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Washington is bracing for what could be a prolonged federal shutdown after lawmakers deadlocked and missed the deadline for funding the government.Republicans supported a short-term measure to fund the government generally at current levels through Nov. 21, but Democrats blocked it, insisting the measure address their concerns on health care. They want to reverse the Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s mega-bill passed this summer and extend tax credits that make health insurance premiums more affordable for millions of people who purchase through the marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act.Republicans called the Democratic proposal a nonstarter that would cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion.Neither side shows any signs of budging.Here’s what to know about the shutdown that began Wednesday: What happens in the shutdown? Now that a lapse in funding has occurred, the law requires agencies to furlough their “non-excepted” employees. Excepted employees, which include those who work to protect life and property, stay on the job but don’t get paid until after the shutdown ends.The White House Office of Management and Budget begins the process with instructions to agencies that a lapse in appropriations has occurred and they should initiate orderly shutdown activities. That memo went out Tuesday evening.The Congressional Budget Office estimates that roughly 750,000 federal employees could be furloughed each day of the shutdown, with the total daily cost of their compensation at roughly $400 million. What government work continues during a shutdown? A great deal, actually.FBI investigators, CIA officers, air traffic controllers and agents operating airport checkpoints keep working. So do members of the Armed Forces.Those programs that rely on mandatory spending generally continue during a shutdown. Social Security payments still go out. Seniors relying on Medicare coverage can still see their doctors and health care providers can be reimbursed.Veteran health care also continues during a shutdown. Veterans Affairs medical centers and outpatient clinics will be open, and VA benefits will continue to be processed and delivered. Burials will continue at VA national cemeteries. Will furloughed federal workers get paid? Yes. In 2019, Congress passed a bill enshrining into law the requirement that furloughed employees get retroactive pay once operations resume.While they’ll eventually get paid, the furloughed workers and those who remain on the job may have to go without one or more of their regular paychecks, depending upon how long the shutdown lasts, creating financial stress for many families.Service members would also receive back pay for any missed paychecks once federal funding resumes. Will I still get mail? Yes. The U.S. Postal Service is unaffected by a government shutdown. It’s an independent entity funded through the sale of its products and services, not by tax dollars. What closes during a shutdown? All administrations get some leeway to choose which services to freeze and which to maintain in a shutdown.The first Trump administration worked to blunt the impact of what became the country’s longest partial shutdown in 2018 and 2019. But on Tuesday, Trump threatened the possibility of increasing the pain that comes with a shutdown.“We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them,” Trump said of Democrats. “Like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”Each federal agency develops its own shutdown plan. The plans outline which workers would stay on the job during a shutdown and which would be furloughed.In a provocative move, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget has threatened the mass firing of federal workers in a shutdown. An OMB memo said those programs that didn’t get funding through Trump’s mega-bill this summer would bear the brunt of a shutdown.Agencies should consider issuing reduction-in-force notices for those programs whose funding expires, that don’t have alternative funding sources and are “not consistent with the President’s priorities,” the memo said.That would be a much more aggressive step than in previous shutdowns, when furloughed federal workers returned to their jobs once the shutdown was over. A reduction in force would not only lay off employees but eliminate their positions, which would trigger another massive upheaval in a federal workforce that’s already faced major rounds of cuts due to efforts from the Department of Government Efficiency and elsewhere in Trump’s Republican administration. What agencies are planning Health and Human Services will furlough about 41% of its staff out of nearly 80,000 employees, according to a contingency plan posted on its website.As part of that plan, the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would continue to monitor disease outbreaks, while activities that will stop include research into health risks and ways to prevent illness.Meanwhile, research and patient care at the National Institutes of Health would be upended. Patients currently enrolled in studies at the research-only hospital nicknamed the “house of hope” will continue to receive care. Additional sick patients hoping for access to experimental therapies can’t enroll except in special circumstances, and no new studies will begin.At the Food and Drug Administration, its “ability to protect and promote public health and safety would be significantly impacted, with many activities delayed or paused.” For example, the agency would not accept new drug applications or medical device submissions that require payment of a user fee. National Park Service: As the shutdown neared, the National Park Service had not yet said whether it will close its more than 400 sites across the U.S. to