Fast Company’s Creative Director Mike Schnaidt shares a first look at the magazine redesign. So if you are a typeface fanatic, you won’t want to miss this breakdown.
Some U.S. health regulators who review medical devices and tobacco products for safety and efficacy are struggling to meet deadlines mandated by Congress due to Trump administration layoffs, three scientists working on the projects told Reuters.
Two of the scientists who work at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said they had been assigned around double the number of new product applications for review since their colleagues were fired. They requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions.
They said they were instructed to shelve other work, including oversight of other reviewers and providing early feedback on planned product applications before they are submitted for approval review.
One scientist at the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products said the center had delayed starting new applications while staff worked on existing submissions, some with reviews that must be completed within 180 days under U.S. law. Several tobacco-related research projects have also been canceled, he said.
“We have 180 days to complete those (existing) reviews, and we’re not going to come anywhere close to that. It’s just not going to happen,” the scientist said.
A medical device reviewer said they were working to the wire to meet some deadlines.
The FDA did not respond to a request for comment.
The U.S. Department of Government Efficiencyled by billionaire Elon Muskfired around 1,000 probationary FDA employees last month, mostly from the agencys centers for tobacco, food, and medical devices, before bringing some back.
Reuters could not confirm the final number of staff fired. The FDA had more than 20,000 workers earlier this year.
Ameet Sarpatwari, a professor at Harvard Medical School, said the FDA’s loss of personnel and institutional experience could lead the agency to spend longer on reviews, resulting in products coming to market later, or spend less time on individual applications, increasing the risk of missing any red flags.
CANCELED MEETINGS
A lawyer specializing in FDA regulation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said her clients at large medical device companies were deeply concerned that the FDA would start missing deadlines. Medical device industry group AdvaMed said the organization was hearing similar concerns, a spokesperson said.
Eva Temkin, a lawyer at Arnold & Porter who advises clients on medical device applications, said the FDA had canceled some meetings with companies or reverted to providing written responses only.
The FDA last year approved more than 3,000 medical devices, around three-dozen of which were for original, high-risk devices like Medtronic’s Affera system to treat atrial fibrillation, and more than 250 applications for tobacco products, according to agency databases.
It is currently reviewing high-profile projects including one from Philip Morris International that seeks approval for a new iteration of its heated tobacco device IQOS. Philip Morris did not respond to a request for comment.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA, submitted plans for further layoffs to the Trump administration earlier this month.
The administration had been offering $25,000 buyouts to FDA employees, excluding reviewers, investigators, and security personnel, and early retirement ahead of that proposal, according to agency emails viewed by Reuters.
A second scientist in the tobacco division said he had been given more complicated applications to review, which require more in-depth study, after over a dozen people were fired in his office, while simpler submissions assigned to him had been put on pause.
He said he had also been given a regulatory memorandum to work on by himself that would normally be compiled by as many as six scientists.
Some of the probationary workers laid off from the FDAs tobacco center had been recruited last year for their understanding of emerging technologies, such as age verification software for electronic cigarettes, according to the first scientist.
“We needed a greater variety of expertise, and we lost that. And so that has left us scrambling quite a bit,” he said.
Patrick Wingrove, Reuters
At the beginning of the hit 2003 movie Love Actually, Hugh Grants character muses that whenever he gets gloomy about the state of the world, he redirects his attention to the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport.
Another remedy would be to consider the vast natural wonders of space, but perhaps that’s more of a William Shatner move.
Regardless of your leading-man preference, if you are in need of some wonder this week, there will be a partial solar eclipse early Saturday morning visible in certain parts of the world. Heres what that all means and where and how to best see it.
What is a partial solar eclipse?
The moon orbits the Earth while our home planet orbits the sun. When the moon travels between the sun and Earth, an eclipse takes place. The type depends on how the three moving objects line up. If it is not in a perfect line, a partial eclipse occurs.
If it is a perfect line, the sun is completely blocked and a total eclipse occurs. (Cue Bonnie Tyler.) When the moon travels between the sun and the Earth while at its farthest point away from Earth, this is called an annular solar eclipse. (No great pop songs have yet been written about this phenomenon.)
When and where can you see the partial solar eclipse?
The eclipse will take place on Saturday, March 29, 2025.
