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Nearly every day of President Donald Trumps first 100 days in office, his administration came out with new attacks on the environment. On a single day in March, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to roll back more than two dozen environmental regulations, affecting everything from mercury pollution at coal power plants to fuel efficiency standards for cars. On the same day, it shut down its environmental justice offices and made plans to limit the Clean Water Act. To help make it easier to follow the barrage of rollbacks, the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is tracking the actions online. It’s not clear yet what will survive lawsuits and actually stick, though the policy decisions are already having real-world consequences. Here’s a partial look at what’s happened so far. April 28: The Trump administration “released” the scientists who were working on a national report about how climate change affects the United States. The report, required by Congress, has been published every four years since 2000. April 24: Trump issued an executive order to fast-track permits for deep-sea mining, which environmental groups say could cause irreparable harm to marine ecosystems. April 24: The Department of the Interior announced a new “emergency permitting” approach that would fast-track approval for some energy projects from a period of one to two years to just two weeks, skipping most of the standard process of environmental review. (Wind and solar projects don’t qualify for the accelerated process; it’s aimed at fossil fuels.) April 23: The Trump administration eliminated the Office of Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, which was responsible for global climate diplomacy. April 22: The Trump administration announced plans to cut hundreds of jobs at the EPAs Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, an office focused on helping communities that have suffered the worst impacts of pollution. April 21: The EPA announced plans to cancel around $40 million in grants aimed at protecting children from toxic chemicals, including pesticides and PFAS (forever chemicals). April 18: The White House announced a list of mining projects for expedited approval, including a copper mine in Arizona that Native American tribes say is on sacred land and could cause environmental damage, including draining scarce water resources. April 18: The Department of the Interior announced a new program to expand offshore oil and gas drilling. April 17: The Department of the Interior announced plans to cut $10 billion for clean energy projects. April 16: The Trump administration proposed a new rule redefining what it means to “harm” wildlife under the Endangered Species Act. Habitat destruction, one of the leading causes of extinction, would no longer be considered harm. April 16: The Trump administration took the first steps to roll back former President Joe Biden’s protection of millions of acres of public lands in the West and in Alaska. April 15: The Department of Energy issued a rule to repeal water efficiency standards for showerheads. April 15: The EPA gave the worst-polluting coal power plants exemptions from new limits on toxic pollution, including mercury, which is especially dangerous for children. April 15: The EPA announced plans to get rid of the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, which requires major polluters to track and report climate emissions. April 11: The Trump administration announced plans to end climate research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including data used to predict hurricanes. April 9: Trump issued an executive order that aims to erase hundreds of existing environmental and public health rules; this is undoubtedly unconstitutional. April 9: Trump issued an executive order requiring agencies to add expiration dates to energy and environmental regulations. April 9: Trump issued an order that aims to block states from enforcing their own climate laws. April 9: The Trump administration cut nearly $4 million in climate research funding at Princeton University, saying the research promoted exaggerated climate threats and blaming it for increasing climate anxiety. April 8: Trump issued executive orders to boost coal power, including opening up federal land to new mining and potentially forcing some coal plants to stay open when they were planning to close. April 5: The Trump administration reortedly plans to stop states from limiting the use of PFAS (known as forever chemicals) in consumer goods. April 4: The Trump administration canceled the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, which gave grants to communities to prepare for floods, wildfires, hurricanes, and other disasters. (One example of a project that lost what the administration called wasteful and woke funding: upgrading culverts in DeKalb County, Georgia, to keep roads usable during heavy rain and flooding.) April 3: