Category: Washington Post

President Donald Trump said he will meet with Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado next week — and that he would accept the award she has said she wants to share with him.

“I understand she’s coming in next week sometime, and I look forward to saying hello to her,” the president said of the Venezuelan opposition leader during an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity that aired Thursday. Trump added that he heard Machado wants to give him the prize, “and that would be a great honor.”

The White House late Thursday did not provide details about Machado’s trip or specify what issues she and Trump would discuss.

In an interview with Hannity this week in which she heaped praise on Trump, Machado said she had not spoken to the U.S. president since October, when she was announced as the latest Nobel laureate.

She had been in hiding in Venezuela during President Nicolás Maduro’s last days in power and turned up in Oslo, where her daughter accepted the prize on her behalf. But she promised to return to her country and called for elections to replace Maduro.

“But I do want to say today, on behalf of the Venezuelan people, how grateful we are for [Trump’s] courageous mission,” Machado said on Hannity’s show this week, adding that she and the Venezuelan people want to “share” the prize with Trump after the U.S. military seized Maduro and his wife and brought them to New York to stand trial on narco-terrorism charges.

Trump has openly coveted and publicly lobbied for the Nobel Peace Prize, claiming to have “solved” a number of international conflicts. Several world leaders have backed his claims.

Machado, a former National Assembly member, won the opposition primary in Venezuela two years ago but was barred from running by Maduro in the general election. Maduro claimed victory over the candidate Machado backed, but ballot audits by the Washington Post and independent monitors show the reported election result was invalid.

Following the U.S. operation to arrest Maduro on Saturday, Trump said the United States would “run” Venezuela with the cooperation of Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president, who has become the country’s acting leader. Trump has not given a timeline for when elections would be held and said he did not believe Machado had the support to run the country after Maduro’s removal.

“I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader,” Trump told reporters last weekend. “She doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within, the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.”

Two people close to the White House previously told The Post that Trump was not willing to support Machado because she accepted the Peace Prize. “If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” one of the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.

Machado told Hannity she believed that if elections were held, she would win the presidency in a landslide.

KYIV — Russia launched an Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile, which is capable of carrying nuclear warheads, as part of a large-scale aerial assault on Ukraine overnight Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry said — a menacing reminder to the world of Moscow’s huge nuclear arsenal at a moment when a peace plan promoted by President Donald Trump appears to be faltering.

The latest Russian aerial barrage largely pummeled Kyiv, leaving close to half a million people without electricity in Kyiv and the surrounding region, officials said, as temperatures plummeted — prompting Mayor Vitali Klitschko to urge residents to temporarily evacuate the capital if possible.

Klitschko said nearly 6,000 apartment buildings — half of the city’s total — were without heat. Water supply was disrupted in some districts, he said, and he urged residents, “who have the opportunity to temporarily leave the city” to find “alternative sources of power and heat.”

Russian forces first used the Oreshnik — meaning “hazelnut tree” — in an attack on Ukraine in November 2024, creating concern in Western capitals over Moscow’s potential use of nuclear-capable weapons in the conflict. The missile fired overnight Friday did not carry a nuclear payload.

Countries friendly to Moscow, such as China, have warned Russia against using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, meaning Russian President Vladimir Putin would risk wide international condemnation even by using a small-scale “tactical” nuclear weapon. Depending on the target, a nuclear strike could also pose the danger of releasing radiation next door to Putin’s own country.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that the Oreshnik was launched in retaliation for a claimed attack by Ukrainian drones on one of Putin’s residences — an attack that Trump, citing U.S. intelligence, now says never happened.

Trump initially expressed fury over the alleged drone strike after Putin told him that his residence in the northwestern Novgorod region had been targeted by drones. Kyiv, however, forcefully denied the attack, and local residents did not post anything about it on social media, despite Russia’s claims that 91 drones had been involved and shot down. Days later, Trump rejected Moscow’s claims.

In its statement, on the Telegram messaging platform, the Russian Defense Ministry called the alleged drone incident a “terrorist attack.”

Trump told reporters earlier this week: “I don’t believe that strike happened.”

Trump has been pushing an initiative to halt Russia’s war but with little indication that Putin is willing to support any ceasefire. After a meeting in Paris this week, European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said they had made progress on plans to provide postwar security guarantees and that their initiative was ready for Trump’s approval. Russia, however, quickly rejected any presence of Western peacekeeping forces in Ukraine, a core pillar of the security guarantees.

