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The House passed legislation on Saturday to infuse $25 billion into the Postal Service and block operational changes that Democrats fear could hobble mail-in voting in this November's election.

In a rare Saturday session, the House passed the measure by a vote of 257 to 150, with 26 Republicans siding with Democrats to approve the bill.

The bill effectively reverses recent cost-cutting measures introduced by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy that he had called necessary to help shore up the Postal Service's finances. It blocks the Postal Service from making any service or operations changes through at least January and requires it to prioritize delivery of all election-related mail.

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Postal workers in Washington State have reinstalled high-speed mail sorting machines—dismantled after controversial orders from the U.S. Postal Service— despite USPS orders not to put machines back in use.

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When Jacob Gray opened the box of chicks he ordered, he saw that about 300 of them had been mashed to a pulp. The 100 or so birds that survived tread on their dead fellows and nibbled on what remained of them.

Gray, 28, has been ordering chicks from a breeder in California for his farm in rural southwest Colorado for more than seven years. He never lost more than about a dozen birds in a perforated box of 400 because the U.S. Postal Service delivered them within two days.

That changed over the past few months, as the boxes arrived days late to his home in Delta County, Colorado, an area larger than Rhode Island with a population of about 30,000 people.

“I opened it up and was immediately hit with the smell of death,” he said of the most recent box he received two weeks ago. “Sometimes, the post office would call us in the morning and say, ‘Get these things out of here,’ because they smelled so bad.”

Hundreds of baby birds Gray ordered this summer have died, and he said he had to cancel his remaining orders and renegotiate his farm loan because of nearly $4,000 in losses — more than 10 percent of what he’d hoped to earn this year.

Recent Postal Service delays have affected millions of Americans’ packages and letters, but the impact has been particularly widespread and difficult in rural communities, which depend on the federal agency more than densely populated regions of the United States.

In addition to chicks and other small livestock, including honeybees, farmers order seeds and specialty tools they can no longer purchase locally. Meanwhile, hundreds of rural pharmacies have closed in recent years, leaving residents dependent on mailed prescriptions. In addition, millions of people living in remote areas lack broadband internet, so they rely on the Postal Service to pay bills, receive paychecks, conduct business and correspond with family and friends.

“As important as the Postal Service is to the rest of the country,” said Arthur Sackler, manager of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, an independent group that advocates for the agency in Washington, D.C., “it’s considerably more so to our far-flung rural areas.”

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While the Postal Service’s performance is beginning to tick back upward, after timely deliveries fell more than 10 percent beginning in July, according to the agency’s numbers, people living in rural communities say they’re still seeing the fallout of the delays. The Postal Service reported last week that its “last mile” delivery network — or mail that is carried to underserved rural communities — remained down 4.26 percent from its baseline.

Gray expanded his farm earlier this year, putting up new buildings and planning to begin selling his pasture-raised chickens to restaurant distributors in Denver. But the delays have put his business in jeopardy. He hoped to earn more than $30,000 this year, but the losses have eaten into more than 10 percent of his income, as even the birds that survive the delays have become sick and died before he can process and sell them.

“It’s delaying things,” he said. “We’re not maybe going to lose the farm, but it hurts.”

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Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) had arrived at the Royal Palm Processing and Distribution Center in Opa-Locka, Fla., for a 4 a.m. tour to find the parking lot entry roped off with caution tape and a U.S. Postal Inspection Service cruiser blocking the gate. Local Postal Service officials informed her and union leaders waiting to accompany her into the building that national USPS leadership had directed them to bar the group from the building.