The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued an Emergency Situation Determination that opens up more than 100 million acres of national forests to more logging. April 2: The Trump administration fired all staff members working on the Low Income Energy Assistance Program, which was designed to help families afford heating and cooling. March 20: Trump issued an executive order to increase mining on public land. March 19: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delayed the process of listing the monarch butterfly as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. March 19: The Department of Energy granted conditional authorization for the LNG export terminal in Louisiana, which will pollute local communities and dramatically add to climate pollution. March 17: Trump signed a law repealing a fee on oil and gas companies for excess emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The fee would have had the same effect on pollution as taking 8 million gas cars off the road. March 17: The EPA announced plans to gut its science office and lay off more than 1,000 scientists. March 14: The EPA stopped enforcing pollution regulations at energy facilities. March 12: The EPA announced sweeping plans to dismantle more than two dozen air quality and carbon pollution regulations. That included an attack on the endangerment finding,” which makes it possible to regulate climate pollution like CO2 under the Clean Air Act. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin described it as “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” March 12: The EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced plans to revise the definition of waters of the U.S. under the Clean Water Act, threatening to strip protection from streams, wetlands, and other water sources that supply communities with drinking water and support wildlife. March 12: The EPA announced that it was shutting down its environmental justice offices, which worked on projects like helping rural communities prepare for flooding or install sewage systems. March 10: The EPA announced the cancellation of $1.7 billion in environmental justice grants. March 3: The Trump administration ordered thousands of new EV chargers to be disconnected at federal buildings. March 1: Trump labeled imported wood a national security risk” and issued an executive order to dramatically expand logging in U.S. public forests. February 19: The Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a memo to remove 10 climate-related words and phrases from its documents, including climate resilience and changing climate. February 18: The Trump administration fired hundreds of FEMA workers while disasters were ongoing in states like Kentucky and West Virginia. February 18: The EPA froze access to $20 billion in grants under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which supported projects like solar farms and EV chargers. (Even after a judge ordered the release of the money, the intended recipients still couldn’t access it.) February 14: The Trump administration fired more than 1,000 National Park Service workers. Workers were later rehired, but the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is currently looking for ways to make cuts again. February 14: Trump issued an executive order to create a “National Energy Dominance Council” led by fossil fuel allies that excludes wind and solar power. February 6: The Trump administration ordered states to suspend a $5 billion program to build a network of new EV charging stations. January 31: The Trump administration scrubbed climate-related language from government websites. January 31: Trump officials released billions of gallons of water from dams in California, claiming incorrectly that it could have prevented the Los Angeles-area wildfires, and giving California farmers new worries about water shortages. January 28: The EPA dismissed members of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and Science Advisory Board, two groups that offer expertise on air pollution standards. January 28: The Department of Transportation started the process of weakening fuel economy standards. January 21: Trump issued an executive order to end the American Climate Corps, a program that was designed to train thousands of young people to work on jobs like solar installation and wildfire prevention. January 20: Trump issued an executive order to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement. January 20: Trump revoked executive orders from Biden that protected certain areas of federal water, opening up sensitive habitats to offshore oil and gas drilling. January 20: Trump issued an executive order called “Unleashing America’s Energy” that aims to revive the abandoned Keystone XL pipeline, fast-track fossil fuel development, limit incentives for buying electric vehicles, and roll back efficiency standards for appliances. For the full listand to follow new attacks on the environment from the Trump administrationcheck out NRDC’s tracker.
