By TIM REYNOLDS

The biggest rivalry going into the bobsled competition at the Milan Cortina Olympics is pretty much not in dispute.

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On one side, there is Germany. And on the other side, there is everybody else.

The sport made its Olympic debut in 1924 and Germany didn’t win its first gold medals until 1952. But the country, including the days of both East Germany and West Germany, has dominated like no other, with 22 gold medals since 1952 and rest of the world combining for 21 golds in that span.

How does it work?

There are four types of bobsled races: two-man, four-man, two-woman and monobob, which has just one female pilot in the sled and nobody else. All sleds have one driver, and the person in the back of the sled is considered the brakeman; his or her role is exactly as it sounds, to pull the brakes once the sled has crossed the finish line. Races start with everyone running either alongside or behind the sled, down a ramp before they jump into the sled. For aerodynamic reasons, everyone’s head should stay down during a race (except the driver, of course). Speeds can reach 90 mph.

FILE – Second placed Johannes Lochner of Germany celebrates after the men’s two-man bobsleigh World Cup race in Igls, near Innsbruck, Austria, Saturday, Nov. 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, FILE)

Who to watch

Germans tend to dominate sliding, and four-time Olympic gold medalist Francesco Friedrich is generally considered the best bobsledder of all time. He will face intense competition from German teammate Johannes Lochner on the men’s side, where American pilot Frank Del Duca will try to crash the medal party. For the women, U.S. star Kaysha Love is the reigning world monobob champion, while veterans Kaillie Humphries Armbruster (three gold medals) and Elana Meyers Taylor (five medals) are never to be counted out. Germany’s women are very strong as well.

Venues and dates

Competition in bobsled is from Feb. 15-22, all at the Cortina Sliding Center on the remodeled Eugenio Monti track.

FILE – First placed Kaillie Humphries of United States celebrates during award ceremony of the of the Women’s Monobob World Cup race in Sigulda, Latvia, Saturday, Feb. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Oksana Dzadan, FILE)

Memorable moments

For USA Bobsled, the quintessential Olympic moment likely remains the four-man bobsled gold medal by Steven Holcomb in the famed “Night Train” sled at the 2010 Vancouver Games, when he and his team ended a 62-year drought for the Americans in the sport’s biggest race. There also is the unforgettable, made-for-the-movies tale of the Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 Olympics in Calgary when they bucked overwhelming odds and competed in the two- and four-man events. Jamaica still has a bobsled team as well, and plenty of other smaller nations — even those that never see snow — have embraced the sport more and more since.

FILE – Germany’s Francesco Friedrich talks during an interview with the Associated Press ahead of a three-day skeleton and bobsled World Cup stage and Olympic test event in Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, FILE)

Fun facts

 

Friedrich will try to become the first pilot with more than four gold medals; he’s currently tied with another German great, Andre Lange, for the most in Olympic history. If a team crashes, it remains in the competition provided that the sled actually crosses the finish line. Unlike skaters, who have blades on their feet, bobsleds don’t have anything sharp on the bottom of the sleds. They glide on runners, which are steel tubes.

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

By BILL BARROW

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he wants Republicans to reach a deal on health care insurance assistance by being willing to bend on a 50-year-old amendment that bars federal money from being spent on abortion services.

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“You have to be a little flexible” on the Hyde Amendment, Trump told House Republicans as they gathered in Washington for a caucus retreat to open the midterm election year. “You gotta be a little flexible. You gotta work something. You gotta use ingenuity.”

With his suggestion, Trump, who supported abortion rights before he entered politics in 2015, is asking conservatives to abandon or at least ease up on decades of Republican orthodoxy on abortion and spending policy. At the same time, he is demonstrating his long-standing malleability on abortion and acknowledging that Democrats have the political upper hand on health care after Republicans, who control the White House, the Senate and the House, allowed the expiration of premium subsidies for people buying Affordable Care Act insurance policies.

As negotiations on Capitol Hill continue, some Democrats are pushing to end the Hyde restrictions as part of any new agreements on health care subsidies.

