There isnt a single element that carried Zohran Mamdanis campaignexcept, well, for Mamdani himself. However, there was one campaign artifact that became ubiquitous on New York City streets in the months ahead of the mayoral primary: his campaign poster. Taped up on storefronts, in apartment windows, and around light posts, it was impossible to miss. The mix of colors (Metrocard yellow, Mets blue, and fire-engine red); Mamdanis affable portrait; and a hand-drawn wordmark with an exaggerated drop shadow that alighted his head like a crown stood out in the cacophonous cityscape (and bland arena of the competitions branding). Could a single-term assemblyperson ascend to the highest political office in the United States most-populous city? The poster sure made it easy to envision.
Mamdanis aesthetics, from his fashion to his video filters, are a master class in the communication required for a 21st-century campaign to be successful. His branding, by the Philadelphia-based design cooperative Forge, was nimbly applied to social media, mailers, and merch and brought cohesion to the multi-platform campaign without veering into corporate territory. And for all the new media associated with Mamdani, his poster, one of the oldest tools in a candidates kit, encapsulated the innovative messaging at the heart of his campaign: It was fresh, welcoming, and specificand set a new gold standard for progressive, political design.
The poster was designed by Tyler Evans, a designer based outside of Washington, D.C., who was Bernie Sanderss design director and, as of three months ago, became Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs creative director, and was the first widely circulated printed matter rooted in the visual identity that Forge created for the campaign. We spoke to Evans and Aneesh Bhoopathy, a creative at Forge, about what makes Mamdanis poster design so compelling.
[Photo: Tyler Evans]
Rooted In New York
The poster is based on the design system Bhoopathy and the team at Forge created. The identity is grounded in New Yorks iconography and typographic legacy, Bhoopathy says, and features a primary color palette that pulls from Metrocards, taxi cabs, and even the New York Lottery logo.
While design systems trace their roots to corporate branding, Mamdanis avoids feeling contrived or stiff. Bhoopathy hand-drew Mamdanis wordmark, a nostalgic nod to the once-ubiquitous hand-painted signs that adorned bodega storefronts, and specified Unique Gothic, a sans-serif typeface, for all other text as a way to balance out the playfulness so the identity doesn’t get too Barnum and Bailey, he says. The colors, lettering, and levity help Mamdanis branding feel relatable. The nostalgia, the human touchthat is obviously different from a more corporate brand, Bhoopathy says. Its just the feeling of it being for everyone.
[Photo: Zohran for New York City]
A Handmade Look
Before designing Mamdanis mayoral campaign, Bhoopathy designed graphics for his assembly run and has also worked with New York State Senators Julia Salazar and Jabari Brisport. These experiences taught him that the branding for progressive candidates is often memedlike the famous Hot Girls for Zohran shirtswhich he welcomes.
One thing about working in leftist campaigns is knowing that people are going to remix, screen print, and make their own things, Bhoopathy says. And so you have to be comfortable with letting things take on a life of their own and not feel too precious about it, like you might be with a corporate brand.
A human touch is also important to Evans in poster design. In Democratic politics especially, there was a rush to kind of put a corporate sheen on things and to make things really nice and clean, he says. And it kind of forgets the fact that people are involved and people are messy. I don’t think people should be afraid of making things look a little rough, making things look handmade, or potentially even doing things handmade. The people element of politics cant be overlooked, and that follows through into visuals.
The campaign poster was the first project to test Forges flexible approach to the design system. The only constraints? Evans was asked to use a portrait Mamdanis team provided and to stick to the typefaces that Bhoopathy specified; everything else was open to interpretation.
[Photo: Zohran for New York City]
Not a Political Type
Evans designs political posters that dont look political. Its a strategic move the voters his candidates are vying for are distrustful of establishment politics. Usually this draws people in and makes them curious about what this person is about, Evans says.
In order to do this, Evans opts for expressive typography. There’s always got to be some mood, energy, and spirit present, he says. It has to feel alive.
The sensibility Evans likes is common in the sports and entertainment industry and, occasionally, in political design from the past, especially from the FDR and Lyndon B. Johnson eras. Baseball logos are frequent reference material; he used the Gothic font from the Pittsburgh Pirates in an Instagram poster for one of Bernies rallies in the Steel City; in an Instagram poster he designed to announce Bernies endorsement of Mamdani, he borrowed from the Brooklyn Dodgers logo for Sanderss name and from the Mets logo for Mamdani. (In addition to designing the printed campaign poster, Evans also designed multiple Instagram posters for the campaigns pivotal moments.)
The wordmark Bhoopathy designed has the gravitas Evans looks for. Evans riffed on the drop shadows found in Bollywood posters so it stands out even more. Somebody on the AOC campaign said [Zohrans poster] looked more like a concert poster for a singer than a political campaign poster, which I take as a compliment, he says.
[Photo: Kara McCurdy]
Brevity, for Legibilitys Sake
There is very little writing on Mamdanis poster and what words are there are efficient. They say exactly what he is running for and what his campaign platform is: A New York You Can Afford. And once the poster earns that attention, its respectful of it by being clear with what it saysno vague proclamations of Hope, which might have worked in Shepard Faireys 2008 poster for Obama, but isnt enough today. Thinking of people walking by on foot, you have probably two seconds max for people’s attention, Evans says.
Editing down the copy to the right amount was trial and error. Originally, the campaign wanted Mamdanis full name on the poster, but Evans eventually pared it back to Zohran. Additionally, when Evans began working on the poster, the campaign hadnt finalized its tagline; the working copy was Afford to Live and Afford to Dream, a phrase that appeared on a banner behind Mamdani when he gave his election night speech.
