Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night is supposed to thwart the delivery of the U.S. mail. But that old motto says nothing about deliberate sabotage by a sitting president intent on disenfranchising voters.

Critics of President Donald Trump have warned for awhile that he's deliberately hobbling the U.S. Postal Service to hamper mail-in voting ahead of the Nov. 3 election. Trump's defenders in the right-wing media have expressed outrage at this assumption of nefarious motives. A Wall Street Journal op-ed headline went so far as to call it a "smear." But last week, Trump said the quiet part out loud, admitting — practically boasting — that, yes, sabotage is exactly what's going on here.

Expecting any kind of self-reflection from Trump's conservative media lickspittles would be expecting too much. But will the rest of America, and Congress, really stand by and watch him openly undermine both a crucial government service and electoral democracy itself?

With the Postal Service bracing for one of its greatest challenges, Trump has refused requests for an urgent $25 billion funding infusion. As usual with Trump, his motives are self-serving. Record mail-in voting is expected ahead of November due to fears of coronavirus exposure at polling places. Trump has said he believes mail-in voting will hurt Republicans. Meaning, him.

There's actually little to suggest mail-in voting favors either party — though anything that spurs higher turnout could well hurt an incumbent already down in the polls, as Trump is. In any case, there's zero evidence for his argument that mail-in voting spawns voter fraud. It's clear his real concern isn't that mail-in voting won't work correctly, but that it will.

Trump on Thursday succinctly settled the debate over his motives, by stating them plainly: "They want $25 billion ... for the Post Office. Now they need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots," Trump told a Fox News interviewer. "But if they don't get [the money], that means you can't have universal mail-in voting because they're not equipped to have it." Trump later tried to walk back the comments, but that bell can't be unrung.

Even as Trump was working to ensure millions of Americans can't vote by mail, he and First Lady Melania Trump both mailed in their absentee ballots for Florida's primary this Tuesday.

That little nugget might be satisfying for critics to focus on, but Trump's offense here is far worse than hypocrisy. He's using the power of his office to hinder the right to vote — the foundation of America's democracy — because he believes stopping it will help his political fortunes. If members of Congress stand for this, they are as guilty in this attack on democracy as he is.

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