Jan. 26 marks the official start date of the 2026 tax filing season, when the IRS will begin accepting and processing 2025 tax returns. April 15 is the filing deadline.
Tax experts, including the IRS independent watchdog, have warned that this year’s filing season could be hampered by the loss of tens of thousands of tax collection workers who left the agency through planned layoffs and buyouts spurred by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The IRS will also be responsible for implementing major provisions of Republicans’ tax and spending package signed into law last summer. Several provisions in the law retroactively affect the 2025 tax year, likely leading to more questions from taxpayers and requiring the IRS to update tax forms.
President Trump is committed to the taxpayers of this country and improving upon the successful tax filing season in 2025, said acting IRS Commissioner Scott Bessent in a news release. I am confident in our ability to deliver results and drive growth for businesses and consumers alike.
The IRS expects to receive roughly 164 million individual income tax returns this year, which is on par with what it received last year.
The latest National Taxpayer Advocate report to Congress published in June states that the IRS workforce has fallen from 102,113 workers at the end of the Biden administration to 75,702. The IRS website does not include the latest employment numbers on the agencys workforce.
IRS employees involved in last year’s tax season were not allowed to accept a buyout offer from the Trump administration until after the taxpayer filing deadline of April 15, 2025.
The June National Taxpayer Advocate report to Congress warned that the 2026 season could be rocky.
With the IRS workforce reduced by 26% and significant tax law changes on the horizon, there are risks to next years filing season, said Erin M. Collins, who leads the organization assigned to protect taxpayers rights.
Fatima Hussein, Associated Press
The crisp crinkle of fallen leaves beneath your feet. The swish and trickle of water moving through a stream. A breath of crisp, fresh air.
Spending time in nature can be invigorating or produce feelings of peace and calm. But many professions allow little time or access to the outdoors during the workday.
After a youth spent climbing trees and playing soccer, Anna Rose Smith found it difficult when her first job as a psychotherapist in Utah required working in a windowless office.
So she spent her lunch breaks outside, walking to nearby fountains or gardens. She picked up flower petals or leaves from the ground and brought them back to her desk, where she would listen to recorded bird songs, sometimes incorporating the soothing chirps into sessions with clients.
It helps to just have that reminder that these things are going on outside, Smith said. I can remember, no matter what happens in this room or with my job today, theres still going to be birds singing.
Getting to trees or shorelines can be challenging during work hours, especially in cold weather and urban environments. But there are ways to enjoy the outdoors and to bring the natural world into your place of work, even if it’s a windowless cubicle.
Al fresco meetings
Scheduled meetings don’t have to take place indoors. An in-person appointment can happen on a park bench. Smith sometimes suggests a walk and talk meeting at a nearby greenway.
Mobile devices mean virtual get-togethers also aren’t limited to conventional work spaces. You can also attend Zoom meetings while walking a woody path.
Smith will ask if she can participate in an online meeting with her smartphone and headphones, allowing her to still be able to get sunlight on my face or see water and plants and birds, she said.
I do definitely feel more calm, Smith, who grew up in South Dakota but now lives in a more moderate climate in North Carolina, said. I think it helps with focus as well. Im just feeling more peaceful and optimistic.
Atlantic Packaging, a sustainable packaging manufacturer headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, encourages employees to hold meetings in the courtyards of its facilities or while taking a walk, said Becca Schusler, the company’s wellness director.
The company added fig trees and native plants to its Charlotte location. It launched a nature challenge in 2024 in which employees tracked the time they spent outdoors while dog walking, eating meals, attending meetings, or watching a sunset. Participants uploaded photos into a group chat from their workstations around the U.S.
It was just so wonderful because we got sunrises in the mornings, sunsets at night from all different areas, from the beach to the mountains in Nevada,” Schusler said.
Some employees reported they felt like they handled stress better as a result of spending more time outside, she said.
Just walk
Separate from meetings, a group of Atlantic Packaging employees get together for Walk it out Wednesdays, a weekly time to take strolls together. It helps provide a quick break in the day where they can reset and refocus,” Schusler said.
The Ford Motor Company also has encouraged employees to move outdoors. When it redesigned its Dearborn, Michigan, headquarters in 2025, the automaker included native plants, walking paths, and outdoor pavilions, and suggested people use the grounds for meetings. The parking lot was put further away from the main building by design so people would walk for a few minutes by tall grasses, rocky outcroppings, bridges, and flowers.
We are very careful about how we are engineering space so that our brains and our bodies react positively, said Jennifer Kolstad, Ford’s global and brand design director. Designing for human health is our priority, our responsibility.
Find the light
When temperatures dip and more time is spent indoors, windows can provide a connection with nature.
The designers who laid out Ford’s new headquarters placed offices in the center of floors so exterior walls with tall windows could be enjoyed by everyone in collaborative spaces, Kolstad said.
During Smith’s windowless office days, she kept a pothos plant in the room. The greenery didn’t need much light and survived with the dose it got when Smith moved it to spend weekends in a colleague’s office that had a window.