According to NASA, people in the northeastern United States, Europe, western Africa, eastern Canada, and over the Atlantic Ocean are in for a show.
Shortly after a beautiful sunrise, those on the East Coast of the United States will witness a partial solar eclipse.
Those in New York City should expect it to begin at 6:44 a.m ET. Things kick off even earlier in Boston at 6:31 a.m.
The folks at NASA have compiled a handy list of major cities and the exact timeline for your convenience.
NASA.gov
What is the best way to view the eclipse?
The first rule of viewing a partial solar eclipse is safety. You cannot look directly at it without damaging your eyes. You need solar eclipse glasses.
The American Astronomical Society has a list of approved vendors, which can help you procure some.
Other than that, set multiple alarms to ensure you dont sleep or work through it. If you need a hand waking up, brew some coffee. Then look up and marvel at the sky and for a moment feel a small part of a larger universejust like Captain Kirk.
You’ve heard of burner phones. What about burner email?So much of the internet now requires that you hand over your email address before you’re able to use any servicesfrom an app you’ve downloaded to signing up for a newsletter or redeeming a special offer online.But who says you have to give your real email address? Next time you’re asked, consider using an email mask.There are a growing number of services that give out disguised email addresses and relay any messages to your actual address. Experts say this can be a powerful tool to safeguard privacy and security.Here are some pointers on the whys and hows of email masking:
Mask on
The idea behind email masking is simple. The masking service gives you a randomized address you can use as a decoy instead of your actual email. It can be a series of unrelated words, or a string of letters and numbers. When someone sends a message to the burner email, it will be automatically routed to your address without anyone knowing.Providers include privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo’s Email Protection service, Firefox Relay from browser maker Mozilla, email service FastMail, and independent services like Addy.io. The encrypted service Proton Mail offers email masking with its password manager and standalone SimpleLogin service. There are many others.It’s one of the features Apple offers users subscribing to its iCloud+ or Apple One services. When you’re using the Safari browser app on your iPhone and need to input your email, you can tap the field above the onscreen keyboard to “Hide My Email,” which then creates a random address as a substitute.It’s also available on Mac computers with the desktop Safari browser or Mail app. If you’re using a different browser or app, you can still manually create a random email address by going into your iCloud settings.
A Key Feature
Most services have a free version with basic options and a premium tier with more features.Some free services can only receive emails but not reply to them. However, an important feature users should look for is the ability to do both, said Proton CEO Andy Yen.“Maybe you never reply to a newsletter and that’s fine,” said Yen. But it’s a problem if, for example, you used your email alias to buy something online and there’s an issue with your order that the site needs to ask you about.“Then the ability to reply is actually pretty important,” he said.Most masking services have a dashboard control panel where you can view the various alias addresses you’ve activated. If you notice one starting to get a lot of spam, just turn it off.
When should I use it?
Mask your email when you want to add an extra layer of privacy or protect yourself from data leaks or unauthorized information sharing.An email mask is a “general-purpose tool that can be used in any context,” says Santiago Andrigo, principal product manager at Mozilla.However, he recommends using it in two key situations. The first is when you’re unsure what a website will do with your email address.“Masking your email gives you controlif you start receiving unwanted messages, you can easily block any emails coming to that email mask,” Andrigo said.The second scenario is “when your association with a service could reveal sensitive personal information,” he said. For example, if you join an online community for a specific medical condition or a minority group, a data breach could expose your participation.
Email fail
There are myriad reasons not to give out your email address to anyone who wants it.It could be sold to marketers or shady data brokers, eroding your privacy by helping them build a profile of you for legitimate or nefarious purposes.If your address ends up on the wrong mailing list, it could result in more junk or phishing emails. And if an online service is hacked, attackers could make off with logins, passwords and other personal information.Using unique passwords for all your online accountstypically with the help of a password manageris good cybersecurity practice. “But the real pain point for any user is actually not the password getting leaked, but actually the email getting leaked,” said Yen.Changing your password after a data breach is standard practice but it’s a lot harder to change another piece of sensitive information, your email addressunless you’re using a mask.
False solutions
There are other so-called hacks that you might have heard about.You could set up a throwaway account with a free email service like Gmail or Yahoo. But it’s tedious to do this.Some Gmail users add a plus sign and an extra phrase or combination of characters between their username and the @ sign. It helps track who’s sharing your address as well as filter messages.But “from a privacy standpoint, that does nothing,” said Yen. “Because people can just simply take away the plus and get your original address.”
