This architectural firm put Trump's name on their design without being asked
Plus: Nike’s new Team USA 2026 collection is inspired by Colorado and includes a jacket that can transform from windbreaker to a mid-weight puffer
In December 2025, the Department of Transportation, or DOT, put out a call for design concepts for new terminals and concourses at Washington Dulles International Airport. 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.
A number of firms submitted proposals, including Ferrovial, Phoenix Infrastructure Group, and Alvarez & Marshal Infrastructure and Capital Projects. The submission from Bermello Ajamil & Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects included architectural renderings with a prominent feature that appears to be custom designed for a president who is fond of putting his name on things.
The firms’ proposed terminal design would boast a “grand arch” made of a transparent facade and lettering that reads “Donald J. Trump Terminal.” In some renderings, the name is written out in Trajan, a serif font used by the Trump Organization. In one Reddit thread, commenters criticized the move as “shameless” and brought up Zaha Hadid’s work for authoritarian regimes.
Renderings show the Trump terminal superimposed over the airport’s iconic existing terminal, completed in 1962 with a swooping concave roof and large window sides designed by architect Eero Saarinen. A departures hall in the proposed new building builds on Saarinen’s use of openness and natural light with a continuous skylight over a long-span roof.
Bermello Ajamil & Partners has designed terminals for airports in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Past projects by Zaha Hadid Architects include Western Sydney International Airport in Australia, Bishoftu International Airport in Ethiopia, and Beijing Daxing International Airport in China. Zaha Hadid Architects did not respond to a request for comment.
This story first appeared in Fast Company.
Nike’s new Team USA 2026 collection is inspired by Colorado and includes a jacket that can transform from windbreaker to a mid-weight puffer
A new Nike jacket for Team USA uses air as an insulator.
When U.S. Olympic athletes take the medal stand this month in Italy, they’ll be doing it in a versatile jacket inspired by Colorado that deploys the latest in Nike tech to transform from lighter to heavier.
For its new Team USA collection ahead of the Milano Cortina Games, which open Friday, Nike took inspiration from the home state of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
The Nike ACG collection is named for Nike’s newly revived outdoor sub-brand All Conditions Gear. It features a skirt that doubles as a blanket and shows a scene of a bald eagle taking flight in front of Colorado mountains, a pair of orange ACG Ultrafly shoes, puffy white jackets that evoke soft Colorado powder, and more.
“The collection is crafted in the image of Team USA’s hometown, channeling the infamous Manitou Incline hike, a training ground for some of the world’s greatest athletes, and the Garden of the Gods, which serves as a powerful symbol of strength, resilience and the spirit of adventure,” Nike said in a statement.
One jacket can go from windbreaker to a mid-weight puffer. The collection’s Therma-FIT Air Milano Jacket will debut on athletes in Milan, and was designed as Team USA’s official medal ceremony look. The jacket can regulate temperature because it uses air as an insulator.
The jacket comes with a custom, metallic pump that the wearer can use to inflate or deflate in the jacket baffles in seconds through an airway on the front. Nike calls it its “most technically engineered garment of its kind.” The interior lining of the jacket depicts Garden of the Gods, the public park in Colorado Springs.
New York City just killed its AI chatbot
Launched under the previous administration, the chatbot answered some questions by telling users to break the law.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is doing is a bit of actual DOGEing, and the city’s error-prone AI chatbot was on the chopping block.
Mamdani said in a press conference last week that a chatbot introduced during former Mayor Eric Adams’s time in office was one of “a number of different things we’re going to pursue for savings,” according to the New York-based publication The City. Today, the site for the tool now says “The Chatbot beta test has ended.”
“The previous administration had an AI chatbot that was functionally unusable,” Mamdani said. “It was costing the administration around half a million dollars.”
New York released the chatbot in 2023, and it used Microsoft Azure AI. Adams said at the time that the city’s AI plan “will empower city agencies to deploy technologies that can improve lives while protecting against those that can do harm,” but a review the following year found the chatbot regularly answered questions by telling people to break the law. Adams admitted, “It's wrong in some areas, and we've got to fix it.”
While New York’s chatbot program didn’t take off, other local governments have explored other ways to use AI, including using it for construction reviews, making transportation decisions, and modeling climate change impacts, according to Smart Cities Dive, a trade publication about cities and municipalities.
Has your local government tested AI at all? If so, what’s working and what isn’t? Let me know.
Have you seen this?
Trump sues America. Trump, whose net worth reportedly grew by $3 billion in a year, is now taking the U.S. to court and seeking $10 billion in damages. [Whig by Hunter Schwarz]
Park Service targets Native history exhibits at Grand Canyon. The National Park Service has targeted signage, exhibit text, and images that refer to the removal of Native peoples or discuss restrictions placed on tribal cultural practices from what is now Grand Canyon National Park as part of a directive in a memo issued by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. [The Arizona Republic]
Will Trump gut the Kennedy Center? What we know about his construction plans for the D.C. institution. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said Trump’s planned closure of the Kennedy Center is part of his “demolition tour of Washington.” [Associated Press]
Grassroots donors are pulling back. Fundraisers say there’s a fix. With the cost of living remaining persistently high and survey data showing that Americans feel financially strained, some political fundraisers say that they’ve seen a slump in small-dollar donations. [Campaigns & Elections]
Government websites didn’t redesign for the most recent partial government shutdown. Trump signed legislation to end the four-day partial shutdown on Tuesday.
Incredible spotting on the Trajan font detail. The proactive branding play here says alot about how deeply firms have internalized the current political climate. I worked on municipal projects a decade ago and cant imagine anyone back then daring to name-drop a sitting president unprompted. The Zaha Hadid authoritarian connection adds another layer too.