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 operate under 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 flowing to postal executives while delivery continues to decline.
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 during 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 this accumulation included thousands of pieces, and that Steiner testified he had not even been informed about it.
According to Senator Hawley’s official release, the investigation covers service failures across Missouri, the St. Louis mail dumping incident, possible criminal conduct, and executive compensation. Hawley reported that his office continues to receive complaints from constituents experiencing delayed and undelivered mail.
He cited USPS Inspector General audits of St. Louis and Kansas City. One St. Louis audit was described by Hawley as the most severe failure of on-time delivery observed in field operations reviews. A separate Kansas City audit found nearly 100,000 delayed pieces of mail over a three-day period.
Hawley also criticized the USPS’s on-time delivery standards, noting they allow up to one in ten pieces of mail to miss the target and still be counted as successful. Missouri’s performance in 2024 and 2025 averaged around 76 percent.
Public filings reveal millions in non-salary compensation paid to Postmasters General over the past decade, with senior leaders receiving hundreds of thousands annually in additional pay.
Hawley is demanding written responses and documents by July 15, 2026. The request includes internal USPS communications regarding the St. Louis mail incident, the exact date Steiner first became aware of it, any referrals to law enforcement over suspected theft or destruction of mail, and information about alleged scan data manipulation.
Hawley further stated that Postmaster General Steiner must resign unless he commits to forgo bonuses until mail delivery in Missouri becomes timely. He characterized Steiner’s response after the hearing as an attempt to shift blame and evade accountability.