WASHINGTON — Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi said Sun­day she is call­ing the House back into ses­sion this week to vote on a bill pro­hibit­ing the U.S. Postal Ser­vice from imple­ment­ing any changes to oper­a­tions or lev­el of ser­vice. The action comes amid grow­ing con­cerns that the Trump White House is try­ing to under­mine the agency dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic while states expand mail-in vot­ing options.

In a let­ter to Demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers Sun­day evening, Pelosi also called on her col­leagues to appear at a post office in their dis­trict on Tues­day for a coor­di­nat­ed news event. “In a time of a pan­dem­ic, the Postal Ser­vice is Elec­tion Cen­tral. Amer­i­cans should not have to choose between their health and their vote,” she wrote.

Pelosi said House Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Ste­ny Hoy­er would soon announce the leg­isla­tive sched­ule for the com­ing week. House Democ­rats were like­ly to dis­cuss the sched­ule on a con­fer­ence call on Mon­day and were expect­ed to be in ses­sion next Sat­ur­day, a senior Demo­c­ra­t­ic aide said on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because the plans were private.

Ear­li­er Sun­day, Demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers demand­ed that lead­ers of the Postal Ser­vice tes­ti­fy at an emer­gency over­sight hear­ing Aug. 24 on mail delays.

The House Over­sight and Reform Com­mit­tee said it wants to hear from new Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al Louis DeJoy and from the chair of the Postal Ser­vice board of gov­er­nors, Robert “Mike” Dun­can. With height­ened scruti­ny of its oper­a­tions, the agency is now request­ing a tem­po­rary pre­elec­tion rate increase, from mid-Octo­ber through Christ­mas, although not for first-class letters.

The agency did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to requests for com­ment about whether the two men would appear before the House com­mit­tee. But it said Sun­day it would stop remov­ing its dis­tinc­tive blue mail­box­es through mid-Novem­ber fol­low­ing com­plaints from cus­tomers and mem­bers of Con­gress that the col­lec­tion box­es were being tak­en away.

“Giv­en the recent cus­tomer con­cerns the Postal Ser­vice will post­pone remov­ing box­es for a peri­od of 90 days while we eval­u­ate our cus­tomers’ con­cerns,” said Postal Ser­vice spokes­woman Kim­ber­ly Frum.

DeJoy, a major Repub­li­can donor and ally of the pres­i­dent who took con­trol of the agency in June, has pledged to mod­ern­ize the mon­ey-los­ing agency to make it more effi­cient, and has elim­i­nat­ed most over­time for postal work­ers, imposed restric­tions on trans­porta­tion and reduced of the quan­ti­ty and use of mail-pro­cess­ing equipment.

“The post­mas­ter gen­er­al and top Postal Ser­vice lead­er­ship must answer to the Con­gress and the Amer­i­can peo­ple as to why they are push­ing these dan­ger­ous new poli­cies that threat­en to silence the voic­es of mil­lions, just months before the elec­tion,” con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats said in a state­ment announc­ing the hearing.

The law­mak­ers includ­ed Pelosi of Cal­i­for­nia and New York Rep. Car­olyn Mal­oney, the com­mit­tee chair, along with Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Michi­gan Sen. Gary Peters, the top Demo­c­rat on the Sen­ate Home­land Secu­ri­ty and Gov­ern­men­tal Affairs Com­mit­tee, which over­sees the Postal Service.

Trump said last week that he was block­ing a $25 bil­lion emer­gency injec­tion sought by the Postal Ser­vice, as well as a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pro­pos­al to pro­vide $3.6 bil­lion in addi­tion­al elec­tion mon­ey to the states. The Repub­li­can pres­i­dent wor­ries that mail-in vot­ing could cost him reelec­tion. The mon­ey for the post office is intend­ed to help with pro­cess­ing an expect­ed surge of mail-in bal­lots. Both fund­ing requests have been tied up in con­gres­sion­al nego­ti­a­tions over a new coro­n­avirus relief package.

On Sat­ur­day, Trump tried to mas­sage his mes­sage, say­ing he sup­ports increas­ing mon­ey for the Postal Ser­vice. He said he was refus­ing to capit­u­late to Democ­rats on oth­er parts of the relief pack­age, includ­ing fund­ing for states weighed down by debt accu­mu­lat­ed before the pandemic.

