Federal health care workers condemned the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal agents, accusing the department of causing a “growing public health crisis.”

“We cannot pursue our mission to improve the health and well-being of all Americans while DHS agents are murdering, assaulting, and terrorizing people who call this country home,” a coalition of current and former Health and Human Services (HHS) staffers wrote in a letter released by the group Save HHS on Monday. 

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The letter writers said they had been “deeply shaken” by what they described as the “execution” of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Minneapolis who they called “our colleague.” Multiple videos of the incident show Pretti attempting to help a female protestor who was being pushed by a federal agent. A Border Patrol agent then sprays Pretti in the face with a substance and a larger group of agents pins him to the ground. Not long after that point, the fatal shooting occurs: multiple gunshots can be heard and officers move away, leaving Pretti motionless on the ground.

Read more: Alex Pretti, Man Shot By Federal Agents in Minneapolis, Wanted to ‘Make a Difference’

Aryn Backus, a founder of the National Public Health Coalition—the organization behind  the Save HHS initiative—and a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) employee, tells TIME that both documented and undocumented Minnesotans are skipping medical appointments, keeping their children out of school, and staying away from grocery stores out of fear of being prosecuted by federal agents, which she says is contributing to a health crisis. 

“Even if they’re not afraid of potentially being deported, they’re afraid that they could be assaulted by ICE, just for being out and about or for expressing their First Amendment right,” Backus says. “And when people are afraid, they’re not safe and they’re not healthy.”

She adds that the health community, including current and former HHS employees, is angered, frustrated, and shocked by Pretti’s shooting, but that the concerns being raised about the killing on both sides of the political aisle make her believe change is imminent. 

“There does seem to be a little bit more hope because the response from this has seemed to be bigger, and in some cases, a little bit more bipartisan than some other events that have happened over the past year. So even though it’s a really dark and frustrating time, I’m hopeful that maybe something will change.”

Pretti’s death follows the shooting of another Minneapolis resident by an ICE officer just weeks earlier. Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three and U.S. citizen, was shot by an immigration officer on Jan. 7 in her car while attempting to drive away from the scene of a protest against the agency. Her death has sparked demonstrations in Minnesota and beyond. On Friday, a day before Pretti’s shooting, thousands took to the streets in mass protests in the heart of Minneapolis. 

Save HHS laid out specific demands in its letter. The organization called for members of Congress to halt ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) operations “until these agencies justify their activities to Congress and the American people.” It also demanded that Congress refuse ICE and CBP funding until both agencies “immediately halt the invasion of American cities,” agree to being investigated, and adopt new protocols “that do not violate the Constitution.”

The demands come as the Senate is set to vote this week on an appropriations bill including $64.4 billion in DHS funding—$10 billion of which would go to ICE—that key Democrats have vowed to oppose following Pretti’s shooting. The legislation needs 60 votes to pass, meaning some Democrats would need to join Republicans’ narrow 53-seat majority to approve it. And with federal funding for the government set to expire at the week’s end, the growing opposition to the measure has increased the likelihood of a partial government shutdown. 

“Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the D.H.S. funding bill is included,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement, calling the events in Minnesota “unacceptable.”  

Save HHS expressed concern that a potential shutdown could threaten public health by prompting the Administration to furlough staffers in a number of positions. 

“If the bill fails to pass by January 30, many of us will be placed in unpaid furlough status and barred from providing essential services that support the health and well-being of the American people,” the letter states. 

But, it added, “We believe ICE and CBP are a greater threat to the health of our nation than the lapse of HHS services.”

The Trump Administration has sought to defend federal immigration agents in the wake of Good and Pretti’s shootings and portray the killings as acts of self-defense. But witnesses and video of the incidents have contradicted federal officials’ accounts. Several congressional Republicans have joined Democrats in calling for an investigation into Pretti’s shooting

Amid the bipartisan backlash, Trump has deployed White House border czar Tom Homan to oversee federal immigration operations in the area, the President announced on Monday. Trump said in a Truth Social post that he would have Homan call Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who the President said was “on a similar wavelength” to himself. 

Crime rates are dropping across the U.S, in some cases reaching their lowest levels in decades. 

Data from 40 American cities shows a decrease in crime across 11 out of 13 categories of offenses last year compared to 2024, the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) found in a new analysis released on Thursday. Nine of those offenses, ranging from shoplifting to carjacking to aggravated assault, declined by 10% or more. 

