Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

As ballot surge starts, a USPS attaboy from its global colleagues

Postal Service

Postal workers have been buffeted by safety, financial and political challenges during he pandemic.

Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images

The Postal Service got a little uplifting news Thursday, after having faced quite a bit of guff lately over its readiness to handle this fall's deluge of election mail.

The United Nations agency that sets global postal rules and policies, the Universal Postal Union, declared the USPS the seventh best postal service in the world. That's actually up one notch from last year's ratings.

The high score may offer a psychological balm to postal workers, buffeted by months of bad headlines and lawsuits about service cuts suspected of being designed to slow the pandemic-fueled flow of tens of millions of absentee presidential ballots.


But it is highly unlikely to mollify President Trump. Not only does he continue to derided the USPS as a shoddy operation that's been duped into supporting massive voter fraud, but he's long threatened to withdraw the United States from the treaty that created the U.N. agency because he says it hobbles American trade.

The postal union rankings of services in 170 countries relied on an ocean of data to measure each postal system's reliability (speed and accuracy of delivery), reach (breadth and depth of operations), relevance (intensity of demand) and resilience (diversity of revenue sources and capacity to innovate).

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Switzerland tops the rankings, followed by Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and France. The USPS was next with its 83.47 score a full 5.5 points better than last year.

The biggest factor affecting postal service around the world, of course, is the coronavirus pandemic, the report says. "At the time of writing this report, the connectivity of the international network has not yet been fully restored," the report concludes.

The report was issued hours after the latest bit of bad election-related news for the Postal Service: The arrest of a New Jersey postal worker Wednesday on charges he poured nearly 100 mail-in ballots into a dumpster near his house rather than deliver them to voters. The state is among half a dozen that have switched the general election to mostly mail-in for this year only to minimize the public's Covid-19 risks.

Read More

Just the Facts: DEI

Colorful figures in a circle.

Getty Images, AndreyPopov

Just the Facts: DEI

The Fulcrum strives to approach news stories with an open mind and skepticism, looking to present our readers with a broad spectrum of viewpoints through diligent research and critical thinking. As best as we can, we work to remove personal bias from our reporting and seek a variety of perspectives in both our news gathering and selection of opinion pieces.

However, before our readers can analyze varying viewpoints, they must have the facts.

Keep ReadingShow less
The Republican Party Can Build A Winning Coalition With Independents

People voting at a polling booth.

Getty Images//Rawpixel

The Republican Party Can Build A Winning Coalition With Independents

The results of the 2024 election should put to bed any doubts as to the power of independent voters to decide key elections. Independents accounted for 34% of voters in 2024, handing President Trump the margin of victory in every swing state race and making him only the second Republican to win the popular vote since 1988. The question now is whether Republicans will build bridges with independent voters and cement a generational winning coalition or squander the opportunity like the Democrats did with the independent-centric Obama coalition.

Almost as many independents came out to vote this past November as Republicans, more than the 31% of voters who said they were Democrats, and just slightly below the 35% of voters who said they were Republicans. In 2020, independents cast just 26% of the ballots nationwide. The President’s share of the independent vote went up 5% compared to the 2020 election when he lost the independent vote to former President Biden by a wide margin. It’s no coincidence that many of the key demographics that President Trump made gains with this election season—Latinos, Asians and African Americans—are also seeing historic levels of independent voter registration.

Keep ReadingShow less
Large Bipartisan Majorities Oppose Deep Cuts to Foreign Aid

The Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland releases a new survey, fielded February 6-7, 2025, with a representative sample of 1,160 adults nationwide.

Pexels, Tima Miroshnichenko

Large Bipartisan Majorities Oppose Deep Cuts to Foreign Aid

An overwhelming majority of 89% of Americans say the U.S. should spend at least one percent of the federal budget on foreign aid—the current amount the U.S. spends on aid. This includes 84% of Republicans and 94% of Democrats.

Fifty-eight percent oppose abolishing the U.S. Agency for International Development and folding its functions into the State Department, including 77% of Democrats and 62% of independents. But 60% of Republicans favor the move.

Keep ReadingShow less