The back of the poster features Mamdanis platform: building affordable homes, making buses fast and free, and a rent freeze for all stabilized tenants. This campaign is uniquely disciplined and sharp, Bhoopathy says of the messaging.
In March, the campaign released a new version of the poster on Instagram, which was even more pared back.
Brief phrases also help with another key aspect of Mamdanis campaign: its multilingual. Mamdani frequently spoke to constituents in Spanish and filmed videos in Urdu/Hindi. His printed material was translated into 14 languages, some that are written in characters and some that are read right to left. The need to be nimble influenced the identity Forge designed and the poster Evans designed. Keeping the copy short and sweet lends itself to translations, Evans says.
[Photo: Zohran for New York City]
A Design Fit for the Candidate
But most importantly, the campaigns design fit Mamdani. No matter how good a visual identity might be, if it isnt authentic to the candidate, it just wont work. The candidate matters, Bhoopathy says. And Evans echoes a similar sentiment. Not to oversimplify it, but 95% is him.
To wit: Dianne Morales, a candidate for mayor in 2021, had distinctive gradient-inspired branding (and inventive merch), but her campaign spectacularly flopped after her staffers protested against poor working conditions. If you cant manage your campaign, it doesnt bode well for managing a city. Meanwhile, the branding for Kamala Harriss 2020 presidential campaign nodded back to Shirley Chisholms historic run for the countrys top office, but her For the People slogan was impotent against the chorus of Copmala memes.
Meanwhile, Mamdani understood how important branding is and had strong personal opinions about what his should look like. I admire his attention to detail, his belief in the power of design to communicate ideas, and his willingness to get creative with it, Bhoopathy says.
The classic funding announcement post is getting the Gen Z treatment.
More startups, especially those led by young founders, are moving away from LinkedIn posts or X threads and turning to viral TikToks and short-form videos to stand out, Business Insider recently reported.
With traditional media coverage harder to land and social posts quickly vanishing from feeds, founders are rethinking how they announce major milestones.
Cluely, the cheat on everything startup, recently raised $15 million and announced it with a shot-for-shot homage to The Social Network. Earlier this year, they also launched with a video that cost $140,000 to produce. The 90-second narrative short, posted to X, shows a man on a first date being fed lines in real time by Cluely. The investment paid off. The video went viral and crashed Cluelys servers, founder Chungin Roy Lee told Business Insider.
Cluely is out. cheat on everything. pic.twitter.com/EsRXQaCfUI— Roy (@im_roy_lee) April 20, 2025
For Hedra, a startup focused on digital avatars, the announcement video doubled as a product demo. Founder Michael Lingelbach appears in the clip as himself, as a Studio Ghibli character, a Pixar animation, and with a full tech bro makeover, complete with gold chain. Those viral baby podcast videos that were everywhere last month? That was them.
@hedra.labs We’re hooked on the baby podcasts, so we made our own with Character-3. #ai #babypodcast #aibaby #aivideo #chatgpt #hedra original sound – Hedra – Hedra
Not every announcement needs to be a high-budget production, though. British entrepreneur Grace Beverley turned to TikTok last year to announce two fundraises: one for her activewear brand TALA, and another for Retrograde, her AI-powered talent agency.
Sign my businesss series a funding round with me, read the caption of one TikTok, where she signed the 5 million deal with a pink fluffy pen. Just a few months later, she returned with a white fluffy pen to sign the 1.9 million round for Retrograde.
@gracebeverley a pinch me moment original sound – grace beverley
Instead of relying on blog posts or LinkedIn updates, startups navigating a saturated market may find that a viral video is more likely to attract new customersor even the right investor sliding into their DMs.
For many people, when a “For Sale” sign pops up in their neighborhood, one of the first questions that comes to mind is: how much will that place go for? This price curiosityfueled by house flipping shows on HGTV and doomscrolling on Zillowhas gone from idle neighborhood interest to multimedia obsession.
Now that experience is being turned into PropQwiz, a live daily trivia sweepstakes, and accurately guessing the listing price will give players a chance to win up to $350,000 to purchase a home, pay off a mortgage, or make a down payment.
[Photo: Popqwiz]
Like a mix of the defunct daily trivia game HQ Trivia and the real estate listings on Zillow, PropQwiz is a live game played through an app that uses actual real estate listings to quiz players on the likely selling price of homes around the U.S.
Every weekday at 3 p.m. (Eastern Time), the PropQwiz app will broadcast a three-minute video featuring one house currently on the market, offering five clues about the home, the property, the amenities, and the location, and then giving players 15 seconds to guess the listing price. The closer the guess, the more points a player receives, and each point counts as an entry into a periodic sweepstakes for the grand prize of $350,000 toward a home, or $175,000 in cash. According to PropQwiz’s rules, the first home giveaway will happen after the total number of plays on the daily game and other minigames within the app reaches 31 million. By comparison, HQ Trivia had 2.4 million concurrent users at its peak of popularity.
“The more people who play this game and the more games that are played, the more homes we get to give away,” says PropQwiz creator Jim Casey. “In the beginning, it might be a home a month. We’re looking to quickly turn that into a home a week, and perhaps even a home a day.”
A longtime television producer behind shows like Building Outside the Lines and The Dead Files, Casey says the idea for the game came from his own experience, walking his dogs in his Los Angeles neighborhood with his wife and quizzing each other on the prices of homes that were up for sale. “It was fun in our neighborhood, but we found that when we traveled and we were in unfamiliar areas, it was even more fun,” he says.
