A 55-year-old woman was fatally shot at a Maplewood apartment complex Wednesday morning by a suspect who then shot and wounded himself, police said.

Officers about 10:45 a.m. were called to a report of gunshots and someone lying on the ground at Pondview Apartments in the 2500 block of Ivy Avenue, north of Maryland Avenue and west of Century Avenue.

The woman was found in a hallway with gunshot wounds and taken to Regions Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Officers learned the suspect, a 56-year-old man, was possibly inside the woman’s apartment and armed.

A perimeter was set up, and neighboring apartment units were evacuated. A shelter-in-place order was issued.

The Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office SWAT team responded and made entry into the apartment, where they found the man with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. His condition was not released by police.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is assisting Maplewood police in the investigation.

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By MIKE SCHNEIDER

The ranks of U.S. government statisticians have been gutted in the past year due to layoffs and buyouts. That along with diminished funding and attacks on their independence have put at risk the data used to make informed decisions about everything from the nation’s economy to its demographics, according to a new report from outside experts released Wednesday.

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One agency lost 95% of its staff, while others dropped by about quarter to more than a third, due to government downsizing this year during President Donald Trump’s first months in office, according to the report released by the American Statistical Association. Besides veteran employees with deep institutional knowledge, some of the cuts hit new hires meant to infuse new blood into the agencies, said the annual report.

“Things are getting a lot worse,” Nancy Potok, a former U.S. chief statistician during the first Trump administration who was on the team that produced the report, said Wednesday. “It’s kind of dropping off the cliff there and in a really dire situation.”

The administration’s Office of Management and Budget, home to the U.S. chief statistician who coordinates the system of gathering data, didn’t respond Wednesday morning to an e-mailed inquiry about the report.

However, when asked last month about concerns that the statistical agencies were getting politicized, Mark Calabria, who was appointed in July as the U.S. chief statistician, said: “Everything in government is embedded in politics and is embedded in accountability.”

“So these kinds of debates about independence and accountability, they’re oranges and apples to some extent,” Calabria said during a forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. “What you have is wanting to make sure that the data gives you the right answer.”

In the first months of the second Trump administration, thousands of federal government workers were shown the door as part of efforts by the White House and its Department of Government Efficiency. The White House also offered a “deferred resignation” proposal in exchange for financial incentives, like months of paid leave, to almost all federal employees who opted to leave their jobs. It also moved to lay off probationary employees — those generally on the job for less than a year and who have yet to gain civil service protection.

“The statistical system is still functioning, but the threats are very serious,” said Beth Jarosz, vice president of the Association of Public Data Users, who was not involved in the report. “There are staffing reductions, contracted services that have been reduced. We’re seeing that showing up in the cancellation of data products, the reduction in data collection on things like consumer prices.”

The team behind the report noted that they had a “sparsity of information” about the detailed impacts of the cuts since the agencies wouldn’t provide them “perhaps out of caution or because they are not allowed to communicate with outside entities.”

The hardest hit agency was the National Center for Education Statistics, a part of the U.S. Department of Education, which lost 95% of its staff. The agency tracks educational trends with the goal of improving outcomes, and the staff losses halted most of its data collection earlier in the year, according to the report. Many outside contracts have since been restored but with a reduced scope, the report said.

The Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics’ workforce in the Social Security Administration was almost halved. The cuts eliminated retirement and disability research, among other things, the report said.

The Energy Information Administration, the Economic Research Service in the Department of Agriculture and the National Agricultural Statistics Service each lost between 25% and 40% of their staff. The cuts have resulted in discontinued or delayed reports about the energy industry and the cancellation of a survey about farmworkers and some state-specific agricultural reports.

The nation’s largest statistical agency, the U.S. Census Bureau, lost at least 15% of its staff this year, according to the report.

Besides the staff cuts, some barriers to the statistical agencies’ political independence were removed this year. The Trump administration made unsubstantiated claims of biased data; removed the heads of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Center for Education Statistics; failed to fill key leadership vacancies; and named political appointees who hold other jobs to fill in leadership positions that had been held by career civil servants, according to the report.

“These actions undermine public trust in federal statistics,” the report said.

Follow Mike Schneider on Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social

By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON

MIAMI (AP) — Democrat Eileen Higgins’ victory in the Miami mayoral race marks a setback for Republican President Donald Trump, who endorsed her rival and has touted his 2024 win in the area as a testament to his appeal in Florida and particularly among Hispanic voters.

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Higgins, who will become the city’s first female mayor, secured a decisive win of approximately 19 points over Trump’s pick, Emilio Gonzalez, signaling a potential shift in voter sentiment.

In becoming the first Democrat to lead the city of 487,000 in nearly 30 years, Higgins said she will explore legal ways to unwind an agreement between the city and the federal government that empowers police officers to conduct immigration enforcement.

“We need to look at all our legal options to ensure that our city police work for our neighborhoods and not on checking residents’ papers,” Higgins said in Spanish at a press conference Wednesday.

While harshly criticizing Trump’s immigration crackdown, Higgins has been more measured than her counterpart in New York City, Zohran Mamdani, in her approach.

Higgins’ message for Trump

Higgins’ victory occurred on the same night that Trump delivered a speech in Pennsylvania meant to emphasize his focus on combating inflation. But the president appeared dismissive on an issue that has damaged his popularity, saying inflation was no longer a problem and that Democrats were using the term “affordability” as a “hoax” to hurt his reputation.