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The homicide rate fell 21% in 35 cities which provided data for the crime, accounting for 922 fewer deaths. And the report predicted that the rate will drop even further, to four per every 100,000 residents, when the FBI releases nationwide data for jurisdictions of all sizes. That would represent the lowest homicide rate since 1900 and the largest percentage drop in homicides in any single year on record. 

President Donald Trump has taken credit for falling crime rates around the country, citing his immigration crackdown and deployment of the National Guard in cities across the U.S. since he began his second presidential term. 

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel highlighted the CCJ report’s findings on Thursday and credited the Administration for the decrease in overall crime. 

“Media gymnastics can’t hide the reality that this administration brought law and order back, and Americans are safer because of it,” he wrote in a post on X. He also pointed to statistics from what he called the “FBI’s historic year” that credited the agency with disrupting 1,800 gangs, seizing 2,000+ kilograms of fentanyl, and increasing violent crime arrests by 100% in 2025, among other achievements.

Data shows, however, that there has been a steady decline in crime since a spike during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that rates were already falling before Trump returned to office—including in cities the Administration has targeted in its immigration and crime crackdowns. Experts tell TIME that the drop recorded last year is part of this larger trend and can be attributed to a kaleidoscope of factors, none of which can singularly or definitively account for the decline. 

“We see very confident claims of credit in abundance, but scarce hard evidence to back them up,” CCJ president and CEO Adam Gelb tells TIME. He stresses that disaggregating all the contributing factors that act against crime to create a coherent explanation for the data is an “impossibly difficult” task. 

“The remarkable consistency in the magnitude of the decline across the country really suggests that everything’s happening at the macro level,” he added, pointing to “broader changes in society and culture and technology that are exerting enormous influence on what’s happening at the local level.”

Here’s what you should know about the recent data, and what factors experts believe could be contributing to the decline.

Last year’s decline in crime

The CCJ report found that homicide rates decreased from 2024 to 2025 in 31 out of the 35 cities evaluated, with Denver, Omaha, Nebraska, and Washington seeing declines of 40% or more. Little Rock, Arkansas, marked the biggest outlier in the broader trend, seeing a 16% increase in homicides.

In addition to the steep decline in homicides, the report found that there were 9% fewer reports of aggravated assault, 22% fewer gun assaults, 23% fewer robberies, and 2% fewer incidents of domestic violence.

Violent crime in 2025 was overall at or below its levels in 2019, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the report. 

Cities saw 25% fewer homicides than in 2019, with the largest drop—of 36%—occurring in the cities that had the highest homicide rates before the pandemic. Robberies fell 36% in the evaluated cities from their 2019 levels, and carjackings 29%.

Beyond violent crimes, other categories of offenses also saw declines last year compared to 2024, including a 27% decrease in motor vehicle thefts, a 17% drop in residential burglaries, and a 10% decline in shoplifting. 

Drug offenses were the only category that saw an increase in 2025 from the previous year, rising 7%. But they were still down a notable 19% from 2019 levels. 

Rebounding from the pandemic

Data shows that the steady drop in crime recorded in the last three years follows a widespread spike in rates during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“When COVID hit, and the world shut down, we basically turned off the water with respect to prevention and intervention strategies,” says Alexis Piquero, the former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics appointed by President Joe Biden and a professor of criminology at the University of Miami. “And then it took about two or three years for the water to be turned back on. Then it starts dripping a little bit. And now ‘25 and into ‘26 the water now is at full blast.” 

John Roman, the director of the Center on Public Safety and Justice at the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago, tells TIME that the loss of local government jobs as a result of the pandemic crippled communities’ abilities to prevent crime, but that local government jobs have since grown past pre-pandemic levels. 

“We actually have more local government employees now that we’ve ever had and crime is at the lowest level it’s been since 1960 and I don’t think that’s a coincidence,” he says, noting that those in such positions, like teachers, counselors, clinicians, and local police officers, are “the people who most directly work with young adults and adolescents who are at the greatest risk of committing a crime or being the victim of a crime.”

He asserts that the most influential factor in reducing crime was the allocation of federal funds that led to the proliferation of such jobs, specifically crediting the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, a $1.9 trillion stimulus package that provided hundreds of billions in relief funds to state and local governments, among other provisions. 

