#federal-branding

#federal-branding

Younger generations have lost faith in American institutions due to nearly two decades of economic turmoil, which has led to a significant rise in populism across the United States.

A ProPublica investigation has found that most of these bills are part of a coordinated effort, orchestrated by a constellation of groups that share staff or have funding ties to the prominent conservative activist Leonard Leo.

"Today, the Trump Administration is removing the unnecessary and unlawful burdens that prior Administrations imposed on schools in its relentless pursuit of a radical transgender agenda," Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in the news release.

"A certain kind of person is opting into spending a lot of time on social media, and they may be people who are more disaffected to start with."

The White House is seeking a 10 percent cut to nondefense spending, proposing a reduction of $73 billion from federal programs outside the military, targeting environmental initiatives.

The White House App's News tab features a carousel of about 35 articles that seem suspiciously cherry-picked with articles that favor the Trump administration.

For a nation whose founding symbols were carefully engineered around the balance of peace and war, that omission is hard to read as accidental. Dropping the olive branch from the dime isn't just a design choice: it's a cultural signal.

Starting next month, the cost of renouncing your U.S. citizenship will go down dramatically - a boon for people already shouldering the burden of paying for a major overseas move. Anyone wishing to formally shed their American citizenship is required to obtain a form called a Certificate of Loss of Nationality, and right now it comes with a whopping $2,350 fee. In April, that fee will drop by 80% to $450.

The Emerging Liberty dime, created for the U.S. Semiquincentennial, shows a woman who personifies Liberty on the heads side; on the tails side, there's a bald eagle holding arrows in its talons for war, but it's missing olive branches in its other talons for peace.

The 42-second video posted on the official X account of the White House on Thursday was met with almost universal mockery online, with comments accusing the Trump administration of immaturity, and likening its social media strategy to one run by teenagers.

Last week- after the Wall Street Journal broke more news about the Trump family's dodgy crypto-business dealings and before the President shared a racist video of the Obamas depicted as dancing apes-the Amazon entrepreneur Jeff Bezos decided that one of his smaller properties, the Washington Post, has proved such a drag on his two-hundred-and-thirty-billion-dollar fortune that prudence required that he obliterate much of its newsroom.

Three of the four things that gave Trump a foothold, in my opinion, were failures in this century (the fourth is the legacy of slavery and the organized political violence that replaced it). The other three, though, are the War on Terror, the financial crisis, and social media. (COVID was the final catalyst, I think; having moved during the height of COVID, I can't express how much worse the US dealt with it than much of the EU.)

The State Department is removing all posts on its public accounts on the social media platform X made before President Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, 2025. The posts will be internally archived but will no longer be on public view, the State Department confirmed to NPR. Staff members were told that anyone wanting to see older posts will have to file a Freedom of Information Act request, according to a State Department employee who asked to remain anonymous

It replaces the old homepage-which featured a banner image of Trump, the bolded phrase "America is Back," and headshots of the first lady and vice president-with a decidedly more cinematic design. Now, when people visit whitehouse.gov, they're immediately greeted with a wall of videos, including shots of Trump sporting his own "Make America Great Again" merch, saluting military personnel, and taking off in a helicopter. Every shot is bathed in a warm, fuzzy filter, making the whole page feel like a retro-inspired movie trailer.

Official lies after an ICE killing begin to backfire. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, the fatal shooting of a protester by border control agents triggered mass demonstrations and presented the Trump administration with an unexpected test of its immigration strategy. Footage captured by onlookers has undercut official statements and intensified questions about the level of force and use of high-tech tools being used to crack down on dissent.

Donald Trump has called on the GOP to nationalize elections, which are currently run by states, as mandated in the Constitution. Many are alarmed by the president's words, considering his continued quest to consolidate power and his inability to accept the results of free and fair elections. In short, his desire to nationalize seems like a blatant effort to control their outcomes.

The DOT claimed Dulles had fallen into disrepair and was "no longer an airport suitable and grand enough for the capital of the United States of America." The agency said it was looking for proposals to either replace the airport's existing main terminal and satellite concourses or build upon them. It also noted Trump's executive order calling for classical architecture in federal building projects.

In this new season, I'm asking how the Trump White House is rewriting the rules of U.S. politics, and talking to Americans whose lives have been changed as a result. Today's episode examines the destruction of the civil service: the removal of professionals, and their replacement with loyalists. I've seen this kind of transformation before, in other failing democracies. Everyone suffers from the degradation of public services.

I'm old enough to remember when it was frowned upon-even considered very bad-for the White House to photoshop anything or digitally alter photos for the public record. On Thursday, the official White House social media accounts posted a digitally altered photo of an arrested protester to make it look like she was crying. About thirty minutes earlier, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted what seems to be the original image of the arrest-in which the woman appears completely composed.

Even though some White House policies are popular, policy is but one leg of the three-legged stool of political leadership. Rhetoric also matters. So, too, does implementation, especially at the executive level. Without its full complement of limbs, this three-legged stool is prone to tip over and shatter. Communication about public policy is as important as the public policy itself, Jeffrey Brauer, a political scientist at Keystone College, near Scranton, Pennsylvania, told me.