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When the clock strikes midnight tonight, the U.S. government could shut down. If that happens, it will be because Congressional Republicans and Democrats could not reach an agreement on a new funding bill, which is required to keep the government running. As noted by CBS News, one of the key sticking points between Democrats and Republicans involves healthcare provisions in the proposed bill. Democrats want provisions in the bill that would help fund healthcare for millions of Americans across the country. They also want restrictions on President Trumps ability to withhold such healthcare funding. Republicans have so far refused to entertain these provisions. If a deal cant be reached, the federal government will shut down on Wednesday, October 1. The shutdown will impact Americans in different ways, depending on their livelihoods and the services they rely on. Heres how a government shutdown could affect three large groups of Americans, including Social Security recipients, travelers, and federal workers. What if I’m a Social Security recipient? The good news is that if you currently receive Social Security payments, the government shutdown will not stop those payments from being sent to you, reports CBS News. This is no doubt a relief for the 74 million Americans who get Social Security checks every month. The reason Social Security checks will continue to come is that Social Security spending is mandatory and therefore does not need to be renewed on a yearly basis. However, some administrative tasks of the Social Security Administration (SSA) could be impacted due to federal workers being furloughed during the shutdown. This could include benefit verifications, earnings record corrections and updates, overpayments processing, and replacing Medicare cards, Max Richtman, CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare, told CBS News. Will a government shutdown delay my flight? If the government does shut down, not all federal employees who work in travel-related positions will be furloughed. This is because some of these workers are considered essential, so federal law says they must continue workingalbeit without pay in many cases. Essential federal workers include those who work for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Customs and Border Protection (CPB). It also includes those who work for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), including air traffic controllers, as noted by USA Today. However, while these workers will continue to perform their roles, it’s possible that if the shutdown continues for a long time, some of them could attempt to strike over a lack of pay. If a strike occurs, it could cause delays at airports. And then there are the non-essential federal employees who work in travel-related positions, such as those in the National Park Service. Many of these workers will be furloughed, which could lead to the closure of national parks or their understaffing. How will a government shutdown affect federal workers? Without a doubt, the most immediate impact of a federal shutdown will be felt by Americans who work for the federal government. If a shutdown occurs, most federal employees who are considered non-essential workers will be furloughed. During the time they are off work, they will not be paid, which could have devastating financial consequences for them and their families. A law passed in 2019 states that federal workers who are furloughed during a shutdown have a right to back pay once funding is restored, but that law does nothing to help those workers while the shutdown is in place. What’s more, things could be worse for federal workers this time around when compared to previous government shutdowns. That’s because the Trump administration has stated that if the government is shut down, federal agencies should prepare to permanently lay off federal workers whose jobs dont align with President Trumps priorities, CNN reports. If the Trump administration goes through with those plans, it could mean that when some federal workers leave their jobs on Wednesday, if there is a shutdown, they may never return to those roles again. Will a federal government shutdown happen? Congress has less than 24 hours to avert a federal government shutdown. And as of the time of this writing, there are no signs that the Republicans and Democrats are close to an agreement to pass the funding needed to avert a shutdown. If the government shuts down, it will not be unprecedented. As CBS News notes, government shutdowns have occurred 14 times since 1980. The most recent shutdown was in Trumps first term in 2018-2019, when the federal government shut down for 34 daysthe longest shutdown on record. Whether the average American who isnt a federal worker feels the immediate impact of any shutdown depends on their situation, but most should experience a limited impact if the shutdown doesnt last long. As noted above, this is because Social Security checks will continue to arrive, planes will remain in the air, and mail will continue to be delivered (since the United States Postal Service is a self-funded institution). To see how a shutdown may affect other aspects of life, its worth checking out the various 2025 Federal Government Shutdown FAQs that are being posted by some members of Congress on their websites.
