Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s offer for a controlling stake in Paramount Global could keep Shari Redstone close to the company, if his bid is successful.

Bronfman is open to having Redstone, currently non-executive chairman at Paramount, remain involved with the company if the Paramount special committee accepts his consortium’s bid for National Amusements, the controlling shareholder, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Bronfman has raised $6 billion to challenge Skydance Media for ownership of National Amusements, the holding company founded by Sumner Redstone, according to people familiar with the matter. Both Bronfman’s bid and Skydance’s bid would also include money to buy out a percentage of Paramount Global common shareholders.

At $6 billion, Bronfman’s bid would give cash to about 20% of Class B holders at $16 per share. Skydance would pay out about 50% of current Paramount common investors at $15 per share as part of its bid, according to the people familiar.

It’s not clear if Redstone prefers one offer over the other. The Paramount Global special committee will determine if Bronfman’s offer is a superior proposal for shareholders by Aug. 28. If the committee decides Bronfman’s offer is better, Skydance will then have four business days to match. The deadline for the entire process to be concluded is Sept. 5.

Bronfman still has a few more days to raise more money for a competing bid to counter Skydance, which agreed to an $8 billion deal to merge with Paramount Global last month. The special committee earlier this week extended the so-called “go-shop” period — during which it could entertain competing offers — by 15 days to review Bronfman’s initial bid.

One of the individuals who is part of Bronfman’s bid is former AOL CEO Jon Miller, suggesting Redstone could potentially have more control over a future Paramount Global than she’d get with Skydance. Miller, a close ally of Redstone, has been connecting Bronfman with potential capital and would likely take a role with the company if it came under Bronfman’s stewardship — perhaps a board seat and an operational job — according to people familiar with the matter. Bronfman would be CEO of the company if his deal were to be accepted and go through, said the people.

Miller, Redstone and Redstone’s son-in-law, Jason Ostheimer, together run Advancit Capital, a small venture capital firm that invests in media and technology. The trio are the only three people that appear on the firm’s website. Miller has also operated as a de facto strategic advisor to Redstone for many years, according to people familiar with the matter.

Redstone has not spoken with Miller about the bid, according to people familiar with the matter.

While the Redstone family and Bronfman family have run in similar circles, including donating heavily to Jewish foundations, Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Shari Redstone haven’t met many times and don’t have a close preexisting relationship, two of the people said.

Skydance CEO David Ellison and Redstone have had several discussions about the potential for Redstone to stay in as a shareholder of a combined Skydance-Paramount Global, according to people familiar with the matter.

Redstone is taking a wait-and-see approach to any future involvement she may want to have in Paramount Global moving forward regardless of its ownership, according to a person familiar with her thinking.

Spokespeople for Redstone, Bronfman, the Paramount Global special committee and Skydance all declined to comment.

Bronfman has spent the last few weeks aggregating individuals with interest in owning a piece of Paramount Global, including film producer Steven Paul and Patron cofounder John Paul DeJoria, who had previously considered a bid of their own, according to a person familiar with the process, as well as Fortress Investment Group, the credit arm of private equity firm BC Partners, and former Turner Broadcasting CEO John Martin.

Bronfman’s financing comes from many different sources, which may potentially trigger regulatory concerns if too much of the money is from foreign entities. Having so many different financers may also make Bronfman’s offer riskier than Skydance’s bid, which is backed by private equity firm RedBird Capital and multibillionaire Larry Ellison, the father of David Ellison.

Bronfman is the chairman of Fubo, a sports streaming service, and the former head of Universal and Warner Music.

Skydance’s lawyers sent a letter to the Paramount Global special committee demanding the company stop negotiating with Bronfman, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Skydance said Paramount Global breached the terms of the go-shop agreement by not alerting Skydance that it planned to extend the window, the report said.

Skydance also argued the special committee didn’t have the right to extend the go-shop because a bid had to “reasonably be expected to lead to a superior proposal.” Skydance argued the Bronfman bid didn’t meet the criteria.

Researchers have begun measuring the impact of legalized sports gambling on American households, and the initial results paint a worrisome picture about how its expansion has affected bettors’ finances.