“I do think that there’s a policy argument that the American Rescue Plan is probably the most important federal legislation in the years since the pandemic,” says Patrick Sharkey, a Princeton University professor of sociology who founded AmericanViolence.org, calling the measure the “strongest and most effective investment in federal funding” in his lifetime. “I think it has gone unrecognized how incredibly effective it was in stabilizing communities and stabilizing local government … It’s not very visible how important these resources are, but they play an enormous role in just making sure that communities don’t fall apart.”

These federal investments are essential for crime reduction programs at the local, neighborhood level that combat community violence, such as after-school, employment, and education programs, Piquero stresses to TIME.

Barring another pandemic-level predicament, he expects these drops in crime to continue with the continued federal support trickling down to local jurisdictions. 

“We’re much safer now than we’ve been in the last, certainly six years, and certainly since the height of the crack trade in the 1980s and in the strife and unrest of the 60s,” he adds “So I’m very I’m optimistic, but it’s also not the time to take our foot off the pedal right now.”

Shifts in technology and culture 

Outside of more trackable factors like federal funding, Gelb, CCJ’s president, believes a host of other contributors have worked together to reduce crime rates. 

Among them, he contends, is technology. 

From the growing frequency of cameras outside of homes and businesses; to more advanced criminal justice surveillance techniques and interconnected databases; to digital wallets, which have made cash robberies less common, Gelb says the increasingly technological world is causing crime to falter. 

He adds that the now ever-present role of tech is also leading to “rising youth independence,” with young people isolating themselves more rather than “carousing” with their friends. He notes that young people often co-offend in instances of violent crime.

He also attributes the falling crime rates to cultural and social influences, namely a decline in alcohol consumption and a slowing of the opioid epidemic. Increased police presence, taking guns off the streets, and local community violence intervention programs are other factors contributing to the steep drop, he says.

Trump’s role

Though Trump has taken credit for reducing overall crime in 2025, rates were already declining before he returned to office last January, and experts say it’s at best too soon to tell if his Administration has played a notable role in the drop—and that it could be outright false to attribute the change to his crackdown.

Gelb acknowledges that the increased presence of federal agents could be contributing to lower rates of crime.

But, he says, “This level of deployment and these types of tactics are unprecedented. So even if we had good research about general deterrence, it wouldn’t necessarily apply here because of the unprecedented nature of this federal deployment.”

Piquero notes that crime has also trended down in cities and areas where the National Guard has not been deployed and ICE operations have not been ramped up.

“We’re in the fourth year of a crime decline, and the National Guardian and ICE deployments have really been something that’s only happened over the last six months. It’s hard to link the two at this point,” Roman added. “It’s clear that the crime decline was fully developed before any of those deployments happened.”

Sharkey, meanwhile, believes there’s no correlation between the ramped up federal presence in cities and the decrease in crime rates at all.

“It would be ridiculous to argue that federal presence in cities played any role,” he tells TIME. “This started in 2023. So that argument is nonsensical.”

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets across Minnesota on Friday, closing down businesses and calling out of work in a mass protest against the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown in the state.

The “Ice Out of Minnesota: Day of Truth and Freedom” demonstration, organized by community leaders, members of the clergy, and labor unions, called for a “no work, no school, no shopping” economic blackout.

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“Minnesotans are coming together in moral reflection and action to stand together against the actions of the federal government against the state of Minnesota,” a website for the movement reads. “There will be a unified, statewide pause in daily economic activity. Instead, Minnesotans will spend time with family, neighbors, and their community to show Minnesota’s moral heart and collective economic power.” 

A large march began Friday afternoon from the Downtown Commons in Minneapolis toward the Target Center arena, where a rally was scheduled to be held. Bishop Dwayne Royster, the executive director of Faith in Action, which co-organized Friday’s movement, says that organizers were expecting more than 20,000 people to be on the ground standing in solidarity at the rally.

“We are not sitting on the sidelines, and we’re not going to be idly standing within the four walls of our congregations, but we’re speaking truth to power by our very actions today,” Royster tells TIME while driving to the Target Center with other clergy members. “Let me be clear that not only has Minneapolis and Minnesota come together, but they’re calling the nation together as well.” 

Protests have spread in Minnesota and across the country in the wake of an ICE officer shooting and killing Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three, in Minneapolis. The Trump Administration has defended the shooting as an act of “self-defense.” But video of the incident appears to contradict federal officials’ accounts, and the incident has inflamed outrage over the Administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics. On Tuesday, ICE officers detained a five-year-old boy named Liam Conejo Ramos, along with his father, in a Minneapolis suburb and transported them to a detention center in Texas, sparking further scrutiny and backlash against the crackdown.