What about the man in the middle?
Email masks use their servers to relay message traffic between the sender and the recipient. So how can you be sure those servers are private?Look for reputable providers that promise not to keep your messages. If you’re shopping around for an email masking service, Yen advises checking if it has “proper terms and conditions,” a privacy policy and is based in a jurisdiction where it could be legally held accountable.“We state very clearly we’re not keeping a copy of anything that passes through our servers,” Yen said.Firefox Relay says in its FAQs that it does not “read or store any of your messages.”“In the event that an email cannot be delivered to you, we will keep it on our servers and delete it after it has been delivered (in no event will we hold onto it for more than three days),” it says.Apple says it “doesn’t read or process any of the content” in email messages that pass through Hide My Email except for standard spam filtering.“All email messages are deleted from our relay servers after they’re delivered to you, usually within seconds,” the iPhone maker says.
AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay in Oakland, Calif. contributed to this report.
Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip.
Kelvin Chan, AP Business Writer
Shares in foreign and domestic car companies are down since yesterdays market close after President Donald Trump announced his latest round of tariffs on Wednesday. Those tariffs include a 25% levy on automobiles imported into the United States. However, the tariffs could also affect cars made in America. Heres what you need to know.
25% tariffs on imported cars and auto parts
Yesterday, Trump announced that he would enforce 25% tariffs on all cars and other automobiles imported into the United States. However, as NBC News notes, while Trumps original announcement just referred to tariffs on imported vehicles, the tariffs apply to parts of vehicles made in America as well.
A fact sheet about the 25% auto tariffs posted on the White Houses official website states, The 25% tariff will be applied to imported passenger vehicles (sedans, SUVs, crossovers, minivans, cargo vans) and light trucks, as well as key automobile parts (engines, transmissions, powertrain parts, and electrical components), with processes to expand tariffs on additional parts if necessary.”
The announcement of the tariffs drew condemnation from America’s trading partners and auto-industry players. Jennifer Safavian, CEO of Autos Drive America, a trade group that represents international automakers who operate in the United States, said the tariffs “will make it more expensive to produce and sell cars in the United States, ultimately leading to higher prices, fewer options for consumers, and fewer manufacturing jobs in the U.S.,” as NBC News reported.
How much will car prices rise?
Due to the tariffs, the price of cars in America is expected to rise by thousands of dollars in the next few weeks, reports CNN.
But it wont just be foreign cars sold in America that will see higher price tags. Because the tariffs also cover imported parts that American car manufacturers need to make their cars in America, those parts will become pricier to obtain, leading to higher domestic car prices as well.
This means it will become costlier for even U.S. car makers to make carsand some of those costs will need to be passed on to buyers of American-made vehicles.
Automaker stock prices fall
Unsurprisingly, shares in many automakers fell after Trumps tariff announcement on Wednesday, although some seem to be stabilizing in premarket trading on Thursday.
Heres a roundup of the current movement in automaker stocks sold on U.S. markets. Prices reflect the time of this writing in premarket trading on Thursday morning.
General Motors Company (NYSE: GM): down 6.5%
Tesla, Inc. (Nasdaq TSLA): up 0.71%
Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F): down 0.4%
Stellantis N.V. (NYSE: STLA): down .1.7%
Toyota Motor Corporation (NYSE: TM): down 1.74%
Rivian Automotive, Inc. (Nasdaq: RIVN): down 0.41%
Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (NYSE: HMC): down 1.45%
President Trump said the tariffs will begin being collected on April 3next Thursday. The president said the tariffs will be permanent.
The White House fact sheet detailing the tariffs says that the U.S. auto industry “is vital to national security and has been undermined by excessive imports threatening Americas domestic industrial base and supply chains.” The tariffs, the White House says, are meant to protect it.
