A private-sector tech leader tapped by the Trump administration to improve the federal government’s online presence is setting an ambitious goal — overhauling about 27,000 dot-gov websites.

Joe Gebbia, chief design officer of the United States and co-founder of Airbnb, said in a podcast interview Tuesday that the White House set out this goal when President Donald Trump signed an executive order last summer creating the National Design Studio.

“We’re fixing all of them,” Gebbia said Tuesday on the American Optimist show. Many of the federal government’s websites, he added, “look like they’re from the mid-90s.”

Gebbia began working with the Department of Government Efficiency in the early days of the Trump administration. At the Office of Personnel Management, he oversaw a long-anticipated modernization of the federal employee retirement system.

The National Design Studio so far has launched several new websites that serve as landing pages for some of the Trump administration’s policies on immigration, law enforcement and prescription drug prices.

As for next steps, Gebbia said his office will deliver “major updates,” including a refresh of existing federal websites, by July 4.

“It’s working, because we are really pulling in veterans of Silicon Valley from a talent perspective, I think it’s working because this president really deeply cares about how things look, because he knows that esthetics matter,” he said.

The White House estimates that only 6% of federal websites are rated “good” for use on mobile devices. About 45% of federal websites are not mobile-friendly.

As part of the President’s Management Agenda, the Trump administration is looking to leverage technology to “deliver faster, more secure services” and “reduce the number of confusing government websites. “

The administration has already taken steps to eliminate websites that it deems unnecessary. Federal News Network first reported that the 24 largest federal agencies are preparing to eliminate more than 330 websites — about 5% of an inventory of 7,200 websites reviewed.

The National Design Studio is still recruiting new hires. Gebbia estimated that his office will eventually have a team of about 15 engineers and 15 designers.

“We’re still ramping up the team,” he said, adding that the National Design Studio has been able to “recruit some of the best and brightest minds of our era.”

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment where we have a shot on goal to actually upgrade the U.S. government the way we present ourselves to the nation and to the world,” Gebbia said.

The idea for the National Design Studio began when Interior Secretary Doug Burgum asked Gebbia to improve Recreation.gov, a website for booking campsites, scheduling tours and obtaining hunting and fishing permits on federal lands. The site serves as an outdoor recreation system for 14 federal agencies.

“There’s a lot to be desired for when you have this incredible feature of the American experience, our national parks. They were being undersold in a way that they were showcased,” Gebbia said.

After working on Recreation.gov, Gebbia said he was getting similar requests from other Cabinet secretaries.

“I started to see there’s demand here for better design. There’s demand here for modernizing the digital surfaces of the government,” he said.

At that point, Gebbia said he made his pitch for the National Design Studio to Trump during a meeting at the Oval Office.

“What would it look like to have a national initiative to actually go in and up level and upgrade, not just one agency, not just one website, all the websites, all the agencies, all of the digital touch points between us, government and the American people?” he recalled.

According to the America by Design website, the White House is drawing inspiration from the Nixon administration’s beautification project in the 1970s. That project led to the creation of NASA’s iconic logo, branding for national parks and signage for the national highway system.

“My vision is that, at some point, somebody’s working at a startup and they go look at a dot-gov website to see how they did it. And we can actually create references for good design in the government, rather than be the butt of a joke,” Gebbia said.

So far, the National Design Studio has launched SafeDC.gov, a website meant to facilitate the Trump administration’s surge of federal law enforcement agents to Washington, D.C. It’s also launched TrumpCard.gov, a program meant to fast-track the green-card process for noncitizens seeking permanent residency in the United States — and who are able to pay a $15,000 processing fee and a $1 million or $5 million “gift” to the Commerce Department.

Its most recent website, https://trumprx.gov/, is still in the works. The website supports an administration goal of connecting consumers with lower-priced prescription drugs.

Gebbia said private-sector tech experts are interested in working with National Design Studio and overcoming institutional barriers to change.

“Of course, you bump into things and all the processes and people saying, ‘Well, it’s always been done this way. Why would we change it?’ I think, though, there’s an incredible amount of momentum behind this — the excitement around America by Design, the excitement around the National Design Studio, and the excitement on the demand side of secretaries and people and agencies — ‘Yes, please fix this for us. We’re so happy you’re here to make us make this look good,'” he said.