In separate papers released this month, academics have found that households in states where gambling was legalized saw significantly reduced savings, as well as lower investments in assets like stocks that are generally considered more financially sound.

Meanwhile, states that legalized sports betting saw their residents’ aggregate credit scores decrease, while bankruptcies increased.

“Legalization is not a free lunch,” said Scott Baker, associate professor of finance at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and the lead author on one of the papers.

The “lunch” has nevertheless been substantial for state coffers: New York, which has a 51% tax rate on mobile sports wagering, raked in $862 million last year in tax revenues from the activity and more than $2 billion over the past three years, according to Legal Sports Report — with most of it going toward education. New Jersey, the first state to allow online sports betting, has a much lower tax rate — though it is contemplating an increase — but has still seen $549 million in tax receipts from sports betting since 2018.

Online sports betting is legal in 30 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, and the authors estimate total monthly wagers have climbed from an average of $1.1 billion per month in 2019 to $14 billion in January 2024. North Carolina became the most recent state to offer online sports betting earlier this year.

But there has been a clear cost, according to the studies’ authors.

Using datasets showing deposits and withdrawals into and out of online sports betting platforms like FanDuel and DraftKings, as well as to and from equity brokerage accounts like Charles Schwab, E-Trade, Vanguard and Fidelity, Baker and his co-authors found that legalization has led to higher credit card balances, lower access to credit, a reduction in longer-term and higher-yield investments, as well as an increase in lottery play — with the effects particularly pronounced among financially constrained households.

“It’s not just moving entertainment dollars from one company to another,” Baker said. “Rather, they’re drawing from sources of their household budget that policymakers are trying to increase” like stock investment accounts, he said.

And the effects aren’t limited to an individual: Baker’s team found bettors were more likely to have received pandemic-era child tax credits, regardless of income, suggesting they were more likely to have children.

In a separate study led by Brett Hollenbeck, an associate professor of marketing at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, researchers found that compared with states that did not implement sports gambling, states that did so saw credit scores drop by a statistically significant, though modest, amount, while bankruptcies increased 28% and debt transferred to debt collectors climbed 8%. Auto loan delinquencies and use of debt consolidation loans also increased, they found.

“While many consumers get real enjoyment from legal gambling, and states benefit in the form of additional tax revenue, there is a corresponding concern that the introduction of sports gambling and the ease at which consumers can now bet online are negatively harming consumer financial health,” they write. “Our paper provides evidence that this concern is well founded.”

The papers have not yet been peer-reviewed, but both sought to rule out other causes for the declines in household financial well-being, like national economic trends, that might have also affected household spending and investment decisions. They note instead that the timing of a given state’s legalization has tended to map neatly onto the beginning of households’ financial deterioration.

Some state lawmakers have taken note of the negative impact. In New Jersey, Senate President Nicholas Scutari recently introduced a bill that would create a gambling treatment diversion court, citing the fact that gambling expansion has created “unrestrained opportunity for persons with problem gambling or disordered gambling to become engulfed in destructive behaviors.”

The New York State Gaming Commission noted a 26% increase in problem gambling-related calls to the Office of Addiction Services and Supports from 2021 to 2022, the most recent period for which data has been released.

Yet states continue to see gambling as a cash cow. While Adam Candee, editor-in-chief of Legal Sports Report, said it would be unfair to characterize state approaches to sports gambling legalization as a search for a panacea to their budget woes, many are now introducing legislation to further capitalize on the growth in gambling, whether through increasing tax rates or replacing existing levies with funding from gambling.

Meanwhile, the industry will continue to grow — although Candee said the rate of growth will slow until California and Texas decide to legalize sports betting, and there is no sign that they will do so imminently, he said.

But he said that as money continues to pour in, gambling platforms will acquire ever greater leverage to try to get some form of legalized gambling passed in those states, not to mention all others, as an entryway into legalizing sports betting.

Earlier this year, the major sports betting platforms formed the Responsible Online Gaming Association to address problem gambling. Its members have committed more than $20 million to fund research, education and awareness campaigns, as well as to develop a “clearinghouse” of players who display high-risk attributes.

Yet there is likely a limit to how much the platforms will seek to restrict their own activities.

