Democracy Dies in Darkness

The Founders never intended the U.S. Postal Service to be managed like a business

The mail delivery agency is supposed to serve the public good — not worry about profit

Perspective by
Richard R. John is a professor at the Columbia Journalism School and the author of "Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse."
April 27, 2020 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
A mail carrier wearing a protective mask has packages yet to deliver in Hawthorne, Calif., April 20. (Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg)

To combat the coronavirus, Congress has seemingly tried to bail out everyone: Millions of individuals, airlines, restaurants, retail businesses and even golf courses are among the beneficiaries of the government’s largesse.

But so far, one struggling institution has come up empty: the U.S. Postal Service. On Friday, President Trump threatened to block a loan to the Postal Service, calling it “a joke” and demanding postal administrators raise the price of packages by “approximately four times,” before tweeting later that he would “never let our Post Office fail.”