Category:
E-Commerce
Its been just 100 days since Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term as president, but its already clear that the tenor of this term is much different than his firstand Trump has been carefully curating an image to match. Since taking office on January 20, Trump has taken an aggressive approach to the presidency. On just his first day in office, he signed a whopping 26 executive orders, including several to eliminate federal DEI efforts and one aimed at granting pardons for January 6 rioters. That initial 24 hours proved a harbinger of what was to come. In the following 100 days, Trumps administration has taken a flurry of extreme steps, including slashing 260,000 federal jobs through Elon Musks DOGE; ramping up deportations and the surveillance of immigrants; and unleashing a global trade war through a series of harsh tariffs. For many Americans, it’s been a confusing period of social and economic upheaval. It has been difficult to predict what the President might do next, and how hell respond to backlash. But within these first 100 days, there is one through line thats become clear: Trump is trying to give his public image an overhaul. The first 100 days of his presidency has seen Trump adopt a darker, sterner image that aligns with his no-holds-barred leadership strategy and appeals to his ultraconservative base. One need only look to four new portraits of the President to prove it. An official portrait inspired by a mug shot Portraiture of President Trump has proven to be a fairly transparent window into the way he is branding his second term. The first glimpse at his new strategy came before Trump even officially took office. Days before January 20, the world got a first glimpse at Trumps official inaugural portrait via his administrations chief photographer, Daniel Torok, who posted the image to his X account. In the photo, Trump stares down at the viewer with one eyebrow cocked in a stern, borderline angry expression. A bright artificial light illuminates the center of his face, leaving dark shadows on his profile. The framing comes almost uncomfortably close to his face, giving the unsettling impression that the viewer is standing just inches away. The headshot is a striking departure from past official presidential photos. These portraits, (viewable in the Library of Congresss digital archives) have a few near universal features dating as far back as Nixons presidency. Each past president is framed at a straight angle that cuts off at the mid-chest; the photos are lit with even, neutral lighting, and the subjects are smiling broadly. In an interview with Fast Company back in January, Rhea L. Combs, director of curatorial affairs at Smithsonians National Portrait Gallery, shared that subtle choices like these are generally used by presidents to lend them a friendly, down-to-earth appearance. It’s a precedent that traces all the way back to early depictions of George Washington. In 2017, Trump himself largely followed these conventions. The official portrait from his first term frames Trump at a more traditional, level angle, and hes shown smiling into the camera in an evenly lit room. Next to his 2025 portrait, the difference is like night and dayand the departure is no coincidence. [Image: Fulton County Sheriff’s Office] Through a series of comments on X, Torok confirmed that Trumps new portrait was inspired by the presidents mug shot, taken before Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts in a criminal hush money trial last May. Despite the guilty verdict, Trump went on to use his mug shot as a political tool on the 2024 election campaign trail, including turning it into rally posters, selling pieces of the suit worn in the photo, and even printing the image on a line of mugs and T-shirts. (Merch has long been a major lever of image control for the president.) Torok openly admitted to using the mug shot as inspriation for the official portrait. The portrait felt calculated both to serve as rage bait for Trumps detractors and to bolster his image in the eyes of his conservative following. During his campaign, Trump strongly aligned himself with members of the manosphere, an online community of male influencers like Andrew Tate, Adin Ross, and Logan Paul, who, to varying degrees, tend to glorify the concept of a certain brand of toxic masculinity (often alongside anti-woman rhetoric.) For Trump, the official portrait was the perfect stage to debut a new personal brand that puts this unrepentant machismo front and center. A callout six years too late About two months into his presidency, amidst a war in the Middle East and massive unrest as a result of his new tariffs, Trump took the time to double down on his new image by coming after a portrait that hung in the Colorado State Capitol. The President logged on to Truth Social on March 23 to demand that a portrait of him be removed. The Presidents timing seemed odd, considering that it had been six years since the painting was first displayed. [Photo: Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post/Getty Images] Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before, Trump wrote at the time. He went on to add that he was calling on Colorado Governor Jared Polis to take it down. The portrait, painted by artist Sarah Boardman, depicts a younger Trump in soft lighting, with a rounded jawline and wearing a neutral, almost contented expression. While Trump chalked up his disapproval to finding the portrait unflattering, its difficult to miss how the painting represents a vastly different Trump from the more intimidating version hes presenting with his new official portrait. His direct message to Polis showed that Trump is willing to go out of his way to control how the public views him, even in ways that might seem inconsequential. Walking around looking at images of yourself all day long The Trump administration took the Presidents updated image to another level in April, when it swapped a minimalist portrait of former president Barack Obama in the White Houses East Room for a pop-art painting of President Trump raising his fist after the assassination attempt last year on the campaign trail. Several historians told The New York Times that they were startled by the move, considering that its almost unheard of for a sitting president to place artwork of themselves in the White House (typically art of a former president is added after their term.) [Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images] It just seems tacky, Ted Widmer, a presidential historian at the City University of New York, told the publication. It feels different from our tradition of venerating the distinguished holders of the