The Senate advanced on Wednesday three Biden nominees for the U.S. Postal Service board who would form a Democratic majority, but it’s no longer clear they would push to dismiss Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.

Both incumbent Democratic board members including Chairman Ron Bloom have expressed support for DeJoy, whose restructuring of the service has drawn widespread criticism.


Bloom in February told House lawmakers that “the board of governors believes that the Postmaster General in very difficult circumstances is doing a good job.” He told The Atlantic magazine for an article published April 21 that DeJoy “earned my support.”

It would be a stunning turnabout for a former Trump donor whose replacement was urged in a letter last month signed by 50 lawmakers, and had been accused of letting service slow during an election that drew a surge in mail-in voting.

Bloom’s comments “do not seem to be the actions of a guy who would move take out DeJoy,” said Michael Plunkett, president of PostCom, a trade group for companies that are Postal Service customers. “I just don’t see it.”

Paul Steidler, a senior fellow at the Lexington Institute, agreed.

“You can bet the ranch on it,” Steidler said in an interview. “There is absolutely no evidence they are going to vote to remove Louis DeJoy.”

Washington, DC, May 21, 2021 - Former President Donald Trump’s stronghold over the Republican party remains. His refusal to concede the 2020 election and calls of widespread fraud have raised doubts about the integrity of its results among his Republican base. Consequently, 56% of Republicans believe the election was rigged or the result of illegal voting, and 53% think Donald Trump is the actual President, not Joe Biden. Only 30% of Republicans feel confident that absentee or mail-in ballots were accurately counted, compared to 86% of Democrats and 55% of independents. As a result, 87% of Republicans believe it is important that the government place new limits on voting to protect elections from fraud. Finally, 63% percent of Republicans think Donald Trump should run for President again in 2024, compared to only 8% of Democrats and 23% of independents.

SOUTHLAKE, Texas — Nine months after officials in the affluent Carroll Independent School District introduced a proposal to combat racial and cultural intolerance in schools, voters delivered a resounding victory Saturday to a slate of school board and City Council candidates who opposed the plan.

In an unusually bitter campaign that echoed a growing national divide over how to address issues of race, gender and sexuality in schools, candidates in the city of Southlake were split between two camps: those who supported new diversity and inclusion training requirements for Carroll students and teachers and those backed by a political action committee that was formed last year to defeat the plan.

On one side, progressives argued that curriculum and disciplinary changes were needed to make all children feel safe and welcome in Carroll, a mostly white but quickly diversifying school district. On the other, conservatives in Southlake rejected the school diversity plan as an effort to indoctrinate students with a far-left ideology that, according to some, would institutionalize discrimination against white children and those with conservative Christian values.

Candidates and voters on both sides described the election as a "fork in the road" for Southlake, a wealthy suburb 30 miles northwest of Dallas. "So goes Southlake," a local conservative commentator warned in the weeks leading up to the election, "so goes the rest of America."

In the end, the contest was not close. Candidates backed by the conservative Southlake Families PAC, which has raised more than $200,000 since last summer, won every race by about 70 percent to 30 percent, including those for two school board positions, two City Council seats and mayor. More than 9,000 voters cast ballots, three times as many as in similar contests in the past.

BOISE, Idaho -- A sixth-grade girl brought a gun to her Idaho middle school, shot and wounded two students and a custodian and then was disarmed by a teacher Thursday, authorities said.

The three victims were shot in their limbs and expected to survive, officials said at a news conference. Jefferson County Sheriff Steve Anderson says the girl pulled a handgun from her backpack and fired multiple rounds inside and outside Rigby Middle School in the small city of Rigby, about 95 miles (145 kilometers) southwest of Yellowstone National Park.

A female teacher disarmed the girl and held her until law enforcement arrived and took her into custody, authorities said, without giving other details. Authorities say they're investigating the motive for the attack and where the girl got the gun.

“We don't have a lot of details at this time of ‘why' — that is being investigated,” Anderson said. “We're following all leads.”