“Ultimately, most of the major sports books in the U.S. have shareholders to answer to,” Candee said, noting the largest ones, including DraftKings, FanDuel and BetMGM, are all publicly traded. “And those shareholders are going to want to see growth and profit.”

Customers have come to expect when they order something online, it arrives in two days or less. But with increasing adverse weather events like Houston’s heatwaves, Florida’s hurricanes and other extreme storms, it’s getting harder to ensure fast delivery.

Many logistics companies have warned about shipping delays due to extreme weather. Weather-related supply chain disruptions will cost the industry an estimated $100 billion in 2024, according to Freight Waves. Freight solutions company Breakthrough, which focuses on sustainable transportation, conducted a survey of 500 shippers and carriers this year that revealed extreme weather was cited as the top transportation challenge. 

“Shippers and carriers continue to face a myriad of disruptions,” Breakthrough chief operating officer Jenny Zanden said in a statement. “Last year, transportation professionals were focused on reducing costs as a means to overcome volatile diesel prices. This year, sustainability and climate-related disruptions are driving the need for fuel efficiency and changes to transportation strategy.” 

The issues are affecting key global transportation conduits, such as the Panama Canal, where drought conditions have plagued shippers. But the issues are also increasing for the biggest retailers in the U.S. as they attempt to get delivered to customers and keep warehouses and stores stocked.

In March, an expected snowstorm hit the Sparks, Nevada. It led to the closure of Donner Pass, which many drivers use to traverse the northern Sierra mountain range. Walmart was unable to dispatch its grocery delivery from its Sparks center as a result. It turned to to predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize last-mile strategies.

“We have now this technology at our hand, which allows us to make sure that we continue to serve those customers in the best possible way, run those scenarios, and have those recommendations ready so that we can start taking actions in a much quicker way, rather than waiting for the event to happen and then reacting,” said Walmart senior vice president Parvez Musani.

Walmart used its simulation platform built with artificial intelligence to create a digital twin of its entire network. Predictive modeling allows the company to see how to react to an adverse weather event, including if there are stores or warehouses in the weather path that need to be shut down and where those orders can be fulfilled. In the Sparks storm, Walmart identified 85 stores spread across Nevada, California and Oregon that could be quickly realigned to address the deliveries coming from the Sparks center. The system was able to find four specific distribution centers that could handle the workload, as well as offer alternate driving routes to get items to customers. 

“Our goal is that by using technology and AI, we make it seamless for our customers where they don’t see the impact of some of this unforeseen event that happened, and we continue to serve the customers in that area,” Musani said. “We would reroute trucks where possible. We will realign warehouses that serve the stores in that area so that we can continue to bring the freight for our customers in the affected areas.”

Target adjusts its logistics network to address any delays created by storms or other adverse weather, so its supply chain can move faster. It also has adapted its models to make sure it stays stocked in areas where supplies may be in demand, pre-positioning inventory like food, water, batteries and other essential items in areas where predicted storms will hit. And rather than rely on large warehouses, it uses its stores as hubs, which helps it change delivery fulfillment quickly.

“We can quickly shift delivery origins across markets to ensure our stores are stocked,” said a Target spokesman. “And our various fulfillment options, including Target Circle 360 same-day delivery, Drive-up, and next-day delivery, provide multiple ways for guests to get products quickly.”

Rising temperatures affecting warehouse and deliveries have also become a serious issue for retailers, including Amazon. One union organizer in New Jersey showed temperatures as high as 92 degrees in July in areas where people lift heavy boxes, according to the Daily Beast. Other facilities in states like California have also complained about working conditions during heat waves in recent years.

In addition to closing warehouses in cases of extreme weather, Amazon is using algorithms to plan delivery worker routes. During 2023, it worked with partners to adjust routes based on heat by more than 96.9 million minutes to allow drivers to take additional breaks to hydrate and cool down. It also spent $59 million to insulate vans, including a rapid cooling system.

All delivery associates are also provided electrolyte powder, a cooler for each vehicle, a 64-ounce insulated tumbler, cooling bandanas, and sunscreen, with additional cooling mechanisms currently being tested. Its buildings provide heat mitigation above federal standards, including having most of its North American warehouses climate-controlled. It also requires mandatory additional indoor breaks for delivery workers in extremely cold temperatures, and invested $8.5 million in cold weather supplies for its delivery team. 

