The occupier of the Oval Office has made it crystal clear: The main reason he's blown up further coronavirus relief negotiations with Democrats is because they want to secure the Postal Service and the November election. He's not having that: “Now they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots. […] if they don't get those two items that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting.”
“They need that money in order to make the post office work.“ Trump is dedicated to making sure the Postal Service does not work, and so far no one is telling him he can't. Particularly not the only people who have any hope of influencing him: Senate Republicans. Which is ironic since it's their constituents who are most likely to be seriously harmed—like life-and-death harmed—without a functioning Postal Service. Because it's rural voters who regularly send Republicans to the Senate who rely most on the institution for critical things like medications and paying their bills. The U.S. Postal Service provides the last-mile delivery in rural America for FedEx and UPS, which don't have the resources to deliver to these areas because it's not profitable for them to operate there.
Senate Republicans are sitting by while Trump destroys everything, even the Postal Service. We have to get them out. Help here with your $5.
There’s a typical racist method here too, of course. Because many of the areas that are particularly reliant on the Postal Service are also communities of color and are economically disadvantaged—all the people Republicans don’t want to be able to vote. Twyla Baker of the Mandan-Hidatsa tribe in North Dakota told Vox that shutting down the Postal Service “would just be kind of a continuation of these structures in the US that already dispossessed people of color, black and indigenous people of color, and people below the poverty line. […] USPS isn’t just a public service,” she said. “It’s a lifeline.”
More than 14 million people in rural areas, according to the Federal Communications Commission, don't have internet access. They have to conduct their finances and pay their bills by mail. (In fact, 18% of all Americans pay their bills by mail.) The National Community Pharmacists Association found in a survey that 20% of people over age 40 get their prescriptions for chronic conditions through the mail.
The Department of Veterans Affairs provides 80% of all its outpatient prescriptions by mail. More than 330,000 veterans every day get their prescription medicines by mail. Or at least, before Trump's sabotage, that happened every day. Now? "What used to take days now takes weeks," one veteran told Radio.com. "I received my life-saving medication 20 days late," another reported. "I ordered five weeks early, expecting delays," yet another veteran told the outlet. "My meds were still late." Another vet stressed: "We depend on these medications. […] This could be devastating. I can't go without."
Then there are the elections. In Minnesota alone, 130,000 people can only vote by mail because they live in communities that are too small to open up polling locations. That's definitely what Trump wants to shut down. But what about Republican senators in all these states?
For instance, Iowa Republican Joni Ernst, who is up for reelection this year. More than one-third of her constituents live in rural areas. Trump's toady, Louis DeJoy, who now in charge of the Postal Service, has been removing sorting equipment from Iowa post offices to sabotage delivery service. Ernst is defending just one of the 23 seats Republicans are defending in November, and nearly every single one has significant rural populations.
What are they saying about Trump's destruction of this vital institution? Nary a peep from any of them.