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• Federal wildland firefighters would keep their higher pay rates under the latest congressional appropriations package. The spending “minibus” maintains funding for wildland firefighters’ permanent pay raise, as well as job updates that were initially included in the 2021 infrastructure law. The new appropriations package also would not adopt President Trump’s plan to combine wildland firefighting forces into a single agency. According to the legislation, wildland firefighters from the Forest Service and the Interior Department would remain separate.
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• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is reinstating former probationary employees it already fired twice. NOAA sent an email to about 40 former employees, informing them that their April 2025 termination is being rescinded, and that they have the option to return to their jobs. Employees who received reinstatement offers had until Monday to accept the offer and will return to work next week. These employees will receive about nine months of back pay regardless of whether they opt in for reinstatement.
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• Federal retirees can now securely access some of their tax forms online. The Office of Personnel Management updated its delivery method for 1099-R tax forms. The update will allow retirees to view their forms digitally, rather than waiting for them in the mail. OPM said it’s a faster and paperless way for retirees to access important documents. Retirees who still want a paper copy can opt into receiving a mailed version, or request one directly from OPM.
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• President Donald Trump put defense contractors on notice. Trump said his administration is capping executive compensation at defense contractors at $5 million dollars and prohibiting stock buybacks or dividends. In a post on Truth Social, the president said executive pay in the defense industry is exorbitant and unjustifiable given how slowly these companies are delivering vital equipment to the military. In a second post on Truth Social, Trump also took aim at Raytheon, threatening the defense giant that the government will stop doing business with it until it invests more money in plants and equipment manufacturing. Trump signed an executive order codifying these changes Wednesday evening.
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• The Senate has confirmed Lt. Gen. Christopher LaNeve as the Army’s next vice chief of staff. President Donald Trump nominated LaNeve for the role in October. He will succeed Gen. James Mingus, who has served as vice chief since January 2024. LaNeve currently serves as senior military assistant to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Hegseth called LaNeve a “generational leader” and said he will “help ensure the Army revives the warrior ethos, rebuilds for the modern battlefield and deters enemies around the world.”
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• The Department of Veterans Affairs said it’s chipping away at a backlog of veterans waiting for benefits. VA Secretary Doug Collins said the backlog is down 60% since the start of the Trump administration. VA’s Veterans Benefits Administration reinstated mandatory overtime for its employees last year. The VA has relied on mandatory overtime under several administrations to reduce claims backlogs. But VBA briefly ended mandatory overtime in July 2024.
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The post Federal wildland firefighters would keep higher pay rates under minibus first appeared on Federal News Network.

Congressional appropriators are rejecting some of the most severe agency budget cuts proposed by the Trump administration, and are looking to put additional guardrails on unilateral agency reorganizations that could further shrink the federal workforce.

A “minibus” of three spending bills for fiscal 2026, released by the House and Senate appropriations committees on Monday, prohibits covered agencies from using congressional funds to carry out most agency reorganization activities until they provide advanced notice to appropriators. Those activities include unilaterally reprogramming funds to create or eliminate programs, projects or activities, relocate any office or employees, or cut more than 5% of the employees or funding that support a program, project or activity.

It also prohibits agencies from carrying out these reorganizations using “general savings,” including savings from a reduction in personnel, “which would result in a change in existing programs, projects, or activities as approved by Congress.”

This language applies to a wide swath of agencies — including the departments of Justice, Interior, Commerce and Energy, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation and NASA.

The spending package also includes language ensuring that the National Weather Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service and the EPA maintain staffing levels that allow them to carry out their statutory obligations.

Democrats on the appropriations committees said the spending deal reasserts Congress’s power of the purse, and seeks to rein in the Trump administration’s repurposing of agency budgets and unilateral agency reorganizations.

The Government Accountability Office found last year that several agencies unlawfully withheld congressional appropriations last year through a process called impoundment. GAO is still reviewing dozens of cases of potential impoundment.

Republican appropriators said the spending deal reflects “current fiscal constraints,” and trims the budgets of the Interior Department, EPA and the Forest Service to reflect recent staffing cuts.

The Trump administration sought to lay off about 4,000 federal employees during the recent government shutdown. Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said last October that layoffs at these agencies were justified because lawmakers allowed funds for these programs to expire, indicating they were no longer congressional priorities.