The Associated Press asked Higgins after her win what she would tell Trump.

“When I hear what the residents have to say about affordability, it’s real. They’re facing expensive rent, expensive property insurance, costs of all sorts of things, especially even now the things they’re buying in the stores due to the tariffs,” she said. “I think every leader in America needs to think deeply about what they can do to help get the affordability crisis under control for the American people.”

At the press conference on Wednesday, Higgins, however said that sometimes she and Trump have been in agreement, praising the president for maintaining funding for a new local transit project.

Voters face ‘frustration’ and ‘fear’

Higgins, a former county commissioner, commented on a shift among voters she noticed compared to when she ran in previous years, when people wanted the government to be run more efficiently and to finish projects from housing to transportation.

Miami mayor-elect Eileen Higgins speaks to her staff before a news conference at her campaign headquarters Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

“This is the first election where when I speak to our residents, it’s not just about frustration, it’s also about fear,” Higgins said at the press briefing. “They’ve never been afraid of their government before. And now they are.”

Higgins said she heard from a medical clinic that had to immediately fire 27 employees who lost work authorization when the Trump administration stripped legal protections from more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants.

“That’s 27 families without a breadwinner. And a health clinic that’s short 27 employees to take care of people,” she said. “We want a strong border, we want a path to citizenship. We don’t want law-abiding people to be ejected from our country, impoverishing their family and driving our economy into ruin.”

Turnout was high for a mayoral race

Both major national political parties took an interest in the race, which was a runoff between the two top finishers in the Nov. 4 general election. Trump talked up Gonzalez on his social media site, and national Democratic figures weighed in for Higgins.

Turnout in Tuesday’s runoff was huge for a mayoral election in Miami. At a little more than 37,000 votes, it nearly matched turnout in the Nov. 4 general election, which was 36% higher than the turnout four years ago.

However, the number of votes was still much lower than in a typical midterm election, like the one that will be held in 2026. For example, 92,500 voters in the city of Miami cast ballots in the 2022 election for governor.

Miami may become home of the Trump presidential library

Higgins could join the growing local opposition to Trump’s presidential library, which Republicans have pushed to build in downtown Miami. Earlier this month, the Miami-Dade College board voted to donate a nearly 3-acre undeveloped lot, valued at over $67 million, located on the iconic Biscayne Boulevard. However, a judge had temporarily blocked the transfer while a lawsuit plays out.

At a debate aired last month on Miami television station CBS 4, Higgins said that while it is “an honor” to be home to a presidential library, she felt this was a “land giveaway.” She said the state could have sold the land and paid for things that have been cut such as food aid and money for transit.

Miami mayor- elect Eileen Higgins speaks at her campaign headquarters Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

“We gave away very valuable land to a billionaire for free,” she said. “That doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Miami will host next year’s G20 summit

Earlier this year, Trump was accompanied by Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who Higgins will succeed, at the White House in announcing Miami will host next year’s Group of 20 summit at his golf club in Doral, Florida, a suburb of greater Miami. He argued it was “the best location” for the international gathering.

Suarez said such gathering put the city “on the global map.”

Trump has been known for his public feuds with Democratic mayors and governors. The mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser, had to confront a federal law enforcement intervention into her city launched by Trump. She announced last month that she would not seek reelection.

At the press conference, Higgins was asked if she was scared Trump could retaliate in any way against her.

“No tengo ningún miedo de él,” she said, Spanish for “I am not scared of him, at all.”

Associated Press journalist Stephen Ohlemacher in Washington contributed in this report.

By VESELIN TOSHKOV

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Tens of thousands joined the latest massive protests across Bulgaria on Wednesday, accusing the government of widespread corruption and underscoring political rifts just weeks before the country is to join European nations that use the euro as the official currency at the start of next year.

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The demonstrations came after last week’s protests that were sparked by the government’s budget plans for higher taxes, increased social security contributions and spending increases. The government later withdrew the controversial 2026 budget plan.

The protesters’ demands have since expanded to include calls for the center-right government of Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov to resign.

In the capital, Sofia, protesters gathered on a central square where the parliament, the government and the presidency buildings are located. Chanting “Resignation” and “Mafia,” they called on Zhelyazkov’s minority coalition Cabinet to step down.

Students from Sofia’s universities joined the protests, which organizers said outnumbered last week’s rallies that drew over 50,000 people. Media estimates based on drone visuals put the number of protesters at over 100,000.

At the core of the protesters’ frustrations is the role of Bulgarian politician and oligarch Delyan Peevski, who has been sanctioned by both the United States and Britain, and whose MRF New Beginning party backs the government. Peevski has been accused by opponents of helping shaping government policy in line with oligarchic interests.

No violence was reported and the protests ended peacefully.

Also on Wednesday, the opposition coalition We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria called for a no-confidence vote in the government. The vote, the sixth such motion by the opposition, will take place on Thursday.

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev wrote on Facebook that Wednesday’s demonstrations were in effect a vote of “no confidence in the Cabinet.”

Radev, an opponent of the government who hails from the political left, urged the lawmakers to listen to the people and to “choose between the dignity of free voting and the shame of dependence” when they vote on Thursday.

Bulgaria is soon to become the 21st member of the eurozone, a euro currency union that is a key EU project aimed at deepening ties between member countries. The Balkan country of 6.4 million people is to make the switch from its national currency, the lev, to the euro on Jan. 1.