Trump’s road map on the Hyde Amendment came more than an hour into a stem-winding speech intended as a part strategy session and part cheerleading as Republicans attempt to maintain their threadbare House majority in the November midterms.

The president touted the House GOP proposal to replace ACA subsidies — which taxpayers typically steer directly to insurance companies after selecting their policies — into direct payments that taxpayers could use for a range of health care expenses, including insurance. The expanded ACA subsidies expired on Dec. 31, 2025, hitting millions of policy holders with steep premium increases.

“Let the money go directly to the people,” Trump said, before casually slipping in a reference to the Hyde Amendment.

“We’re all big fans of everything,” he said. “But you have to have flexibility.”

Turning directly to GOP leaders, Trump added, “If you can do that, you’re going to have — this is going to be your issue.”

But the GOP faces considerable pressure from parts of its coalition that want absolute opposition to any policy that might ease abortion restrictions.

At Americans United for Life, a leading advocacy group that opposes abortion rights, Gavin Oxley penned an op-ed this week for “The Hill” titled, “Republicans must hold the line: No Hyde Amendment, no deal on health care.”

“If they play their cards right,” Oxley wrote, “Republicans just might earn back enough of their base’s trust to sustain them through the 2026 midterms.”

The Hyde Amendment, named for the late Rep. Henry Hyde, originally applied to Medicaid, the joint federal-state insurance program for poor and disabled Americans, and barred it from paying for abortions unless the woman’s life is in danger or the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. Hyde first introduced it in 1976, shortly after the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion nationwide.

Over the years, Congress reauthorized Hyde policy as part of spending bills that fund the government. Democrats who support abortion access often joined Republicans who opposed abortion rights as a bipartisan compromise to pass larger spending deals. But as the two parties hardened their respective positions on abortion, Democrats became more uniform opponents of the ban, most famously when presidential candidate Joe Biden reversed his long-standing support for Hyde on his way to winning the 2020 Democratic nomination and general election.

Republicans, meanwhile, have maintained their near absolute support for the amendment.

The anti-abortion movement was initially skeptical of Trump as a presidential candidate in 2015 and 2016. But he has mostly aligned with the key faction of the Republican coalition, especially on Supreme Court appointments that led to the 2022 decision overturning Roe.

By JACQUES BILLEAUD

PHOENIX (AP) — A former Republican lawmaker who questioned the integrity of Arizona’s elections and served as a leader for the conservative group Turning Point Action was sentenced Tuesday to probation and a five-year ban on running for public office for using nominating petitions that contained forged signatures in a bid to qualify for a 2024 primary election.

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Austin Smith, 30, pleaded guilty in mid-November to charges of attempted fraudulent schemes and practices, and illegal signing of election petitions. He had acknowledged trying to use petitions with forged signatures that he knew were false and forging a dead woman’s signature on a nominating petition.

Smith represented an Arizona House district in the Phoenix suburbs for one term before dropping his reelection bid in April 2024 when questions arose about signatures on his nominating petitions.

He resigned at the time as a leader at Turning Point Action, the campaign arm of Turning Point USA, which has become a major force in Arizona Republican politics. His bio page said Smith was approached in 2019 by Turning Point co-founder Charlie Kirk and Tyler Bowyer, another top leader of the group, about launching Turning Point Action. Kurt Altman, Smith’s lawyer, told the judge that his client was mortified by his conduct and will never run for public office again. “He realizes that things got out of hand,” Altman said. “And in today’s political atmosphere, things get out of hand very quickly. He is embarrassed by the lapse in judgment.”

When handing down the sentence, Superior Court Judge Aryeh Schwartz said the offense undermined the integrity of the election process, but also said Smith accepted responsibility for his actions. Smith declined to address the judge during sentencing. He also declined to comment outside of court when a reporter asked him if he wanted to do so.

The Associated Press left messages for a Turning Point spokesperson.

Smith previously portrayed the allegations against him as a coordinated attack by Democrats that was “silly on its face,” but said he would drop out of his reelection campaign to avoid racking up legal bills.