But the president’s crit­ics were not appeased, con­tend­ing that Trump has made the cal­cu­la­tion that a low­er vot­er turnout would improve his chances of win­ning a sec­ond term.

“What you are wit­ness­ing is a pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States who is doing every­thing he can to sup­press the vote, make it hard­er for peo­ple to engage in mail-in bal­lot­ing at a time when peo­ple will be putting their lives on the line by hav­ing to go out to a polling sta­tion and vote,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I‑Vt.

Ear­li­er this month, Maloney’s com­mit­tee had invit­ed DeJoy to appear Sept. 17 at a hear­ing focus­ing on oper­a­tional changes to the Postal Ser­vice that are caus­ing delays in mail deliveries.

But after Trump acknowl­edged in a Fox Busi­ness inter­view on Thurs­day that he’s starv­ing the agency of mon­ey to make it hard­er to process an expect­ed surge of mail-in bal­lots, the com­mit­tee decid­ed to move up their call for the appear­ance of DeJoy’ well as the gov­ern­ing board chair.

Fund­ing a cash-strapped Postal Ser­vice has quick­ly turned into a top cam­paign issue as Trump press­es his unsup­port­ed claim that increased mail-in vot­ing will under­mine the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the elec­tion and Democ­rats push back.

Trump, who spent the week­end at his New Jer­sey golf club, derid­ed uni­ver­sal mail-in vot­ing as a “scam” and defend­ed DeJoy as the right per­son to “stream­line the post office and make it great again.”

“Louis he is work­ing very hard,” Trump said at a news con­fer­ence Sat­ur­day. “But as you know, the Democ­rats aren’t approv­ing prop­er fund­ing for postal, and they’re not approv­ing the prop­er fund­ing for this ridicu­lous thing they want to do which is all mail-in voting.”

His chief of staff tried on Sun­day to counter crit­i­cism that Trump was try­ing to sti­fle turnout with nation­al and bat­tle­ground state polls show­ing him fac­ing a dif­fi­cult path to reelec­tion against Demo­c­rat Joe Biden.

“I’ll give you that guar­an­tee right now: The pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States is not going to inter­fere with any­body cast­ing their vote in a legit­i­mate way, whether it’s the post office or any­thing else,” Mark Mead­ows said.

But Democ­rats said changes made by DeJoy con­sti­tute “a grave threat to the integri­ty of the elec­tion and to our very democ­ra­cy.” They assert­ed that DeJoy “has act­ed as an accom­plice in the president’s cam­paign to cheat in the elec­tion, as he launch­es sweep­ing new oper­a­tional changes that degrade deliv­ery stan­dards and delay the mail.”

The agency in the mean­time is now seek­ing a short-term end-of-the-year rate increase, accord­ing to a notice filed Fri­day with the Postal Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion. The rea­sons: increased expens­es, height­ened demand for online pack­ages due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and an expect­ed increase in hol­i­day mail volume.

The plan would raise prices on com­mer­cial domes­tic com­pet­i­tive parcels, includ­ing Pri­or­i­ty Mail Express, Pri­or­i­ty Mail, first-class pack­age Ser­vice, Par­cel Select and Par­cel Return Ser­vice. No change is expect­ed for first-class letters.

Most of the pro­posed increas­es would be less than 10%. They range from 24 cents for Par­cel Select Ser­vice, which starts at $3.05, to a $1.50 increase for Pri­or­i­ty Mail Express Com­mer­cial, which starts at $22.75. The reg­u­la­to­ry com­mis­sion is expect­ed to decide on the pro­pos­als next month.

The Postal Ser­vice is the country’s most pop­u­lar gov­ern­ment agency with 91% of Amer­i­cans hav­ing a favor­able opin­ion of the ser­vice, accord­ing to a Pew Research Cen­ter Sur­vey pub­lished in April.

“What con­cerns me is an all-out attack — they’re not even hid­ing it — by the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States to under­mine the Unit­ed States Postal Ser­vice, to under­fund it, to allow a mega-donor lead­ing it to overt­ly do things to slow down the mail,” said Sen. Cory Book­er, D‑N.J.

Sanders was on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” while Mead­ows and Book­er appeared on CNN’s ”State of the Union.”

Mad­hani report­ed from Bed­min­ster, N.J. Asso­ci­at­ed Press writer Lisa Mas­caro con­tributed to this report.