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On August 28, President Trump signed a new executive order intended to help him reshape Washington D.C. in his image. The order, titled Restoring Americas Architectural Grandeur, requires federal buildings to maintain Trumps preferred variety of classical architecturei.e. the Greco-Roman style favored in the days of the founding fathers. It further mandates that builders will have to notify the President if they plan to construct any federal building that deviates from this preferred style, including where a design embraces Brutalist, Deconstructivist, or other modernist architecture. In the first months of his second term, Trump has already begun imposing his personal aesthetic on the White House. The President, who has called the look and feel of Louis XIV his favorite style, has bedecked the Oval Office in gaudy gold decorations, filled the White House with art featuring his own image, and begun renovating the Rose Garden to resemble his resort in Mar-A-Lago. Now, hes turning his attention toward reshaping Washingtonand every federal building nationwideaccording to his own design sensibilities. “Uniformity as an extension of power” Trumps fixation on classical architecture is nothing new. During his first term, he issued a 2,500-word executive order that laid out which types of federal architecture were acceptable (classical and traditional) and which were not (Brutalist and modernist). Biden revoked that original order when he took office in 2021, but Trump signaled his plan to pursue it once again almost immediately after starting his second term in late January. Now, hes one step closer to achieving his goal. In an interview with The New York Times on August 28, Justin Shubow, president of the nonprofit National Civic Art Society, which helped draft the executive order, said that its effects could begin to manifest soon. He cited the designs for new courthouses in places like Hartford, Connecticut, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, as projects that would need to follow the new directive. For too long, federal architecture has been in a dismal state, Shubow said in a statement to The Times. Recognizing the publics disdain of our more recent government buildings, [Trump] is ensuring that new edifices will be beautiful, dignified, and admired by the common person. Trumps renewed push to control the appearance of federal buildings coincides with his concerted efforts to exert greater influence over federal agencies themselves. This week, the White House moved to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cookan action that has never been made in the Feds 112-year history, given that it has traditionally been operated independently from federal control. (Cook has requested an emergency injunction to block the move in an effort to prevent the erosion of the Feds independence.) When Trump first attempted to impose his architectural style in 2020, Steven Heller, co-chair of the MFA design program at the School of Visual Arts and author of more than 100 books on graphic design history, told Fast Company that the move might be reason for alarm. Historically, he noted, such efforts have represented uniformity as an extension of power. When one design style is preferred over another, that may be construed as an aesthetic preference. But when it is linked to a presidential act or decree, especially a president that exhibits authoritarian tendencies, then there is reason for alarm,” Heller told Fast Company at the time. “We tend to ignore the nuances of power, like graphics and architecture styles, until its too late.
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He may technically be toxic, but this avenger is radically improving peoples lives offscreen. The Toxic Avenger, the schlocktacular splatterfest from the 1980s, is slashing its way out of video store purgatory this week, with a reboot starring Peter Dinklage and Kevin Baconand an innovative marketing campaign. Hybrid studio-distributor Cineverse is hyping the film by working with the nonprofit Undue Medical Debt to wipe out at least $5 million in debt for families struggling to pay their medical bills. (The grand total may end up being much more as another $1 million in debt will be shredded for every million that Toxie takes in from theaters.) Its the rare benevolent marketing gesture that will have an immediate material impact on real Americans. Earlier promotions for the glossy-scuzzy throwback flick included a collaboration with Liquid Death and the reintroduction of another long-dormant entity, Moviefones phone line. However, when the time came to put together the final push in the days before the movies August 29 release date, Cineverses marketing team had originally considered moving in a much different direction than where they ended up. We were brainstorming stunts and I was leaning toward what we were calling a mop flash with dancing janitors, Lauren McCarthy, SVP of marketing at Cineverse, tells Fast Company. That concept was rooted in the fact that Dinklages titular character starts the movie working as a janitor. (The original 1984 film, from unapologetically trashy studio Troma, also centered around a custodian.) While flash mobs have previously helped promote movies like 2018s Mamma Mia: Here We Go Againand while its quite easy to imagine gyrating janitors making some kind of a splash onlinethe idea met with a bit of hesitancy in the room. Someone on my very smart team said, Um, let’s maybe do something good for the world instead, McCarthy recalls. And when this idea came up, we pivoted right away. A good cause inspired by the character’s origin story Although the core appeal of the campy gore-forward movie is watching a mutated custodian rip bad guy limbs right out of their sockets, The Toxic Avenger has a clear thematic connection to medical debt. Early in the film, a doctor diagnoses Dinklages character, Winston Gooze, with a rare life-threatening disease. He now has somewhere between six months and a year to liveunless he can afford to pay the exorbitant cost of treatment, which the health insurance from his shady employer (played by Bacon) of course does not cover. Even before a vat of toxic sludge enters the picture, our hero is doomed by the expensive complexities of Americas healthcare system. Though the punishingly high cost of medical bills is a major concern