The movement behind Friday’s protests is demanding that ICE vacate Minnesota; that the officer who killed Good be held legally accountable; that no additional funding be given to ICE in the upcoming congressional budget; and that the agency be investigated for “human and Constitutional violations of Americans and our neighbors.”

The group is also calling for Minnesotan businesses to refuse entry and service to ICE officers moving forward.

Amid the ongoing demonstrations, around 100 clergy members were arrested without incident in at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport on Friday during a protest calling on airlines to stop cooperating with deportation flights. 

Hundreds of Minnesota businesses also shuttered on Friday.

The owner of Gold Room Restaurant and Lounge in Central Minneapolis, Nabil, who wished to not provide his last name to preserve his anonymity, was among those who closed his doors in line with the day of protests, though he provided food to protestors free of charge.

Nabil tells TIME that his business, along with others, has been hurt as a result of ICE’s presence as people are more afraid to be out on the streets. 

On Friday, however, “a lot of different people are out. I mean, all different races, all different ages,” he says, adding that the streets were “packed” amid the protests.

“I think it represents that classic phrase: ‘United you stand, and divided you fall,’” he says. “It’s a beautiful thing to see.”

Nearly 230 million Americans are bracing for a severe winter storm that is forecast to bring dangerous ice, snow, and extreme cold to much of the country over the weekend, with at least 16 states and Washington, D.C., declaring a state of emergency by Saturday morning.

The storm brought snow to northern Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas overnight on Friday and is expected to impact regions spanning more than 2,000 miles, from New Mexico to Maine.

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By Saturday morning, 68,000 were without power, according to the Associated Press, with about 27,600 of those in Texas, and more than 30 states were under a National Weather Service watch, warning, or advisory.

The anticipated heavy snowfall, ice, and harsh winds threaten power outages in several states, potentially leaving many without heat, while frozen-over roads could cut off driving routes for days.

Even a number of areas that are not forecasted to get much—or any—snow amid the storm are set to experience dangerously cold temperatures. Over 50 million people are bracing for extreme cold in cities such as Minneapolis, Chicago, Dallas, and Houston.

The coming inclement weather has sparked widespread warnings and scrambles to prepare. More than 9,000 flights were canceled by Saturday morning, and several airlines have issued advisories for travelers, offering to waive change fees. Footage shared on social media showed storm-preppers emptying shelves at grocery stores to stock up before the snow begins to fall. And states of emergency have been declared in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

Read more: How To Stay Safe and Warm In Extreme Cold Weather

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has also begun preparing for the storm and deployed response teams and resources including generators, thousands of meals, and water to several states. The agency, which has terminated around 300 disaster workers so far in the new year, has also halted the ongoing firings ahead of the weekend storm.

Here’s where and how the storm is expected to hit.

Southern States

The storm is set to impact the South first, hitting states including New Mexico, Texas, and part of Louisiana on Friday and Saturday before moving north. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced a state of emergency on Tuesday and activated several emergency response resources to support weather response operations. 

“As temperatures could drop below freezing and regions of Texas face snow, ice, and freezing rain, it is crucial that Texans remain weather-aware, check DriveTexas.org before traveling, and heed the guidance of state and local officials,” Abbott said. The Texas Department of Public Safety announced it has begun treating roads with brine on Wednesday ahead of the storm. 

Dallas and Fort Worth in Texas are forecasted to be hit with severe ice accumulation on Saturday and into Sunday, as are much of Interstates 20 and 30. Other cities including Houston, Waco, and Austin may also be hit by icy conditions.

“Significant ice accumulation on power lines and tree limbs may cause widespread and long-lasting power outages. Expect power outages and tree damage due to the ice. Travel could be impossible,” wrote the Fort Worth Weather Service on Friday.

Read more: How to Prepare for a Winter Storm Power Outage

Oklahoma is set to be hit hard Friday night through Saturday night, with heavy snowfall in the north and more ice accumulation in the south. Oklahoma City is expected to receive six to 10 inches of snow and glazes of ice that will likely make travel dangerous. Extreme cold is anticipated to follow the storm and linger into the following week.