On Friday, Ukrainian officials did not specify whether an Oreshnik had been used, but Zelensky later said in a social media post that an Oreshnik had been part of Russia’s overnight aerial assault.

Ukraine’s security services, the SBU, said that its investigators had found debris indicating the missile was an Oreshnik — including the “stabilization and guidance unit,” which was described as the “brain” of the missile, and “parts from the engine unit.”

The country’s western air command said in a Facebook post that “the enemy launched a missile strike on infrastructure facilities in Lviv using a ballistic missile.”

“The air target was moving at a speed of about 13,000 kilometers per hour along a ballistic trajectory,” the air command said. “The type of missile with which the Russian aggressors attacked the city will be established after studying all its elements.”

Ukrainian media reported six loud explosions in the Lviv region, one after another, shortly before midnight.

In a Telegram post, Ukraine’s air force said that a “medium-rаnge ballistic missile” was launched from Russia’s Kapustin Yar test site, in the Astrakhan region on the Caspian Sea.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the possible use of an Oreshnik near Ukraine’s border with European Union and NATO member Poland was “a grave threat to the security on the European continent and a test for the transatlantic community.”

“We demand strong responses to Russia’s reckless actions,” Sybiha wrote on X.

“It is absurd that Russia attempts to justify this strike with the fake ‘Putin residence attack’ that never happened,” he wrote, adding that Putin used the Oreshnik “in response to his own hallucinations — this is truly a global threat.”

Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said that Russia’s use of the Oreshnik as a “high precision kinetic weapon with normal warheads” did not make a great deal of sense, since the destruction it caused was “limited.”

Instead, Gabuev said it was potentially “a signal” — that in striking the Lviv region in far western Ukraine “no part of the country is immune.” It also could be a warning to Western leaders that any peacekeeping contingent sent to Ukraine would be vulnerable.

“The message could be both to undermine Ukrainian morale but also to show that, look, if you place Western military, it will not be immune, because we have multiple ways to reach these troops,” Gabuev said in an interview.

In addition to the Oreshnik, Ukraine’s air force said that the Russian attack involved 242 drones “of various types” and 36 missiles, including 13 ballistic missiles. In total, the air force said that 18 missiles and 16 drones pummeled 19 locations.

“The main direction of the attack was Kyiv region,” the air force said. Air raid alerts in the capital lasted until the early morning hours on Friday, with explosions ringing out regularly — as Ukrainian antiaircraft defenses countered the aerial assault and some of the drones and missiles hit their targets.

At least four people died and 22 were injured in Kyiv, Ukraine’s state emergency service said.

Among those killed was a first responder, Serhiy Smolyak. “When the emergency medical team arrived at the scene of the shelling of a residential building, the enemy launched a second strike,” Ukrainian Health Minister Viktor Liashko wrote on social media.

The damage to Kyiv’s critical infrastructure was extensive, city officials said. Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said that at least 50 buildings, four educational institutions and 18 cars were damaged, as well as “more than 1,000 broken windows.” A Russian drone also damaged the Qatari Embassy in Kyiv, Zelensky said.

The difficult energy situation was made worse as temperatures across Ukraine were forecasted to remain well below freezing.

“This is one of the most difficult attacks on the city,” Tkachenko said. This was in part due to “the challenging weather,” he said, which the Russians were “counting on,” hoping that “we will freeze and our services will collapse.”

Klitschko warned Kyiv residents that the cold weather would not let up for some time.

“City services are operating in emergency mode,” the mayor wrote on Telegram. “And the weather conditions, unfortunately, are forecast to be difficult in the coming days.”

MINNEAPOLIS — Renee Nicole Good and her wife had “stopped to support our neighbors” when she was fatally shot by an ICE officer in a confrontation on a residential street Wednesday, her wife said in a statement.

The couple had come to Minneapolis almost a year ago, looking for a place that they and their 6-year-old son could feel comfortable.

“On Wednesday, January 7, we stopped to support our neighbors. We had whistles. They had guns,” Rebecca Good said in a statement Friday.

“We were raising our son to believe that no matter where you come from or what you look like, all of us deserve compassion and kindness,” the statement said. “Renee lived this belief every day. She is pure love. She is pure joy. She is pure sunshine.”

