When Rhiannon Hampson, a farmer in coastal Maine, went to her post office to pick up a recent delivery of newly hatched chicks, the box was eerily silent.
“We could hear a few, very faint peeps,” Hampson says. “Out of 500, there were maybe 25 alive. They were staggering. It was terrible.”
For decades, postal carriers have delivered day-old chicks in cardboard boxes to small farmers and families with backyard henhouses. But this summer, postal delays have wreaked havoc with the tradition, and chicks around the country have arrived dead.
The delays that became apparent in the late summer are the latest sign of crisis at an agency that has been plagued with financial troubles for a long time. The problems have been
Amid these challenges, President Trump has been attacking the Postal Service, calling it “a joke,” and refusing to support additional funding. Democrats say he’s trying to