In Arkansas, heavy snow is forecasted to hit the northern portion of the state and ice the southern part. The capital of Little Rock, which sits at the dividing line in the center of the state, could experience a combination of both. Snow is expected to develop beginning Friday night, with compromised driving conditions lasting into Sunday. An ice storm warning is in place in southeastern Arkansas, which faces the threat of long-lasting power outages.

A stretch of land extending from northern Louisiana through Mississippi and into northern Alabama is set to be hit hard by ice, with accumulation potentially reaching one inch. Such ice accretion can add significant stress to power lines and tree branches and lead to outages that leave residents without heat for days. 

Several inches of snow are also expected on early Saturday in Tennessee. “Travel will be extremely dangerous, near impossible this weekend. Please take this seriously and prepare now,” the Memphis Weather Service posted on Thursday.

Georgia, which issued a state of emergency on Thursday that will be in place for a week, has mobilized 500 National Guardsmen to assist with storm preparations. A Winter Storm Watch from the National Weather Service includes most of North Georgia and the Atlanta area warns of significant ice accumulation up to three-quarters of an inch, potentially impacting roads, bridges, and power lines. Snow and sleet are predicted to be much less severe than other states, with an inch or less expected. 

Snow is forecasted to begin early Saturday morning in Kentucky, where forecasts predict up to 14 inches of snow. In Louisville, wind chills are expected to drop as low as -11 degrees.

The Midwest

The storm is forecasted to move from Southern states up through the Midwest, hitting parts of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio Friday into Saturday.

Most of Ohio is expected to receive snowfall, with some parts of the state—including Cincinnati, Chardon, Canton, Akron, and Wooster—slated to get up to or even more than 10 inches by the end of Sunday night.

Central Illinois is expected to be hit with two rounds of snowfall: the first on Saturday morning and the second beginning Sunday morning and going through the evening. Chicago is forecasted to get up to four inches, with other areas like Decatur, Mattoon, and Effingham expected to get over eight or even 10 inches. 

Read more: Could Your Flight Be Canceled Amid This Weekend’s Brutal Winter Storm?

Kansas, which declared a state of emergency on Friday morning, is anticipating similar conditions, with winter storms predicted to begin on Friday and last through Sunday. The National Weather Service forecasted that temperatures across the state would dip into the negatives and negative teens when accounting for wind chill. 

Missouri is also expected to get snow from around noon on Friday through Sunday afternoon. 

“There is high confidence (85-95% chance) that at least 2-4 inches of snow will be seen across southwest Missouri and southeast Kansas,” the National Weather Service of Springfield posted. “There is still some uncertainty in the potential upper-end amounts, but a reasonable worst case scenario is upwards of 10-12+ inches.”

The Carolinas and Mid-Atlantic

North Carolina will bear the brunt of the storm on Saturday evening through Sunday night, as cities including Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham are bracing for major ice events. Parts of South Carolina are also set to face potentially dangerous ice accumulation. 

Moving up to Virginia, there are expected to be wintry conditions across most of the state starting Saturday night, with snow accumulation of up to six inches, along with sleet, freezing rain, and wind. The wider Washington, D.C., area is anticipated to experience similar conditions, seeing up to 10 inches of snow. The storm is expected to end in the capital by Monday morning, although roads and sidewalks could remain dangerous as temperatures will likely remain below freezing. 

Parts of Pennsylvania will also be hit particularly hard, where in the west portion of the state, forecasts also say there could be 10 to 15 inches of snow. In some parts of the state, the snow could fall an inch per hour on Sunday afternoon.

Further north in New York, conditions are set to be similar to those in D.C., with a heavy period of snowfall followed by a changeover to ice on Sunday. Eight to 12 inches of snow could hit the Big Apple by Sunday afternoon, after which point sleet is expected to take over. There may be a chance of light snowfall again on Monday morning. 

“Our state of emergency that is now in effect allows us to literally go in the streets of New York if they call and need our assistance with plowing or whatever they may need,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said, advising New Yorkers to “stay at home as much as possible.”

Further North

Snowfall is expected in northern states, including Massachusetts, beginning Sunday morning and lasting through Monday evening. New Hampshire is also expected to get snowfall on Sunday and all day on Monday. Maine will receive snow, late Sunday into Monday as well, with the highest snowfall expected in the southern part of the state.

In Boston, there could be up to 18 inches of snow by Monday morning, with even higher amounts possible in locales outside the city, notably in the west. The state is expecting school closures on Monday. 