Good, 37, was shot and killed Wednesday morning blocks from her home by an ICE agent, who federal officials say fired in self-defense. Details of the shooting, which was captured in videos by private citizens, are in dispute.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, told Fox News on Thursday that Good “was stalking agents all day long, impeding our law enforcement.” Asked by the Washington Post what she was basing that description on, McLaughlin said the information came from “firsthand accounts” from law enforcement officers who had been in contact with Good.

In interviews this week, friends and family members painted a picture of a woman who lived a quiet life not shaped by overt activism — a sharp contrast to comments by Vice President JD Vance, who blamed Good for her own death, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, who said Good’s actions amounted to “an act of domestic terrorism.”

Noem’s comments, and the FBI’s apparent move to block state investigators from the probe into the shooting, show the administration has “already come to a conclusion” about what it wants the inquiry to find, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said Friday.

“From the very beginning, they’re calling the victim a domestic terrorist, they’re calling the actions of the agent involved as some form of defensive posture,” Frey said from the Minneapolis City Hall rotunda. “We know they’ve already determined much of the investigation.”

Good’s family members have said they do not believe she was an aggressive activist tailing ICE officers. She had just dropped her son at school, they said. Her father, Tim Ganger, in a brief interview Wednesday, said she got “caught up in a bad situation. I think she was just caught in the crossfire.”

Videos show Good’s maroon Honda Pilot parked across the road as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicles approach. ICE agents then confront her, demanding she get out of her car. A frame-by-frame analysis by the Post of the footage, however, raises questions about the accounts of administration officials. The SUV did move toward the ICE agent as he stood in front of it. But the agent was able to move out of the way and fire at least two of three shots from the side of the vehicle as it veered past him, according to the analysis.

Good’s family and friends describe her as a devoted mother to her three children, an artist with a prizewinning talent for poetry who had weathered personal difficulties, including the death of her second husband, a military veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

She was “a devoted Christian who took part in youth mission trips to Northern Ireland when she was younger,” said her first husband, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for the safety of his daughter, 15, and son, 12. “She loved to sing and studied vocal performance in college.”

Good grew up in Colorado Springs. She attended Coronado High School, sang in the school’s show choir and participated in a school group called Community Crew dedicated to learning practical skills like cooking, according to the yearbook. When she graduated in 2006, Good won “Best Personality.”

“When I found out that I had won, I was like ‘this is pretty flippin’ sweet!’” she told yearbook staff.

Good attended Metropolitan State University of Denver briefly in 2014 and 2015. After she and her first husband divorced, he said Good married Timmy Macklin Jr., who served in the U.S. Air Force. In 2019, she began studying creative writing at Old Dominion University in Virginia.

“She was his heart,” her former brother-in-law Joseph Macklin, who lives near Knoxville, Tenn., said of Good and his brother. He described her as “a great and loving mother.”

One of her professors, Kent Wascom, director of Old Dominion’s MFA and creative writing program, recalled her as a poet studying how to improve her fiction writing, first in a class and then an advanced workshop. Unlike some of her peers, Good never talked about politics, Wascom said, focusing instead on “realist fiction” about those very different from her, from an elderly woman to a veteran.

“She consistently sought to write outside of her experience,” he said. “She was a really warm presence but not a show-off. She never made a class about herself, even when her work was the focus of a workshop.”

By then, Good was older than many of her classmates, pregnant with her third child and working to pay for school (as a dental assistant and at a credit union, her first husband said). “My memory of Renee is how much she tried to connect with her peers and support them,” Wascom said. He recalled how Good later brought her newborn son to meet him.

By 2020, Good had won a prestigious prize for one of her poems, an honor Wascom said demonstrated her promise. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English that December.

In April 2021, Good met a professional photographer named Charles W. Winslow at an Old Dominion football game that he was covering. She wanted advice on how to incorporate photography into covers for book projects she had planned. He said she was a gifted student and accompanied him on many of his professional assignments. But he also remembered her kindness.

“As a friend she was kindhearted and always helping others in need,” Winslow said. “She didn’t care of race, creed, color. If she had $10 in her pocket, she would give a homeless person $9 that she passes on the street.”

In 2023, Timmy Macklin died at the age of 36, and Good became primarily a stay-at-home mom, her first husband said.

