The Lawfare Podcast: Election Anxieties and the U.S. Postal Service with Kevin Kosar and Anne Joseph O’Connell

Jen Patja, Margaret Taylor, Kevin Kosar, Anne Joseph O'Connell
Tuesday, September 1, 2020, 12:00 PM
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On August 13, President Trump said in a news interview that he opposed supplemental funding for the United States Postal Service because such funding is needed for the delivery of universal mail-in ballots for the 2020 election. His comments sparked panic about whether the Trump administration is slowing Postal Service delivery in order to sway the election. Images of blue mailboxes being removed and anecdotes about slow mail delivery added fuel to the fire. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was called to testify before Senate and House oversight committees. Lawsuits were filed by a host of state attorneys general.


So what’s really going on here? Is this election interference, the implementation of legitimate policies or something else? Margaret Taylor sat down with Kevin Kosar of the American Enterprise Institute and Anne Joseph O’Connell of Stanford Law School to sort through the facts, the policy changes, the investigations and the lawsuits—and what it all means for the 2020 election.


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Jen Patja

Jen Patja

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Jen Patja is the editor and producer of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.
Margaret Taylor

Margaret Taylor

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Margaret L. Taylor was a senior editor and counsel at Lawfare and a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. Previously, she was the Democratic Chief Counsel and Deputy Staff Director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2015 through July 2018.
Kevin Kosar

Kevin Kosar

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Kevin Kosar is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he studies the US Congress, the administrative state, American politics, election reform, and the US Postal Service.
Anne Joseph O'Connell

Anne Joseph O'Connell

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Anne Joseph O’Connell is a lawyer and social scientist, with graduate training in economics and political science, whose research and teaching focus on administrative law and the federal bureaucracy.

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