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pcj-githubyesterday at 4:57 PM1 replyview on HN

This is so cringe. Who are the people behind this god awful "national design studio", and how are they related to MAGA / Trump? Assuredly yet another insider cronyism deal that degrades trust in the US government.

Claude:

The National Design Studio (NDS) is a new White House agency that Trump created by executive order on August 21, 2025, as part of an initiative called "America by Design." It lives inside the White House Office of the Executive Office of the President.

The setup

The executive order established the NDS along with a new position: Chief Design Officer of the United States

Trump appointed Joe Gebbia (Airbnb co-founder) as the first Chief Design Officer

Gebbia previously worked at DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) alongside Elon Musk on modernizing federal retirement paperwork

The stated goal: overhaul roughly 26,000 federal websites and physical government interfaces to be "both usable and beautiful" — Gebbia has compared the target experience to "the Apple Store"

Initial results are required by July 4, 2026 (the US 250th anniversary), and the temporary organization within NDS is scheduled to sunset after three years


Replies

righthandyesterday at 5:03 PM

It’s the brain dead rebranding of what Trump thought USDS was doing.