A company spokesperson said that despite these adjustments, predictive analytics and strategizing have helped it maintain its shipping speeds. It set new shipping speed records for Prime delivery in the first three months of 2024, including more than two billion items arriving within two days globally.  

“We’ve built our operations for agility, so even in the face of extreme weather, our supply chain modeling allows us to place in-demand products in non-impacted areas and monitor inventory levels for essential items, like bottled water, where people need them most,” said an Amazon spokesman.

While mitigating adverse weather during deliveries does add additional cost to the companies, in the end keeping customer loyalty by honoring shipping time promises pays off. It helps create a sustainable business, Musani said. With the aid of technology, that can be cheaper than ever. 

“We want to have our cake and eat it too, in the sense that we want to create the fastest network possible for the customers, but do it at the lowest cost possible,” Musani said. “With our scale and using technology and using some of these AI-based platforms that are out there, it actually makes it easier, and it enables us to do all of that, to manage both the top line and the bottom line.”

Lawmakers want to crack down on “junk fees,” but restaurants are trying to stay out of the fight.

Surcharges or fees covering everything from credit card processing to gratuities to “inflation” have become more popular on restaurant checks in recent years.

Last year, 15% of restaurant owners added surcharges or fees to checks because of higher costs, according to the National Restaurant Association. In the second quarter, 3.7% of restaurant transactions processed by Square included a service fee, more than double the beginning of 2022, according to a recent report from the company.

Opponents of the practice say those fees and surcharges may surprise customers, hoodwinking them into paying more for their meals at a time when their wallets are already feeling thin. Fed-up diners compiled spreadsheets via Reddit of restaurants in Los Angeles, Chicago and D.C. charging hidden fees. Even the Onion took a swing at the practice, publishing a satirical story in May with the headline “Restaurant Check Includes 3% Surcharge To Provide Owner’s Sugar Baby With Birkin.”

The Biden administration has broadly targeted so-called junk fees, like an undisclosed service charge for concert tickets or unexpected resort fees when checking out of a hotel. This fall, the Federal Trade Commission is expected to publish a rule banning businesses from “charging hidden and misleading fees.”

Restaurants are trying to stay out of the Biden administration’s crosshairs. They say surcharges and fees are necessary to keep their businesses afloat and to compensate their employees fairly in a competitive industry with razor-thin profit margins.

“The challenge for the restaurants is that not all fees are junk fees … People know what they’re paying for when it comes to most fees that are on a restaurant bill,” said Sean Kennedy, executive vice president of public affairs for the National Restaurant Association.

Some customers might disagree with Kennedy.

While federal law makes it illegal for management to keep their workers’ tips, mandatory service charges are the property of the restaurant. Some states, like New York, have their own laws that say service charges belong to staff.

A Denver-based restaurant worker said in a public comment responding to the FTC’s proposed rule that his employer describes the fee to customers as “equitably distributed to the staff.” But he was told when he was hired that the business keeps 30% of the proceeds.

Service fees increase the risk of wage theft, because employers might claim that the money goes to workers but fail to distribute it, the National Women’s Law Center wrote in its public comment. Moreover, customers who pay a service charge are less likely to tip on top of the check, hurting workers’ income, the non-profit organization said.

For their part, restaurant operators argue that service fees and other surcharges help them pay their employees more and provide better benefits.

When Galit, a Middle Eastern restaurant in Chicago, opened its doors in 2019, it tacked on an optional 2% fee to cover health-care costs for its workers. These days, the fee is 4%, plus the restaurant adds a 20% service charge to each bill for hourly workers. The fees are stated clearly on its website, its Resy page and its menu.

 Co-owner and general manager Andres Clavero, who has an accounting background, said the restaurant chose that approach for a few different reasons.

“We can dictate where it all goes, so some of our service charge of 20% goes to the back of house,” Clavero said.

Moreover, higher menu prices could scare away customers, plus diners would have to pay higher sales tax. Galit would also have higher payroll taxes. And the service charge aims to address issues with tipping. The practice has grown more controversial in recent years, thanks to studies that connect it to sexual harassment and racial discrimination.

