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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
Category:
E-Commerce
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
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E-Commerce
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.
Category:
E-Commerce
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