card for personal purchases including meals, fuel, transportation, shopping, and travel. . . . . . The union’s former treasurer, Yvette...

Four environmental groups that want the U.S. Postal Service to buy more electric delivery vehicles are suing to halt purchases of thousands of gas-powered trucks as the agency modernizes its mail delivery fleet. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in California asks a judge to order the Postal Service to conduct a more thorough environmental review before moving forward with the next-generation delivery vehicle program. Plaintiffs contend that purchases of fossil fuel-powered delivery vehicles will cause environmental harm for decades to come. “Louis DeJoy’s gas-guzzling fleet guarantees decades of pollution with every postcard and package,” said Scott Hochberg, an...

CHICAGO — A former U.S. Postal Service employee based in Chicago has been indicted on federal charges for allegedly stealing stimulus checks from the mail. Olivia Bryant, 33, of Chicago, has been charged with three counts of theft from the U.S. mail. During her arraignment, Bryant pleaded not guilty.

The United States Postal Service (USPS) announced Wednesday that it aims to raise postage prices by July 10 and has filed a notice of the desired changes with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC). The Forever stamp will move from 58 cents to 60 cents, marking what would be its second price hike in a year, CBS noted. In August, it moved from 55 cents to 58 cents. Between August of last year and this upcoming July, the stamp’s cost would have gone up nine percent, or five cents, should the prices take effect. But the Forever stamp is not the...

Effective this Sunday, the U.S. Postal Service will implement two parcel-delivery surcharges that will make it costlier for high-volume shippers to move their bigger packages. A “dimensional noncompliance” fee of $1.50 per piece will be levied on parcels that are tendered without any dimensions appearing on the shipper manifest. A similar fee will apply for parcels that are tendered with dimensional information and either exceed 22 inches in length on the parcel’s longest side or are 1 cubic foot in volume. The fees are designed to compensate the Postal Service for the time and resources spent measuring a package, as...

U.S. Postal Service employees are exempt from the Biden administration’s new coronavirus-vaccine requirements for federal workers and large companies, White House officials told the Washington Post on Thursday evening. -snip- However, those requirements do not extend to the USPS, a federal agency that employs over 644,000 people. “We strongly encourage them to comply with these standards,” White House officials told the Post. It was not immediately clear why the administration’s vaccination requirements do not extend to the Postal Service.

Washington D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Postal Service and its inspection agency seeking records about a covert program to secretly comb through online posts of social media users before street protests, raising concerns about chilling the privacy and expressive activity of internet users. Under an initiative called Internet Covert Operations Program, analysts at the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), the Postal Service’s law enforcement arm, sorted through massive amounts of data created by social media users to surveil what they were saying and sharing, according to media reports. Internet...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Two U.S. Postal Service employees were arrested Wednesday on charges that they abused their positions to purchase postal money orders with thousands of dollars in California unemployment benefits obtained through false claims of pandemic-related job losses, authorities said. A March 3 criminal complaint unsealed after the arrests alleges conspiracy, aggravated identity theft, access device fraud and fraud in connection with major disaster or emergency benefits, the Los Angeles U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a press release. Christian Jeremyah James, 31, of South Los Angeles and Armand Caleb Legardy, 32, of Inglewood were expected to make initial...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives voted on Saturday to provide the cash-strapped Postal Service with $25 billion and block policy changes that have stirred concerns about mail-in balloting ahead of the Nov. 3 election. **SNIP** As lawmakers prepared to vote, Trump took to Twitter to accuse Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of seeking unnecessary funding for the Postal Service and trying to pull off a “Universal Mail-In Ballot Scam.” “Vote NO to the Pelosi/Schumer money wasting HOAX which is taking place now,” the president wrote. DeJoy told a Senate committee on Friday that the...

The United States Postal Service filed notice with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) today of a temporary price change to take effect Oct. 18, 2020. The planned temporary price adjustments are in response to increased expenses and heightened demand for online shopping package volume due to the coronavirus pandemic and expected holiday ecommerce. As a result of these changing market conditions, the Postal Service is planning a time-limited price increase on all commercial domestic competitive package volume from Oct. 18 until Dec. 27, 2020. Retail prices and international products will be unaffected. The planned price increase would go into effect...