A stopgap spending bill, set to expire on Jan. 30, has put a hold on layoffs at some agencies. The Interior Department was poised to eliminate more than 2,000 positions.

Steep cuts at other agencies, however, have already gone into effect. A recent inspector general report found that the Energy Department lost about 20% of its employees in fiscal 2025 through a combination of voluntary separation incentives, retirements and “other human resource actions.”

The National Park Service and the EPA have also lost about 25% of their workforce under the Trump administration.

The minibus spending package generally seeks modest spending reductions for covered agencies, but departs from the Trump administration’s calls for major budget cuts.  It would cut the EPA’s budget by about 4% in fiscal 2026 — a far cry from the 55% budget cut the Trump administration proposed.

Lawmakers are also proposing a nearly 4% budget cut for the National Science Foundation, rejecting the Trump administration’s request to cut NSF’s budget by about 57% in FY 2026.

The minibus offers a $24.43 billion budget for NASA, a nearly 2% decrease from current spending levels. But the package rejects most of the Trump administration’s proposals to cut NASA’s science budget by nearly half and terminate 55 operating and planned missions.

Lawmakers are seeking a $160 million budget increase for the Energy Department’s Office of Science — about a 2% boost from current spending levels, rejecting the Trump administration’s calls to cut more than $1 billion from its current budget. DOE’s Office of Science supports research being conducted by 22,000 researchers at 17 national labs and over 300 universities.

Lawmakers are proposing a $3.27 billion budget for the National Park Service, about a 2% overall budget decrease. The spending plan includes flat funding for National Park Service operations. The Trump administration proposed cutting the NPS operating budget by nearly $1 billion.

The National Parks Conservation Association said in a statement that the bill includes key provisions “seeking to retain and rehire urgently needed Park Service staff, which would help restore the agency’s capacity to protect our parks, as well as require congressional notification of any plans for future mass firings.”

NPCA President and CEO Theresa Pierno said that the association had been “sounding the alarm on the need for park funding and staffing for months, and Congress listened.”

Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said in a statement that Democrats, as part of these negotiations, “defeated heartless cuts,” and are reasserting congressional control of how agencies spend appropriated funds.

Murray said language in the minibus bill prevents President Donald Trump and cabinet secretaries from “unilaterally” deciding how to spend taxpayer dollars. A yearlong continuing resolution for fiscal 2025, she added, lacked these detailed funding directives for hundreds of programs, and “turned over decision-making power to the executive branch to fill in the gaps itself.”

“Importantly, passing these bills will help ensure that Congress, not President Trump and Russ Vought, decides how taxpayer dollars are spent — by once again providing hundreds of detailed spending directives and reasserting congressional control over these incredibly important spending decisions,” Murray said.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), ranking member of the committee’s subcommittee on commerce, justice, science and related agencies, said the spending package rejects the Trump administration’s deep cuts to scientific agencies, including NASA Goddard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. All three agencies are based in Maryland.

“Our bill makes clear that Congress, on a bipartisan basis, will not accept this administration’s reckless, harmful cuts,” Van Hollen said in a statement.

Van Hollen said the bill “is not perfect,” but requires the Trump administration to provide more details on plans to relocate the FBI’s headquarters to the Reagan Building in downtown Washington, D.C., before it can tap into funds Congress had set aside for the project.

Before it taps into those funds, the FBI must give congressional appropriators an architectural and engineering plan for the new headquarters building.

“This is an important step to reassert Congress’s oversight role in the relocation of the FBI headquarters and to ensure the new headquarters meets the mission and security needs of the FBI,” Van Hollen said.

Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) called the minibus a “fiscally responsible package that restrains spending while providing essential federal investments” in water infrastructure, energy and national security, and scientific research.

“The package supports our law enforcement and provides funding for national weather forecasting and oceans and fisheries science to save lives and livelihoods,” she said. “It provides investments in our public lands and upholds our commitments to tribal communities.”

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said the bipartisan spending package “reflects steady progress toward completing FY26 funding responsibly.”

House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said the spending package “reasserts Congress’s power of the purse.”

“Rather than another short-sighted stop-gap measure that affords the Trump Administration broader discretion, this full-year funding package restrains the White House through precise, legally binding spending requirements,” DeLauro said.

Congress has already passed FY 2026 spending bills that cover the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Veterans Affairs, military construction and the legislative branch.

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