That guessing game turned out to be a common one among Casey’s friends, and as he looked into it, he realized that there is an even larger pool of people who browse real estate listings just for the fun of it. Research from 2021 found that more than a third of Zillow users were not actively in the market for housing but were just using the site casually. “People were doing this everywhere,” Casey says.
But there’s also a bleaker side to that stat, which is that many people are only casually looking at real estate listings because they can’t actually afford to buy a home on the market. For people in the Gen Z and millennial age range, more than half believe they’d need to win the lottery to be able to afford a home, according to research from Zillow. “So we thought, alright, let’s give them a lottery, or at least a form of the lottery,” says Casey. (Legally speaking, the game is a sweepstakes; PropQwiz is free to play, and is supported by ads.)
Ahead of PropQwiz’s first official live game on June 30, I tried my luck at a beta version of the game. I watched a three-minute video montage of a contemporary house while a narrator cheekily explained its stats and amenities: 5,200-square feet, five bedrooms, six bathrooms, walk-in pantry, saltwater pool, hot tub, all on three quarters of an acre. The final, and most important, cluelocation, location, locationis that the home is in Charlotte, North Carolina. Not knowing much about that particular housing market, and likely not ever being in the market for such a big house, I used my 15 seconds of guessing time to frantically suggest a listing price of $7.8 million. Within seconds, the true price was revealed: $3.45 million.
“So you were pretty far off there,” says PropQwiz COO Daniel Tibbets.
“But that’s okay,” he adds, noting that even a very bad guessone off by multiple millions of dollars, for exampleearns a player at least 100 points, or 100 chances to win. Somebody guessing closer to the $3.45 million mark would have racked up 5,000 points, vastly improving their odds of winning the ultimate sweepstakes.
In addition to the daily live game, PropQwiz also features what Casey and Tibbets call minigames, which are multiple-choice quizzes that show a home and as for its current listing price, or in a version called Time Machine, its price decades ago.
The homes featured in PropQwiz aren’t pulled from real estate listing aggregators like Zillow and Redfin but licensed from real estate photographers across the country. “They own the copyright on all these images,” Casey says. “So we ask them what are your favorite homes?” The PropQwiz team digs through thousands of images to find good candidate houses. Casey, the longtime television producer, says they aren’t always big expensive homes, but they do have to have some standout feature or unique quality. “We always want something that people are going to enjoy taking a tour of,” says Casey. “It needs to be something that’s either very relatable or very aspirational.”
And, hopefully, entertaining enough that people tune in repeatedly, and get others to as well. “You bring in more people to play, you play more games, you get to have fun playing a game, and we get to give away homes,” Casey says. “That’s the goal.”
Starting today, Costco is rolling out a new schedule that introduces exclusive hours for its Executive members.
The schedule was first announced in an email sent to members earlier this month, in which the big-box warehouse club detailed its plans to adjust its hours of operations to add some attractive new perks for its highest-paying members. The plan comes on the heels of a strong financial quarter for Costco: Per its third quarter 2025 earnings report, the company notched 8% year-over-year sales gains, from $57.39 billion last year to $61.96 billion this year.
Heres what to know about the updated schedule:
How are hours and membership perks changing?
Previously, Costcos hours at most locations were 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays, 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday.
Today, the company is introducing an earlier start each day thats only available to its Executive tier. Throughout the week, Costco will now open at 9 a.m. for Executive members, giving those card-holders an additional hour of shopping Sunday through Friday, as well as 30 added minutes on Saturday. In addition, Costco will offer Executive members a monthly $10 credit for orders of $150 placed through the company’s “Same-Day” service or Instacart.
Outside of these Executive tier offerings, Costco also plans to expand its Saturday hours to a 7 p.m. closing time for all members starting on July 5.
Why is Costco making these changes?
To shop at Costco at all, customers need to purchase one of two membership plans: either the standard Gold Star Membership, which costs $65 per year, or the Executive Membership, which costs $130 per year.
In the past, Costco has primarily attracted its most loyal shoppers to the pricier Executive Membership with an annual 2% reward on qualified purchases, which can rack up a maximum of $1,250 in cash back per year. Now, though, the company is trying to sweeten the deal with an exclusive shopping experiencea strategy thats already in place at Sams Club, the retailers main rival.
Costcos adoption of the concept makes sense, given how central Executive members have become to its overall financial health. On a May 29 earnings call, Gary Millerchip, Costcos executive vice president and CFO, shared that the company now has 37.6 million Executive members, up 9% from the same quarter in 2024. He also noted that at the end of third quarter 2025, Executive members accounted for 47.3% of paid members but a whopping 73.1% of worldwide sales. Early access to the clubs inventory (and its popular food court) is one way for Costco to keep its biggest spenders coming back for more.