Joseph Macklin said Good made an effort to keep her son in touch with his family back in Tennessee: “She always brought him to see us. She was so kindhearted.”

After she met and married Rebecca Good, 40, the couple settled in Kansas City, Mo., and crafted a quiet life.

As a gay couple living in a red state, they weren’t overtly political, at least among the residents of their quiet street in the Waldo neighborhood, their neighbor Jennifer Ferguson recalled Thursday. But after Donald Trump was reelected in 2024, the two broke their lease and told Ferguson they were moving to Canada because of the political situation.

“[Becca] said, ‘We’re getting out,’ ” Ferguson said. “‘We can go to Canada until we figure out what we are going to do.’”

The couple lived in the neighborhood for only a short time but made an impression on Ferguson, 41, an administrative assistant. Becca Good had sold a home improvement business before they moved in, so she mostly stayed home with their son, cooking and mowing the lawn. Renee Good told Ferguson she was studying for a master’s degree.

The two families exchanged Christmas treats and their kids played together, she said.

They were “just such nice people” and “great parents” to their son, then in preschool, Ferguson said. Both were attentive, quick to enforce rules or stop an activity — like splashing in a kiddie pool — when the little boy seemed overly tired. When they moved away, they gave Ferguson their lawn mower after hers had been stolen.

“We always talked about free stuff for the kids,” Ferguson said. “She asked about a free indoor playground, and I said, ‘Go to the McDonald’s up the street.” The couple also asked her opinion about nearby charter schools, because her son was about to start kindergarten.

“They rarely left the house,” Ferguson said, except to take the boy to school. “They were homebodies.”

They were also devotees of the WNBA and the KC Current, the local women’s pro soccer team. (A KC Current sticker was visible on Good’s Honda Pilot.)

The couple moved from Kansas City to Minneapolis in March of last year, her first husband said, adding that Becca Good was “getting support from friends and her and Renee’s family.”

Macklin, Good’s former brother-in-law, said Thursday that Good’s children “are hurting and wondering why this happened, especially the youngest.”

“We just buried his father three years ago in June and now he lost his mother,” Macklin said. “It is definitely a tragedy no kid should have to go through at such a young age. And to have to see it all over social media and television is sickening.”

He said that after the shooting, Good’s wife contacted his parents. “My heart really hurts for her. I’m praying for her,” he said. “She’s such a sweet and caring woman.”

Macklin, whose father is a Christian street preacher, struggled to make sense of Good’s death.

“I wish she would’ve minded her business and stayed out the way,” he said, but added, “I know families are being broken apart … and it’s heartbreaking, but now it’s our family.”

“She was a good mother and a good person, and she didn’t deserve this. Her [significant other] doesn’t deserve to be without her, her mom doesn’t deserve to be without her, and her kids don’t deserve to be without her,” he said. “It truly is a tragedy that not just our family is going through, but our nation.”

Visitors traveling to the most popular national parks are facing a new question at the gate: Are you a United States resident?

That question is already causing longer wait times to enter parks and is leading some foreign tourists to turn away at the gates. Experts describe the “America-first pricing” as another example of the Trump administration targeting immigrants.

“It’s meant to make people feel nervous and uncomfortable and make the decision to either stay away or to modify their plans based on their identities,” said Mneesha Gellman, a political scientist at Emerson College who serves as an expert witness in U.S. immigration court.

“It really is being used to sow fear.”

In November, the Trump administration announced it would hike visitor fees for people who are not U.S. residents, with 11 popular parks charging a $100 surcharge in addition to the entrance fee. America the Beautiful passes, which include admission to the entire National Park system, cost an additional $170 for nonresidents.

“The updated fee structure reflects the significant investment made by U.S. taxpayers to support these public lands, while still welcoming international visitors who help sustain local economies and share in our nation’s natural and cultural heritage,” said Elizabeth Peace, an Interior Department spokeswoman, in a statement. “This policy reflects the Administration’s belief that America’s public lands should be enjoyed by everyone who visits our country lawfully and responsibly.”

The parks subject to the additional fees are Acadia National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Everglades National Park, Glacier National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite National Park and Zion National Park.

That policy went into effect on Jan. 1 and is already having an impact, according to four people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

That includes slowing down entry to parks as staff question visitors about whether they are U.S. residents, which can generate confusion because of the wide array of possible immigration statuses and visas.