President Donald Trump has signed an Executive Order that his Administration contends will help lower housing prices and stoke affordability by placing restrictions on big investors’ home purchases. But experts say that its impact for homebuyers and the broader market will be minor.

The order signed by Trump on Tuesday directs his Administration to work to bar large institutional investors from buying single-family homes in an effort “to make homeownership affordable again after years of Wall Street crowding out first-time buyers and young families,” in the White House’s words. 

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“Hardworking young families cannot effectively compete for starter homes with Wall Street firms and their vast resources,” the order reads. “Neighborhoods and communities once controlled by middle-class American families are now run by faraway corporate interests … My Administration will take decisive action to stop Wall Street from treating America’s neighborhoods like a trading floor and empower American families to own their homes.”

The order lays out several broad steps for the Administration to take in the coming weeks to review relevant policies and impose restrictions. The specifics of how it might be implemented are not yet clear, however, including how the terms “large institutional investor” and “single-family home” will be defined—which the order gives Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent 30 days to determine.

Experts tell TIME that they expect the move to have only a small effect, saying that its scope is limited and it doesn’t address the issues most responsible for high housing prices.

“This executive order appears to be fairly benign in practical terms,” says Tobias Peter, a co-director at the American Enterprise Institute Housing Center. “It gives the impression that the Administration is taking action against these institutional investors, but the actual channels that it targets are likely limited.”

Here’s what to know about the order, and how it could affect homebuyers and renters.

What does Trump’s order do?

The order directs agencies to promote home sales to individual buyers and restrict federal programs from enabling big investors to acquire single-family homes by “approving, insuring, guaranteeing, securitizing, or facilitating” such sales.

The order also instructs the Treasury Secretary to consider revising rules and guidance related to large institutional investors acquiring single-family homes, and directs the Attorney General and Federal Trade Commission to review such investors’ acquisitions in the single-family home rental market for “anti-competitive effects” and prioritize their enforcement of antitrust laws to target some of those practices.

Within the White House itself, it instructs several officials to develop legislative recommendations to codify the order’s goals.

What will the order mean for housing prices?

Despite the Administration’s claims about Wall Street investors “crowding out families” and controlling neighborhoods and communities, large institutional investors don’t actually dominate the single-family housing market, Peter tells TIME.

His research has shown that roughly 1% of the entire single-family housing stock is owned by big investors, about 11% by smaller mom-and-pop shop investors, and 87% by individuals. Peter defines “large institutional investors” as those acquiring hundreds of homes at a time.

Another tally, from a 2023 Urban Institute report, estimated that institutional investors owned about 3.8% of all single-family rental homes nationally by June 2022. 

Peter also says that “large single family rental investors generally do not heavily rely on government backing,” and that institutional investors’ home acquisitions haven’t been shown to drastically increase prices for individual buyers.

On the contrary, Peter notes that large investors might actually save homebuyers money by refurbishing fixer-uppers whose renovation costs would have otherwise been out of reach for them, performing what he described as “a vital function by fixing up dilapidated homes” and returning them to the market. 

“Since January 2012 in the largest 150 metros, we absolutely found no correlation between share of institutional investor owned homes out of the total stock in the metro to the home price appreciation,” Peter says. “It’s unlikely that they’re going to be moving the needle on housing affordability.”

Marc Norman, the associate dean of the Schack Institute of Real Estate at New York University, also says that rising prices should not be attributed to a narrative of institutional investors’ dominance over the housing market. 

“It’s based on a misconception,” he says about the Executive Order. “Housing prices are going up because of supply constraints … supply and demand is always going to be the driver.”

Norman references falling prices in Sun Belt markets, like those in Austin and Nashville, after supply booms following the COVID-19 pandemic. He stresses that building more homes would have the biggest impact on lowering pricing, but that the Trump Administration’s tariffs have increased construction costs for materials like lumber and steel and, ultimately, the prices of many homes. 

“If this executive order meaningfully limits investor activity, some first-time buyers could face slightly less competition—especially at the lower end of the market where investors are most active. But that doesn’t solve the core affordability problem, which is that there simply aren’t enough homes for sale,” Daryl Fairweather, the chief economist at the real estate brokerage firm Redfin, tells TIME in a statement. 

She notes that Wall Street firms tend to be active in specific neighborhoods, rather than across entire metropolitan areas. High mortgage rates and years of underbuilding, she adds, are unaddressed but persistent contributors to rising prices.