Major antiabortion groups were gathering in the nation’s capital on Thursday to begin a lobbying effort with Congress and President Donald Trump’s administration aimed at eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood ahead of the Supreme Court hearing a case in April that could strip the organization’s funding in South Carolina.The antiabortion groups are taking aim at abortion providers under an initiative called Defund Planned Parenthood, which targets federal Medicaid funding for the reproductive healthcare provider.“This event begins an intensive round of outreach to the GOP, calling on them to take advantage of this unique moment to defund the abortion industry,” Students for Life, the national antiabortion group organizing the event, said in a statement.The Hyde Amendment already restricts government funding for most abortions, and less than 5% of the services Planned Parenthood provides are abortions, according to the organization’s 2023 report. Planned Parenthood also provides other forms of reproductive healthcare, including contraception, treatment for sexually transmitted infections and cancer screenings, often for low-income patients.Vicki Ringer, Planned Parenthood’s South Carolina director of public affairs, said claims that Planned Parenthood uses Medicaid funding for abortion is “an attempt to mislead the public” and emphasized Planned Parenthood’s role in providing broader reproductive healthcare.“We should be expanding healthcare to low-income people rather than trying to kick off these people who rely on us for healthcare,” Ringer said.Rachel Rebouche, dean of Temple University’s Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia, said the Defund Planned Parenthood movement has been building for 10 years but has gained momentum as the antiabortion movement has been emboldened by Trump’s presidential victory and by his fellow Republicans winning control of Congress in November.“We’re seeing more enthusiasm in states like South Carolina and others to close down Planned Parenthood under the banner of stopping abortions, which their laws already do,” she said.The Supreme Court announced it would hear a case involving South Carolina’s attempt to strip Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. Experts say the lawsuit could prompt similar efforts in conservative states across the country to chip away at the organization’s funding.Almost 100 conservative members of Congress signed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to side with South Carolina. The state already bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people know they’re pregnant.In February, a panel of judges in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court ruling that attempted to force Planned Parenthood to repay millions of dollars of Medicaid funding in Texas and Louisiana.If the Supreme Court sides with South Carolina, Rebouche said, there may be a wider impact on healthcare by “giving states broad power to exclude healthcare that is unpopular or politically disfavored,” such as contraception. Targeting Planned Parenthood might also have a negative effect on maternal and infant mortality rates and could cost more money in the long run by cutting off low-income patients from vital preventive reproductive healthcare, she said.During a 2015 push to strip Planned Parenthood funding, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that doing so would cost the government $130 million over 10 years.Meanwhile, lawmakers in at least three statesMissouri, Ohio, and South Carolinahave introduced bills this year aiming to create tax breaks for antiabortion centers.The strategies come during a time when abortion rights advocates are warning that Trump and his Cabinet hold significant power to restrict medication abortion access nationwide.Rather than immediately heeding calls from antiabortion allies to restrict Medicaid funding for clinics that provide abortions, Trump has made quieter moves after waffling on the issue on the campaign trail.Trump reinstated a policy that requires foreign nongovernmental agencies to certify that they don’t provide or promote abortion if they receive U.S. aid for family planning assistance. He also pardoned several antiabortion activists convicted of blockading abortion clinics and used wording related to fetal personhood in an executive order rolling back protections for transgender people.The Republican president has appointed abortion opponents in some key Cabinet positions that could affect the availability of medication abortion and contraception, Medicaid coverage for family planning services, collection of abortion-related data and abortion access for troops and veterans.Advocates on either side of the abortion debate are waiting to see if Trump’s Department of Justice will revive the Comstock Act, a 19th-century obscenity law, to restrict the mailing of medication abortion or other materials used for abortions. Attorney General Pam Bondi has a history of defending abortion restrictions, and her confirmation was celebrated by abortion opponents.
The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Christine Fernando, Associated Press
Fast food giant Yum Brands has worked for years to distance itself from third-party tech partners. Last week, it made the ultimate power move: a development deal with Nvidia, a tech giant consistently ranked among the most valuable companies in the world.
We want to own the intellectual property. We want to own the technology, Yum Brands chief digital and technology officer Joe Park told the Wall Street Journal. Thats a shift in our strategy as we think about AI.
In other words: Yum knows its strength and wants full control over its own data. The company will build more services for its 61,000 restaurants with Nvidias tech with the goal of quickly processing and understanding critical information about store-level performance and giving managers personalized action plans.
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Yum Brands owns fast food powerhouses Taco Bell and KFC along with delivery stalwart Pizza Hut and its more recent acquisition, a less-known burger concept called Habit Burger. It says it’s Nvidias first restaurant partner, an important distinction in what could become a restaurant-tech land grab.
