When your bill payment shows up late, the late fee is yours. When your medicine gets lost in the mail, that is your problem to solve. When a tax document or legal notice never arrives, the consequences land on you.
The people running the U.S. Postal Service play by different rules.
On June 30, 2026, Senator Josh Hawley announced a congressional investigation into USPS failures in Missouri, possible criminal activity tied to abandoned mail, and bonus compensation paid to postal executives while delivery continues to deteriorate.
The trigger came a week earlier, when Hawley questioned Postmaster General David Steiner during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing. Hawley stated that Steiner refused, both at the hearing and afterward, to return or forgo bonus pay despite Missourians reporting late and missing mail.
Hawley pointed to a large pile of mail discovered in North St. Louis City on April 29, 2026. His letter indicates the pile included thousands of pieces, and Steiner testified he had not even been aware of it.
According to Senator Hawley’s official release, the investigation covers service failures across Missouri, the St. Louis incident, potential criminal conduct, and executive compensation practices. Hawley reports his office continues to receive complaints from constituents facing delayed and undelivered mail.
He cited USPS Inspector General audits of St. Louis and Kansas City. One St. Louis audit was described as the worst failure in on-time delivery observed by the inspector general during field operations reviews. A separate Kansas City audit found nearly 100,000 pieces of mail delayed over a three-day inspection period.
Hawley criticized USPS on-time delivery targets, which permit up to one in ten pieces of mail to miss the standard and still be counted as successful. Missouri’s performance in 2024 and 2025 hovered around 76 percent.
Additionally, Hawley highlighted public filings showing millions in non-salary compensation paid to Postmasters General over the past decade, with senior leaders earning hundreds of thousands annually in extra pay.
Hawley has demanded that USPS provide responsive documents and written answers by July 15, 2026. The request includes internal communications regarding the St. Louis incident, the exact date Steiner first became aware of it, whether any postal employees were referred to the Justice Department for alleged theft, delay, or destruction of mail, and records related to potential falsification of scan data to inflate delivery numbers.
In a separate statement, Hawley urged Steiner to resign unless he committed to forgoing bonuses until mail delivery to Missourians becomes timely. He characterized Steiner’s response after the hearing as an attempt to shift blame and evade accountability.
USPS has not yet responded to Hawley’s request for comment.