If the fees were instead baked into the restaurant’s prices, customers might choose cheaper options that don’t provide the same benefits for its employees, Clavero said.

In some cases, fees help restaurants navigate tricky legislation. For example, service charges became much more common in D.C. after voters approved Initiative 82, which will phase out the tipped wage by 2027. In March, the city passed a bill protecting service fees of 20% or less.

Kaliwa, a Southeast Asian restaurant in D.C., said it implemented an 8% surcharge to manage rising labor and operating costs.

“Our priority is to remain transparent with our guests, ensuring they understand the reasons behind these fees,” Kaliwa director Peter Demetri said.

For Ming-Tai Huh, the head of Square’s restaurant business and a partner of Cambridge Street Hospitality Group, service fees have helped some of his Boston restaurants pay cooks and dishwashers more.

Massachusetts law forbids sharing servers’ tips with kitchen workers. Thanks to the higher pay from the surcharges, more of the restaurant company’s workers have opted into its health-care program.

Huh said that the service charge was easier to implement at the company’s fine-dining restaurants. But CSHG ended up taking it away from a fast-casual eatery because of customer pushback. Instead, the company just raised menu prices.

On the state level, restaurants have already had some success in getting excluded from the fight over junk fees.

In California, last-minute legislation excluded bars and restaurants — as well as grocery stores and grocery delivery services — from having to list the mandatory fees that they charge customers. As a result, the industry was exempt from a broad anti-junk-fee law that went into effect on July 1.

“We believe that allowing the many restaurants who for decades have used auto gratuity instead of tips, (which is more fair and equitable), and more recently who have added service charges to help offset things like the SF Health Care Security Ordinance, will make it possible for restaurants to continue to support pay equity and contribute to worker health care,” the Golden Gate Restaurant Association wrote in a statement following the legislation’s passage.

The National Restaurant Association argues that getting rid of fees will lead to customer confusion, higher prices, less transparency and costly compliance. The trade group estimates that the cost for new menus alone would reach more than $4,800 per restaurant.

Even restaurant operators admit that not all fees and surcharges are worth protecting.

Clavero opposes restaurants that use Covid surcharges more than four years after the pandemic temporarily shuttered dining rooms.

“To have that, to me, is a cry for help. That’s not being fully open and honest about where your money is going,” he said.

For its part, the National Restaurant Association said it’s pushing the FTC to protect three fees commonly charged by restaurants: large party, delivery and credit card processing.

Kennedy said the trade group is trying to help operators preserve their razor-thin margins of 3% to 5%, which is difficult as the costs of doing business keep rising. For example, credit card swipe fees have doubled over the last decade, and are now the third-highest cost for restaurants, according to Kennedy.

“What we have really been instilling in or membership is to be as open and transparent and public about it as possible, so customers know exactly what they’re getting into when they sit down to dine at their favorite restaurant,” Kennedy said.

Apple announced it will hold a press event at its headquarters in Cupertino, California, on Monday, Sept. 9, where the company is expected to announce new iPhones and Apple Watch models.

The launch event will be streamed on Apple’s website and YouTube. Apple has launched products through pre-recorded videos since 2020.

Apple typically releases new iPhones and Apple Watches at its fall launches ahead of the critical holiday shopping season.

This year’s iPhone models, which could be called the iPhone 16, could include bigger screens on the high-end devices, a redesigned camera bump, and a new color, according to analysts and Bloomberg. Apple’s wearables are expected to get a new faster chip.

Apple also typically announces the release data of the newest version of the iPhone software for all users alongside the new models.

This year’s version is called iOS 18, and will eventually include Apple Intelligence, a collection of AI features for daily usage like summarizing messages and generating cute images. However, Apple’s recent developer preview signaled that Apple Intelligence features will likely launch shortly after Apple’s hardware launch.

This year’s invites include the tagline “It’s Glowtime,” a reference to Apple’s new redesign of its Siri interface.

Consumers in the market for a home have been patiently waiting for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates — a move it seems poised to make in September.

But without action from Congress, there could be another change at the end of that month that makes it temporarily trickier to buy or sell a home in some areas, or to refinance an existing mortgage.

