Save the Postal Service

W in Durham, North Carolina—back in the 1990s, before I became a historian—an older man used to greet me joyfully, “Here comes Uncle Sam!” To him, and to others on my route, I represented not just the chance of a letter, but also a connection to the federal government—and to an institution that had probably provided a relative with a steady job, and a path into the middle class. The United States Postal Service is among the country’s most popular institutions, enjoying as high as 90 percent. The USPS delivers percent of the world’s mail to 160 million homes. Yet in late March, as the Postal Service struggled to deal with the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump threatened to a version of the $2.2 trillion bipartisan CARES Act stimulus package that contained a $13 billion grant to help the USPS keep