office from both partiesand going in a new direction of walking around looking at images of yourself all day long. Beyond the peculiar choice to add the portrait in the first place, its contents are also bizarre for a placement in the White House. The painting depicts Trump surrounded by Secret Service, pumping his fist in the air as rivulets of blood run down the side of his facea depiction of a moment which Trump and his campaign used for promotional material. Alongside his inaugural portrait, this choice of White House art was another carefully vetted opportunity for the Trump administration to project his revamped image of strength. Trump 2.0 catches on Its evident that the Trump administration has been carefully curating a darker, more aggressive public presentation of the President in both photos and artwork during these first 100 days of his presidency. One unexpected outcome of this Trump 2.0 rebrand, though, is that some publications seem to be following the administrations artistic lead. View this post on Instagram A post shared by TIME (@time) Last week, Time magazine sat down with the President to discuss the 100 day milestonea reprise of a similar article run by the publication back in 2017, during his first term. Time chose to represent both articles with a close-up headshot of the President, which it posted as a side-by-side carousel on Instagram. While the 2017 photo is relatively warm-toned and brightly lit, the 2025 version is distinctly cooler and darker. Like Trumps new inauguration portrait, Times updated headshot of the President includes deep, prominent shadows on the sides of his face, as well as an almost stormy background. Its an image that feels both foreboding and bleak. Trumps new image appears to be making its way into the public consciousness. And as his term continues, its likely that the Trump administration will continue to develop this sterner version of Trump through new imagery. In the meantime, these four portraits underscore an enduring theme for Trump. To the President, public image is a matter of winners and losers. In his interview with Time, Trump took reporter Eric Cortellessa to the East Wing to view the painting of him thats been installed there, which sits across from another portrait of Obama. 100 to 1, they prefer that, the President said of his portrait. Its incredible.
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E-Commerce
Barbara Bouza went from architecture to Imagineering and back again. A trained architect who spent nearly 19 years working on building projects for the world’s largest architecture and design firm, Gensler, Bouza made an unconventional career pivot in 2020 when she became president of Walt Disney Imagineering, the famed division of the Disney corporation focused on theme parks, experiences, and future technologies. After four years of navigating pandemic closures, updating theme parks around the world, and debuting new cruise ships, she’s now coming back to her roots in architecture and taking on a new role as executive director of market strategies and growth at the architecture and engineering firm CannonDesign. With this unique background, she has some ideas about how the architecture industry can broaden its approach by creating multifunctional spaces where people can live, work, and play. Her time at Imagineering has shown her that designing places for people requires thinking about the wide range of different users of a spacewhether within the confines of a theme park or in more of a real-world setting like a workplace or an educational facility. But a theme park is also a real place. Going from working on architecture projects for Gensler to theme park projects for Disney was less of a jump than most people would think, Bouza says. “You go out to a job site at a park for an attraction, and it’s very similar. Similar consultants, similar contractors, but not so much steel that is straight. It is all over the place because we’re turning people upside down. But they’re the same ideas around safety and quality,” she adds. “The process is very similar, but with a lot more disciplines integrated.” The approach, though, is much different than the way a traditional architecture firm works. Within Imagineering, Bouza says there were between 100 and 120 different disciplines that might get involved in any given project. She sees the opportunity for an architecture firm like CannonDesign to include more types of expertise on its projects. Hiring Bouza is part of the firm’s strategic long-term vision to diversify the services it offers clients, beyond the few years it takes to design and build a building. “The silo-ization in the profession is a missed opportunity to really address some big problems with our clients,” says Brad Lukanic, CannonDesign’s CEO. He says Bouza will help the firm figure out what new design services it can offer, and help clients to “articulate a very cohesive vision for things that really aren’t known yet because technologies are evolving, and experiences are evolving.” There is some precedent for Bouza’s career shift. In 2023, Bob Weis, Bouza’s predecessor at Imagineering, made a similar jump to architecture, joining Gensler as its global immersive experience design leader. Bouza’s new role won’t be about bringing Imagineering into architecture, but rather exploring the ways that architecture and design services should be changing to meet new client demands. She says that requires thinking more expansively about how a place can serve people and create a venue for new ideas. “Being at Disney was like getting a PhD in this idea that there are other aspects of what we call the built environment,” she says. Pulling on her Imagineering experience of developing a new cruise ship, Wish, and launching World of Frozen at Hong Kong Disneyland, Bouza says she learned a lot about designing for the varied experiences of every participant in a space, from the families on vacation to the performers roaming the theme park to the maintenance crews working behind the scenes. She also embraces the immersive nature of the Disney approach and sees ways that architecture projects can do more to engage their users beyond the basics of the design brief. “[Imagineering] is so story driven. And that’s one area that I really want to see more in architecture,” she says. “I think the storytelling out there can be very strong. I think the execution of the work is strong. But I think where we really need to look is the science behind it, because guest behavior, consumer behavior, is really evolving.” After years building very different kinds of projects, Bouza says she’s happy to be back in the architecture world. “It’s like riding a bike,” she says.