Many of the world’s nations are gathering starting Monday in Spain for a high-level conference to tackle the growing gap between rich and poor nations and try to drum up trillions of dollars needed to close it. The United States, previously a major contributor, pulled its participation, so finding funding will be tough.The four-day Financing for Development meeting in the southern city of Seville is taking place as many countries face escalating debt burdens, declining investments, decreasing international aid and increasing trade barriers.“Financing is the engine of development. And right now, this engine is sputtering,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in his opening comments at the conference.“We are here in Sevilla to change course, to repair and rev up the engine of development to accelerate investment at the scale and speed required.”The U.N. and Spain, the conference co-hosts, believe the meeting is an opportunity to reverse the downward spiral, close the staggering $4 trillion annual financing gap to promote development, bring millions of people out of poverty and help achieve the U.N.’s wide-ranging and badly lagging Sustainable Development Goals for 2030.Even though the gathering comes amid global economic uncertainty and high geopolitical tensions, there is hope among the hosts that the world can address one of the most important global challengesensuring all people have access to food, health care, education and water.“The government of Spain believes that this summit is an opportunity for us to change course, for us to raise our voice in the face of those who seek to convince us that rivalry and competition will set the tone for humanity and for its future,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told the delegates as he inaugurated the conference.
The ambitious package seeks to reverse decline in development
High-level delegations, including more than 70 world leaders, are attending in Seville, the U.N. said, along with several thousand others from international financial institutions, development banks, philanthropic organizations, the private sector and civil society.At its last preparatory meeting on June 17, the United States rejected the 38-page outcome document that had been negotiated for months by the U.N.’s 193 member nations and announced its withdrawal from the process and from the Seville conference.The rest of the countries then approved the document by consensus and sent it to Seville, where it is expected to be adopted by conference participants without changes. It will be known as the Seville Commitmentor Compromiso de Sevilla in Spanish.The document says the leaders and high-level representatives have decided to launch “an ambitious package of reforms and actions to close the financing gap with urgency,” saying it is now estimated at $4 trillion a year.Among the proposals and actions, it calls for minimum tax revenue of 15% of a country’s gross domestic product to increase government resources, a tripling of lending by multilateral development banks, and scaling up private financing by providing incentives for investing in critical areas like infrastructure. It also calls for a number of reforms to help countries deal with rising debt.U.N. trade chief Rebeca Grynspan said recently that “development is going backward” and the global debt crisis has worsened.Last year, 3.3 billion people were living in countries that pay more interest on their debts than they spend on health or education and the number will increase to 3.4 billion people this year, according to Grynspan. And developing countries will pay $947 billion to service debts this year, up from $847 billion last year.She spoke at a press conference where an expert group on debt appointed by Guterres presented 11 recommendations that they say can resolve the debt crisis, empower borrowing countries and create a fairer system.
US objections to the document
While the U.S. objected to many actions in the outcome document, American diplomat Jonathan Shrier told the June 17 meeting: “Our commitment to international cooperation and long-term economic development remains steadfast.”He said, however, that the text “crosses many of our red lines,” including interfering with the governance of international financial institutions, tripling the annual lending capacity of multilateral development banks and proposals envisioning a role for the U.N. in the global debt architecture.Shrier also objected to proposals on trade, tax and innovation that are not in line with U.S. policy, as well as language on a U.N. framework convention on international tax cooperation.The United States was the world’s largest single founder of foreign aid. The Trump administration has dismantled its main aid agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development, while drastically slashing foreign assistance funding, calling it wasteful and contrary to the Republican president’s agenda. Other Western donors also have cut back international aid.U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said last week that the U.S. withdrawal from the conference was “unfortunate,” stressing that “many of the recommendations you see cannot be pursued without a continuous engagement with the U.S.”After Seville, “we will engage again with the U.S. and hope that we can make the case that they be part of the success of pulling millions of people out of poverty.”
Lederer reported from the United Nations.
Joseph Wilson and Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press
Home Depot is buying specialty building products distributor GMS Inc. in a deal valued at approximately $4.3 billion.The Atlanta home improvement chain said Monday the transaction will help strengthen Home Depot’s relationship with professional contractors.GMS of Tucker, Georgia, is a distributor of specialty building products including drywall, ceilings, steel framing and other complementary products related to construction and remodeling projects in residential and commercial end markets.As part of the deal, a subsidiary of Home Depot’s SRS Distribution Inc. will start a cash tender offer to buy all outstanding shares of GMS for $110 per share. The total equity value of the transaction is approximately $4.3 billion. The deal is worth about $5.5 billion, including debt.Last year, Home Depot purchased SRS Distribution, a materials provider for professionals, in a deal valued at approximately $18.25 billion including debt. SRS provides materials for professionals like roofers, landscapers and pool contractors.The GMS transaction is expected to close by the end of fiscal 2025. Shares of the company jumped 11% in premarket trading. Home Depot shares slipped less than 1%.
Michelle Chapman, AP Business Writer
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling tied to birthright citizenship prompted confusion and phone calls to lawyers as people who could be affected tried to process a convoluted legal decision with major humanitarian implications.
The court’s conservative majority on Friday granted President Donald Trump his request to curb federal judges’ power but did not decide the legality of his bid to restrict birthright citizenship.
That outcome has raised more questions than answers about a right long understood to be guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution: that anyone born in the United States is considered a citizen at birth, regardless of their parents’ citizenship or legal status.
Lorena, a 24-year-old Colombian asylum seeker who lives in Houston and is due to give birth in September, pored over media reports on Friday morning. She was looking for details about how her baby might be affected, but said she was left confused and worried.
“There are not many specifics,” said Lorena, who like others interviewed by Reuters asked to be identified by her first name out of fear for her safety. “I don’t understand it well.”
She is concerned that her baby could end up with no nationality.
“I dont know if I can give her mine,” she said. “I also don’t know how it would work, if I can add her to my asylum case. I don’t want her to be adrift with no nationality.”
Trump, a Republican, issued an order after taking office in January that directed U.S. agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the U.S. who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident. The order was blocked by three separate U.S. district court judges, sending the case on a path to the Supreme Court.