“In the short term, we might see modest relief in a handful of markets, but unless this policy is paired with measures that increase housing supply, its impact on prices and affordability will likely be limited. The risk is that it creates the perception of action without addressing the structural issues that make housing expensive in the first place,” she says.

Zillow found in an analysis last summer that there was a national housing shortage of over 4.7 million homes. Addressing this shortage is the antidote to rising prices, Jenny Schuetz, vice president of infrastructure for housing at the philanthropic think-tank Arnold Ventures, says in a statement to TIME.

“Proposals that do not address the national shortage of around 4 million homes will not meaningfully impact America’s housing affordability challenges. The good news is that state and local governments across the country are increasingly taking creative steps to encourage affordability by reducing regulatory barriers and stimulating innovation to speed up homebuilding,” she says. 

Peter says that if Trump’s order is implemented and large investors’ housing acquisitions are restricted, the supply shortage could still be remedied by large investors who choose to rent their properties, as opposed to developing homes for purchase. 

“One positive about the Executive Order is that it leaves out built-to-rent development, so where the investor is partnering directly with the home builder to build large scale communities,” he explains. “From a supply perspective, that’s probably positive, because these large institutional investors, they are really the only ones that can do this at scale.” 

Beyond its more direct implications for housing prices, Norman notes that the order may also affect the stocks of large real estate investment companies. 

“It’s definitely going to change the price of the stocks of the big players that are in that market, just because they just haven’t had constraints on them before,” he says, adding that Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) shares held up in single-family properties could lose value. 

Business leaders considered the future of AI at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, during the TIME100 Impact Dinner Tuesday night.

The panel, ”From Vision to Velocity — Deploying Innovation at Scale,” delved into the ways AI has been integrated into industries from health care to energy, and some of the biggest challenges it may present down the road.

Noubar Afeyan, the co-founder and chairman of Moderna and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, said that Moderna has been using machine learning techniques to make medical advancements for quite some time, citing the development of COVID mRNA vaccines.

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“In tech, we always watched with envy the ability to move quickly, because pharmaceuticals have never been programmable,” Afeyan said. “For the first time in 2020 the world saw programmable medicine. But we haven’t stopped at that.”

He also asserted that AI will become crucial in understanding the nature in and around us—but cautioned that people may not be ready for what that insight “will do to our humanity and to our self image.”

“​​I would contend that what we’re about to find out, based on the application of artificial intelligence to nature, is that nature is a whole bunch of forms of intelligence, and we never realized it. Every tree, every virus, every immune cell, these are forms of intelligence,” he said, adding, “I think the safety, maybe security challenge to humans—or, let me put it this way, insecurity challenge to humans—is going to be that we’re going to have to adjust our image of ourselves and realize that with machine intelligence and with nature’s intelligence, we can improve how we can manage nature, how we can extract value from food … new medicines, how to prevent disease.”

Executives of two of India’s leading renewable energy companies, ReNew Energy co-founder Vaishali Nigham Sinha and Greenko Group President Mahesh Kolli, spoke about the changing energy industry amid AI’s growing demand for power.

Kolli discussed the developing role of what he called “electro-states,” countries that have shifted to electrical energy and clean sources, like solar or wind, and away from traditional methods such as oil. 

“What we’re seeing in India is that kind of electro-state revolution,” he said about the country’s use of clean energy going from “a power source for electricity to households” to “now becoming a source to make materials, molecules, and AI,” a shift he said is driving India’s competitive position within a global market and that of other advanced electro-states like China.

Speaking about the potential implications of AI’s rise on the effort to combat climate change, Sinha urged collaboration between countries.

“When we talk about the climate agenda, we’re talking about the world at large. And for that, countries will have to work together because climate really doesn’t know boundaries,” she said, adding that public and private partnerships are “required” to make strides across sectors, “especially in clean energy.”

Siemens Chief Technology and Strategy Officer Peter Koerte ended the panel discussion by offering a warning about the threat AI could pose to the job market. He referenced the ways technology has already taken human jobs throughout history, and noted that this is not the first time rapidly advancing tech has stoked fear in countries’ workforces. 

“AI is doing to the brain workers, meaning the white collar workers, what robots did to the blue collar workers,” he said. 

TIME100 Impact Dinner: From Vision to Velocity — Deploying Innovation at Scale was presented by Andhra Pradesh.