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E-Commerce
In the days before a recent ballot referendum in Seattle that would determine the future of social housing in the city, large tech companies spent big. Amazon and Microsoft, both of which are headquartered in the Seattle metropolitan area, each donated $100,000, and opponents of a tax to fund social housing spent a combined $780,000 in the lead-up to the February 11 vote. Despite this, the vote on a corporate tax to fund the citys social housing authority won, with 63% of voters supporting it. In 2023, voters had already resoundingly approved the social housing authority, agreeing that a new entity would be created to acquire and construct mixed-income housing and keep it permanently affordable and under the citys ownership. But this February, voters were asked to return to the polls to determine how to fund the authorityor whether it would be funded at all. The first question on the ballot asked if voters approved of funding the new authority using payroll taxes. Next, voters had to choose whether they wanted a new 5% payroll tax on individual compensation above $1,000,000, paid by companies, or to use an existing payroll tax that mostly funds affordable housing. The new tax could bring in $52 million of funding each year for social housing. The second option would appropriate $10 million a year for five years that had already been set aside. The citys big tech companies had no interest in paying a new tax. In addition to contributions from Amazon and Microsoft, Seattles Chamber of Commerce donated $40,000 and T-Mobile donated $20,000 to derail an additional tax on companies. But according to Tiffani McCoy of House Our Neighbors, a Seattle nonprofit that has been one of the lead supporters of the social housing authority, the influx of spending actually hurt Big Techs case. Frankly, Amazon donating was a godsend for us, McCoy says. We capitalized on the fact that Amazon and Microsoft were dumping in $100,000, and we made clear to voters that these corporations dont want you to have social housing. McCoy says the campaign to fund the social housing authority with a corporate tax sent mailers, paid for digital advertising, and made social media posts that played up the tech companies donations. Supporters also held a rally in front of Amazons Seattle headquarters. Theres a lot of resentment toward tech billionaires who are part of the Trump regime here in Seattle, she says. The win suggests a way forward for organizers on the local level to take the housing crisis into their own hands. Persistent federal inaction and recent drastic attacks to HUD have provided motivation. We needed to Trump-proof our housing sector, McCoy says. And I think that helps because theres mass opposition to what hes doing. The vote also showcased a groundswell of resentment toward Big Tech that has been percolating among voters. The authority will initially be modest in its ambitions, as it wont have funding to develop housing anywhere near the scope or scale of the private market. The plan is to build or preserve 300 units a year, once funding comes in, according to the social housing development authoritybut it will own those units and will be able to issue its own debt. The first step, proponents say, is to make sure the money actually comes through. What will Seattles social housing authority do? The initial ballot referendum to build a social housing authority in Seattle passed in February 2023 with 57% of the vote. It created a public development authority, a type of government-owned private entity that can take out debt by issuing bonds. The term social housing has been used broadly in recent years to refer to types of housing that are not subject to the speculative market, including public housing, forms of subsidized affordable housing, and housing owned by community land trusts. Seattles referendum referred to social housing as publicly owned and financed mixed-income housing intended to be permanently affordable. According to the housing authoritys charter, that means it will acquire or build housing and rent it to people making between 0% and 120% of the area median income, with rents never exceeding 30% of a tenants income. The median income for a family of four in Seattle is about $160,000, according to the Seattle Housing Authority. That means families in properties owned by the authority could be paying between $0 and about $4,700 a month, depending