Category:
E-Commerce
For decades, the baby food aisle has been dominated by big players like Nestlé, which makes Gerber brand products, and Danone, whose brands include Happy Family. Angela Vranich and Ben Lewishigh school sweethearts turned entrepreneurswanted to change this. Even though they didn’t yet have children, they believed that millennial parents were looking for new sources of food for their growing families. “Millennials had spent their twenties drinking fresh-pressed juices and eating salads,” Vranich says. “When they started having kids, they were looking for food that was more nutritious than what they grew up eating.” [Photo: Little Spoon] In 2017, the pair launched their direct-to-consumer startup, Little Spoon. They used their previous experience in the food industry to develop a line of baby food that uses organic, non-GMO ingredients, and abides by EU standards of quality, which are higher than those in the United States. Customers could order products on the brand’s website and have them delivered, saving them regular trips to the grocery store. According to the company, since that launch Little Spoon has delivered 80 million meals to families across the country, and now feeds more than 3% of babies in the U.S. It has expanded beyond baby food, creating developmentally appropriate food all the way into preschool, including a large selection of products for toddlers that are designed to be nutritious and fun to eat (like nuggets in the shape of spoons to better scoop up sauce!). Little Spoon’s full-plate meals and school lunches have been particularly popular. [Photo: Little Spoon] As of September 30, the brand is available at Target locations across the country. The brand’s 23 products will be spread out across five aisles, from fresh baby food in the fridge section to shelf-stable snacks in the grocery section to frozen chicken nuggets in the freezer aisle. Little Spoons redesigned packaging provides more insight into its products nutritional content. “While some parents love getting food delivered, many others prefer shopping in stores,” says Lewis. “As we grow, we want to make sure we’re meeting the needs of all our customers.” Vranich and Lewis believe that for Little Spoon to scale, its crucial to go beyond the direct-to-consumer model. And they’re not alone. [Photo: Little Spoon] Designing for Retail Little Spoon is among a number of food startups that got their start in the DTC boom of the mid-2010s and are now graduating into grocery stores to reach a broader market and tap into customers shopping habits. In their effort to appeal to millennial consumers whose tastes are different from those of their parents, these innovative companies are beginning to change the food industry (think Brightland and Graza olive oils, Fly by Jing and Brooklyn Delhi sauces, Magic Spoon cereal, and Olipop soda). All of these brands offer a fresh take on the category, using more nutritious ingredients than their incumbent counterparts. Some have incorporated more protein. Others have focused on more diverse, global flavor profiles. [Photo: Little Spoon] Much like Little Spoon, these brands connected with consumers on social media and grew slowly at first, but expanded production as they started to scale. Building a food brand involves complex logistics and extensive quality-control checks. “It’s not just about developing a really compelling product,” Lewis says. “We needed to find factories that we could trust and that would make our food up to our specifications.” Nearly a decade after the DTC boom, many startups realize that the direct-to-consumer model can only take a brand so far. Only 3% of U.S. shoppers get their food exclusively online; the other 97% shop in a physical store at least monthly. That’s why you can now find Graza and Fly by Jing at Whole Foods, and Daily Harvest, Magic Spoon, and Olipop at Target. [Photo: Little Spoon] Hitting a new target Launching at a major retailer is no small task. While many DTC food brands have grown large customer bases through their e-commerce websites, stocking shelves at a national retail store involves producing at a much larger scale. And for startups, this involves working closely with their network of suppliers and factories. Lewis says revving up Little Spoon for the Target launch involved a substantial increase in production. “It took us a long time to get our production up to the scale that Target requires,” Lewis says. “We had to work with our existing factories and find new ones so we could deliver trucks and trucks of food to meet Target’s demands.” Vranich says they also had to rethink the companys packaging for retail. For one thing, many customers will not be familiar with the brand. So to increase brand awareness, Little Spoon made its logo much bigger. [Photo: Little Spoon] Then there’s the issue of what’s inside each package. When customers visit the Little Spoon website, they can scroll through images of the food; when a package arrives at their doorstep, its not covered with images of food but rather cartoons that will appeal to kids. For instance, in Little Spoon’s line of toddler school lunches, the website features images of chicken nuggets and sauces, but the exterior packaging has a funny picture of a cartoon nugget wearing sunglasses and getting dunked in sauce. “Shopping for food in store is a very different customer experience than shopping online,” Vranich says. All of these food startups are still a fraction of the size of the larger incumbents, but their growing popularity is sending a jolt to the food industry, prompting larger players to create similar offerings. For instance, Trader Joe’s has been accused of ripping off startups, creating copycats of Brooklyn Delhi and Fly by Jing sauces. And Little Spoon appears to have prompted other baby food brands to focus on reformulating their products to make them organic and more nutritious. For Vranich, the key to staying ahead is to continue innovating on every aspect of the product. For example, she says shes very proud of being the only kids brand that makes squeezable yogurt and smoothies in packages with fun ridges on the edges that are both pleasant to look at and easy to hold. Little Spoons food development team also works hard to create fun meals that kids will actually eat, like a “brunch lunch that features little chicken maple sausages, crunchy granola, a zucchini muffin, and an organic smoothie bowl. “We’re constantly coming up with new products,” Vranich says. “It’s a way to keep our existing customers coming back for more, but it also means we’re ahead of the rest of the market.”