That’s because the National Flood Insurance Program — the government-sponsored public insurance program that is the largest flood insurer in the U.S. — needs to be reauthorized by Sept. 30 to continue to issue new policies or increase coverage on existing policies.

If you are buying or selling a house, you want to avoid the end of September and the beginning of October.

Homeowners insurance policies typically don’t cover flood damage, meaning consumers who want to protect their home and its contents from that peril need a stand-alone flood policy. Mortgage lenders may require applicants to obtain such a policy before closing on a home, depending on the flood risk for the property.

“This is about the ability to get a mortgage in a flood zone after Sept. 30,” said Jaret Seiberg, a managing director and financial policy analyst at TD Cowen. “Without an [NFIP] extension, you’re not going to be able to get a mortgage in any area that requires flood insurance.”

Congress established the NFIP in 1968 to provide reasonably priced flood insurance coverage. The Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012, which included the NFIP authorization, expired on Sept. 30, 2017. Since then, Congress has extended the NFIP’s authorization 30 times — but it has also lapsed briefly three times in that period.

“This has been an issue now for many years where the program faces expiration and Congress, [at the] last minute, reauthorizes it,” said Bryan Greene, vice president of policy advocacy at the National Association of Realtors. “We’re trying to prevent natural disasters, but we seem to always face this potential man-made disaster of not acting timely enough.”

If the NFIP experiences a lapse in its authority, it will not be able to issue new policies, including for people whose lenders require flood insurance or increase coverage on existing policies (including property owners looking to refinance existing mortgages), according to a spokesperson for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which operates the NFIP.

It’s possible the home sale transaction would be halted or be held up until the buyer can obtain flood insurance, said Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications research at First Street Foundation, a nonprofit organization in New York that focuses on quantifying the financial risk of climate change. That might entail waiting for Congress to reauthorize the NFIP, or looking for coverage on the private market.

The latter tactic isn’t easy. “There are very few private insurers that offer any type of flood insurance,” said Daniel Schwarcz, a professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School who focuses on insurance law and regulation.

“There are some very niche types of policies out there … but for all intents and purposes,” he said, the NFIP is “the only available option for flood insurance.”

And if the NFIP lapses, it could make the search for a private insurer more difficult: “If you eliminate that foundation, the rest of the market isn’t there,” said Seiberg.

When the program lapsed from May 31 until July 2 in 2010, 6% of real estate agents reported a delayed or canceled sale, according to a report by the National Association of Realtors. In that report, from 2011, it estimated a one-month NFIP lapse could affect about 40,000 closings.

“If you are buying or selling a house, you want to avoid the end of September and the beginning of October,” said TD Cowen’s Seiberg. “There is no need to take the risk that the flood insurance program will lapse when you could close ahead of Sept. 30.”

The NFIP insures 4.7 million policyholders and protects more than $1.28 trillion in assets. Those existing policyholders may be shielded by the effects of a lapsed NFIP, said Seiberg.

Policies that are in force will remain in force and the NFIP will continue to pay claims under those policies during a lapse, according to the FEMA spokesperson.

If your flood insurance policy’s renewal or expiration date is around Sept. 30, try to renew it early, said Yanjun Liao, an applied microeconomist and fellow at Resources for the Future, a nonprofit research institution in Washington, D.C.

“Check the expiration date and make plans in advance,” said Liao, whose research focuses on natural disaster risk management and climate adaptation.

Homeowners considering refinancing an existing mortgage may also want to weigh the timing with the Sept. 30 reauthorization deadline in mind, if their lender has required flood insurance coverage.

The NFIP has been continuously reauthorized because of the “potential consequences” of limited private insurers available, Schwarcz said.

“We’re in this real catch-22,” said Schwarcz. “We have a bad program; no one likes it.

“But you can’t get rid of it because people are dependent on it without a better alternative, and no one can agree on better alternatives.”

Critics often point to policy pricing as a concern.

Until recently, the NFIP had a reputation as being a subsidized insurance program, in which people in places far away from the coast paid for flood insurance for those who live in high-risk areas, said First Street Foundation’s Porter.

Then in 2021, FEMA implemented Risk Rating 2.0, a new pricing system that would accurately reflect the cost of an area’s risk. Homeowners and elected representatives of coastal states have pushed back against that change because of how high premiums got.