If its really ugly weather, extreme, then I think thats where windows are truly a godsend, she said.
To catch some sunshine and feel the wind on your face during a commute, consider biking all or part of the way. Many cities and towns have bicycle sharing programs. A warm coat and mittens can keep you from getting too cold while pedaling. Layer up with a neck gaiter, balaclava or hat under your helmet.
Erin Mantz, who works in Washington, D.C., as vice president of marketing for public relations firm Zeno Group, walks to a Pilates class before work four times a week, often before the sun rises. On the days she works from home, she takes breaks to walk her dog on the meandering paths in her neighborhood.
Mantz said that as a child living in Chicago, she often played at the park with neighborhood friends while bundled up in winter gear. She found it difficult to maintain her connection with nature when she had prior jobs that called for working in an office full-time.
Growing up Gen X, we were always running around outside, and you have that great feeling of freedom and fresh air, she said.
Now that she has a hybrid work schedule, she’s realized that spending time outdoors helps her feel relaxed and destressed.
It’s so good for me, Mantz said. The fresh air reminds me of that youthfulness of being outside, and I think its physical and mental, honestly. I feel reinvigorated.
___
Share your stories and questions about workplace wellness at cbussewitz@ap.org. Follow APs Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health at https://apnews.com/hub/be-well
Cathy Bussewitz, Wellness Writer
In the age of rampant AI slop, seeing isnt always believing. Theres more than one way, though, to make people doubt their own eyes.
Many have long predicted and warned that AI deepfakes could profoundly distort public opinion. For example, although swiftly debunked, a fake video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urging his troops to surrender in early 2022 seemed to be a harbinger of horrors to comewhen AI would become indistinguishable from reality.
But as events this week in Minneapolis and the White House demonstrate, no visual manipulation is necessary for forging reality from whole cloth. All it takes is a federal government united around its leaders preferred narrative.
On Tuesday afternoon, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot a woman driving an SUV in a Minneapolis suburb. Amid a crowd protesting the agencys recent incursion into the Twin Cities, legal observer Renee Nicole Good was stopped in the middle of the street when federal vehicles zoomed toward her, sirens wailing.
Agents then hopped out of the vehicles and aggressively approached Goods car on foot. As captured on video from multiple angles, she tried to evade the agents, prompting one of them to fire several shots through Goods windshield, one of which hit her face. She died of her injuries on the scene.
Even before many of the above details were known or confirmed, the official government narrative had already begun to coalesce.
Today, ICE officers in Minneapolis were conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill theman act of domestic terrorism.— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) January 7, 2026
Who are you going to believe?
Journalism may be the first rough draft of history, but the Trump administration, famously hostile toward journalists, prefers to write the first rough draft of reality themselves, in real timeoccasionally with a Sharpie pen.
As videos of the incident in Minneapolis proliferated online, a tweet from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) declared that a nameless violent rioter had committed an act of domestic terrorism by attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem soon held a press conference, reiterating this version of events. She claimed that the still-nameless woman had been stalking officers and suggested that shed used her vehicle as a weapon. Both accounts claimed that officers involved had been hurt but expected to make a full recovery.
Of course, no narrative from the Trump administration is complete until the president himself weighs in, which he did soon enough on Truth Social. Apparently, it wasnt enough for Trump to just reiterate the skewed DHS version of events; instead, he added some flourishes of his own.
In Trumps telling, the driver hadnt merely attempted to run over an ICE agent; shed viciously ran over himto the point where it is hard to believe he is still alive.
Before Goods name had even been confirmed by The Minnesota Star Tribune and released to the public, the administration had turned her into an attempted murderer (the rare type of attempted murderer, no less, who drives around with a glove box full of stuffed animals for her young child).
Stranger than fiction
Much remains unknown about the events that led to Goods killing, since video has yet to emerge showing what happened before her vehicle stopped in the middle of the road.
Whether her attempt to flee the scene was illegal or ill-advised may be up for debate. What is absolutely certain, though, is that this was the ninth ICE shooting since just last September, which suggests that Good had more reason to be scared of the agents than they were of her.
Either way, to describe what is depicted in the videos as a ramming attack is so staggeringly detached from reality, its an attack on the very idea that one should believe their own eyes.
Unfortunately, in this administration, such brazen fabrications are par for the course.
One day before Goods shooting death, the White House crystallized Trumps paradoxical reframing of the Capitol riots with an official new government web page. On the fifth anniversary of the attack, the administration touted a timeline that grossly misrepresented what happened on January 6, 2021, despite countless freely available video clips taken by the rioters themselves.
In this fanciful retelling, the pro-Trump marchers were orderly and spirited, while the Capitol police escalated tensions by firing tear gas and flash-bangs for no reason. And somehow its all then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosis fault.
Perhaps more egregious, the site presents this revisionist history as a corrective to the purportedly revisionist history spun by the Biden administration. Its not that Trump and his defenders are being dishonest; theyre just the only ones courageous enough to tell the truth!
The Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, the site reads, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as insurrectionists and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trumpdespite no evidence of armed rebellion or intent to overthrow the government.
