The Brief

If it continues business as usual, the U.S. Postal Service is on track to run out of cash for paying its workers and vendors in about a year and may have to stop deliveries, Postmaster General David Steiner told lawmakers this week.

The warning is the latest development in longstanding money troubles at USPS — a unique federal government agency that relies on stamps and service fees, not tax dollars, to deliver mail and packages six days a week to every address in the country.

"I am not sure that the American public is aware that the Postal Service is at a critical juncture. I know that I wasn't aware of the extent of it before I took on this role, but at our current run rate and if we continue to pay our required obligations in the same manner as we have done in recent years, then we will be out of cash in less than 12 months," Steiner, who joined USPS last July, said in a written statement released ahead of a House Oversight Committee hearing on Tuesday.

Since 2007, the mailing agency has been operating with a financial shortfall almost every fiscal year with fewer people and businesses using first-class mail, its most profitable product, amid the rise of paperless billing and digital communication.

"I like to say that in the time since peak 2006 mail volume, the Postal Service was thrown overboard and instead of tossing us a life jacket, we were thrown an anchor," Steiner said, referring to what USPS has seen as burdensome regulations and requirements.

So far, its multi-year reorganization effort, which started in 2021 under Steiner's predecessor Louis DeJoy, has not delivered enough efficiencies to stem the financial bleeding.

USPS ended fiscal year 2025 with a net loss of $9 billion. And after finishing its busiest mailing and shipping season of the year in December, it recently posted its fourth quarterly loss in a row ($1.3 billion), partly due to increases in workers' compensation, retiree health benefit and operating expenses.

Mail deliveries have not stopped, however, because USPS has been able to borrow money from the U.S. Treasury, while holding off on paying some pension obligations in recent years.

But USPS can take on no more debt under federal law, which has capped the agency's borrowing at $15 billion.

And defaulting on more benefit obligations is not a long-term solution, Steiner told Congress, because at some point, USPS "will no longer be able to maintain operations in the short-term through such defaults, and those obligations that we cannot meet will have to include payments to our employees and vendors."

That has left Steiner to turn to Congress for help.

Among the changes Steiner is calling for is increasing the Postal Service's debt limit, which has not changed since 1992, and allowing USPS to raise postage prices beyond the current limits. Reforming its retiree benefit obligations has been another focus of USPS officials.

At a February public meeting of the Postal Service's governors, Amber McReynolds, who chairs the board, said "policymakers must act urgently to address the structural and statutory cost pressures that continue to weigh heavily on our financial future."

Past USPS leaders have asked lawmakers to help the mailing agency stay afloat. Most recently, Congress passed the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022, which got rid of a requirement for USPS to prepay future retiree health benefits and canceled about $57 billion in past-due prefunding payments. That law resulted in the only fiscal year in the past two decades that USPS ended without a shortfall.

For its part, USPS is trying to boost revenue this year by starting to take bids from large and small businesses for special shipping rates for its nationwide "last-mile" delivery network. Some industry experts, however, say that could push Amazon and other big shippers to stop relying on the Postal Service and further destabilize the agency.

The Postal Service's financial struggles have also attracted the Trump administration's attention, though talk of having the Commerce Department take over USPS, which Congress set up to be an independent agency, has quieted over the past year.

But President Donald Trump is continuing a push to appoint his own picks to the agency's board of governors, whose politically appointed members are currently all nominees of former President Joe Biden. This month, Trump named three new nominees after withdrawing an earlier nomination last year and having another returned by the Senate.

Edited by Benjamin Swasey
Copyright 2026 NPR

Hundreds of people from across Greater L.A. journeyed to the Mojave Desert this weekend to protest living conditions at the Adelanto Immigration and Customs Enforcement Processing Center, where an estimated 2,000 people are being held.

Current and former detainees say immigrants there face rotten food, denial of medication and solitary confinement.

The Trump administration, which has denied those charges, has promised to expand the network of immigrant prisons like Adelanto across the U.S., even as the number of people who’ve died in ICE custody grows.

The organizers stage a concert outside the detention center on Saturday to serenade the detainees, while also speaking to how the administration’s policies have harmed their communities.

Sandra Garcia was among dozens of people who boarded three buses outside the Pasadena Community Job Center. She decided to make the trek out of a sense of responsibility, she told LAist. Last summer, immigration agents raided her family’s tamale stand, pinned four of their regular customers to the ground and arrested them. She said it’s something her family can’t forget. Two of Garcia’s cousins have also been detained. One of them, she said, has already been deported.

Since then, Garcia has joined a rapid response network to help alert her neighbors to the presence of federal agents.

“ As a U.S citizen, I'm gonna continue pushing,” she added.

Sandra Garcia said two of her cousins were detained by ICE, as were four customers at her family's business in Pasadena.

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Heavenly Hughes, a longtime Altadena resident, said she joined the caravan “to show that Black and brown unity is important.”

Her parents, she said, bought their home in the early 1970s, and the community she grew up in was the product of redlining.

“Hardworking Black people built this community,” she said of Altadena. When the Eaton Fire broke out, “my friends, my peers, those who helped raise me — they lost everything in the fire.”

The day laborers at the job center have been integral to rebuilding the region, Hughes said. She was going to Adelanto to protest against the detention of these workers and to express her solidarity with them and their families.

