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The Trump administration on Thursday proposed a multibillion-dollar overhaul of a U.S. air traffic control system that it said still relies on floppy disks and replacement parts found on eBay and has come under renewed scrutiny in the wake of recent deadly plane crashes and technical failures.The plan calls for six new air traffic control centers, along with an array of technology and communications upgrades at all of the nation’s air traffic facilities over the next three or four years, said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.“We use radar from the 1970s,” said Duffy, who compared the proposal with upgrading from a flip phone to a smartphone. “This technology is 50 years old that our controllers use to scan the skies and keep airplanes separated from one another.”How much it will all cost wasn’t immediately revealed. Duffy said he’ll work with Congress on the details.“It’s going to be billions, lots of billions,” he said.The plan has an aggressive timeline, calling on everything to be finished by 2028 although Duffy said it may take another year.Demands to fix the aging system that handles more than 45,000 daily flights have increased since the midair collision in January between an Army helicopter and a commercial airliner that killed 67 people over Washington, D.C.That crashand a string of other crashes and mishapsshowed the immediate need for these upgrades, Duffy said in front of airline officials, union leaders and family members of those who died in the crash near Reagan National Airport.The proposal sets out to add fiber, wireless or satellite technology at more than 4,600 locations, replace 618 radars and more than quadruple the number of airports with systems designed to reduce near misses on runways.Six new air traffic control centers also would be built under the plan, and new hardware and software would be standardized across all air traffic facilities.The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week budgeted $12.5 billion to overhaul the system, but that estimate came out before the Transportation Department revealed its plan. Duffy said the final price tag will be higher.U.S. Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, who heads the House transportation committee, called the amount only a “down payment.”To build the system quickly, as planned, Duffy said Congress must give the Federal Aviation Administration all the money up front and streamline the permitting process.“The system we have here? It’s not worth saving. I don’t need to preserve any of this. It’s too old,” Duffy said.Trump said Thursday that the plan will revolutionize flying. “The new equipment is unbelievable what it does,” he said from the Oval Office. He began to say it may even alleviate the need for pilots before adding, “In my opinion, you always need pilots. But you wouldn’t even have to have pilots.”The newly revealed proposal appears to have wide support across the aviation industry from airline CEOs to the unions representing controllers and pilots but this is just the beginning and many details haven’t been revealed.Duffy quickly said the plan will not involve privatizing the air traffic control system, as Trump had supported in his first term.Following the midair crash near Washington, Trump promised to fix what he called “an old, broken system” and to tackle the nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers while blaming the previous Biden administration for both problems.But the weaknesses within the air traffic control system have been highlighted for years in hearings before Congress and government reports. The struggles to keep up with increasing air traffic has been recognized since the 1990s long before either Trump or Biden took office.The Trump administration’s overhaul plan will need enough funding to be more effective than previous reform efforts during the last three decades. Already more than $14 billion has been invested in upgrades since 2003 but none have dramatically changed how the system works.The FAA has been working since the mid-2000s to make upgrades through its NextGen program.One of the biggest challenges with a massive upgrade is that the FAA must keep the current system operating while developing a new system and then find a way to seamlessly switch over. That’s partly why the agency has pursued more gradual improvements in the past.The shortage of controllers and technical breakdowns came to the forefront in the last two weeks when a radar system briefly failed at the Newark, New Jersey, airport, leading to a wave of flight cancellations and delays.Without the planned upgrades, those breakdowns will be repeated around the nation, Duffy said. “Newark has been a prime example of what happens when this old equipment goes down,” he said. Associated Press reporter Will Weissert in Washington contributed. Josh Funk and John Seewer, Associated Press