The archbishop for the U.S. military services said that it “would be morally acceptable” for troops to disobey orders that go against their conscience as the Trump Administration ramps up its military actions and threats, joining other prominent Catholic leaders in sounding alarms over President Donald Trump’s aggressive foreign policy moves.

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“It would be very difficult for a soldier or a marine or a sailor to by himself disobey an order,” Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio told the BBC Sunday. “But strictly speaking, he or she would be, within the realm of their own conscience, it would be morally acceptable to disobey that order, but that’s perhaps putting that individual in an untenable situation, and that’s my concern.”

When asked if he was “worried” about the troops in the archdiocese he oversees, Broglio responded: “I am obviously worried because they could be put in a situation where they’re being ordered to do something which is morally questionable.”

Broglio, who has served as the head of the Washington, D.C.-based archdiocese of the U.S. military since 2007, specifically pushed back against Trump’s repeated threats to annex Greenland. 

“Greenland is a territory of Denmark,” the archbishop said. “It does not seem really reasonable that the United States would attack and occupy a friendly nation.”

Read more: Trump Warns There’s ‘No Going Back’ on Greenland and Accuses U.K. of ‘Act of Great Stupidity’

A number of other high-ranking Catholic bishops and Pope Leo XIV have also raised vocal concerns in recent weeks as U.S. forces deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the President has levied threats against several other countries and territories, including in his renewed push to acquire Greenland. The Pope, who—along with a number of U.S. bishops—has also challenged Trump’s immigration crackdown, recently condemned a “diplomacy based on force” in an annual speech at the Vatican.

“War is back in vogue and a zeal for war is spreading,” the pontiff stated. He went on to call for respect for “the will of the Venezuelan people,” given “recent developments,” and spoke about several other areas around the world afflicted by conflict.  

On Monday, three senior cardinals leading U.S. dioceses released a joint statement inspired by Leo’s comments, in which they called into question “the moral foundation for America’s actions in the world.”

“The events in Venezuela, Ukraine and Greenland have raised basic questions about the use of military force and the meaning of peace,” Cardinals Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago; Robert McElroy, archbishop of D.C.; and Joseph Tobin, archbishop of Newark wrote, adding, “Our country’s moral role in confronting evil around the world, sustaining the right to life and human dignity, and supporting religious liberty are all under examination.” 

They went on to call for a “genuinely moral foreign policy” and stated that “military action must be seen only as a last resort in extreme situations, not a normal instrument of national policy.”

Trump has also faced pushback over foreign policy from a number of world leaders and congressional lawmakers, including some members of his own party.

In November, six Democratic lawmakers released a video in which they told members of the military and intelligence community not only that they could decline to follow unlawful orders, but that they must. 

“Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders,” the lawmakers said. “You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.”

The group of politicians, all of whom are either veterans or former intelligence analysts, included Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, Reps. Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Rep. Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, and Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado. They didn’t reference any specific orders troops might be receiving. But the video came as Trump faced scrutiny over his deployment of troops to multiple cities in the U.S. amid his crackdown on crime and immigration and the deadly strikes his Administration was carrying out on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that it alleged were transporting drugs.

Trump accused the group of “seditious behavior, punishable by death” in the wake of the video’s release, and the lawmakers have said they are being investigated by the Administration over their participation in it. 

Read more: Is It ‘Seditious’ or ‘Illegal’ to Urge the Military to Refuse Unlawful Orders? Legal Experts Weigh In

Deluzio, Houlahan, and Goodlander said last week that they had received inquiries from the Justice Department over the video last week, while  Slotkin and Crow said that Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney general in D.C., had reached out to them for interviews. 

The Pentagon has also taken steps to demote Kelly, a retired Navy captain, and thereby reduce his military pension. Kelly sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, saying the move was unconstitutional. 

Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, members of the military swear an oath of enlistment to “obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me.” There is a strong presumption that orders are lawful under military law, but service members are allowed to disobey unlawful orders and can even be prosecuted for carrying out patently illegal orders, such as war crimes. Though Trump and other Administration officials have contended that the lawmakers’ comments in the video were “seditious” and violated the law, legal experts told TIME that there was nothing illegal about their message.

Broglio’s comments come as Trump is set to arrive in Davos, Switzerland, to attend the World Economic Forum, where his plans to take over Greenland are expected to be discussed with European leaders in what is being seen as an emergency summit.