“I love when I hear our community saying joy is resistance,” she said. “ We want the people there who are detained to hear our voices.  That they are humans. That they deserve to be treated right.”

Songs of resistance  

As desert winds blew, the activists made their way from the caravans to a mobile stage truck.

“It's heavy to be here,” said Elisa Schwartz, a resident of Valley Village who carried a sign that read: “We’ve seen this shit before.”

“As a Jew, I was raised to know that once you are othered, you are in serious danger,” she added.

To get to Adelanto from her home, Schwartz traveled nearly 100 miles. As she marched along the dusty highway with other protesters, she wished she could go out there every day.

“I hope [this] will mean something to them,” she said.

Demonstrators gathered at the front of Adelanto ICE Processing Center, in San Bernardino County. The privately run detention center has faced accusations of neglect and inhumane conditions, including in a recent lawsuit.

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Up on the stage, the musicians played folk songs about working class solidarity and resistance to repressive governments, like Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin'” and a rendition of Alí Primera’s “Techos de cartón.”

Some protesters created an altar near the stage in honor of those who recently died in immigrant prisons, or at the hands of federal agents. For a while, the mood was somber, and the activists weren’t sure that the detainees could hear the music. The unyielding gusts of wind didn’t help.

A few feet away, brothers Abe and Ben (who asked LAist not to share their last name out of fear of reprisal) distributed groceries from the back of their truck. When a parent or partner is detained, Abe noted, it can wreak economic havoc on a household. They wanted to do their part to help ease their burden.

They would know. In late February, Abe had been detained at Adelanto. And Ben had flown to visit him in Adelanto from the Bay Area.

“It was really hard to see, you know, my older brother, who I grew up with, in these conditions,” Ben said.

Abe, left, said he spent nearly a month in the Adelanto ICE Processing Center. He came to the demonstration with his brother Ben, right, to show support for people who are still inside.

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Abe was detained for three weeks after being arrested at an annual check-in. When asked about what it was like inside, he said he always ate canned food — “nothing was fresh” — and that getting medical attention could take up to a week. He most looked forward to the one hour per day he was allowed to be outside.

“You're behind the fence, inside the cages, but at least you're in the sun,” he said.

While he was detained, Ben’s friends suggested that he launch a GoFundMe page to help the family cover his brother's attorney’s fees. More than 200 people contributed. That level of support “was hope giving,” Ben said. Now that Abe is free, he, his brother and Abe’s wife decided to go to the protest and pay it forward.

Singers performed from a truck outfitted with huge speakers.

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Demonstrators gathered around a delivery truck that served as a stage for performers and speakers.

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Getting in contact with people inside

Jax Santana, whose father, Ramiro Santiago Pacheco Martinez, was detained last November, told the crowd that their father was a day laborer in Pomona; that he taught them to drive and cheered for them at graduation; that they and their four siblings wanted him home.

As the sun began to set, the crowd moved the mobile stage across the street, closer to the detention center.

The musicians played more upbeat music including cumbia and quebradita.

Jax Santana came to the demonstration to speak out for her father, Ramiro Santiago Pacheco Martinez. He was detained in November and is being held at Adelanto ICE Processing Center.

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Demonstrators marched around the Adelanto ICE Processing Center on Saturday to demand the release of people detained at the facility. Their goal was to make enough noise that people inside the detention center could hear them.

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Santana took the mic for a second time. Using a government-approved messaging system, they were able to make contact with their father.

“He can hear us!” Santana told a cheering crowd. “They all can hear us!”

Then, Santana led the crowd in chanting: “No estan solos! You’re not alone!"

As the chanting died down, Santana shared one more message from their father: “You better be dancing,” he said.

A federal judge Monday dealt a major blow to the Trump administration's efforts to overhaul the nation's vaccine policies, including the controversial decision to slash the number of federally recommended vaccinations for children.

U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy in Boston put a hold on the decisions made by an influential Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisory committee, ruling that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had improperly replaced the entire committee.

The decision was hailed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other leading health groups that brought the lawsuit, as well as infectious disease experts around the country.

"Today's ruling is a historic and welcome outcome for children, communities, and pediatricians everywhere," said Dr. Andrew Racine, the pediatric academy's president.

The administration plans to appeal the decision, according to Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon. "HHS looks forward to this judge's decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing," Nixon wrote in an email to NPR.

Nixon, confirmed, however that the ruling had forced the CDC vaccine committee, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, to postpone a meeting that was planned for Wednesday and Thursday. The committee was expected to raise new questions about the COVID-19 vaccines and possibly revamp how federal vaccine policies are formulated.

The judge ruled that Kennedy and his committee had made arbitrary and capricious decisions, ignoring a long-used, well-regarded scientific process for developing vaccine policies. He wrote in his ruling, "the government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions."

The ACIP, whose members Kennedy fired and replaced largely with new members who also criticized vaccines, had issued a series of contentious recommendations, including a recommendation that all babies get vaccinated against hepatitis B at birth. The judge's ruling stays the appointment of 13 committee members appointed by Kennedy since June 2025, when the previous members were fired.

Administration lawyers had argued that the changes were the result of different interpretations of vaccine data.

"This is a significant victory for public health, evidence-based medicine, the rule of law, and the American people," Richard Hughes, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told reporters after the ruling.
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