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The Federal Emergency Management Agency faced fresh upheaval Thursday just weeks before the start of hurricane season when the acting administrator was pushed out and replaced by another official from the Department of Homeland Security.The abrupt change came the day after Cameron Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL who held the job for the last few months, testified on Capitol Hill that he did not agree with proposals to dismantle an organization that helps plan for natural disasters and distributes financial assistance.“I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” he said Wednesday.President Donald Trump has suggested that individual states, not the federal government, should take the lead on hurricanes, tornadoes and other crises. He has been sharply critical of FEMA’s performance, particularly in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.David Richardson, a former Marine Corps officer who served in Afghanistan, Iraq and Africa, will run FEMA for the time being. He does not appear to have any experience in managing natural disasters. He currently serves as the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for countering weapons of mass destruction.The administration made no statement about any potential permanent nominee. Nor did the White House answer questions about Richardson’s background, the impact of Hamilton’s testimony or whether the president personally ordered his dismissal.An administration official, who requested anonymity to discuss a personnel matter, said Hamilton was offered another government job that would be a better fit for him, but did not say what that job would be.FEMA staff were notified of the change in leadership through a brief email.Through a January executive order, Trump established a review council tasked with “reforming and streamlining the nation’s emergency management and disaster response system,” according to Homeland Security. The 13-member council is chaired by Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.During Hamilton’s appearance before a House Appropriations subcommittee Wednesday, he shared concerns about how FEMA assistance is administered. He also said the agency had “evolved into an overextended federal bureaucracy, attempting to manage every type of emergency no matter how minor.”But when Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, asked Hamilton how he felt about plans to eliminate FEMA, Hamilton said he did not believe the agency should be eliminated.“Having said that,” Hamilton continued, “I’m not in a position to make decisions and impact outcomes on whether or not a determination such as consequential as that should be made. That is a conversation that should be had between the president of the United States and this governing body.”In a statement Thursday afternoon, DeLauro expressed support for Hamilton and accused the Republican president of firing “anyone who is not blindly loyal to him.”“The Trump administration must explain why he has been removed from this position,” said DeLauro. “Integrity and morality should not cost you your job.” Chris Megerian and Gabriela Aoun Angueira, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Since 1974, William Stout Architectural Books in San Franciscos Jackson Square has been one of the citys most iconic destinations for its seemingly endless stock of art, design, and architecture books. As the store was approaching its 50th year in business with a fresh owner, the Eames Institute for Infinite Curiosity, it discovered a problem: It had run out of stickers to label its books. Then it discovered another problemit didnt have a formalized logo to print more.But as luck would have it, a fairly competent design firm resided just across the street that offered to help: LoveFrom.Its a store we loved. And if we didnt get to design [their brand], it would have been like, we wish we could have done that! says Chris Wilson, designer at LoveFrom. Its something that falls into that category of projects we do for the love of doing themquite organic by just being in the neighborhood and going in the store.[Image: LoveFrom]The ongoing health and legacy of San Francisco is a core reason that Jony Ive founded his studio in his favorite neighborhood, Jackson Square, which sits in the shadow of the Transamerica Pyramid. Ive first visited the neighborhood in 1989, and fell in love with William Stout, along with other local gems. When he left Apple to build LoveFrom, he did so here, right next door to Laurene Powell Jobss Emerson Collective, around the corner from his hardware startup with Sam Altman called io Products. After acquiring nearly $90 million in real estate, Ive is a landlord to several businesses in the neighborhood where hes offered to lower rents, and LoveFrom has offered pro bono design services to many of its neighbors, like the local three Michelin star restaurant Quince, hoping that rising tides raise all boats. It all makes for a nice story. But the effect of this financial and creative investment on the ground level really has been something to watch. Ive visited the neighborhood several times over the past few years, and have witnessed firsthand how the once sleepy blocks are now bustling with activitylike a successful game of SimCity playing out IRL.The William Stout bookstore is a preservation project unto itself, acquired by the Eames Institute in 2022, ensuring that the beloved destination will stick around into the foreseeable future. We dont want it to disappear, says Lauren Smith, chief experience officer at the Eames Institute, who takes our call from deep in the William Stout stacks. Its important to the San Francisco design community and the neighborhood. There arent many architecture book stores left in the world.