for uninsured Americans at all times, it has figured prominently in the national conversation throughout 2025. Last December, Luigi Mangione allegedly gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, following a long struggle with chronic back pain. (Mangione has pleaded not guilty.) The grim spectacle of this assassination ultimately provoked an outpouring of American grievances with the health insurance industry at the years start. Then, just last month, a federal judge blocked a Biden-era rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) meant to ban medical debt from showing up in credit reports. With the topic still fresh in public discourse, Cineverse is wise to spotlight its presence in the moviewhile making a huge difference in peoples lives in the bargain. Beyond being a noble move, though, its a cost-effective marketing spend. Undue Medical Debt works by using donor money to purchase medical debt in large, bundled portfolios, and homing in on bills for those most in need. As John Oliver demonstrated in an illuminating, charitable episode of Last Week Tonight from 2016, the shady debt-buying business is structured in such a way that altruistic souls can sometimes scoop upand wipe outa strangers debt for less than half a cent on a dollar. No matter the precise terms of Cineverses arrangement with Unpaid Medical Debt, its clear the studios dollar is stretching a long wayand for a positive cause. Movie marketing as charity Plenty of movie promotions in the past have had a charitable component. To draw attention to the environmental undercurrent of 2007s Steve Carrell comedy Evan Almighty, Universal Studios teamed up with The Conservation Fund for the planting of 15,000 trees, for instance. Lucasfilm and Disney launched the Star Wars: Force for Change program in 2014, a year before the release of Episode 7: The Force Awakens, and raised $4.2 million for Unicef. And the 2020 release Buffaloed even embarked on a similar partnership with Undue Medical Debt to erase $1.5 million in bills. (Zoey Deutchs character in that film is a debt collector.) Cineverses push stands out, howver, for the scale of its generosity ($5 million in debt eliminated, and potentially much more), its timeliness, and its relevance to the films themes. Its a witty reminder that maybe the real toxicity in The Toxic Avenger is the medical debt that too many Americans accrued along the way.
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E-Commerce
Most of my co-workers liked to ease into their workday. They stopped and chatted on their way to their office. Once there, they put down their stuff, turned around, and headed to the break room for coffee. When they finally drifted back, they checked a few news sites (why do that at home when you could do it at work?), glanced at their emailin athletic terms, they warmed up for 20 or 30 minutes. I don’t work that way, at least not effectively. My elapsed time from bed to desk is usually about 10 minutes: make the bed, brush my teeth, grab a protein bar and a glass of water, sit down, start working. That’s not because I’m Mr. Productivity. That’s because whenever I do dawdle, whenever I do let myself settle into work, I rarely manage to work very hard the rest of the day. Hit the ground running? I stay running. Hit the ground walking, though, and I rarely can do more than jog. (I know I should be better than that, but I’m not.) Turns out there’s a little science to back up how I approach the morning. According to a study just published in The Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies (h/t to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s newsletter), warming up with heavier rather than lighter weights improves overall weight training workout performance. Participants who warmed up by doing five reps at 80 percent of their 10-rep max were able to lift more weight, and perform more reps during their workouts, than people who warmed up doing 15 reps at 40 percent of their 10-rep max. For example, say you can just barely squeeze out 10 reps of 150 pounds doing bench presses. Warmup up with five 120-pound reps will result in “significantly greater total training volume” than warming up with 15 60-pound reps. Sounds counterintuitive? After all, the goal of a warmup is to get your blood flowing, get your heart pumping a little faster, to limber and loosen your muscles. A warmup is supposed to be easy, so it doesn’t negatively impact the real work to come. Nope. As you can guess by the results, the researchers determined there was no difference in overall fatigue. Harder warmups didn’t affect stamina; even though the heavy warmup group lifted more weight overall, they weren’t more exhausted at the end of their workouts. In part, that’s because of the dose-response effect: heavier weights activate more muscle tissue and more rapidly increase body temperature, both of which lead to higher levels of strength and performance. Plus, heavier warmups may change your perception, making the weight you use for working sets seem less heavy by comparison. If you warm up with 60 pounds, shifting to 150 pounds feels like a lot. If you warm up with 120 pounds, the difference doesn’t seem nearly so great. That’s what happens to me. If I tackle easier tasks first, I tend to want to stick with easy tasks; shifting to something difficult seems daunting. But if I start my day by diving right in, that builds a sense of momentum that carries me through the rest of the day. Once I check off one hard thing, I’m eager to check off another. And another. Starting my day with a productive bang creates natural momentum, and provides the boost of motivation and energy I need to move on to the next difficult task on my to-do list. Granted, working is different than working out: muscle recruitment, body temperature, and post-activation performance enhancement don’t necessarily apply to the average person’s workday. But the principle still broadly applies. Hit the ground runningespecially if you tackle the most important task on your to-do list firstand whatever you do next won’t feel so difficult. Both by comparison and because the sense of accomplishment will make you eager to tackle something else. So you can earn that feeling again. By Jeff Haden This article originally appeared on Fast Company‘s sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
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