visitors. Park officials said Tuesday afternoon that contingency plans were still being updated and would be posted to the service’s website.Many national parks including Yellowstone and Yosemite stayed open during a 35-day shutdown during Trump’s first term. Limited staffing led to vandalism, gates being pried open and other problems including an off-roader mowing down one of the namesake trees at Joshua Tree National Park in California. Smithsonian Institution: In the event of a government shutdown, our museums, research centers, and the National Zoo will remain open through at least Monday, Oct. 6. Impact on the economy Phillip Swagel, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said a short shutdown doesn’t have a huge impact on the economy, especially since federal workers, by law, are paid retroactively. But “if a shutdown continues, then that can giverise to uncertainties about what is the role of government in our society, and what’s the financial impact on all the programs that the government funds.”“The impact is not immediate, but over time, there is a negative impact of a shutdown on the economy,” he added.Markets haven’t reacted strongly to past shutdowns, according to Goldman Sachs Research. At the close of the three prolonged shutdowns since the early 1990s, equity markets finished flat or up even after dipping initially.A governmentwide shutdown would directly reduce growth by around 0.15 percentage points for each week it lasted, or about 0.2 percentage points per week once private-sector effects were included, and growth would rise by the same cumulative amount in the quarter following reopening, writes Alec Phillips, chief U.S. political economist at Goldman Sachs. Associated Press writer Ali Swenson, Fatima Hussein, Matthew Brown and Annie Ma contributed to this report. Kevin Freking, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
The U.S. government has shut down. Last night, Congress failed to pass a new funding bill that would have kept the federal government operating normally. However, at 12:01 a.m. today, the existing funding bill ceased to be in effect, and with no new one in place, large parts of the government are now shut down. Fast Company has previously explored how the government shutdown will affect everyone, from Social Security recipients to travelers to federal workers. But the shutdown will also no doubt have an effect on the markets. And not just the stock markets. The U.S. government shutdown appears to already be having an impact on cryptocurrency markets. Heres how Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies are performing in the hours after the federal government shut its doorsand how cryptocurrencies reacted the last time there was a government shutdown. The government is down, but crypto is up The first thing to note about markets of all stripes today is that some are down and some are up. As of the time of this writing, futures of the three major stock market indexes in the United States are all downbut not by a staggering amount. S&P futures are currently down by about 0.58%, Dow futures are down by about 0.52%, and Nasdaq futures are down by about 0.67%. But those declines are opposite to how most major cryptocurrencies are performing. As of the time of this writing, nearly every major cryptocurrency is up by multiple percentages, including: Bitcoin: Up 2.8% to $116,281 Ethereum: Up 2.8% to $4,283 XRP: Up 3.1% to $2.93 Other popular cryptocurrencies are also up as of the time of this writing, including Dogecoin, up 5.2%, and Solana, up 4.81%. Why are crypto prices rising? Many major cryptocurrencies began spiking around the time that the U.S. government officially entered its partial shutdown. But why? Investors are likely seeking safe-haven assetsinvestments that are seen as safer bets than stocks or bonds when there is a wave of economic uncertaintyuncertainty that is often created by a government shutdown. Historically, gold has been seen as the de facto safe-haven asset during uncertain economic times. But in recent years, as cryptocurrencies have become more mainstream, investors often see the digital assets as safe havens when political turmoil has the potential to upset traditional markets. However, investors in crypto would be wise to act cautiously because while crypto currently seems to be benefiting from those seeking safe-haven assets, theres no guarantee that the digital assets will continue to riseor remain stablein the days and weeks ahead. Indeed, the last time there was a government shutdown, Bitcoin lost value during the period that the U.S. government shut its doors. Bitcoin lost value during the last shutdown Prior to this government shutdown, the federal government last shut down during President Trumps first term. The U.S. government entered a partial shutdown between December 22, 2018, and January 25, 2019. This was the longest government shutdown on record. And in the early days of the shutdown, Bitcoin appeared to receive a boost. According to Yahoo Finance data, Bitcoin opened at $3,898 per coin on December 22, 2018. It closed the day above $4,014. Two days later, Bitcoin climbed to an intraday high of $4,271 on December 24. But then the gradual slide began. Over the course of the next month, Bitcoin steadily declined, and by January 25, 2019, it closed below $3,600. If you go by Bitcoin’s closing prices of $4,014 on December 22, 2018, and below $3,600 on January 25, 2019, that means Bitcoin lost roughly 10% of its value during the last U.S. government shutdown. Of course, this historic loss cannot be relied upon to predict what might happen to digital assets during the current federal government shutdown. However, what this history suggests is that asset prices can vary significantly in the later stages of a government shutdown compared to the early stages.