[Image: LoveFrom]Rebuilding a brandWhen Wilson and fellow LoveFrom designer Antonio Cavedoni (who in a past life developed Apples San Francisco typeface) began searching for the stores original logo, they learned William Stout never really had one; instead, the companys small sign wrote out the stores name in the typeface Washington upon a square placard, and that seemed to inform letterheads and other brand assets. It was a bit quirky and a bit architectural, but it didnt feel codified into a larger, scalable brand system. We kind of thought there was something to hold onto there, says Wilson. Theres a lot of stuff that was a bit odd and a bit weird. We loved some of that, but we just wanted to rationalize these things.The team started by breaking down the core square into five equal quadrants. Then, they looked more closely at the typeface to fill them. Washington was a contemporary (albeit retro) typeface when the store opened. A mix of serif and sans serifs, some of its cleaner geometries (like a perfect circle O) made it appealing for a design store, but the Art Deco stylewhile spiritedfelt too prescriptive of one particular era to represent the entirety of William Stouts purview.[Image: LoveFrom]The obvious choice would have been to do what many do in this situation (and indeed, what William Stout had to do fill some of its brand needs throughout the years): opt for Futura, a now ubiquitous geometric typeface that has similar qualities to Washington. But instead, LoveFrom modified Washington into a new typeface it calls LF Washington with permission from Russell Bean, the creator of the typeface. Designers evened out the cap heights of Washington, while lowering the midlines that made for the high waisted Art Deco look. Meanwhile, LoveFrom drew new numbers that moreclosely align with the new letterforms.LF Washington sings on William Stouts new sign. (The LoveFrom industrial design team created it custom out of enameled steel.) But it also looks straightforward as it balances atop photos to promote William Stout events. For times that the typeface needs to be more expressive, or playful, Cavedoni was inspired by another 1970s typefacesAvant Gardeapproach to ligatures with its overlapping Os and letters nested inside other letters. Later, Cavedoni was joyed to discover that Frank Lloyd Wright took an all-around similar approach in his own branding, making all these decisions feel pretty appropriate for an architectural bookstore.[Image: LoveFrom]The brand beyond the typeAs the team considered the brand colors, it started with those on the original sign: black, white, and red. LoveFrom mostly stuck with this color system, but it expanded a palette of synergistic hues inspired by two of Le Corbusiers famed color studies. LoveFrom contracted illustrator Satoshi Hashimoto to create a series of illustrations. His vaguely mid-century cartoon style captures a kinetic energy that, as Wilson explains, juxtaposes the more formal architectural typography. We wanted to soften [the type] with the warmth of what it feels like to walk in the store, says Wilson. Theres some jazz playing, the doors open, and you see the light inside the store.Its yet another illustration of LoveFroms sense of whimsy offsetting its stricter approaches to geometry. These illustrations are perfect tote bag or T-shirt fodder, but they also introduce a subtle and sweet part of William Stouts e-commerce UX.Anyone visiting the newly launched William Stout website will be welcomed by an illustration of the shops storefront, drawn by Hashimoto. But what they might not realize until visiting again is that this storefront (and its solitary tree) changes with the seasonsyellow in the fall and adorned with multicolor lights in the winter. The front door is sometimes open and sometimes closed (matching the open/closed hours of the building). And if you look really closely, you will spot a bird somewhere in the scenewhich was something of a mascot for Ray and Charles Eames. Click on it, and youll be ushered to the Eames Institute. While not technologically complex, the evolving illustration a clever way to bridge a physical store with a digital shop that Im a bit surprised I havent seen before.The website is definitely a way for us to get a bigger reach; were a very small square foot storefront in San Francisco, says Smith. But we want that shopping experience to feel like coming into the store.The new William Stout brand and website is live today.
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