In truth, roughly 174 of the 608 defendants charged with assaulting, resisting, or interfering with law enforcement that day were charged for using a deadly or dangerous weapon or otherwise causing serious injury to an officer.
Footage that shows it happening is out there for all to see. But for the second Trump administration, it doesnt matte if hard video evidence disproves their narrative. What matters is their unwavering insistence that their narrative is the way it is.
Seeing is still believing
Although Trumps reelection in 2024 has essentially rendered moot the truth about January 6, the story of what happened in Minneapolis on Wednesday is still developing. Local politicians are not mincing words as they attempt to wrest control of the narrative out of Trumps handsand back into the realm of evidential reality.
“They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said during a press conference on Wednesday. Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly: that is bullshit.”
Shortly afterward, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz tweeted that hed also seen the video, and urged people to not believe this propaganda machine. (Walz was on the business end of Trumps propaganda machine last Saturday, when the president reposted a video falsely suggesting that Walz was behind the murder of Minnesota state senator Melissa Hortman last summera video Hortmans children have asked Trump to take down, so far to no avail.)
Walz’s and Freys statements reiterate that seeing is believing, an idea that Trump himself apparently shares.
Asked by visiting New York Times reporters on Wednesday about his version of eventsin which Renee Nicole Good viciously ran over an ICE agentthe president ordered an assistant to play video footage that he seemed to think proved him correct.
While watching the video, the reporters claim they told Trump that the angle did not appear to show an ICE officer had been run over.
Well, Trump responds, I the way I look at it He then apparently trails off, without ever admitting that the footage shows something different than what he previously claimed it does.
The report describes this remarkable exchange as a glimpse into Mr. Trumps reflexive defense of what has become a sometimes violent federal crackdown on immigration.
But this characterization doesnt tell the full story. Its more of a glimpse into how the president routinely invents whatever version of reality best serves him, regardless of whether it clashes with realitys version of reality.
On Thursday morning, the Times released a forensic analysis of Goods killing from three different angles, definitively contradicting Trumps account.
And yet even conclusive video evidence is bound to have little impact, not as long as the presidents supporters in and out of Congress insist on only viewing the world the way Trump looks at it.
If you visit the Herms website in search of a scarf or a handbag, you’ll be greeted by a collection of whimsical sea creatures swimming across the screen. To navigate to the watch section, you’ll click on an image of a watch flanked by an eel. To locate shoes, you’ll click on a loafer with a pelican sitting inside it as if it were riding a boat.
[Screenshot: Herms
These sea horses and fish and eels and star fish are intriguing to the eye. While digitally-rendered images are hyper smooth, symmetrical, and flawless, these pictures bear all the imperfections of a hand-drawn illustration. We see the texture of the paper grain in the background, a slight irregularity in the lines, unevenness in the coloring. In a world of AI-generated images, these pictures feel special, perhaps even luxurious.
[Image: Linda Merad (illustration), Quentin Klein (animation), Pascal Armand(music)/courtesy Herms]
Herms, which unveiled a new website this week, partnered with the French artist Linda Merad to create these images. Merad, whose pen and ink illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and The Atlantic, specializes in hand-drawn images. It was her old-fashioned, analog process that appealed to the brand. “They wanted t create the impression that the art was made by a human,” Merad explains. “They wanted the viewer to feel the materiality of the drawing.”
Illustrations from the portfolio of Linda Merad [Images: courtesy of the artist]
For Herms, it is on-brand to tap a small artist for its imagery. The 188-year-old fashion house has become a luxury giant (generating $13.8 billion in revenue last year) by emphasizing the handcrafted nature of its products, which are made in European factories by well-trained artisans. Through its Instagram page, Herms has put out calls to artists who are interested in offering their own interpretation of the brand, from creating images of horses as a reference to the brand’s equestrian roots to drawing pieces from the collection.
[Illustration: Linda Merad for Herms]
Merad answered the call six months ago, illustrating Herms hats in her own fantastical style, drawing the bucket hats and caps with legs, dancing across a field of mushrooms. The Herms team was so taken with her work that they invited her to create images of sea animals that would be featured on the brand’s Instagram campaign. Then, a few weeks ago, the Herms team said they would be incorporating the images onto the e-commerce website, which came as a surprise. This is the first time that Herms is using illustrations on its website. “It wasn’t planned,” Merad says. “The e-commerce team really liked my universe, so they wanted illustrations.”
[Illustration: Linda Merad for Herms]
Given how enormous the company is, Merad says she was given remarkable creative freedom. She only worked with four other people, two Herms art directors, one animator, and one musician. She says she was compensated for her work, with the Herms team accepting her first offer. Herms wanted to start with the motif of a seahorse, but she was free to build out an entire under sea world. “It’s the year of the horse in the Chinese calendar, and Herms felt that horse imagery would be everywhere, so they wanted to do something distinct,” she says.