on their income. Since the authoritys properties are not meant to be resold, it could provide a modicum of stability to lifelong renters as they age. Market-rate properties are meant to increase in value every year, but seniors with fixed incomes dont see their pay increase as they age. For decades, working Americans in general havent seen their pay increase significantly. The authoritys charter also creates a mediation provision for tenants to prevent evictions: According to the charter, residents MUST be afforded opportunities for restorative justice conflict resolution prior to being subject to eviction procedures. Theres not the pressure of somebodys investment that is in cross purposes to their ability to stay there, says Julie Howe, a Seattle Social Housing board member. The authority will issue its own debt in the form of bonds and create a revolving loan fund, lending itself money for construction and acquisition that would be paid back through rents, with higher rents subsidizing lower rents. Debt is a large and under-discussed factor in the cost of housing, as developers often price units to pay back loans. By using its own funds for construction, the authority will be able to reduce interest payments that can cause rents to balloon. The authority will be governed by a board with 13 members, including 7 appointed by the Seattle Renters Commission, an advisory board that consults with the mayor and city council. They will be mainly focused on the authoritys fiscal responsibilities and making sure it remains aligned with its mission. While public housing is notoriously underfunded in the United States, the result of a bipartisan aversion to government-owned housing, McCoy says the mixed-income approach that Seattle is taking with its own development authority might prove more sustainable, as it doesnt require as much direct subsidy. The authoritys approach is also less convoluted than building housing using Low Incom Housing Tax Credits, which requires multiple layers of financing on top of the federally issued credits. But there still needs to be a dedicated revenue stream to staff the development authority, to purchase and construct housing, and to issue bonds. The state law establishing public development authorities does not allow them to impose taxes. And the 2023 ballot referendum was limited to creating the authority; a dedicated funding stream was always going to require a second ballot measure. Some opponents of the social housing authority, which includes not just big tech but affordable housing developers, believed that the new ballot measure was an opportunity to relitigate whether the authority should be established at all. Theyre really looking for a do-over, McCoy said prior to the February vote. Taxing the wealthy Rather than opposing the authority outright, opponents opted to put option 1B on the ballot to essentially recreate the affordable housing system that exists in Seattle, with no new funding. That option would have effectively made the social housing development authority moot: the citys affordable housing fund that it would have pulled from can only go toward people making 80% of the area median income or lower, which means that the authority would not be able to cross-subsidize rents. According to Howe, the board member, this would have put the agency in conflict with affordable housing developers who rely on the existing funding stream. That would essentially go against how we were founded, Howe says. Suresh Chanmugam, a tech worker organizing with the group Tech for Housing, says tech companies dont mind Washington having one of the most regressive tax codes in the nation. Because the state has no income tax, most taxes are derived from consumer sales and property, regressive taxes where poorer people have an effective tax rate much higher than the wealthiest. Chanmugam believes rich companies use the lack of an income tax as a pretext to pay their employees less than they would in other states. He says that dozens of members of the Tech for Housing coalition knocked on doors, tabled at farmers markets and phone banked across the city. When people hear, Hey, do you want to tax companies to fund social housing?, people say yes, because theres near universal appeal in Seattle for making big businesses pay their fair share in taxes, Chanmugam says. He says he personally spoke to about 300 voters while canvassing and only received pushback from one or two people. It makes