Category:
E-Commerce
Every holiday season feels high stakes, but 2025 may be the most unforgiving yet. Consumer demand remains resilient, but retailers are facing a tangle of economic headwinds, from tariffs and supply chain volatility to rising ad costs and leaner teams. In an uncertain economy, the margin for error shrinks, and the cost of a slow site or a fragile storefront grows even steeper. For years, retailers have measured holiday readiness by promotions, inventory planning, and staffing strategies. But theres a blind spot: performance readiness. How fast, resilient, and visible your digital storefront is when shoppers show up can determine whether you hit your holiday forecast or miss it by millions. The challenge is that many e-commerce leaders still operate under assumptions that no longer hold true. These assumptions quietly undermine performance and cause retailers to stumble at the moment they most need to shine. Assumption 1: Performance Is a Side Project Retail leaders spend months calibrating promotional calendars, forecasting inventory swings, and allocating marketing budgets. Yet digital performance gets treated like an afterthought, or a box to be checked by IT. In reality, it is a revenue program. What happens in the first few hundred milliseconds of a visit sets the tone for everything that follows and has measurable consequences. A faster, more resilient storefront doesnt just feel smoother. It directly drives higher conversion rates, greater cart completion, and improved ROI on every marketing dollar. Research shows that 63% of shoppers abandon a page that takes longer than four seconds to load, and shaving even one second off load time can lift mobile conversions by 3%. Thats not just a technical winits a financial one. When ad costs are rising, supply chains are fragile, and budgets are tight, squeezing more value out of the traffic you already have is one of the most dependable levers retailers can pull. The companies that win in 2025 will be those that recognize speed and stability not as a side project but as a boardroom priority. Assumption 2: Shoppers Are Only Human This holiday season has a twist: not every shopper will be human. 2025 will be the first year of Cyborg Monday. AI agents are already comparing prices, summarizing reviews, and recommending products. They do not get tired, they do not impulse-buy, and they have little patience for heavy pages or unstable components. Just as SEO reshaped how teams built for Google, the rise of AI answers and generative engine optimization (GEO) is pushing a new discipline that favors clean markup, predictable rendering, and fast pages so experiences are easy for humans and machines to understand. Recently, I wanted to find a kid-friendly music player with streaming capabilities. I did not start with a traditional search engine. Instead, I asked an AI. In seconds it produced options, pulled in reviews, and linked to retailers. In that moment, the agent was the primary shopper. Multiply that instinct across millions of households this holiday season, and you can see why 2025 will be different. Retailers arent just competing for human clicks anymore. Theyre competing for placement in AI-generated answers, shopping summaries, and bot-driven carts. Thats why performance readiness is about more than keeping the lights on. Its about ensuring your site is fast, resilient, and discoverable, whether the shopper is a person on a smartphone or an AI agent buying on their behalf. Assumption 3: More Traffic Equals More Revenue In uncertain economic times, the reflex is to double down on traffic acquisition. Retailers pour money into ads, believing more visitors will guarantee growth. But the assumption that volume alone drives revenue is increasingly flawed. When load times lag or pages break, additional visitors do not translate into additional sales. Instead, they magnify losses. Every click that doesnt convert represents wasted spend. Buying more top-of-funnel only works if your experience converts reliably under pressure. Under peak load, third-party tools can stall or fail. Without orchestration, you pay for clicks that never become customers. The smarter bet is to extract more value from the traffic you already have by raising conversion, reducing abandonment, and protecting every paid visit with speed and stability. The Imperative: Build for Speed and Agility Recognizing flawed assumptions is only the beginning. Most teams dont lose sales because they lack a strategy; they lose them because theyre weighed down by fragility. Modern e-commerce storefronts are like orchestrasdozens of third-party vendors, from ratings and reviews to personalization engines, all playing at once. But under the heavy traffic of peak shopping season, many of those instruments stall, fall out of sync, or fail to load entirely. Performance readiness in 2025 means more than checking a Lighthouse score. It means building agility into the stack itself: Continuous optimization, not one-time fixes. Performance isnt static. Codebases evolve, vendors push updates, and new scripts pile up. Optimization must be ongoing. Real-time resilience under load. Peak traffic reveals fragility. Stress-testing and load resilience need to be continuous capabilities, not seasonal exercises. Orchestrate third parties and dont blindly trust them. Every vendor integration affects performance. Leaders must demand visibility and orchestration across the stack. Tie visibility to revenue. Technical scores are helpful, but what matters is the financial translation: how many sales are lost or gained through performance. The Bottom Line Holiday pressure is coming. You cant control tariffs, shipping costs, or consumer sentiment. You can control what happens when shoppers or their agents hit your site. The first Cyborg Monday will not reward those with the loudest promotions or the biggest ad budgets. It will reward those who have built fast, resilient, bot-friendly storefronts. In this new era of e-commerce, milliseconds wont just decide whether you win or lose a customer. They will decide whether you appear in the consideration set at all.
Category:
E-Commerce
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