WASHINGTON, D.C. — It’s not often that Congress is in session on the weekend, much less in the middle of August, but House Democrats felt the recent headlines concerning the U.S. Postal Service warranted an immediate vote.

“We’re getting hammered. Our offices are getting calls left and right. They can’t believe this is happening,” Rep. Tim Ryan (D, 13th Congressional District) said in a virtual interview Aug. 17.

What happened were operational changes involving mailboxes, sorting machines and overtime.

Democrats have pointed the finger at Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a longtime Republican mega-donor who took over the job in June.

On Tuesday, DeJoy announced the changes would be suspended until after the election “to avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail.”

But Ohio Democrats said that’s not good enough.

“So his just saying, ‘We’re going to stop. We’re not going to do anything else.’ No, it goes beyond that,” Rep. Marcia Fudge (D, 11th Congressional District) said in a virtual interview Aug. 18. “How are you going to reverse some of the things you already have done? And what are you going to do going forward? How do we trust you from now through Election Day?”

Rep. Joyce Beatty (D, 3rd Congressional District) echoed Fudge in a separate virtual interview on Aug. 20: “…because we clearly know that this is all about the election and trying to suppress the vote and how people vote through the mail.”

The Democratic-led House passed a bill Saturday that would give the Postal Service $25 billion and ban any operational changes for the rest of the year.

Most Republicans voted against it; the Republican-led Senate is not expected to take it up; and the White House has said President Trump would veto it.

“This is not about the Postal Service, this is about politics,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R, 4th Congressional District) said in an interview on Capitol Hill on Saturday. “This is just the Democrats’ latest attempt to go after the president.”

Ohio Republicans told me this has been a political show nobody needed.

They argue similar operational changes have been made by previous postmasters general, that the Postal Service has enough money to operate through the middle of next year, and that DeJoy was unanimously confirmed to his job by the bipartisan Postal Service board of governors, who were nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate.

“And part of the reason he was brought in is because he was an outside expert in logistics and he was brought in to quit losing money,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R, 8th Congressional District) said in an interview Saturday. “So that the Post Office could, say for example, not burn through the $14 billion in cash that they’ve got on hand right now.”

Northwest Ohio Republican Bob Latta (R, 5th Congressional District) wrote a letter to DeJoy asking for him “to ensure the timely and accurate delivery of election-related materials prior to the November elections.”

Nine other Ohio Republicans signed it.

On Saturday, Latta said his district has struggled for years with on-time mail delivery since sorting was relocated to Michigan, but he didn’t agree with how Democrats approached this bill.

“We’re voting on a piece of legislation for a very large amount of money that we never had a hearing on,” Latta said.

DeJoy testified before a Senate committee Friday and said he was confident the election will go smoothly when it comes to mail, and he pledged to work on delivery delays for things like prescriptions.

Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman took part.

“One of the facts I have learned this morning is that you started 67 days ago and much of what we’ve been talking about, in the media at least, including the blue boxes and the sorting machines, that happened before you got there and it was part of a plan,” Portman said.

Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown disagreed. He claimed DeJoy can’t be trusted and is calling for him to resign.

“He’s a political hack, was a Trump mega-donor, he’s never worked in the Postal Service,” Brown said in a virtual interview Aug. 17. “He knows nothing about the Postal Service. He’s taking his orders from the White House.”

DeJoy will testify before the House Oversight Committee on Monday, which Ohio Republicans Jim Jordan and Bob Gibbs serve on.

The Postal Service has long struggled with its finances. It lost $9 billion last year, but an increase in package delivery during the pandemic has helped it make up some ground.