sense that tech workers have opposing priorities to their employers: While tech workers are typically high earners, many would benefit from the social housing authority, which would ensure that people making 120% of AMI, or around $190,000 for a family of four, would pay only 30% of their wages toward rent in units it owns. That would greatly offset any pass-through cost put on their wages by tech companies. According to campaign finance records, Microsoft and Amazon were tied for the highest donations to the campaign for option 1Busing existing taxat $100,000 each. Its not the first time that spending from tech companies has backfired in Seattle. In 2019, Amazon and the Chamber of Commerce supported a slate of City Council candidates, most of whom lost. The corporate tax was also opposed by the mayor; ads for option 1B, which would use existing funds, had pictures of his face on it. One opposition mailer included the mayors face and signature and the message, I strongly urge you to vote for Prop 1B. We need to build and operate social housing the smart way. 1B uses existing city funds, and has all the voter accountability and transparency that 1A doesnt have. The mailer notes that 1A builds homes for the poorest city residents. Only two current city council members support the corporate tax, according to McCoy. Our city council has taken a very reactionary turn, McCoy says. But the campaign used the political opposition to their advantage, citing the mayors stance in opposition mailers and messaging. Money being held up Despite the measures success, supporters say the city is still lagging on funding the authority. The new payroll tax is retroactive to January 1, 2025, but the city told supporters of the corporate tax the system to bill for it will take a year to build out, so that money wont be available for the authority until early 2026. In the past, the city has used an interfund loan, borrowing money from its existing funds to process a new tax right away. McCoy says the city didn’t initially appear willing to take similar measures to pay for the social housing authoritythough the mayors office later contacted the authority to discuss a bridge loan. A spokesperson for the mayors office says the city offered the loan to the authority to keep it afloat until the payroll tax revenue comes in next year. We have not determined the amount of the bridge loan yet, and any funding would require approval from the Citys Debt Management Policy Advisory Committee and the City Council, the spokesperson said in an email. Additionally, the original February 2023 ballot measure required the city to pay for staff for the authority for 18 months, but supporters say the city has only paid for 12 months. The spokesperson at the mayors office says that the city had disbursed all $850,000 of its contractually obligated startup costs, with the final payment on March 4. Roberto Jimenez, CEO of Seattle Social Housing (SSH), told Shelterforce Next City, The mayor interprets the charter and contract differently than does SSH. I believe we will reach agreement. Jimenez says his recent conversation with the mayors office was positive. He says the authority has already started looking at opportunities to purchase housing. That includes real estate deals that have stalled because buyers have had trouble accessing financing. He says construction is getting harder to do because of rising interest rates and the uncertainty of Trumps tariffs. But ideally, the authority will be in a position to build small and midsize housing that larger developers now avoid because larger multifamily buildings are more financially feasible. But first the money needs to arrive. Things could happen very quickly if the money gets freed up, he says. The challenge that were facing right now is we dont have the resources to hire staff yet, and we dont have the resources to really pursue analysis of these real estate options. Despite the hostility to the social housing development authority and its funding mechanisms from the political class, voters have now affirmed that they want it, twice. I think people dont ned to be afraid of it, Jimenez says. I think its an alternative form of housing that makes a lot of sense and has worked around the world. And its becoming much more utilized in the U.S. over the last couple of years. Youre going to see a lot more of it. By Roshan Abraham, Next City This story was originally copublished by Next City and Shelterforce.
