Fresh from an election victory that even took some supporters by surprise, St. Paul Mayor-elect Kaohly Her has announced members of a transition team that will help pick new department leaders and top City Hall staff, plan for her inauguration and inaugural gala and lead other transitional decision-making. Her, who resigned as state representative on Monday, has drawn her team from a mix of campaign staff, former State Capitol workers and recent city and county employees.
Erica Schumacher and Hnu Vang will serve as the new mayor’s transition team co-leaders.
Schumacher currently works in the Ramsey County Attorney’s office and previously served as director of Neighborhood Initiatives under Mayor Chris Coleman. Vang, Her’s campaign manager, previously worked for former House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler, state Sen. Foung Hawj, former U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips and in the office of U.S. Rep. Angie Craig, where she served as director of constituent services.
Nick Stumo-Langer, Her’s deputy campaign manager and operations director, will serve as transition advisor. He has served as a committee administrator for the Minnesota House DFL Caucus, a former campaign manager for state Rep. Brion Curran, policy associate for Minneapolis Councilmember Steve Fletcher, supervisor of an early vote center in 2020, and communications manager for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
Matt Wagenius, Her’s campaign spokesperson, will serve as the transition team’s communications director and press secretary. He has served as a staff member for Gov. Tim Walz, House Speaker Melissa Hortman, and various state and congressional officials across the country. He recently operated a fundraising and communications consulting service.
Bridget Hajny will serve as Her’s scheduler and office manager. She has spent 20 years in administrative management, including 11 years with the city, most recently with the St. Paul Fire Department.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The U.S. and Russia have drawn up a plan aimed at ending the war in Ukraine that calls for major concessions from Kyiv, according to a person familiar with the matter, including granting some demands the Kremlin has made repeatedly since the full-scale invasion began nearly four years ago.
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It was not clear what, if any, concessions the proposal asks of Russia. The same person confirmed that promises from Moscow of no further attacks are part of the framework.
As reports of the plan emerged, blindsided European diplomats insisted they and Ukraine must be consulted.
U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff has been quietly working on the plan for a month, receiving input from both Ukrainians and Russians on terms that are acceptable to each side, according to a senior U.S. official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
U.S. President Donald Trump, the official added, has been briefed on the plan and supports it.
The talk of a secret peace plan piled more pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is marshaling his country’s defenses against Russia’s bigger army, visiting European leaders to ensure they continue their support for Ukraine and navigating a major corruption scandal that has caused public outrage.
Several high-ranking Army officials, including Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, were in Kyiv on Thursday to give a new push to peace efforts and assess the reality on the ground in Ukraine, U.S. officials said.
Zelenskyy’s office said in a statement that he formally received the peace plan Thursday from American officials. The statement said Zelenskyy expected to talk to Trump in coming days about diplomatic opportunities and what was needed for peace.
Zelenskyy underlined Ukraine’s main conditions for peace and promised to work on the conclusions reached in the meetings with U.S. officials, the statement said.
European leaders have already been alarmed this year by indications that Trump’s administration might be sidelining them and Zelenskyy in its push to stop the fighting. Trump’s at-times conciliatory approach to Russian President Vladimir Putin has fueled those concerns, but Trump adopted a tougher line last month when he announced heavy sanctions on Russia’s vital oil sector that come into force Friday.
“For any plan to work, it needs Ukrainians and Europeans on board,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said at the start of a meeting in Brussels of the 27-nation bloc’s foreign ministers. She added: “We haven’t heard of any concessions on the Russian side.”
German Foreign Minister Johannes Wadephul said he talked by phone Thursday with Witkoff and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to discuss “our various current efforts to end Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and thus finally put an end to the immeasurable human suffering.”
The conversations “also focused on specific ideas that are currently being discussed,” Wadephul said in a statement. He did not elaborate.
Plan would give Russia control of the Donbas
It was not clear whether the foreign ministers had seen the peace plan, which was first reported by Axios. The proposal was drawn up by U.S. and Russian envoys, and was said to include forcing Ukraine to cede territory, a prospect Zelenskyy has ruled out.