“All of a sudden, you went from paying $800 a year to paying thousands of dollars a year for your insurance,” Porter said.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., spoke in early August about the rising costs of NFIP premiums in his Gulf Coast state, and urged Congress to improve the program.

“My team is working on a bipartisan solution that will roll back Risk Rating 2.0, and make flood insurance affordable and accountable again,” said Cassidy in his speech.

Congress is unlikely to let the NFIP entirely expire, given the number of homeowners who depend on the program, Seiberg said.

“The real problem is that the flood insurance program is a financial debacle and Congress doesn’t seem capable of fixing it and, instead, what Capitol Hill does is just kick the can down the road,” he said.

At least 551 people were likely sickened by cucumbers tainted with Salmonella bacteria, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said — with 155 hospitalized.

But in an update posted Thursday, the CDC declared the cucumber-linked outbreak of the Braenderup strain of Salmonella over.

It said testing had sourced the outbreak strain to untreated canal water used by a grower in Florida, and that an additional grower was identified as a likely source of illnesses.

Cucumbers from both of these growers are no longer in season and products are no longer on shelves, the agency said.

Individuals in at least 31 states and the District of Columbia reported becoming ill after eating affected cucumbers.

The true number of individuals sickened from the products has likely been much higher, the agency said, since not all were likely reported.

In a separate release, the Food and Drug Administration said it had matched Salmonella strains found in untreated canal water near Bedner Growers Inc., of Palm Beach County, Florida, to ones that comprise the outbreak — but that the grower “does not account for all the illnesses in this outbreak.”

A representative for Bedner did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Another Palm Beach County grower, Thomas Produce Co., was identified by the FDA has having supplied cucumbers linked to the outbreak.

But in a statement, Thomas denied its products were directly connected and that it had been named by the FDA because a matching Salmonella strain was found in a water sample from an irrigation canal on one of its farms.

“Our farm did not have a positive test result for Salmonella Braenderup or any other strain of Salmonella on any of our packed product,” the company said in a letter to customers dated Aug. 14. “Our packing facility was also tested, by the FDA, and we received no positive test results for any strains of Salmonella.”

“At Thomas Produce Company, our commitment to food safety is our top priority,” it continued. “We continuously monitor our production processes, follow best practices and comply with all regulatory requirements”

Earlier, the government investigation prompted a Florida distributor, Fresh Start Produce, to recall all its cucumbers grown in Florida. However, a subsequent finding determined the strain of Salmonella found in a sampling of its product did not match the ones linked to the outbreak.

A representative for Fresh Start Produce did not respond to a request for comment.

An uptick in sausage demand can offer the latest sign of consumers tightening their belts as they continue grappling with high prices.

There’s been “modest growth” in the dinner sausage category for one producer, according to the Dallas Federal Reserve’s Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey released Monday. This underscores the trends of shoppers opting for cheaper products and pulling back spending all together as cumulative inflation bites into purchasing power.

“This category tends to grow when the economy weakens,” the respondent said, according to edited comments included in the Dallas Fed’s report. That’s because “sausage is a good protein substitute for higher-priced proteins and can ‘stretch’ consumers’ food budgets.”

This anecdote pointed out by eagle-eyed Bespoke Investment Group on X comes as grocery prices remain top of mind for consumers. While the rate of annualized inflation has fallen closer to levels deemed healthy by economic policymakers, the collective increase in prices compared with just a few years ago has left everyday Americans feeling sour about the state of the national economy.

Additionally, it bolsters two themes emerging as hallmarks of today’s post-pandemic economy.

A growing chorus of corporate executives, including those leading some of the largest restaurant chains, have warned that the consumer is starting to slow down. In particular, they’ve pointed to stress on lower-income tax brackets as they attempt to make their dollars go further.

The shift to sausage also highlights an action experts call the “trade down.” Carefree customers may select protein that’s typically more expensive like steak or chicken. On the other hand, price-conscious shoppers will hunt for sausage or other lower-cost alternatives.

Other food manufacturers who responded to the Dallas Fed’s survey also raised concern about their economic health. One said agriculture as a whole was “hurting,” citing challenges from factors like weather and higher costs.

Another put it more plainly, saying it was “preparing for the recession.”