[Illustration: Linda Merad for Herms]
Her main constraint was including various products in the imagery, such as shoes, jewelry, and scarves, since they would be used to help customers navigate to product categories. Merad says she didn’t find this very onerous because sheoften juxtaposes animals with human elements. “I was surprised to get so much creative freedom from a luxury brand,” she says. “I like to mix several ideas and create hybrid forms. It allows me to make images that are funny and poetic.”
[Illustration: Linda Merad for Herms]
In a world where AI can produce high quality images for free, many artists fear that there will be less demand for their work. Indeed, AI image generators are trained on existing art, which effectively means that they are using artists’ work without compensating them, then reworking it into new images. But this partnership with Herms suggests that original art made by human beings will also become increasingly valuable. Standing out in a digital world full of slop will require taking the time and money to work with artists.
[Illustration: Linda Merad for Herms]
Merad believes there is already a growing desire, in some quarters, for hand-drawn work. From the time she was a child, she always loved drawing pictures, particularly of clothing. She considered becoming a fashion designer, but she didn’t like the idea of having to creating large collections every season; she preferred to spend time focusing on each individual image. She thought her best chance of finding work as an artist was to become a graphic designer, so she attended the French art school, École nationale supérieure des arts appliqués et des métiers d’art, to learn graphic design.
[Illustration: Linda Merad for Herms]
But over the last few years, she’s found that clients are more interested in her hand drawn illustrations. She believes all the imperfections that come along with handcrafted work create images that are more interesting to the eye in a world where so much digital art looks the same. “When things are made by hand, you can tell there is a soul behind them,” she says. “There is charm and humanness in the imperfections than something that looks more robotic.”
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On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced: I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it.
Soon afterwards, Senator Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) tweeted that hell “introduce legislation in the Senate to codify this [ban] into law.
The general idea has some support on the other side of the aisle as well. Back February 2025, the Humans over Private Equity for Homeownership Act was introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and co-sponsored by Angus King (I-Maine), Chris VanHollen (D-Maryland), Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona), Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), and Mark Kelly (D-Arizona).
Trumps announcement on Wednesday raises a lot of questions that have yet to be answered. Is this just midterm-year politicking, or a policy proposal that could actually be enacted? Would such a ban be challenged in court? What qualifies as a large institutional investor under Trumps proposed ban? Would it target only scatter-site acquisitions, or also build-to-rent development? Would the ban require institutional investors to sell off their current single-family rental portfolios?
Given what we know today, Ive outlined 5 things housing stakeholders should keep in mind.
1. The effects of an institutional single-family homebuying ban would vary sharply by region
On a national level, large investorsthose owning at least 100 single-family homesonly own around 1% of total single-family housing stock. That said, in a handful of regional housing markets, institutional and large single-family landlords have a much larger presence.
Markets like Phoenix and Atlanta became major hubs for institutional single-family rental investment following the 2008 housing crash as the asset class started to institutionalize. Firms such as Invitation Homes, Progress Residential, and AMH built sizable portfolios in these metros by acquiring distressed homes.
That early activity helped establish a reliable local SFR ecosystemincluding property management firms, leasing infrastructure, and contractor networksthat makes it easier to scale and expand single-family rental and build-to-rent operations today.
Following the bottom-buying wave, institutional capital remained concentrated in highpopulation-growth Sun Belt markets, where investors anticipated stronger long-term growth in incomes and overall rental growth.
Looking ahead, if a ban on institutional homebuying were enacted, its effects would likely be most pronounced in high-growth Sun Belt marketsespecially in specific neighborhoods within metros such as Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, Austin, Tampa, Jacksonville, and Charlottewhere institutional ownership is more concentrated.
2. A forced institutional sell-off could temporarily put additional downward pressure on home prices in certain Sun Belt neighborhoods that are already experiencing corrections
Many of the Sun Belt markets with the largest institutional footprints are also among those already seeing home-price corrections. If a ban were to force institutions to sell existing holdings, some of these communities in places like Atlanta and Tampa could experience a short-term spike in listings from institutional sell-offs, adding further downward pressure in certain neighborhoods that already have downward home pricing pressure.
But in Trumps post, he said he wants to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes.
That word, more, could imply that the proposal would NOT include a forced institutional sell-off, making the scenario above less likely.
3. With institutional buying already well below Pandemic Housing Boom levels, theres less demand left that can be squeezed out
If Congress were to ban institutional homebuyingand if the policy were to withstand legal challengesit would reduce housing demand that curretly accounts for about 1% of total U.S. homebuying activity. That contraction would have been much larger if the ban had been enacted a few years ago.
At the height of the Pandemic Housing Boom, large investorsthose owning at least 100 single-family homesmade up an all-time high of 3.1% of home purchases in Q2 2022, according to John Burns Research and Consulting. That period, at the tail end of the boom, was when yields were particularly attractive as borrowing costs were ultra-low, home prices were soaring, and rents were climbing rapidly.
However, since mortgage rates spiked and capital markets shifted, their share has fallen to around 1.0% of transactions over the past three years. The math isnt as favorable right now.