In campaign literature, Smith voiced support for a Republican-backed review of the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County that ultimately ended without producing proof to support President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election. Smith also sponsored an unsuccessful proposal to ban voting by mail and complained in a campaign ad about political elites breaking election laws.

By AAMER MADHANI

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday pushed back against Democratic criticism of this weekend’s military operation that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro, noting that his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden had also called for the arrest of the Venezuelan leader on drug trafficking charges.

Trump in remarks before a House Republican retreat in Washington grumbled that Democrats were not giving him credit for a successful military operation that led to the ouster of Maduro, even though there was bipartisan agreement that Maduro was not the rightful president of Venezuela.

In 2020, Maduro was indicted in the United States, accused in a decades-long narco-terrorism and international cocaine trafficking conspiracy. White House officials have noted that Biden’s administration in his final days in office last year raised the award for information leading to Maduro’s arrest after he assumed a third term in office despite evidence suggesting that he lost Venezuela’s most recent election. The Trump administration doubled the award to $50 million in August.

“You know, at some point, they should say, ‘You know, you did a great job. Thank you. Congratulations.’ Wouldn’t it be good?” Trump said. “I would say that if they did a good job, their philosophies are so different. But if they did a good job, I’d be happy for the country. They’ve been after this guy for years and years and years.”

Trump’s latest comments came after Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top officials briefed leaders in Congress late Monday on the Venezuela operation amid mounting concerns that the Republican administration is embarking on a new era of U.S. expansionism without consultation with lawmakers or a clear vision for running the South American country.

After the briefing, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters he does not expect the United States to deploy troops to Venezuela, saying the U.S. actions there are “not a regime change” operation. Democratic leaders said the session lacked clarity about the Trump administration’s plans for Venezuela.

Americans are split about the capture of Maduro — with many still forming opinions — according to a poll conducted by The Washington Post and SSRS using text messages over the weekend. About 4 in 10 approved of the U.S. military being sent to capture Maduro, while roughly the same share were opposed. About 2 in 10 were unsure.

Nearly half of Americans, 45%, were opposed to the U.S. taking control of Venezuela and choosing a new government for the country. About 9 in 10 Americans said the Venezuelan people should be the ones to decide the future leadership of their country.

Maduro pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges in a U.S. courtroom on Monday. U.S. forces captured Maduro and his wife early Saturday in a raid on a compound where they were surrounded by Cuban guards. Maduro’s No. 2, Delcy Rodriguez, has been sworn in as Venezuela’s acting president.

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In the days since Maduro’s ouster, Trump and top administration officials have raised anxiety around the globe that the operation could mark the beginning of a more expansionist U.S. foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere. The president in recent days has renewed his calls for an American takeover of the Danish territory of Greenland for the sake of U.S. security interests and threatened military action on Colombia for facilitating the global sale of cocaine, while his top diplomat declared the communist government in Cuba is “in a lot of trouble.”

Trump has said that his administration will now “run” Venezuela policy and would press the country’s leaders to open its vast oil reserves to American energy companies.

Colombia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Rosa Villavicencio said Tuesday she’ll meet with the U.S. Embassy’s charge d’affaires in Bogota to present him with a formal complaint over the recent threats issued by the United States.

On Sunday, Trump said he wasn’t ruling out an attack on Colombia and described its president, who’s been an outspoken critic of the U.S. pressure campaign on Venezuela, as a “sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.”

At a news conference, Villavicencio said she’s hoping to strengthen relations with the United States and improve cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking, echoing comments made Monday by several members of Colombia’s government.

“It is necessary for the Trump administration to know in more detail about all that we are doing in the fight against drug trafficking,” she said.

Meanwhile, the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom on Tuesday joined Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in defending Greenland’s sovereignty. The island is a self-governing territory of the kingdom of Denmark and thus part of the NATO military alliance.

“Greenland belongs to its people,” the statement said. “It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.”

AP writer Linley Sanders and Manuel Rueda contributed reporting.