For nearly a decade, Donald Trump and his minions have wielded their chainsaws at women’s rights and the U.S. Postal Service, which was why seeing the first and only woman Postmaster General lifted my spirits.
Both institutions were on my mind before Megan Brennan, who retired from that position in 2020, addressed the Schuylkill County Democratic Women’s League in our hometown of Pottsville on Tuesday.
I vote by mail because I like being able to take my time and do my research. So of course, I was horrified that Trump, who’s talked about privatizing or seizing control of the Postal Service, wants to use it to sabotage this safe and secure way to cast a ballot.
Fortunately, enough Supreme Court justices put the kibosh on this part of his election-rigging scheme for the midterms, but they haven’t ruled it out for the future. Meanwhile, the Trump/Project 2025 regime has done what it loves to do: cause confusion and distrust.
As for women’s rights, there was the death of Gloria Steinem, who inspired so many of us women to live life on our own terms. And this regime hasn’t stopped lobbing salvos at women’s rights and opportunities, even though its attacks against Iran, immigrants and anything or anyone else it dislikes are getting more attention.
There’s also “Yesteryear,” the best-selling and much-discussed novel about an influencer who’s suddenly forced to live as the submissive trad wife she cosplayed on social media.
She’d come into her own when she derailed her nepo baby husband’s unmanly plan to become a kindergarten teacher and decided that her ambition and ruthlessness qualified her to run her household, albeit behind the scenes.
But even she suffered because of the patriarchal values she lived by. And the very rights that people like her are prodding women to renounce are what allowed Megan Brennan and countless other women to find success and fulfillment that their mothers and grandmothers couldn’t imagine.
Breaking a glass ceiling
Brennan joined the Postal Service in 1986 as a letter carrier in Lancaster. After a series of promotions, she was appointed postmaster general in late 2014.
For most of my life, I didn’t think much about that position, but I’ll bet most people in the post-World War II decades wouldn’t have considered it one for a woman. In fact, most boomers like me probably grew up thinking of people in Brennan’s first job as mailmen.
During her speech at the Democratic Women’s League’s Eleanor Roosevelt Dinenr, she praised both her former employer and “the strong women who are engaged in the democratic process, working for a better tomorrow.”
She came from a family of postal workers who included her father and two brothers. And while she was growing up in Pottsville, she watched her parents work on local political campaigns.
As a teenager in the ’70s, she herself went door to door to deliver pamphlets for Jacqueline Lord Shields, a Democrat who was running for state rep against GOP incumbent William Hutchinson.
“While she didn’t win the seat,” Brennan said, “she mounted two highly competitive campaigns.”
She said she was honored to lead the Postal Service, which is “more technologically advanced” and “delivers more mail than any other post in the world.
“ … And it still carries the same mission that it’s held for 250 years: to bind the nation together.”
Her sister, League Secretary Brigid McFadden, reeled off some impressive Postal Service statistics: more than 31,000 retail offices, 630,000 employees, 200,000 vehicles and daily deliveries to more than 170 million addresses.
But Brennan’s career path moved her most. “She didn’t walk in as an executive,” McFadden said. And when she became postmaster general, “another glass ceiling was shattered. And all women benefit when that happens.”
What now?
Throughout her tenure, Brennan had to contend with the Postal Service’s longstanding financial problems as an independent agency of the executive branch that nonetheless must run like a business and depend on the revenue it generates.
But I didn’t stop taking the post office for granted until the election-related controversies that erupted under her Trump-appointed successors.
Cost cuts by prominent GOP donor and former logistics company CEO Louis DeJoy slowed mail delivery during the COVID pandemic and ahead of the 2020 election. Public outcry and a congressional investigation prompted him to reverse course.
After DeJoy stepped down last year, Trump replaced him with David Steiner. Although the former FedEx board member and Waste Management CEO insists he’s not political, he faced blowback for working with Trump on restricting mail-in ballots before the Supreme Court stopped that move.
Brennan didn’t mention DeJoy or Steiner, but she did say this: “The Postal Service will uphold its promise to deliver the nation’s election mail securely, on time, and consistent with its nonpartisan public service mission.”
I hope it can keep that promise after November – and that the White House can’t replace the glass ceiling that Brennan managed to smash.
Photo: Marybeth Matz
Canary note: Opinions expressed in any Op-Ed column appearing on this site are the views of the writer and are not necessarily the opinions of Coal Region Canary.
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