The restaurant industry has been historically slow to deploy new tech, but seems to be excited about AI. According to data from the National Restaurant Association, about a third of restaurant operators plan to invest in AI for operations this yeara significant increase from the year before.
Of course, Park is quick to tell the WSJ, all of this new tech wont replace human workers. Instead, he says, theyll be trained on a different form of service and hospitality than I think weve seen in the past.
(This is a common refrain from industry execs who promise employees will augment new tech, freed up to provide additional human connection inside restaurants. In tandem, the execs celebrate the efficiency and reduced labor costs that tech brings to their operations.)
Yum hasnt been shy about its desire to use tech to win. In 2023, it shared an aggressive sales target, albeit without a timeline: It wants all of its sales to come through digital channels. Digital ordering carries a host of benefits, including a restaurants ability to collect real-time data. Additionally, consumers tend to spend more when they place orders digitally thanks to smart upsells and better order accuracy.
Its made some progress toward that goal. In 2024, the companys system-wide digital sales were up 15%, representing over half of sales. In the fourth quarter alone, it processed $9 billion in digital sales.
Given the huge growth potential (and massive amount of money involved), Yum is right to hold its own ordering data close. Its a lesson the company may have learned the hard way. In 2018, Yum signed an exclusive deal with Grubhub, the onetime national leader in online ordering and delivery. Grubhub would power delivery at both Taco Bell and KFC, and Yum invested $200 million in Grubhub, a 3% stake.
The deal flamed out rather spectacularly just two years later. Yum, realizing the delivery tailwind thanks to the onset of the pandemic, started working with competing delivery services like Uber Eats, which Grubhub said violated the terms of their agreement.
In hindsight, this was Yums first big digital flex: Were too big and powerful to be constrained by your platform, it seemed to say. When Grubhub moved to increase the fees it charged Yums restaurants, Yum sued Grubhub for breach of contract, eventually offloading its investment for a reported $208 million.
The Nvidia deal, on paper at least, should accelerate Yums next transition. To start, it will use the tech to add voice AI to its drive-thrus and phone lines, targeting a relatively modest 500 restaurants in the second quarter of this year. Eventually, Park says, theyll use the tech to optimize all ordering channels, including the companys mobile apps, and home in on in-store productivity and accuracy with Nvidia-powered computer vision.
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Kristen Hawley
The wildfires that blazed through Los Angeles earlier this year, some of the fastest-spreading fires on record, underscored the risk of living in homes known to be at high risk for future fires. One national homebuilder, KB Home, believes that risk can be reduced by building a wildfire-resilient neighborhood.Dixon Trail, a community of 64 homes under construction in Escondido, California, near San Diego, will be the first neighborhood to earn the new Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood standard developed by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS). [Image: KB Home]Each individual home will meet the Wildfire Prepared Home Plus certification, an IBHS designation that requires the homes to meet specific material and design standards, including Class A fire-rated roofs, noncombustible gutters, ember- and flame-resistant vents and all-metal fence systems. The town of Paradise, California, which lost 90% of its homes during a 2018 fire, passed a law requiring all homes meet this standard.The entire development is being designed with a holistic vision to reduce fire risks. Homes will be spaced 10 feet apart, with trees, bushes, and other landscaping distanced from structures to reduce the chances fires will start or spread. Wider streets will run through the neighborhood, creating fire breaks between homes and allowing for quicker evacuations.This is the first neighborhood that cohesively is meeting not just individual property attributes, but is paying attention to fire pathways, and fences and other kinds of landscaping between structures that can become pathways for fires, said Roy Wright, CEO of IBHS.Last year, roughly 1,200 homes in California earned the Wildfire Prepared Home designation, mostly through retrofits to add more fire resistant features. This is the first ground-up neighborhood to aim for this additional neighborhood-level certification, which will be awarded when its finished. Theres real risk in the region for fire; the chaparral on the foothills surrounding the development can easily ignite in the right conditions. Housing shortages in western states like California have pushed more and more development toward whats called the wildland-urban interface, or WUI, where new development comes up against undeveloped land. Roughly 11.2 million Californians, a quarter of the states population, live in the WUI today, which has