At multiple parks, this has led to long lines and wait times at entrance gates, with staff saying they expect the problem to worsen when visitation peaks in the summer months ahead.

The NPS website says visitors must show proof of citizenship or residency in the form of a passport, driver’s license, state ID or green card to purchase a pass. But an internal NPS directive reviewed by The Washington Post instructs staff to ask groups, “How many people visiting are not U.S. citizens or residents?”

The document says “the fee collector does not need to check the identification of every visitor.” Two park employees confirmed they are taking visitors at their word and not checking IDs, except when it’s required to buy or use an annual pass.

Even the questioning leads to uncomfortable conversations, one of the employees said.

“We feel a bit conflicted in what we’re doing or it doesn’t feel right,” the person said. “We don’t want to make visitors feel unwelcome.”

The staffers, who work at separate parks, said every day groups of foreign visitors are deciding not to enter the park when asked about their residency and told they will have to pay higher fees.

“Wait times are absolutely longer because we have to ask more questions,” the second park staffer said. “If someone doesn’t meet residency requirements then we have to explain everything to them. This can be made extra difficult with language barriers.”

Deciding who counts as a U.S. resident is difficult when there are hundreds of different immigration statuses, said Julia Gelatt, an associate director of U.S. immigration policy at the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank.

“I don’t know how somebody from the Park Service who’s not trained in immigration law is meant to tell who is a citizen or permanent resident,” she said.

The policy is part of a larger Trump administration strategy to send a message that the interests of U.S.-born Americans come before those of immigrants, Gelatt said. That includes restricting immigrant access to public programs, as well as escalating Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity, Gelatt said.

An undocumented immigrant is likely to face a risk at a National Park only if ICE or other immigration enforcement agents are present, she said, noting examples in the Washington, D.C., area of immigration arrests in parks.

Verifying visitor’s residency status adds to the workload of already overburdened park staff, said Emily Douce, deputy vice president for government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group.

NPCA estimates that the Trump administration cut 4,000 Park Service employees last year, about a quarter of the overall staff.

“There is going to be a lot of confusion because it’s not easy to implement such a complicated system of new rules in such a short amount of time,” she said.

She added that it remains unclear how the fee policy “could affect park visitation or the tourism economies of surrounding gateway communities. Any policy that keeps people from visiting our national parks is a problem.”

The Trump administration is preparing an executive order focused on housing — with special attention to first-time buyers — as the White House attempts to address voter concerns about affordability.

An order could include policies that President Donald Trump has already floated, like a 50-year mortgage or a ban on institutional investors buying single-family homes, according to five people close to the deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. Other proposals are newer, like helping home buyers withdraw from their 529 or 401(k) savings accounts to make down payments without incurring tax penalties.

Exact timing or language is not final, and plans have been in flux over the past few weeks, the people said. But it’s clear the White House increasingly sees housing policy as central to its broader affordability agenda. More details are expected when Trump speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, later this month, according to the president’s social media posts and housing officials.

Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and a close Trump confidant, told the Washington Post on Thursday that an executive action was coming and would later need to be “codified by Congress.”

“We’ve got 30 to 50 different ideas that are in front of the president,” Pulte said. “He’ll be releasing a handful of them in Davos.”

Officials have been planning an executive order aimed at housing for months. But timing stalled as different factions within the administration clashed over an approach. Two of the people close to the talks said internal divisions sometimes boiled down to how much the federal government should tell states and cities what to do. Other disagreements centered on what role Congress should play.

White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement that Trump had pledged to slash red tape, cut interest rates, and tackle unfair business practices that make it harder for Americans to buy homes.

“As the President indicated over Truth Social, he will be unveiling more details about his housing proposal in Davos — any discussion from unnamed sources until then is baseless speculation,” Ingle said.

For much of last year, the administration’s policy agenda has involved blaming undocumented immigrants for housing shortages and clawing back fair housing regulations. Officials also want to take mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public after years of government control — a tremendously complicated endeavor that could lead to a massive stock offering but, if not done carefully, roil the mortgage market.

Yet fresh momentum appeared to pick up this week after a meeting of top housing and White House officials on Tuesday. Trump announced the ban on institutional investors on Truth Social on Wednesday, saying he would call on Congress to seal the deal, and drawing favorable reaction from GOP lawmakers. On Thursday, he said Fannie and Freddie would use some $200 billion in cash to buy mortgage bonds — which he said would drive mortgage rates and monthly payments down.