Category:
E-Commerce
Experts are warning that tariffs on pharmaceuticals are likely to increase shortages of essential medications. The governments ongoing investigation into the national security implications of importing pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients is widely understood as a precursor to sector-specific tariffs, which a White House advisor has said are likely. On the other hand, the administration recently issued a new executive order laying the groundwork for tariff exemptions for some pharmaceutical products imported from countries that reach trade agreements with the United States. As a result, manufacturers, pharmacists, doctors and patients are in limbo. Digital health companies that make access to prescription medication simpler are also at risk. But I already know firsthand what a drug shortage looks like. I am the CEO of Oar Health, a company that helps people struggling with alcohol misuse get access to prescription medication to drink less or quit. And naltrexone, the recommended frontline medication for treating alcohol use disorder, has been in shortage for more than a year. Heres what Ive learned: Patients suffer when essential medications are unavailable Throughout the naltrexone shortage, I have heard from patients who have found medication critical to their recoveries. But instead of celebrating and building upon their progress, they were worried about continuing their treatment. Retail and mail order pharmacies alike told patients that they could not refill their prescriptions nor provide a reliable estimate of when they would. Patients documented their experience and concern in social media posts. As someone who took naltrexone for more than five years, I can relate to their unease. When a medication is proving helpful in ones recovery, the last thing a patient should be forced to do is remove that tool from their toolkit. Beyond alcohol use disorder, direct-to-consumer telehealth companies like Ro, Hims, Nurx, and Cove have increased patient access to safe, effective medications across a broad range of health conditions. But access depends on availability. Tariffs on generic medications could harm patients who rely on everything from anti-depressants to birth control to migraine relievers to erectile dysfunction and hair loss treatments. The generic drug supply chain is fragile Americans often assume that generic medications will always be cheaply available from multiple manufacturers and at every pharmacy. This assumption is incorrect. In the case of naltrexone, a shortage of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient meant that manufacturers had to slash production. Coupled with an increase in demand for the medications used to treat alcohol problems, shortages spread and prices went up. But input shortages are not the only vulnerability in the supply chain. Manufacturing complexity, quality concerns, and geographic concentration have contributed to an increase in the number and duration of generic drug shortages according to the research organization U.S. Pharmacopeia. 253 drugs are in shortage in 2025 according to the American Society of Health System Pharmacists after reaching an all-time peak of 323 in 2024. Because generic drug manufacturing, distribution and pharmacy dispensing all have very low profit margins, a cost increase including from tariffs at any point in the supply chain is likely to be disruptive. Facing even marginally higher costs, a manufacturer may decide that producing a generic drug is no longer economical. And, as our experience shows, the industry lacks the redundancy to make up the difference. Industry can adapt, but not overnight I am proud to say that we have kept medication in hand for every Oar Health member throughout the shortage. But it has not been easy. Many of our members worked with us during the most acute phases of the shortage, shifting from shipments of 90 tablets to 30 tablets at a time out of concern for others who needed access to the medication. We also drastically reduced marketing budgets and briefly stopped accepting new patients, meaning that people who could have benefited from treatment did not. Over time, we have seen API availability improve and manufacturers increase or restart production. But regulatory bottlenecks, manufacturing setup costs, and uncertainty about demand mean that bouncing back after a supply shock is a process measured in months and years, not days or weeks. More than 18 months after the FDA officially declared a naltrexone shortage and almost two years after patients and pharmacists first began reporting problems, naltrexone remains in shortage. This is unfortunately common. The average shortage lasts 18 months and can span as much as 15 years. Similarly, industry participants agree that reshoring manufacturing, a potential goal of tariffs, would be timely and costly. The bottom line I started Oar Health so that more of the 28 million Americans with alcohol use disorder could get access to safe, effective, FDA-approved medication proven to help them drink less or quit. Our more than 10,000 members and the millions of Americans who rely on essential generic medications are counting on policymakers to remember them.
Category:
E-Commerce
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