substantially higher risks of fires than metro areas. The IBHS, which works in service of the insurance industry, arrives at its recommendations via exhaustive testing and research. The group has studied fire and storm risk for years, including the recent Palisades and Eaton Fires. The organization even has a 90-acre test site in South Carolina where it builds and then blasts apart homes, recreating Category 3 hurricanes and wildfires to test the latest in material safety and building codes. The materials recommended for Wildfire Prepared Home Plus were tested at the South Carolina site, and reflected learnings from what kind of homes tend to survive catastrophic wildfires. [Image: KB Home]KB Home began constructing Dixon Trail last June, said Jacob Atalla, KB Homes Vice President of Sustainability and Innovation. The first homes have been finished, going for roughly $1 million (the median single-family home sale in Escondido last year was $825,000, per Redfin). Its a small part of KB Homes overall production in 2024; the company earned nearly $7 billion in revenue, with more than 6,500 homes under construction, including a sizable number in western states with higher fire risks.[Image: KB Home]This price was set knowing that we are already building these homes to be wildfire prepared, so we didnt add a premium top of it, said Atalla.He expects this project to serve as a testing lab, helping the company figure out how to source materials for these kinds of homes in the future and scale up production of more wildfire resistant products. Initially marketed as a neighborhood with mountain views and oversized lots, the new messaging around wildfire risk reflects the sentiment shift since L.A.s devastating January fires. The certifications will likely reduce the insurance costs for new homeowners, said Atalla and Wright, and lower the total cost of ownership over time. Neither, however, could provide more specifics about the amount of savings, claiming the insurance process is complex and every carrier has their own methodology. Californias home insurance market has become increasingly challenging for homeowners, with rapidly spiking premiums and carriers dropping coverage or leaving the market altogether. Thats why savings on insurance is good business for KB and other homebuilders; in the companys 2024 annual report, it notes wildfire risk and increasing insurance costs as a risk factor, noting that consumers facing higher premiums may decide not to pursue purchasing a home or may cancel a home sales contract with us. Wriht says approximately 10 different neighborhoods in California, either through retrofits or new construction, are looking to gain the Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood designation.This Dixon Trail development is the first, but it will not be the last. I promise you, he said. There are plenty of people watching this who intend to emulate it.
Back in January, Kohls announced that it would be closing 27 of its stores across America in order to help the company control costs and increase operational efficiency. At the time, Kohls described the closing locations as underperforming and said the closures will occur by April 2025.
And now it looks like Kohls remains on track for that by April deadline. As first noticed by USA Today, the 27 stores that Kohls had previously announced would be closing now list their last day of operation as this Saturday, March 29, on Kohls store locator tool.
For example, the store locator listing for the Kohls located at 1116 1st Street in Napa, California, now lists, in bright red letters, This store will be closing soon. Our last day of business at this location will be Saturday, March 29th.
Other closing locations also show the same message.
The listing for the Napa store goes on to reveal that its store hours for the last day of its operation will be from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. After that, the store will shut its doors to customers for good.
Kohls store closures 2025 full list
The 27 Kohls stores that are closing are spread across 15 states, with California being hit the hardest with 10 stores closing there. After the stores are closed on Saturday, Kohls will still operate over 1,120 locations across the country.
Announcing the closures in January, Kohls CEO Tom Kingsbury said, “We always take these decisions very seriously. As we continue to build on our long-term growth strategy, it is important that we also take difficult but necessary actions to support the health and future of our business for our customers and our teams.”
The full list of store closures is below.
Alabama
Spanish Fort – 21000 Town Center Ave.
Arkansas
Little Rock West – 13909 Chenal Pkwy.
California
Balboa (San Diego) – 5505 Balboa Ave.
Encinitas – 134 N El Camino Real
Fremont – 43782 Christy St.
Mountain View – 350 Showers Dr.
Napa – 1116 1st St.
Pleasanton – 4525 Rosewood Dr.
Point West (Sacramento) – 1896 Arden Way
San Rafael – 5010 Northgate Dr.
San Luis Obispo – 205 Madonna Rd.
Westchester – 8739 S Sepulveda Blvd.
Colorado
Arapahoe Crossing (Aurora) – 6584 S Parker Rd.
Georgia
Duluth – 2050 W Liddell Rd.
Idaho
Boise – 400 N Milwaukee St.
Illinois
Plainfield – 11860 S Route 59
Spring Hill (West Dundee) – 3000 Spring Hill Ring Rd.