The resulting decision said Trumps policy could go into effect in 30 days but appeared to leave open the possibility of further proceedings in the lower courts that could keep the policy blocked. On Friday afternoon, plaintiffs filed an amended lawsuit in federal court in Maryland seeking to establish a nationwide class of people whose children could be denied citizenship.
If they are not blocked nationwide, the restrictions could be applied in the 28 states that did not contest them in court, creating “an extremely confusing patchwork” across the country, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst for the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute.
“Would individual doctors, individual hospitals be having to try to figure out how to determine the citizenship of babies and their parents?” she said.
The drive to restrict birthright citizenship is part of Trump’s broader immigration crackdown, and he has framed automatic citizenship as a magnet for people to come to give birth.
“Hundreds of thousands of people are pouring into our country under birthright citizenship, and it wasn’t meant for that reason,” he said during a White House press briefing on Friday.
WORRIED CALLS
Immigration advocates and lawyers in some Republican-led states said they received calls from a wide range of pregnant immigrants and their partners following the ruling.
They were grappling with how to explain it to clients who could be dramatically affected, given all the unknowns of how future litigation would play out or how the executive order would be implemented state by state.
Lynn Tramonte, director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance said she got a call on Friday from an East Asian temporary visa holder with a pregnant wife. He was anxious because Ohio is not one of the plaintiff states and wanted to know how he could protect his child’s rights.
“He kept stressing that he was very interested in the rights included in the Constitution,” she said.
Advocates underscored the gravity of Trumps restrictions, which would block an estimated 150,000 children born in the U.S. annually from receiving automatic citizenship.
“It really creates different classes of people in the country with different types of rights,” said Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, a spokesperson for the immigrant rights organization United We Dream. “That is really chaotic.”
Adding uncertainty, the Supreme Court ruled that members of two plaintiff groups in the litigationCASA, an immigrant advocacy service in Maryland, and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Projectwould still be covered by lower court blocks on the policy. Whether someone in a state where Trump’s policy could go into effect could join one of the organizations to avoid the restrictions or how state or federal officials would check for membership remained unclear.
Betsy, a U.S. citizen who recently graduated from high school in Virginia and a CASA member, said both of her parents came to the U.S. from El Salvador two decades ago and lacked legal status when she was born.
“I feel like it targets these innocent kids who haven’t even been born,” she said, declining to give her last name for concerns over her family’s safety.
Nivida, a Honduran asylum seeker in Louisiana, is a member of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project and recently gave birth.
She heard on Friday from a friend without legal status who is pregnant and wonders about the situation under Louisiana’s Republican governor, since the state is not one of those fighting Trumps order.
“She called me very worried and asked whats going to happen,” she said. “If her child is born in Louisiana . . . is the baby going to be a citizen?”
Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke, Reuters
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said Sunday he will not seek reelection next year, an abrupt announcement that came one day after he staked out his opposition to President Donald Trump’s tax breaks and spending cuts package because of its reductions to health care programs.His decision creates a political opportunity for Democrats seeking to bolster their numbers in the 2026 midterm elections, creating a wide-open Senate race in a state that has long been a contested battleground. It could also make Tillis a wild card in a party where few lawmakers are willing to risk Trump’s wrath by opposing his agenda or actions. Trump had already been threatening him with a primary challenge, and posted Sunday that Tillis’ announcement was “Great News!”“In Washington over the last few years, it’s become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species,” Tillis said in a lengthy statement.Tillis said he was proud of his career in public service but acknowledged the difficult political environment for those who buck their party and go it alone.“I look forward to having the pure freedom to call the balls and strikes as I see fit and representing the great people of North Carolina to the best of my ability,” Tillis said in a statement.Republicans hold a 5347 edge in the Senate.Trump, in social posts, had berated Tillis for being one of two Republican senators who voted on Saturday night against advancing the massive tax bill.The Republican president accused Tillis of seeking publicity with his “no” vote and threatened to campaign against him, accusing the senator of doing nothing to help his constituents after last year’s devastating floods in western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene.“Tillis is a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER,” Trump wrote.The announcement from the two-term senator surprised senior Republicans with its timing, but not necessarily the substance. Tillis had planned to announce his reelection plans later this year, likely September at the latest, but had been heavily leaning in favor of retiring, according to a person close to the senator.In the hours before his announcement, Tillis was weighing two questions: whether Trump and the White House would give him freedom to campaign with some independence, and whether Tillis would have the full protection of Senate Republican leaders, said the person, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics.The GOP leadership’s decision to forge ahead with cuts to Medicaid that Tillis repeatedly warned would devastate North Carolina, and the president’s Truth Social post calling for a primary challenger to the senator made it clear to him that the answers to those two questions were no.Tillis then decided he would announce his retirement, with the thinking that it would remove any ambiguity whether he would flip his opposition to the GOP’s sweeping tax bill.He informed Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Saturday night of his decision to retire.The North Carolina Republican Party chairman, Jason Simmons, said the party wishes Tillis well and “will hold this seat for Republicans in 2026.” Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the chairman of the campaign arm for Senate Republicans, did not mention Tillis in a statement but said the party’s winning streak in North Carolina will continue. Scott noted that Trump won the state three times.Democrats expressed confidence about their prospects.Former Rep. Wiley Nickel, who announced his candidacy in April, said he was ready for any Republican challenger.“I’ve flipped a tough seat before and we’re going to do it again,” Nickel said in a statement.Some said Tillis’ decision is another sign of the dramatic transformation of the Republican Party under Trump, with few lawmakers critical of the president or his agenda remaining in office.It “proves there is no space within the Republican Party to dissent over taking health care away from 11.8 million people,” said Lauren French, spokesperson for the Senate Majority PAC, a political committee aligned with the chamber’s Democratic members.Tillis rose to prominence in North Carolina when, as a second-term state House member, he quit his IBM consultant job and led the GOP’s recruitment and fundraising efforts in the chamber for the 2010 elections. Republicans won majorities in the House and Senate for the first time in 140 years.Tillis was later elected as state House speaker and helped enact conservative policies on taxes, gun rights, regulations and abortion while serving in the role for four years. He also helped push a state constitutional referendum to ban gay marriage, which was approved by voters in 2012 but was ultimately struck down by the courts as unconstitutional.In 2014, Tillis helped flip control of the U.S. Senate to the GOP after narrowly defeating Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan. During his more than a decade in office, he championed issues such as mental health and substance abuse recovery, Medicaid expansion and support for veterans.As a more moderate Republican, Tillis became known for his willingness to work across the aisle on some issues. That got him into trouble with his party at times, most notably in 2023 when North Carolina Republicans voted to censure him over several matters, including his challenges to certain immigration policies and his gun policy record.“Sometimes those bipartisan initiatives got me into trouble with my own party,” Tillis said, “but I wouldn’t have changed a single one.”
Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Joey Cappelletti in Washington and Makiya Seminera in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.
Ali Swenson and Seung Min Kim, Associated Press
The number of Rite Aid stores marked for closure just hit a grim milestone.
In a bankruptcy court filing last week, the ill-fated pharmacy chain disclosed another 123 locations that will close their doors as it works through its Chapter 11 proceedings and commences with a full wind-down of its operations.
With this latest list, Rite Aid has now marked more than 1,000 locations for closure since it filed for bankruptcy in early May. At the time of its original filing, Rite Aid said it had 1,277 pharmacies in operation.
Previous waves of Rite Aid closures
The shutterings have been happening for several weeks. In previous bankruptcy filings, Rite Aid has posted no fewer than eight notices of store closures, in addition to the initial notice of closures it posted when it first sought Chapter 11 protection. You can find lists of its previous closure notices below:
May 5: 47 initial locations
May 9: 68 additional locations
May 16: 95 additional locations
May 23: 151 additional locations
May 30: 111 additional locations
June 5: 25 additional locations
June 6: 207 additional locations
June 13: 125 additional locations
June 20: 118 locations
June 27: 123 locations (full list below)
What will happen to Rite Aid when this is all over?
Rite Aid is going out of business, meaning all of its stores will either close or be sold to new owners. The company has already sold off most of its prescription files to competitors, including CVS, Walgreens, and Albertsons. CVS has also said it will take over 64 physical Rite Aid locations in three states.
Last week, Rite Aid also named bidders for many of its remaining assets, including its Thrifty ice cream brand, as Fast Company reported. Thrifty’s winning bidder, a limited partnership linked to Monster Energy executives, has so far not said what it plans to do with the brand.
In addition to Thrifty, Rite Aid has identified bidders for dozens of its stores, court documents reveal. A hearing on the sale of these assets is planned for today, “or soon thereafter.”
Which Rite Aid stores were included in the latest closure notice?
Rite Aid listed 123 locations on its ninth notice of closures. The stores span eight states, with California, Pennsylvania, and New York being hit the hardest. Fast Company reached out to Rite Aid to ask about the timeline of the closures. The full list is below:
California
6410 Platt Avenue, West Hills, CA 91307
28100 S Western Avenue, San Pedro, CA 90732
135 Sunset Avenue, Suisun City, CA 94585
1500 Anna Sparks Way Suite D, McKinleyville, CA 95519
48 Robertson Blvd, Chowchilla, CA 93610
262 North Highway 65, Lindsay, CA 93247
17055 Van Buren Boulevard, Riverside, CA 92504
4710 Commons Way, Calabasas, CA 91302
111 North Main Street, Santa Ana, CA 92701
3745 East Foothill Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91107
601 Pine Avenue, Long Beach, CA 90802
2819 Hopyard Road, Pleasanton, CA 94588
955 Tamarack Avenue, Carlsbad, CA 92008
6455 Pacific Avenue, Stockton, CA 95207
200 Fairmont Shopping Center, Pacifica, CA 94044
27177 Highway 189 Suite E, Blue Jay, CA 92317
108 West Anaheim Street, Wilmington, CA 90744
1207 Grand Avenue, Arroyo Grande, CA 93420
405 West Imperial Highway, Brea, CA 92821
650 Walnut Avenue, Greenfield, CA 93927
431 Corte Madera Town Center, Corte Madera, CA 94925
11096 Jefferson Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90230
6420 Rio Linda Blvd, Rio Linda, CA 95673
1201 South Coast Highway, Oceanside, CA 92054
1355 MacArthur Boulevard, San Leandro, CA 94577
802 Beverly Boulevard, Montebello, CA 90640
130 Alamo Plaza, Alamo, CA 94507
12319 South Norwalk Boulevard, Norwalk, CA 90650
1449 East F Street Suite 102, Oakdale, CA 95361
7100 Avenida Encinas, Carlsbad, CA 92011
2424 Spring Street, Paso Robles, CA 93446
2938 West Rosamond Blvd., Rosamond, CA 93560
1237 West Carson Street, Torrance, CA 90502
19205 Sonoma Highway, Sonoma, CA 95476
387 E Avenida De Los Arboles, Thousand Oaks, CA 91360
640 Edith Avenue, Corning, CA 96021
8914 Valley Boulevard, Rosemead, CA 91770
8760 19th Street, Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91701
1076 West Kern Street, Taft, CA 93268
10465 Sunland Boulevard, Sunland, CA 91040
9482 California City Boulevard, California City, CA 93505
3142 G Street, Merced, CA 95340
Connecticut
1619 Post Road, Fairfield, CT 06824
30 Germantown Road, Danbury, CT 06810
Maryland
9300 Lakeside Boulevard, Owings Mills, MD 21117
New Hampshire