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E-Commerce
When Formula 1 superstar Lewis Hamilton announced in December that he would be leaving the Mercedes team for Ferrari after 246 Grands Prix, 84 victories, and 6 drivers championships in 12 seasons, much of the focus was on Hamilton’s future plans. Just as compelling was the empty seat Hamilton was leaving at Mercedes. His departure triggered an intense internal process for the automakerthe search for a successor. Many of the discussions and debates that resulted in Mercedes choosing young Italian driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli played out over messaging app WhatsApp. That process is now the subject of a new one-hour documentary on Netflix called The Seat, dropping on May 5. Directed by Kyle Thrash, and produced by RadicalMedia, its also a WhatsApp commercial. The Meta-owned app is a producer, and created the project with its content partner Modern Arts. WhatsApps global head of marketing, Vivian Odior, says the company decided to create the doc in order to fully show how the app is often part of critical inflection points in its users lives. When it comes to telling those stories, we believe in giving the space to properly unpack the role we play and share the full story of our user base, says Odior. We dont believe we should be limited by ad formats. Storytelling allows us to occupy a unique position in the hearts of users and pushes beyond the functional role we play. This isnt some ad-tiered piece of content. Its a legitimate addition to the streamers F1 library. Many marketers will be shaking with jealousy or excitement, inspired to make their own move into entertainment. But be forewarned, creating content that can go head-to-head with other films and TV is not for the faint of heart, nor is it for those searching for a formula. Even WhatsApp knows this is a unique brand opportunity. Make your own luck WhatsApp has long been a brand partner to the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team, and last year Modern Arts created a short film on Hamilton called Push Push. It chronicled the ups and downs of his racing career, as well as his personal struggles with dyslexia and bullying, woven into a conversation he has with a group of teens today about their own lives. That helped build the relationship and trust with Mercedes to make The Seat possible. Modern Arts has a track record of telling compelling stories around the platform, like its award-winning, 26-minute doc We Are Ayenda, about WhatsApps role in helping the Afghanistan Womens Youth National Football Team escape the Taliban. Zac Ryder, the agency’s cofounder and co-chief creative officer, says that made it a lot easier to start figuring out a story to be told around privacy with the Mercedes team. It just so happens that not only is WhatsApp a sponsor of the team, but the entire Mercedes team literally runs on WhatsApp, Ryder says. You very rarely ever send an email. It’s all done on WhatsApp. They have hundreds of WhatsApp groups, and that’s how their entire team is organized, from little details around traveling to big things like engineering and car designs. It’s all shared across WhatsApp. In theory, this sounds like a formula for the greatest product demo video ever made. But Formula 1 teams are known to be about as forthcoming with secrets as the Pentagon. Ryder says Mercedes saw the value in giving the film access to its internal process, with the goal of helping F1 fans fall in love with Antonelli, a relatively unknown 18-year-old driver. For WhatsApp, the goal was to tell a privacy story by showing how well it functions in high-stakes situations. Our job was to figure out how those two things can coexist to make something that was going to be compelling, Ryder says. No one formula Its a unique situation for a brand to have its product at the center of a major sports story. Ryder says the strategy quickly became to make the project revolve around trust. The Mercedes team was trusting its F1 drivers seat to Antonelli, but in the process it was also showing its trust in WhatsApp as a communications platform. In a typical commercial edit, marketers will obsess over how many times the product is mentioned, or the product appears, or the logo is flashed. Modern Arts CEO Brooke Stites says the film is not about that because the brand and its product are so intertwined with the story itself. As a marketing investment, Stites says the film cost about as much as it would to make and buy ad time for a 60-second commercial. Here, the entire budget went into the production because being on Netflix means there isnt the need to pay for advertising space on TV and online. It’s a totally different model, says Stites. It’s not cheap, but it’s what you’re going to spend on a 60-second spot that you then have to spend 10 times more to buy places that force people to watch it. Everyone who watches F1 content on Netflix is going to get served our film. The Seat is not a paid advertising arrangement with Netflix; it was acquired by the streamer in the same way other film and television content is acquired. Other major streamers were vying for the film, but Netflix’s connection to the long-running docuseries Formula 1: Drive to Survive made it the ideal home. For some time brands and ad agencies have been putting make a film for Netflix in their marketing briefs, but the reality is, its not that simple. Stites says there are some critical ingredients a project needs in order to get anywhere near Netflix or any other top-tier streamer. You have to have an amazing story and quality of craft, she says. All these streamers are looking at it and asking, Is this something that’s adding value to my audience? Is this something that my viewers are going to actually want to engage with? That was a big part of the F1 piece. For other brands interested in this type of storytelling, Stites has a piece of advice: Tell a compelling story that involves your brand, dont just tell your brand story. Every brand wants to tap into culture. To tell stories people really want to hear, you need to find the stories in culture that authentically include your brand instead of trying to force-feed your brand into culture. We’re not telling a story about WhatsApp. It’s not about the brand, says Stites. Stories involving brands already exist in culture that are really actually very interesting, and people are willing and wanting to engage with them. Tell a story that people are going to care about, versus starting from a place of Le’s tell a brand story.
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