Massachusetts
Stoughton – 501 Technology Center Dr.
New Jersey
East Windsor – 72 Princeton Hightstown Rd.
Ohio
Blue Ash – 4150 Hunt Rd.
Forest Park (Cincinnati) – 100 Cincinnati Mills Dr.
Oregon
Portland Gateway – 10010 NE Halsey St.
Pennsylvania
Pottstown – 351 W Schuylkill Rd.
Texas
North Dallas – 18224 Preston Rd.
Utah
Riverton – 13319 S 3600 W Ste 13LOT
Virginia
Herndon – 2100 Centreville Rd.
Williamsburg – 100 Gristmill Plz
At eight months pregnant with my first child, I walked into my bosss office, ready for a pivotal meeting. I had spent months designing a new crisis management program for our universityone that would improve student outcomes and reduce institutional risk. This was the moment Id learn whether my work would be implemented.
I had poured everything into this project. It reflected my expertise, positioned the university at the forefront of best practices, andfor me personallyoffered the challenge and recognition I craved. My current role felt stagnant, and this opportunity was exactly what I needed.
My boss was thrilled with my proposal and agreed I was the right person to lead it. Then, she hesitated. But, she said, you may not want it.
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I was stunned.
Of course, I wanted it. It was a promotion I had essentially built for myself. But she smiled and, with what she saw as kindness, said, Once the baby comes, you may find that youre less interested in work. You might be less . . . ambitious. Youre going to find that youre a different person.
I assured her I wanted the role, and the promotion was official. But her words cast a shadow over the good news. Less ambitious? Change my identity? What kind of sexist nonsense was that? I knew exactly who I was, and I wasnt about to prove her right.
When motherhood becomes a career liability
I hadnt even given birth, yet I was already experiencing the motherhood penaltya term that refers to the economic and career disadvantages that mothers often face in the workplace compared to their childless counterparts and fathers. Sociologists have long studied this phenomenon and have found that, to compensate, working mothers often feel pressured to downplay their parental responsibilities to be taken seriously at work.
When I returned to work after maternity leave, I found myself doing exactly this. I shared my parenting experiences with only a small group of trusted colleagues, wary of confirming anyones biases. My bosss words still echoed in my head. Even in an institution more supportive of working parents than most, I didnt want anyone to doubt my dedication.
The COVID-19 pandemic briefly shattered this illusion. When kids interrupted Zoom meetings asking for help with virtual school, hiding our parental roles became impossible. But now many of us feel pressure to return to the pre-pandemic norms of keeping motherhood in the background. The unspoken expectation remains: Be present as a professional first, a parent second.
Of course, the pressure to separate our professional and personal identities comes at a steep cost. When employees feel they cant be authentic at work, they disengage, burn out, or leave. This isnt just a loss for individualsits a loss for organizations that miss out on the creativity, resilience, and leadership working parents bring to the table.
Bridging the gap
Ironically, my boss was rightbut not in the way she expected. After having my son, I did change. I returned to work with a broader perspective, increased flexibility in my thinking, and with a deeper well of empathy. And these changes made me a different kind of professionalthey made me better.
Parenthood forces us to develop skills that translate directly into leadership: patience, conflict resolution, adaptability, and emotional intelligence. It forces us to prioritize, make decisions under pressure, and manage competing demands. These skills and perspectives are deeply needed in todays workplaces.
We need to stop pretending that work and parenting exist in opposition. The more we integrate these identities, the stronger we becomeas professionals, as leaders, and as humansand the stronger our organizations become.
Its time to rewrite the narrative. Parenthood deepens our capacity for leadership, strengthens our problem-solving skills, and fuels our drive to create a better world for the next generation. The real challenge isnt whether working parents can stay committed to their careersits whether workplaces can evolve to recognize the full value they bring.
So instead of downplaying our role as parents, what if we embraced it as an asset? What if we stopped proving our worth by pretending caregiving doesnt exist, and instead reshaped professional culture to reflect the reality that so many of us live? The more openly we integrate our identities, the more we create space for others to do the same.
I didnt lose my ambition when I became a mother. If anything, it sharpened. The question isnt whether we change after parenthoodits whether we allow those changes to make us stronger. And whether the workplace is ready to keep up.
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