Louis DeJoy, the head of the U.S. Postal Service, intends to step down, the federal agency said Tuesday, after a nearly five-year tenure marked by the coronavirus pandemic, surges in mail-in election ballots and efforts to stem losses through cost and service cuts.

In a Monday letter, Postmaster General DeJoy asked the Postal Service Board of Governors to begin looking for his successor.

DeJoy took the helm of the postal service in the summer of 2020 during President Donald Trump’s first term. He was a Republican donor who owned a logistics business before taking office and was the first postmaster general in nearly two decades who was not a career postal employee.

DeJoy developed a 10-year plan to modernize operations and stem losses. He previously said that postal customers should get used to “uncomfortable” rate hikes as the postal service seeks to stabilize its finances and become more self-sufficient.

The plan calls for making the mail delivery system more efficient and less costly by consolidating mail processing centers. Critics, including members of Congress from several states, have said the first consolidations slowed service and that further consolidations could particularly hurt rural mail delivery.

DeJoy has disputed that and told a U.S. House subcommittee during a contentious September hearing that the Postal Service had embarked on long-overdue investments in “ratty” facilities and making other changes to create “a Postal Service for the future” that delivered mail more quickly.

DeJoy also oversaw the postal service during two presidential elections that saw spikes in mail-in ballots.

Bolsonaro charged in alleged 2022 coup

Brazil’s prosecutor-general on Tuesday formally charged former President Jair Bolsonaro with attempting a coup to stay in office after his 2022 election defeat, in a plot that included a plan to poison his successor and current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and kill a Supreme Court judge.

Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet alleges that Bolsonaro and 33 others participated in a plan to remain in power. The alleged plot, he wrote, included a plan to poison Lula and shoot dead Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a foe of the former president.

In November, Brazil’s Federal Police filed a 884-page report with Gonet detailing the scheme.

The Supreme Court will analyze the charges and, if accepted, Bolsonaro will stand trial.

The far-right leader denies wrongdoing. “I have no concerns about the accusations, zero,” Bolsonaro told journalists earlier on Tuesday during a visit to the Senate in Brasilia.

U.S.-Mexico border crossings down 39%

Arrests for illegal border crossings from Mexico plummeted 39% in January from a month earlier, authorities said Tuesday, an early gauge of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The Border Patrol made 21,593 arrests during the month, down from 47,316 in December and the lowest mark since May 2020 near the peak of the COVID-19 epidemic, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

“Call it the Trump Effect,” the White House said in a statement.

Border arrests fell sharply well before Trump took office from an all-time high of 250,000 in December 2023. Mexican authorities increased enforcement within their own borders and then-President Joe Biden introduced severe asylum restrictions in June.

Arrests sank even further after Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20 and issued a slew of orders on immigration, including one to suspend asylum on grounds that the United States is under “invasion” at the southern border.

U.S. prosecutor quits in contractor flap protest

A top federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., abruptly resigned Tuesday after she declined a request from Trump administration officials to freeze assets of a government contractor, saying she had insufficient evidence to do so.

In her resignation letter, the prosecutor, Denise Cheung, who oversaw the

office’s criminal division, described how the interim U.S. attorney in Washington, Ed Martin, had asked her to step down after she refused to order a bank to freeze accounts of an unnamed contractor.

Martin — in coordination with the office of Emil Bove, a top Justice Department official — pushed Cheung to quickly open a criminal investigation into the vendor, which included securing subpoenas from a federal grand jury and freezing the contractor’s unspent assets, she said.

“I still do not believe that there is sufficient evidence to issue” a so-called freeze letter to the unidentified bank, wrote Cheung, a 24-year veteran of the department.

The apparent interest in ordering a freeze is believed to stem from an effort spearheaded by Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to claw back $20 billion in grants awarded for clean-energy and other environmental projects under the Biden administration, according to several people with knowledge of the situation.

Rapper Rocky acquitted of L.A. assault charge

Rap star A$AP Rocky was acquitted Tuesday of two counts of assault stemming from a 2021 Los Angeles shooting, capping a monthlong trial marked by allegations of courtroom misconduct and frequent appearances by the defendant’s superstar paramour, Rihanna.

The verdict was read in front of a packed courtroom, including Rihanna, who leaped up to hug Rocky as his supporters let out a loud roar when the court clerk read the words “not guilty.”

The rapper, whose legal name is Rakim Mayers, was accused of shooting his former friend and A$AP Mob member Terrell Ephron, aka A$AP Relli, following a fight near The W Hotel in Hollywood, Calif., in November 2021.

Rocky declined to testify in his own defense. The star rapper is set to release his first solo album in nearly a decade, headline L.A.’s Rolling Loud music festival and star in a Spike Lee film later this year.

— From news service