Rescue workers clear the rubble of a residential building which was heavily damaged by a Russian strike on Ternopil, Ukraine, on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Vlad Kravchuk)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry Press Office, Ukrainian Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal, right, shakes hands with US Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll in Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025. (Ukrainian Defense Ministry Press Office via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters and rescue teams search for trapped people after a Russian attack that hit a multi-storey apartment building in Ternopil, western Ukraine, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas addresses the media after an EU general affairs meeting at the European Council building in Brussels, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)
Rescue workers clear the rubble of a residential building which was heavily damaged by a Russian strike on Ternopil, Ukraine, on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Vlad Kravchuk)
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Rescue workers clear the rubble of a residential building which was heavily damaged by a Russian strike on Ternopil, Ukraine, on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Vlad Kravchuk)
The Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts this year to stop the fighting have so far come to nothing.
The proposal, which could still be changed, calls in part for Ukraine to cede territory to Russia and to abandon certain weaponry, according to the person who had been briefed on the contours of the plan but was not authorized to comment publicly. It would also include the rollback of some critical U.S. military assistance.
Russia, as part of the proposal, would be given effective control of the entire eastern Donbas region, Ukraine’s industrial heartland made up of the Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk regions, even though Ukraine still holds part of it. Putin has listed the capture of the Donbas as the key goal of the invasion.
Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, a close adviser to Putin, have been key to drafting the proposal, according to the person familiar with the matter.
A peace deal that requires Kyiv to hand over territory to Russia would not only be deeply unpopular with Ukrainians, it also would be illegal under Ukraine’s constitution. Zelenskyy has repeatedly ruled out such a possibility.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social platform X late Wednesday that American officials “are and will continue to develop a list of potential ideas” for a lasting peace agreement which “will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that there “there are no consultations per se currently underway” with the U.S. on ending the war in Ukraine. “There are certainly contacts, but processes that could be called consultations are not underway,” he told reporters.
EU accuses Russia of insincerity
Though the European diplomats appeared caught by surprise, reported elements of the plan were not new. Trump said last month that the Donbas region should be “cut up,” leaving most of it in Russian hands.
EU diplomats have accused Putin of being insincere in saying he wants peace but refusing to compromise in negotiations while sustaining Russia’s grinding war of attrition in Ukraine.
Kallas, the EU’s chief diplomat, chided Putin’s forces for continuing to target civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, a day after a strike on the western city of Ternopil killed 26 people and wounded 93 others. About two dozen people were still missing.
Kallas said that “if Russia really wanted peace, it could have … agreed to (an) unconditional ceasefire already some time ago.”
Trump has stopped sending military aid directly to Ukraine, with European countries taking up the slack by buying weaponry for Ukraine from the United States. That has given Europe leverage in talks on ending the conflict.
Madhani reported from Washington. Associated Press journalist Sam McNeil in Brussels contributed to this report.
Federal investigators released dramatic photos Thursday of an engine flying off a doomed UPS cargo plane that crashed two weeks ago, killing 14 people in Kentucky, and said there was evidence of cracks in the left wing’s engine mount.
The MD-11 plane only got 30 feet (9.1 meters) off the ground, the National Transportation Safety Board said, citing the flight data recorder in its first formal but preliminary report about the Nov. 4 disaster in Louisville, Kentucky.
Three pilots on the plane were killed along with 11 more people on the ground near Muhammad Ali International Airport.
The NTSB said the plane was not due yet for a detailed inspection of key engine mount parts that had fractures. It still needed to complete nearly 7,000 more takeoffs and landings. It was last examined in October 2021.
“It appears UPS was conducting this maintenance within the required time frame, but I’m sure the FAA is now going to ponder whether that time frame is adequate,” aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti told The Associated Press after reading the report.
New pictures released by the NTSB show the left engine coming off the UPS plane and flying up and over the wing as it rolled down the runway.
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Minnesota’s annual “giving holiday” is underway, and as usual the generosity is incoming.
As of midday Thursday, more than $20 million had been donated to about 5,200 organizations including schools and nonprofits.
In 2024, more than $37 million was donated to 6,556 organizations, an all-time record.
The day of philanthropy, now in its 17th year, began in 2009 through GiveMN as a fun way to “shop” for charitable endeavors as the holiday season approaches with Black Friday, Cyber Monday and all the other ways we are tempted to spend our money this time of year. It’s become a tradition for many people across the state.
This year, according to a GiveMN survey, top causes currently are animals, the environment and hunger relief.