4. A full-blown institutional banincluding a build-to-rent bancould negatively impact U.S. homebuilding
One of the biggest questions right now is whether Trumps proposed institutional ban would apply only to institutional scatter-site purchases (i.e., buying existing homes on the market) or also to build-to-rent development (i.e., building communities and homes specifically for rent).
If policymakers were to also restrict institutional build-to-rent development, it could have a noticeable negative impact on overall homebuilding later in the decade, in 2027, 2028, and 2029.
While single-family build-to-rent is currently only hovering around 8% of total U.S. single-family housing starts, it has driven much of the marginal increase in U.S. single-family housing starts in recent years. Back in pre-pandemic 2017 to 2019, single-family build-to-rent starts made up just around 3% of total U.S. single-family housing starts.
Look no further than giant SFR landlord AMH.
Not long after interest rates spiked in mid-2022 and the Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out, many institutional landlords, including AMH, stopped buying via the MLS. However, AMH continued to barrel ahead building its own single-family rentals.
Indeed, 95.7% of institutional landlord AMHs single-family acquisitions through the first three quarters of 2025 came via its in-house homebuilding unit. According to Builder100, AMHs in-house homebuilding unit ranks as the nations 37th-largest homebuilder.
Housing analyst Kevin Erdmann, author of the Erdmann Housing Tracker, tells ResiClub that he believes banning institutional homebuying and build-to-rent would negatively impact homebuilding and, in turn, long-term housing affordability.
According to Erdmann:
American builders have been completing about 1 million new single-family homes annually since 2020about 3 new homes per 1,000 Americans. That is a significant rise from the low of 1.4 new homes per 1,000 residents in 2011. It is roughly equal to the number of new single-family homes that were completed at the bottom of the 1982 recession. And, it is just over half the rate of homes that were typically built throughout the 20th century. Our problem isn’t that there are too many buyers for new homes. Our problem is that we are building too few. The main reason single-family housing construction has been so low is that the federal mortgage agencies that the Trump administration is in complete control of greatly limited access to mortgages after 2008. So there aren’t enough buyers. For decades, before 2008, big Wall Street firms weren’t involved in single-family housing at all because families that can get mortgage funding happily pay more for new single-family homes to live in than Wall Street will pay to rent to them out. The Trump administration could solve that problem by restoring late 20th century underwriting standards at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the FHA. But, instead, they apparently will add even more obstructions to the marketplace so that builders have nobody to sell new homes to while the rents American families have to pay to stay in the lousy supply of homes that we have skyrockets.
5. Most institutionally owned homes are currently occupiedand most of their tenants cant afford to buy right now
SFR landlords note that if Congress were to force institutions to sell off their housing stock, it could potentially displace thousands of current tenants who would need to find somewhere else to live.
Would those tenants turn around and buy?
Even in normal times, many single-family renterswhether their landlord is an institution or a mom-and-popcant afford to buy the home theyre living in. Thats even more true at this point in the housing cycle, as the gap between todays mortgage payments (i.e., a home at todays prices/rates) and market rents has widened.
Sean Dobson, CEO of Amherstwhich owns around 43,000 single-family rentalstells ResiClub that “85% of their current tenants would not qualify to buy the homes they live in today.
According to Dobson:
Blaming institutional ownership for housing unaffordability is inaccurate and gets both the problem and the solution wrong. Americas housing crisis stems from years of policy failure, not the families who rent or the capital that houses them. At Amherst, we serve more than 200,000 residents, nearly 85% of whom would not qualify to buy the homes they live in today. Putting institutional rental housing at risk threatens real families and is unacceptable. Through private, unsubsidized investment, institutional capital restores neglected housing anddelivers real solutions at a time when much of the housing finance system no longer works. Our industry is not the cause of the housing crisis, it is part of the solution.
When a gunman began firing inside an academic building on the Brown University campus, students didn’t wait for official alerts warning of trouble. They got information almost instantly, in bits and bursts through phones vibrating in pockets, messages from strangers, rumors that felt urgent because they might keep someone alive.
On Dec. 13 as the attack at the Ivy League institution played out during finals week, students took to Sidechat, an anonymous, campus-specific message board used widely at U.S. colleges, for fast-flowing information in real time.
An Associated Press analysis of nearly 8,000 posts from the 36 hours after the shooting shows how social media has become central to how students navigate campus emergencies.
Fifteen minutes before the university’s first alert of an active shooter, students were already documenting the chaos. Their posts raw, fragmented, and sometimes panicked formed a digital time capsule of how a college campus experienced a mass shooting.
As students sheltered in place, they posted while hiding under library tables, crouching in classrooms, and hallways. Some comments even came from wounded students, like one posting a selfie from a hospital bed with the simple caption: #finalsweek.
Others asked urgent questions: Was there a lockdown? Where was the shooter? Was it safe to move?
It would be days before authorities identified the suspect and found him dead in New Hampshire of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, later linking him to the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor.
Here’s a look at how the shooting unfolded.