145 Amherst Street, Nashua, NH 03064
6 South Main Street, Plymouth, NH 03264
53 South Broadway, Salem, NH 03079
73 Exeter Road, Newmarket, NH 03857
New Jersey
702 Browning Road, Brooklawn, NJ 08030
596 Shrewsbury Avenue, Tinton Falls, NJ 07701
354 State Route 57 West, Washington, NJ 07882
10 Lincoln Highway, Edison, NJ 08820
2093 Route 130 N, Burlington, NJ 08016
755 Memorial Pkwy (US Hwy 22), Phillipsburg, NJ 08865
100 Warwick Road, Stratford, NJ 08084
1 North New Prospect Road, Jackson, NJ 08527
1210 Route 130 N Ste 1408, Cinnaminson, NJ 08077
New York
3950 Union Road, Cheektowaga, NY 14225
4407 Military Road, Niagara Falls, NY 14305
804 Route 82, Hopewell Junction, NY 12533
1200 Deer Park Avenue, North Babylon, NY 11703
60 Central Avenue, Lancaster, NY 14086
46 Kellogg Road, New Hartford, NY 13413
391 West Main Street, Huntington, NY 11743
511 Hooper Road, Endwell, NY 13760
701 Route 211 East, Middletown, NY 10941
81 1st Avenue, New York, NY 10003
214 Central Avenue, Silver Creek, NY 14136
50 Great Neck Road, Great Neck, NY 11021
871 Saw Mill River Road, Ardsley, NY 10502
1410 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14209
7804 Buffalo Avenue, Niagara Falls, NY 14304
5125 Merrick Road, Massapequa Park, NY 11762
1224 East Lovejoy Street, Buffalo, NY 14206
168 North Village Avenue, Rockville Centre, NY 11570
Pennsylvania
1205 Ben Franklin Highway West, Douglassville, PA 19518
801 South 9th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147
3599 West Chester Pike, Newtown Square, PA 19073
4000 Woodhaven Road, Philadelphia, PA 19154
217 South Blakely Street, Dunmore, PA 18512
4965 Carlisle Pike, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050
101 Wallace Avenue, Downingtown, PA 19335
77 Reuters Boulevard, Towanda, PA 18848
3601 Midvale Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19129
2501 Banksville Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15216
9280 Krewstown Road, Philadelphia, PA 19115
26 West Independence Street, Shamokin, PA 17872
916 State Street, Erie, PA 16501
7615 Lindbergh Boulevard, Philadelphia, PA 19153
980 East Main Street, Palmyra, PA 17078
4411 Howley Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15224
1 Ice Cream Alley, Newtown, PA 18940
1328 Chestnut Street, Emmaus, PA 18049
201 Grace Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15211
705 W Lancaster Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
5277 Simpson Ferry Road, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050
262 Connellsville Street, Uniontown, PA 15401
577 South Main Street, Shrewsbury, PA 17361
500 East Lancaster Avenue, Shillington, PA 19607
284 East Lancaster Avenue, Wynnewood, PA 19096
5707 Easton Road, Pipersville, PA 18947
5675 York Road, New Oxford, PA 17350
820 Main Street, Royersford, PA 19468
925 Merchant Street, Ambridge, PA 15003
44 Kings Village, Minersville, PA 17954
401403 South Main Street, Old Forge, PA 18518
1924 Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19130
7972 Castor Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19152
791 Scranton Carbondale Hwy, Eynon, PA 18403
827 N. Center Street, Corry, PA 16407
7700 Crittenden Street, Philadelphia, PA 19118
1593 Elmira Street, Sayre, PA 18840
105 West Main Street, North East, PA 16428
696 Stoney Hill Road, Yardley, PA 19067
110 Main Street, Hellertown, PA 18055
2411 Columbia Blvd, Bloomsburg, PA 17815
Washington
6602 64th St NE, Marysville, WA 98270
10625 NE 68th St, Kirkland, WA 98033
8862 161st Ave NE, Suite 102, Redmond, WA 98052
17254 140th Ave SE, Renton, WA 98058
3130 Simpson Avenue, Hoquiam, WA 98550
100 N 85th St, Seattle, WA 98103
In early June, Dave Margulies, owner and producer of High Sierra Music Festival, was working on a printed pocket guide with a show schedule, which organizers will hand out to attendees of the more than 30-year-old Quincy, California, event.
That there even would be a festival to navigate this year wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Margulies says the festival used to sell about 7,000 tickets annually; in 2023 and 2024, it sold about 4,500 each year. “It almost sent us into bankruptcy,” he says.
Independent festivals like High Sierra have been hit particularly hard, but their main challengeslumping ticket salesis shared by big-name events. Coachellawhich the past few years has welcomed more than 200,000 attendees over its two weekendsused to sell out in just hours. This year, resellers like StubHub had tickets available for less than face value shortly ahead of the event’s first weekend in mid-April. Recent attendance is also less than half of the number who attended the event in 2014.
