A more user-friendly government? A (very) bad joke.

Donald J. Trump has never been shy about his obsession with appearances. From the gold-plated bathrooms of Trump Tower to his insistence that hamburgers be served on silver platters, the man has always confused glitter with greatness. Now, as of August 21, 2025, Trump has extended his brand of surface-level spectacle to the U.S. government itself. With the stroke of his pen, he has given us America by Design, a national initiative promising to make federal services “usable and beautiful.”

On paper, it sounds almost reasonable. Who doesn’t want government websites that actually work? Who wouldn’t prefer to fill out tax forms on something other than a digital relic from the Clinton era? But look closer, and the initiative reveals itself for what it is: a façade of progress, a propaganda exercise that uses the language of design as camouflage for dysfunction, cruelty, and authoritarian control.

The executive order creates a National Design Studio and introduces a new, glamorous position: the Chief Design Officer. And because no Trump initiative is complete without stunt casting, the first CDO is Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of Airbnb. This is not Gebbia’s first dance with Trump-world bureaucracy. Earlier in the year he was drafted into the Department of Government Efficiency, the so-called DOGE, where he worked on streamlining the federal retirement process and promised to bring Silicon Valley’s “customer journey” thinking into the bowels of Washington. In other words, the man who once convinced you to rent a stranger’s couch for $200 a night now wants to convince you that applying for Social Security can feel like booking a loft in Brooklyn.

But beneath the glossy branding lies the bad joke. The promise of a “user-friendly government” is a cruel parody when delivered by the same administration that has systematically stripped away rights, dignity, and protections from so many people, both within the United States and beyond its borders. What good is a prettier website when immigrants are still caged at the border? What comfort does a sleek user interface provide to transgender Americans banned from serving in the military, or to women denied access to reproductive healthcare? You can hire as many designers as you want, but there is nothing “beautiful” about policies that sow fear, cruelty, and division.

Trump has always preferred spectacle to substance. In January 2025, he demanded “beautiful federal architecture” — because what Americans desperately needed, apparently, were government buildings that looked like Roman temples. Now, with America by Design, he promises “usable and beautiful” digital experiences. Notice the pattern: both initiatives obsess over looks while ignoring lives. It is governance as window dressing. The walls are crumbling, but the wallpaper must be fabulous.

Reports suggest a budget of up to $10 billion for this new design studio, though no one seems able to verify it. Ten billion dollars to redesign forms, websites, and government branding, while Americans drown in medical debt, veterans wait years for benefits, and millions of children live in poverty. If Trump truly wanted to improve people’s experience of government, he might start by funding programs that save lives, not ones that beautify PDFs.

But let us not be fooled into thinking this is merely waste. Authoritarian regimes have always understood the power of appearances. Mussolini had his uniforms and parades, Stalin his grandiose metro stations, Hitler his neoclassical facades and Leni Riefenstahl’s carefully choreographed spectacles. The beauty was never accidental; it was a weapon. It concealed brutality behind elegance, oppression behind order, cruelty behind symmetry. By making government look strong, orderly, and even “beautiful,” rulers mask the rot at the core. Trump’s initiative fits neatly into this tradition. The promise of a friendlier design masks a far uglier truth: cruelty rebranded as efficiency, authoritarianism dressed up in the soothing, neutral tones of modern design.

And the tactic is hardly a relic of the past. Vladimir Putin holds tightly choreographed parades and stages nationalist pageantry, while using slickly produced media to disguise repression. Viktor Orbán in Hungary wraps illiberal democracy in the flag of cultural renaissance, making authoritarianism look like patriotism. Kim Jong Un stages massive synchronized spectacles, creating the illusion of unity and strength even as his people starve. Xi Jinping deploys futuristic “smart city” imagery and gleaming infrastructure to project competence, even as his regime suffocates dissent. Authoritarian leaders know that aesthetics seduce, soften, and distract. They make domination look palatable. Trump’s design initiative is just the American version of the same strategy: politics as brand management, cruelty in a glossy new wrapper.

Centralizing design within the White House under a loyalist-controlled National Design Studio is not a neutral act. It is the imposition of a single aesthetic, a single “look,” across all government agencies. It enforces uniformity. It rebrands the state in Trump’s image. What better way to disguise dysfunction, or to obscure the inhumanity of policies, than to ensure that every government interaction carries the same reassuring stamp of modern design? The very language of “America by Design” should make us shudder: it suggests not just websites but a nation itself shaped, packaged, and sold according to one man’s taste.

And cruelty, again, is the through-line. Trump has never cared whether the government is usable, only whether it is useful to him. The Muslim ban wasn’t “user-friendly.” The family separations at the border weren’t “beautiful.” His attacks on voting rights, the free press, and judicial independence were not glitches in the system; they were deliberate features of his authoritarian design. Now, by handing Americans a shinier interface, he invites them to mistake polish for progress.

Picture it: a desperate citizen logs on to apply for Medicaid, only to find their eligibility gutted by Trump’s policies. But at least the denial letter is elegantly formatted, complete with modern typography and a soothing color scheme. That’s what America by Design offers: the same cruelty, repackaged with better branding. It is government as luxury real estate — hollow on the inside, but the lobby looks fantastic.

Trump insists, “It is time to update the Government’s design language to be both usable and beautiful.” But design cannot paper over dysfunction, nor can aesthetics redeem inhumanity. The government doesn’t need a new font; it needs a new moral compass. Without justice, fairness, and compassion at its core, no amount of usability testing will make it humane. And so America by Design is not a promise of better governance. It is the latest chapter in the aesthetics of totalitarianism — governance by spectacle, rule by surface, authoritarianism repackaged as “beauty.” It will not deliver a more user-friendly government. It will deliver the same Trump government: nasty, authoritarian, and inhumane — only now with cleaner lines and a fresher logo. That is a very bad joke. One could almost laugh — but the laughter catches in the throat. Perhaps, then, the modest proposal is this: if cruelty must be the policy, let it at least be beautifully designed. Let detention centers come with calming color palettes, let deportation orders arrive in elegant typography, let benefits cuts be accompanied by soothing infographics. If justice cannot be delivered, at least the injustice will be easy to navigate on mobile. That is the true spirit of America by Design