Stream of collective consciousness
Described by Harvard Magazine as the Colleges stream of collective consciousness, Sidechat allows anyone with a verified university email to post to a campus feed. On most days, the Brown feed is filled with complaints about dining hall food, jokes about professors, and stress about exams fleeting posts running the gamut of student life.
On the Saturday afternoon just before the shooting, a student posted about how they wished they could play Minecraft for 60 hours straight. Then, the posts abruptly shifted.
Crowds began pouring out of Browns Barus and Holley building, and someone posted at 4:06 p.m.: Why are people running away from B&H?
Others quickly followed. EVERYONE TAKE COVER, one wrote. STAY AWAY FROM THAYER STREET NEAR MACMILLAN 2 PEOPLE JUST GOT SHOT IM BEING DEAD SERIOUS, another user wrote at 4:10 p.m.
Dozens of frantic messages followed as students tried to fill the information gap themselves.
so r we on lockdown or what, one student asked.
By the time the university alert was sent at 4:21 p.m., the shooter was no longer on campus a fact Brown officials did not yet know.
Where would we be without Sidechat? one student wrote.
A university spokesperson said Brown’s alert reached 20,000 people minutes after the school’s public safety officials were notified shots had been fired. Officials deliberately didnt use sirens to avoid sending people rushing to seek shelter into harms way, said the spokesperson, Brian E. Clark, who added Brown commissioned two external reviews of the response with the aim of enhancing public safety and security.
Long hours of hiding
Long after the sun had set, students sheltered in dark dorm rooms and study halls. Blinds were closed. Doors were barricaded with dressers, beds, and mini fridges.
Door is locked windows are locked Ive balanced a metal pipe thing on the handle so if anyone even tries the handle from the outside itll make a loud noise, one student wrote.
Students reacted to every sound footsteps in hallways, distant sirens, helicopters overhead. When alerts came, the vibrations and ringtones were jarring. Some feared that names of the dead would be released and that they would recognize someone they knew.
Law enforcement moved through campus buildings, clearing them floor by floor.
A student who fled Barus and Holley asked whether anyone could text his parents to let them know he had made it out safely. Others said they had left phones behind in classrooms when they fled, unable to reach frantic loved ones. Ironically, those closest to the shooting often had the least information.
Many American students expressed emotions hovering between numbness and heartbreak.
Just got a text from a friend I havent spoken to in nearly three years, one student wrote. Our last messages? Me checking in on her after the shooting at Michigan State. Multiple students replied, saying theyd had similar experiences.
International students posted about parents unable to sleep on the other side of the world.
I just want a hug from my mom, one student wrote.
Anxiety sets in
As the hours dragged on, students struggled with basic needs. Some described urinating in trash cans or empty laundry detergent bottles because they were too afraid to leave their rooms. Others spoke of drinking to cope.
I was on the street when it happened & suddenly I felt so scared, one student wrote. I ran and didnt calm down for a while. I feel numb, tired, & about to throw up.
Another wrote: Im locked inside! Havent eaten anything today! Im so scared i dont even know if I get out of this alive or dead.
Some students posted into the early morning, more than 10 hours into the lockdown, saying they couldnt sleep. Sidechat also documented acts of kindness, including a student going door to door with macaroni and cheese cups in a dark dorm.
Information, and its limits
Students repeatedly asked the same questions news? sources? and challenged one another to verify what they saw before reposting it.
Frankly Id rather hear misinformation than people not report stuff theyve heard, one student wrote.
Others pushed back, sharing a Google Doc that would grow to 28 pages where students could find the most updated, verified information. Some posted police scanner transcriptions or warned against relying on artificial intelligence summaries of the developing situation. Professors who rarely post on the app joined the feed, urging caution and offering reassurance.
If youre talking about the active situation please add a source!!! one student wrote.
But reliable information, students noted, often arrived with a delay.
Within about 30 minutes of the shooting, posts incorrectly claimed the shooter had been caught. Reports of more gunshots later proven false continued into the night and the next day, fueling fear and frustration. Asked one studen, what are police doing RIGHT NOW?
Replies came quickly.
They are trying their best, one person responded. Be grateful, another added. They are putting their lives in danger at this moment for us to be safe.
A campus changed
Students awoke Sunday to a campus they no longer recognized. It had snowed overnight the first snowfall of the academic year.
In post after post, students called the sight unsettling. What was usually a celebration felt instead like confirmation something had irrevocably shifted.
It truly hurt seeing the flakes fall this morning, beautiful and tragic, one student wrote.
Even as the lockdown lifted, many said they were unsure what to do where they could go, whether dining halls were open, whether it was safe to move.
What do I do rn? one student posted. Im losing my mind.
Students walked through fresh snow in a daze, heading to blood donation centers. Others noticed flowers being placed at the campus gates and outside Barus and Holley.
Many mourned not only the two students killed, but the innocence they felt had been stripped from their campus.
Will never see the first snow of the season and not think about those two, one student wrote.
With the lockdown ended, students returned to their dorms as Sidechat continued to fill with grief and reflection. Many said Brown no longer felt the same.
Snow will always be bloody for me, one person posted.
Leah Willingham, Associated Press
The dreaded performance review draws the ire of employees and managers alike. Workers fret that reviews fail to capture the full scope of their work, or that they are an unfair assessment of their performance. For managers, reviews can be a time-consuming nuisance and involve the challenging task of delivering tough feedback.
But a new study from Cornell University finds that the structure of the performance review can have a huge impact on how workers feel about them.
Over the last decade, a number of companies have revamped their performance reviews, seemingly to address the long-standing pain points. The likes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have moved away from numerical ratings, while tech companies like Microsoft eliminated stack rankings (reviews that essentially rank employees against their colleagues) and Adobe eliminated reviews altogether. (More recently, however, tech giants like Google and Meta have actually pushed for more stringent evaluations of employees and, in turn, lower ratings.)
The Cornell researchers examined how the shift away from numerical reviews has influenced employee sentiment. Emily Zitek, a professor of organizational behavior, and her coauthors analyzed how employees feel about performance reviews that emphasize narrative or qualitative feedback over numerical rankings. The team looked at three different performance review formats: those that exclusively used either numerical ratings or narrative feedback, and those that employed a mix of both.
What the researchers found overall was that employees believed performance reviews were, in fact, more fair when they did not have numbers attached and were purely narrative-driven.
Even if they’re given kind of average numbers versus wording that says they were very average, it feels more fair if they just see the words and not the numbers, Zitek says. So we thought that was very interesting. We were originally expecting the combined feedback to still be viewed positively, but people didn’t like the numbers within that either.
Employees were also more likely to want to improve their performance if they received narrative feedbackand, more notably, if they felt their review was fair. Obviously, one of the goals is improvement, Zitek says. [If youre] just giving people numbers, they don’t know as much about what they need to do to perform better.
But there was an exception: If their reviews were very positive, then people perceived them as fair, regardless of format.
People love knowing if they’re at the top, Zitek says. More average ratings, on the other hand, seem to betray an employees self-perceptionwhich is why a more middling review feels more palatable if there is no number attached.
Psychology research has shown a lot of people think they are above average, or that they’re doing better than they are, Zitek adds. When they get narrative-only feedback, they’re able to maintain that view because there’s no explicit information showing that they didn’t do well.
Thats one of the reasons Zitek and her coauthors argue there is still a place for numerical ratings, in spite of the studys findings: If one of the goals of performance reviews is to determine raises and bonuses, then including numbers-based feedback can be importantand arguably more fair. If employees are deluding themselves that they’re performing really well, sometimes it helps to have the number, she says. Sometimes you want employees to realistically know where they stand. And yes, theyre going to be mad about it; they’re not going to think it’s fair. But that could be important.
The reality is that many companies still rely on numerical ratings to make decisions about compensationand if they stop using those metrics in reviews, they may still utilize a ranking system without informing employees. If the company is going to want some kind of number anyway, it seems worse to not tell the employee that number, Zitek says. And that’s what some companies are doingthey have shadow rankings behind the scenes. They don’t tell them to the employees, and then employees are like, Wait, why did I get a smaller bonus than this other person?
Regardless of format, one of the most frequent critiques of performance reviews is that they are vulnerable to bias. Even if reviews are standardized across a company, your performance rating can be impacted by a number of variables and often hinges on how your manager or team approaches reviews. A narrative component can help address this issuebut that still depends on how managers are trained and whether they understand the value of proffering real feedback.
To ensure managers actually commit to the review process, Zitek says, its important for employers to emphasize the purpose of providing thoughtful feedback.
People are more willing to do things if they know why they’re doing it, she says. So it could just be making an effort to convince the managers [that] this isn’t just another box to check. Its also crucial that managers are trained on how to give constructive performance feedback, she addssomething that many employers fail to do effectivelyand that they offer it at a more regular cadence so employees are not surprised when their review rolls around.
Feedback can be uncomfortable to give sometimes, Zitek says. But it’s more uncomfortable later if they don’t get promoted and don’t understand whyand they could have been performing better the entire time if they were given that feedback.
Fast-casual salad chain Salad and Go is closing more stores and exiting Texas and Oklahoma completely. The eatery will close a total of 32 stores, 25 in Texas and seven in Oklahoma, by January 11.
The closures will impact around 600 employees. The company will also close its Dallas headquarters and relocate to Phoenix.
Salad and Go operates as a drive-through and grab-and-go business, known for affordable salads, wraps, and other healthy menu items. The fast-casual chain was founded in 2013 in Gilbert, Arizona.
Salad and Go began rapid expansion efforts in 2022. However, the salad chain has recently been reducing its retail footprint, closing 41 of its stores in September 2025.
Salad and Go will focus its efforts in its home state of Arizona
Until recently, the salad chain served customers in four states: Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Texas. Moving forward, it will only operate restaurants in Arizona and Nevada.
After assessing our business, we made the decision to exit our Texas and Oklahoma markets and refocus on strengthening our core operations in Arizona and Nevada, CEO Mike Tattersfield told Fast Company in an email. “By consolidating our operations at our Phoenix area headquarters, we can focus on what matters most: food quality, menu innovation, guest experience and building for long-term growth.”
“Were grateful to our team members in Texas and Oklahoma for the care they brought every day, and we deeply appreciate the communities that welcomed Salad and Go,” Tattersfield said.
Tattersfield, who is the former president and CEO of Krispy Kreme, joined Salad and Go in April 2025.
Tattersfield also told the Phoenix Business Journal that the closures are the result of the economic burden of a flawed expansion plan and a large central kitchen in Dallas: We were so focused on expanding out in Texas and other areas and we neglected Arizona,” he told the journal.
New York Attorney General Letitia James is demanding more information about Instacarts recent and highly controversial price tests, and suggesting that the schemewhich saw customers charged notably different prices for the same products when offered at the same storesmight have violated a new state law.
Late last year, Consumer Reports and the Groundwork Collaborative released an investigation that found that a single item posted on Instacart could have as many as five different prices, and that costs for a single item could range from just 7 cents to $2.56. The investigation found that while some prices changed, and some differed only marginally, for some itemsincluding Oscar Mayer turkey and Skippy peanut butterthey could vary by more than 20 percent.
In response to the widespread outcry and accusations that Instacart had deployed surveillance pricing, the company turned off technology that, it argued, had sought only to allow retailers who wanted to experiment with prices offered at their own stores. Instacart denied ever using demographic information to set prices, or using dynamic pricing or surveillance pricing. Pricing is complex, and retailers have long used different approaches across different markets, wrote the company in a blog. Just as prices can vary between physical store locations, retail partners may continue to vary item prices on a store-by-store basis on Instacart.
In a letter sent on Thursday, the New York attorney generals office suggests that Instacarts test may have violated a new state law, the Algorithmic Pricing Disclosure Act. The legislation went into effect in November and bans platforms from using algorithmic pricing without clear, prior disclosure to customers. Its one of the first laws in the country that requires companies to be this transparent.
New York is accusing Instacart of burying its disclosures. In the letter, the attorney generals office says that Instacarts disclosure on a page linked to certain retail stores front pages was accessed by clicking fine print text and wasnt clear and conspicuous. Moreover, the office argues the prices didn’t appear on category pages listing product prices or on individual product pages displaying price, as required by law.
New York is now asking for more details from Instacart about its price setting agreements, the tools the company used to control displayed prices, and information about its efforts to meet the standards set out in New York law.
Charging different prices for the exact same products leaves shoppers feeling cheated and threatens to raise costs at a time when consumers are already paying too much at the grocery store, James said in a statement. Instacarts pricing experiments raise serious concerns about its use of algorithmic pricing.
If you had a severe case of the Sunday Scaries last weekend, you are not alone. Its a sentiment many have been sharing online.
Ready or not, with it comes an influx of unread emails, meeting invites, and responsibilitiessmugly pushed to the New Year in the last weeks of Decembernow coming back to haunt us all.
Indeed, the first Monday of the year is the Monday-est Monday of all.
Oh god, one TikTok user posted on Monday 6th. Everyone is circling back.
Worst aesthetic ever: Back to work in the first week of jan, another wrote, riffing on TikToks rare aesthetic trend.
Some have used the lyrics to The Smiths Heaven Knows Im Miserable Now” to sum up the feeling of corporate workers logging back on the first Monday of the year.
After weeks of late nights of holiday fun, overindulgence, friends and family time and a slower pace of life, the abrupt shift back to the corporate grind can trigger feelings of anxiety in even the most enthusiastic of employees.
Monday 5th January isnt for the weak, another TikTok user wrote in the caption of a clip. The idea of an unwanted convo at 9am on Monday 5th, the closed captions reads, soundtracked to frantic voiceovers sputtering workplace jargon, including KPIs, decks, emails, and Salesforce.
If this week so far youve felt unusually slow, unfocused, or overwhelmed, youre likely experiencing what is commonly referred to as the holiday hangover, or January blues.
These feelings are not unique to one generation or another, and tend to resurface like clockwork come January each year. As another TikTok user wrote: The way I logged on after two weeks off only to realise i can barely remember what i was doing when I left or what im supposed to be doing now so im lowkey terrified and every email and teams alert feels like a jack-in-the-box.
Relatable.
While time off work over the holidays has been linked to reduced stress and overall improved health, these benefits tend to vanish relatively quickly once back to work. And research has shown when workers are expected to hit the ground running after a break, they often experience depleted energy, focus and motivation.
Reestablishing some semblance of routine post-holidays is essential for keeping the January blues to a minimum. This means fixing sleep schedules after going to bed consistently after midnight and waking up at midday for the past few weeks. Giving up the chocolate and leftovers from the fridge diet and going back to overnight oats and desk salads. And not only having to remember what day of the week it is, but also spending the next few months mistakenly writing 2025, crossing it out, and rewriting 2026.
The key is to keep expectations low. If you simply showed up, caught up on the post-holiday small talk with colleagues, and made it to 5 p.m.? Honestlythat’s enough for this week.