For 2025, Margulies significantly changed how he curated the lineup to curb costs. He did not book high-dollar headliners like Robert Plant, Jason Isbell, and Sturgill Simpson, who all have played the festival in the past, and instead focused on smaller acts like Molly Tuttle, a Grammy-nominated bluegrass guitarist, and the up-and-coming jam band Dogs in a Pile.
Flagging ticket salesand rising costs for artists and organizersare putting unprecedented pressure on festivals’ bottom line. And in such a challenging environment, smaller festivals are becoming a canary in the coal mine for the larger industry. “This is really a make-or-break year,” Margulies says.
High Sierra, 2024. [Photo: Susan J Weiand]
Rising pricesfor everyone
In 2006 in Chicago, Mike Reed, a drummer and event producer, founded Pitchfork Music Festival with the eponymous digital music site. The initial focus was on booking such indie acts as Andrew Bird and The Decemberists.
The landscape for festivals was really bare, Reed says. He curated the lineup based on Pitchforks best new music lists, and the event grew to attract about 60,000 fans and sold out each year until 2017, when the specialness of the event started to wear off, Reed said.
That’s when the focus shifted to booking larger acts from more genresincluding Kendrick Lamar and Chance the Rappermoving away from just indie artists. Reed says that focus, and the accompanying cost of booking big-name artists, led Pitchfork parent Condé Nast to announce in November 2024 that it would be discontinuing the festival.
For a headliner like Lamar in 2014, organizers paid $325,000; a few years earlier, the cost of a headliner was $70,000, Reed says. Those costs have only ballooned further since the pandemic, in part because of how much touring now costs for artists.
A general view of the atmosphere following the cancellation of the 2025 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival on June 13, 2025 in Manchester, Tennessee. [Photo: Josh Brasted/WireImage/Getty Images]
Hank Sacks, a booking agent with Partisan Arts, which works with artists like Jack Johnson, and Big Head Todd and the Monsters, says renting a tour bus now costs twice as much as it did before the pandemic, said. That expense then factors into artists’ appearance fees. Those costs have trickled down to the consumer, said Sacks.
Insurance premiums also increased between 25% and 40%, depending on the event, according to Steven Perlini, president of Wise Risk, which has insured many of the largest festivals in the United States.
In 2015, a three-day general admission ticket to Coachella cost $375. This year, a ticket to the first weekend cost $649 and for the second weekend, $599.
Those costs could continue to rise because of climate change, which has increased the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. This year, Bonnaroo organizers canceled the festival after one day this year because the area had received one inch of rain, and forecasts suggested ongoing precipitation would make campingand leavingharder if the festival kept fans around.
If scientists forecast proves accurate and the amount of drenching rains and wildfires increases, that would lead to higher rates, higher deductibles, and more restrictive policy conditions, and those costs would then trickle down to consumers, Perlini said
If your costs are going up, the only way to make it profitable is for you to increase your revenues by charging more for tickets,” Perlini said.
[Photo: Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images]
Sales slump, festivals close
In 2023, there were at least 48 festival cancellations, according to Music Festival Wizard, a publication that tracks the events. The next year, there were 95 cancellations, some of them at that last minute, leaving fans angry. So far this year, there have been at least 45.
Those who still play, organize, and attend festivals say events being canceled due to low sales take away the opportunity for like-minded music fans to come together around their favorite artists.
I’m a huge fan of making a pilgrimage to distant locales because it just changes the way that you witness the world, and that’s what the music festival is there to do,” says Grace Potter, a Grammy-nominated musicians who has played festivals of all sizes, and organizes Grand North Point festival in Vermont.
The cause is often the samelow sales making the cost of putting on an event untenable.
Thievery Corporation performs during the 2016 High Sierra Music Festival at Plumas County Fairgrounds in Quincy, California. [Photo: C Flanigan/WireImage/Getty Images]
One bright spot has been EDM. Fueled by 6% year-over-year growth in 2024, the electronic music industry hit $12.9 billion last year, according to entertainment analysis firm Midia Research. Flagship festival Electric Daisy Belgian festival Tomorrowland sold out this year, and U.S. events Ultra and EDC regularly sell out well in advance.
But across the wider industry, Midia notes that the global music industry’s revenue growth slowed in 2024, due in part to a slowdown in ticket sales after an initial post-pandemic boom.
Consumers have less disposable income to spend on entertainment, so its put the festivals under a lot of pressure, says Vito Valentinetti, Music Festival Wizard cofounder and editor-in-chief.
Music fans’ budgets have tightened amid a 55% increase in the cost of general admission festival tickets between 2014 and 2024an issue that’s been exacerbated by the rising cost of doing business for artists and organizers.
Whereas owners of a festival like Coachella can weather a downturn, some of them just dont have the money to ride it out, said Valentinetti, of Music Festival Wizard.
Ahead of this weekend, Margulies, of High Sierra, was hopeful the event would once again sell 4,500 tickets as he spent less on artists to keep tickets at their $392 price point.
Despite telling Fast Company in early June that he had no plans to cancel the event, Margulies seemed to flirt with the idea of canceling by the middle of the month, telling a local news outlet that record-low ticket sales forced him to reconsider. The story helped sell enough tickets that he decided to continue with this year’s event.
I’m just hoping that we can make ends meet so we get to do it again next year,” he says.