Administration officials are also looking at ways to implement so-called “portable mortgages,” where homeowners can take their old mortgages with them when they move to a new house, the people close to the discussions said. They are considering “assumable mortgages,” where home buyers take over the sellers’ mortgage. Both of those ideas could help offset the rise in mortgage rates over the past several years, and they could also entice homeowners with low rates to sell without fear of taking on a higher mortgage, opening up more supply in the process. Officials are discussing expanding Opportunity Zones — an economic tool for investing in distressed areas — and other deregulatory policies as a means of boosting homeownership, as well.

Pulte also teed up more actions related to home builders this week, saying on X that they “need to start building out their lot supply, including optioned land which is ‘ready to go.’”

Builders have been in talks with the administration for the past year on ways to cut environmental regulations, energy codes, and permitting restrictions, including those that make it harder to turn land from raw to developable lots and pile on costs, said Jim Tobin, president and chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders.

“If there is an executive order, I don’t expect it to be narrow,” Tobin said. “I expect it to be broad.”

But Trump’s announcements have come with few details or clarity on Congress’s role. Some proposals could also work against affordability goals; many mainstream economists say a 50-year mortgage would likely increase overall costs for borrowers, because they’ll pay far more in interest over five decades than they would with the conventional 30-year loan.

Inside the administration, officials see a two-pronged approach to addressing home prices, according to a GOP pollster close to the White House, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. One path is to increase housing supply through construction; another is decreasing the number of buyers by disincentivizing investors and making it easier to sell homes without paying capital gains taxes. Under current law, most married couples can exempt the first $500,000 in capital gains on the sale of their primary residence from taxes.

White House officials have reviewed polling that shows voters aged 18 to 24 see affordability through a housing lens, said the GOP pollster. That age group helped deliver the presidency to Trump in 2024, which makes the White House especially sensitive to its political standing with them. The pollster said administration officials are focused on first-time home buyers, which often are adults 40 or younger.

“This voting cohort who is deeply concerned about this and worried about housing prices delivered, in a lot of ways, the election to President Trump in 2024,” the pollster said. “Affordability means housing in every bit of data we’ve seen.”

The pollster expects the final plan to pave the way for Trump to take Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public. He also said he expects the administration to “play around” with the step-up in cost basis, a U.S. tax rule that adjusts the value of inherited assets to their market price at the time of death, which can reduce capital gains taxes for heirs. That would include taxes on homes.

David Dworkin, president and chief executive officer of the National Housing Conference, said making it easier for younger buyers to withdraw from their 401(k)s penalty-free “will have a bigger impact than any down payment program ever proposed.” At the same time, the way to make homes more affordable is to build more of them.

“Everything the president does to help us build more units is going to have an impact,” Dworkin said. “Some of these ideas are going to be more impactful than others. Some may have unintended consequences we want to be careful about. But it’s too easy to say, ‘Oh this is risky, let’s not do anything.’ We’ve got to make progress here.”

Fannie and Freddie’s new bond purchases could be part of the strategy around taking them public, because the move would add value to their balance sheets and help the companies make more money. But the broader effect on affordability could be more muted. Mortgage rates typically track Treasury yields, which fall in times of economic uncertainty. In a Thursday analyst note, Gennadiy Goldberg, head of U.S. Rates Strategy at TD Securities, said that based on the projections for Treasury yields, the 30-year mortgage rates could drift down toward 5.25% by the end of the year, compared to 6.16% this week.

But if Fannie and Freddie’s vast securities purchases happen quickly, mortgage rates could tick down a bit more, to 5% by year-end, Goldberg wrote.

Democrats this week criticized the Trump administration for promoting policies those on the left have tried before, like banning institutional investors from the single-family market. But housing is one of the only policy areas with bipartisan support lately. A popular bill from Sens. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) and Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) would increase housing supply and pare back regulations that slow new construction. Its progress slowed late last year after House Republicans pressed to keep it out of the annual defense policy bill. But a similar bill is moving forward in the House, and there’s hope a breakthrough will come eventually.

“My focus is on advancing meaningful solutions that expand housing supply and lower costs — including building on our unanimously passed ROAD to Housing Act — because that’s how we make the American Dream more attainable,” Scott, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement.