VAL DI FIEMME, Italy (AP) — Ben Ogden snapped a selfie, handed off his Olympic silver medal and the plush mascots of Tina and Milo, and then did what few would dare.
He launched into a backflip off the podium.
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Gold medalist Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, center, of Norway, poses flanked by silver medalist Ben Ogden, of the United States, left, and bronze medalist Oskar Opstad Vike, of Norway, on the podium of the cross-country skiing men's sprint classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, from right, Ben Ogden, of the United States, and Oskar Opstad Vike, of Norway, compete in the final of the cross-country skiing men's sprint classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Silver medalist Ben Ogden, of the United States, does a back flip from the podium while gold medalist Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, and bronze medalist Oskar Opstad Vike, also of Norway, right, look on after the cross-country skiing men's sprint classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Gold medalist Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, center, of Norway, poses flanked by silver medalist Ben Ogden, of the United States, left, and bronze medalist Oskar Opstad Vike, of Norway, on the podium of the cross-country skiing men's sprint classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, from right, Ben Ogden, of the United States, and Oskar Opstad Vike, of Norway, compete in the final of the cross-country skiing men's sprint classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Ben Ogden, of the United States, poses after winning the silver medal in the cross-country skiing men's sprint classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Silver medalist Ben Ogden, of the United States, does a back flip from the podium while gold medalist Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, and bronze medalist Oskar Opstad Vike, also of Norway, right, look on after the cross-country skiing men's sprint classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
The 25-year-old American lost his hat mid-rotation, amusing the two Norwegians on the podium who followed with playful jumps of their own after Tuesday's sprint race. The celebration marked a breakthrough for American cross-country skiing — and, Ogden hopes, a catalyst for the future.
Before the Milan Cortina Winter Games, an American man hadn’t won an Olympic medal in the sport in 50 years. Ogden believes a generational breakthrough is now possible.
“There’s been a really strong group of younger men coming up through the sport that I’ve had the pleasure of racing against for my whole life,” Ogden told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
“I’ve seen it many times throughout the course of our careers,” added Ogden, who has a degree in mechanical engineering. “It just takes one of us to crack through to that next level. And then all of a sudden, it’s like an onslaught of teammates following.”
Ogden finished Tuesday's race 0.8 seconds behind Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, the Norwegian star who claimed his second gold of the Milan Cortina Games and is targeting a record career haul.
As Klaebo sprinted up the final hill, Ogden broke from the other competitors and unleashed a powerful finishing kick.
“I just powered over the finish line and ended up getting sort of close to Johannes," Ogden said. "But he won outright, and he had the gas on the hill that nobody else had.”
The last U.S. Olympic medal in men’s cross-country skiing was a silver by Bill Koch at the 1976 Innsbruck Games. Ogden grew up in the same southern Vermont area as Koch and trained at his academy in the Green Mountains. Their families are friendly.
Ogden, who comes from a family of skiers, said he’s not an outlier as U.S. competitors continue to climb the world rankings. He is currently ranked fifth in the World Cup sprint standings — behind four Norwegians — and 15th overall. Other peers gaining ground and international recognition include J.C. Schoonmaker and Gus Schumacher, followed by a crop of younger athletes.
On the U.S. team, Ogden said, success is contagious. He cited Schoonmaker’s 2023 World Cup podium finish as an example.
“As soon as one of us did it, the others were quick to follow suit,” he said. “So I’m really hopeful and excited for what’s coming with our group.”
The backflip celebration was done on impulse.
“When I was young, I had a couple of years where I wanted nothing more than to learn how to do a backflip,” Ogden said. “Yesterday, when I was up there getting ready to go on the podium, I thought to myself, man, no better opportunity to show off my hard-cultivated skills than right now. So I decided to go for it.”
His mother, Andrea, watched from the stands in northern Italy, keeping her fingers crossed on both hands during the race. But Ogden’s thoughts were also with his father, who died three years ago at age 56.
“It was spectacular to have my mom in the stands,” Ogden said. “It’s a confusing set of emotions for me because I certainly wish and crave my father’s presence at moments like those. I miss him every single day. … I’ve been telling everybody and reminding myself that he knew I was capable of this long before I ever did.”
Back home in Vermont, fans gathered before dawn to watch the race.
“I saw some videos — there were all kinds of people up in Vermont at 5 a.m. watching the race,” Ogden said. “From the videos, it might as well have been 9 p.m. They were as amped up and celebrating as much as any.”
Ogden hopes the silver medal will help grow the sport in the United States, which this season will host the final World Cup event at Lake Placid, New York.
“My hopes for this and the rest of this championship are that we can just get more eyes on cross-country skiing in the U.S. and get more young kids fired up about it,” he said. “The U.S., being such a giant country, could have 10 times that success if we could just continue to grow the sport.”
This story has been corrected to show it was the sprint race on Tuesday, not the skiathlon.
AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
Gold medalist Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, center, of Norway, poses flanked by silver medalist Ben Ogden, of the United States, left, and bronze medalist Oskar Opstad Vike, of Norway, on the podium of the cross-country skiing men's sprint classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, from right, Ben Ogden, of the United States, and Oskar Opstad Vike, of Norway, compete in the final of the cross-country skiing men's sprint classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Ben Ogden, of the United States, poses after winning the silver medal in the cross-country skiing men's sprint classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Silver medalist Ben Ogden, of the United States, does a back flip from the podium while gold medalist Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, and bronze medalist Oskar Opstad Vike, also of Norway, right, look on after the cross-country skiing men's sprint classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
The immigration crackdown in Minnesota that led to mass detentions, protests and two deaths is coming to an end, border czar Tom Homan said Thursday.
“As a result of our efforts here Minnesota is now less of a sanctuary state for criminals,” Homan said at a news conference.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched Operation Metro Surge on Dec. 1.
Federal authorities say the sweeps focused on the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area have led to the arrest of more than 4,000 people. While the Trump administration has called those arrested “dangerous criminal illegal aliens,” many people with no criminal records, including children and U.S. citizens, have also been detained.
About 6 in 10 U.S. adults say President Donald Trump has “gone too far” in sending federal immigration agents into U.S. cities, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
Here's the latest:
Trump is inviting the leaders to talks in Florida at a moment when the administration is spotlighting what it sees as concerning Chinese influence in the region.
The summit was confirmed by a White House official who was not authorized to comment publicly about the yet-to-be formally announced gathering of leaders. It will also come just weeks before Trump is expected to travel to Beijing for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The Trump administration has made it a priority to assert dominance over the Western Hemisphere, where China has long built influence through massive loans and high trade volumes.
The administration last month launched an audacious military operation to oust Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and whisk him and his wife to New York to face federal drug conspiracy charges.
— Aamer Madhani
— Gov. Tim Walz: “The long road to recovery starts now. The impact on our economy, our schools, and people’s lives won’t be reversed overnight. That work starts today.”
— Sen. Amy Klobuchar: “Minnesotans stood together, stared down ICE, and never blinked.”
— Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey: “They thought they could break us, but a love for our neighbors and a resolve to endure can outlast an occupation.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison says it’s highly unusual for the state to be shut out of investigations of shootings like they have in the aftermath of the deaths of two Americans.
Ellison is appearing at a Senate hearing to look at immigration enforcement in the state.
He was asked by Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan about what type of cooperation the state has had with the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department on investigations into the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
“We haven’t had any cooperation up until now which is really unusual,” Ellison said.
Peters also asked whether the federal government was stonewalling the state and Ellison agreed.
Despite their strong support for Trump, Republicans are increasingly alone in supporting Trump on his immigration enforcement tactics, a new AP-NORC poll finds.
About 6 in 10 independents now say Trump has “gone too far” in deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, an apparent increase from 46% in an AP-NORC poll in April.
Only about 2 in 10 independents have a positive view of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Having the border shut, that’s OK. But what Trump is doing with ICE and Homeland Security? You don’t go yanking people out of cars. You don’t go shooting people,” said independent Rick Kinnett, a 60-year-old Navy veteran from Crawfordsville, Indiana.
Brooke Rollins and HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr., last month unveiled new dietary guidelines, which back away from long-standing advice to limit saturated fats and urge Americans to choose whole-food sources of saturated fat — such as meat, whole-fat dairy or avocados — while continuing to limit saturated fat consumption to no more than 10% of daily calories.
Those guidelines could have a big impact on U.S. schools districts that receive federal funding for school meals and must follow rules set by the Agriculture Department.
“We expect the actual rules to come out probably in four to six weeks, but we are working very diligently on that right now,” Rollins said Thursday. “We want to ensure that we can move very quickly as we’re working to get better, more nutritious, more wholesome foods into our schools.”
But that still left more than 2,000 on Minnesota’s streets. The border czar said Thursday that the drawdown began this week and will continue next week.
He also said he plans to stay in Minnesota to oversee the drawdown.
Homan took over the Minnesota operation in late January after the second fatal shooting by federal immigration agents and amid growing political backlash and questions about how the operation was being run.
Judge Roy K. Altman of the federal court for the Southern District of Florida rejected an attempt by Britain’s national broadcaster to delay proceedings. He set a February 2027 trial date.
Trump filed a lawsuit in December over the way the BBC edited a speech he gave on Jan. 6, 2021. The claim seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation and $5 billion for unfair trade practices.
The speech took place before some of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress was poised to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election that Trump falsely alleged was stolen from him.
The BBC had broadcast the documentary — titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” — days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
The broadcaster has apologized to Trump over the edit of the Jan. 6 speech. But the publicly funded BBC rejects claims it defamed him.
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The Republican Kentucky senator says he called an oversight hearing to evaluate “the facts” around immigration enforcement in Minnesota and across the country.
Paul said during his opening statement that any time an American citizen is killed is a “tragedy” but made clear that filming government officials in a free society is a “constitutional right” and not “an act of aggression.”
Paul criticized what he called a “rush to judgment” after the shootings and said while he supports Immigration and Customs Enforcement that they had work to do to “restore public trust.”
The immigration crackdown in Minnesota that led to mass detentions, protests and two deaths is coming to an end, border czar Tom Homan said Thursday.
“As a result of our efforts here Minnesota is now less of a sanctuary state for criminals,” Homan said at a news conference.
“I have proposed and President Trump has concurred, that this surge operation conclude,” he continued.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched Operation Metro Surge on Dec. 1.
Federal authorities say the sweeps focused on the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area have led to the arrest of more than 4,000 people. While the Trump administration has called those arrested “dangerous criminal illegal aliens,” many people with no criminal records, including children and U.S. citizens, have also been detained.
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While most U.S. adults think Trump has overstepped on immigration enforcement in cities, only about one-quarter of Republicans agree, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
About half of Republicans say Trump’s actions have been “about right,” while about one-quarter of Republicans say he hasn’t gone far enough.
Teviss Crawford, a 20-year-old student from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said he’s pleased with Trump’s leadership on immigration, although he wishes the president could find a way to deport more immigrants who are in the country illegally.
“I don’t think the deportations have been enough, to be honest. I think it’s much too lax,” he said of Trump’s crackdown.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading a large U.S. delegation this week to the Munich Security Conference where increasingly nervous European leaders are hoping for at least a brief reprieve from President Trump’s often inconsistent policies and threats that have roiled transatlantic relations and the post-World War II international order.
A year after Vice President JD Vance stunned assembled dignitaries at the same venue with a verbal assault on many of America’s closest allies in Europe, accusing them of imperiling Western civilization with left-leaning domestic programs and not taking responsibility for their own defense, Rubio plans to take a less contentious but philosophically similar approach when he addresses the annual gathering of world leaders and national security officials Saturday, U.S. officials say.
The State Department’s formal announcement of Rubio’s trip offered no details about his two-day stop in Munich, after which he will visit Slovakia and Hungary. But the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the trip, said America’s top diplomat intends to focus on areas of cooperation on shared global and regional concerns, including in the Middle East and Ukraine as well as China, an economic powerhouse seeking to take advantage of the uncertainty in U.S.-European ties.
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— Matthew Lee
The Interior Department has distributed only a fraction of the $150 million Congress set aside in last year’s sprawling spending bill for the celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary.
A spokesperson for the department said Wednesday that the single biggest recipient of funding is America250, which has gotten $25 million of the money set aside in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for celebrations and commemorations of America 250. The money went to Interior to distribute but did not specify recipients or amounts. The spokesperson said decisions are being made on how to disperse the money.
The acknowledgement comes one day after a congressional subcommittee hearing where Democrats raised questions about how much public funding Freedom 250, created by President Donald Trump, has received and whether that was to the detriment of America250.
Freedom 250 has received less than $4 million from the pool, said someone with knowledge of the money that organization has received.
Four members of Idaho’s congressional delegation sent a joint letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum last September requesting money be dispersed to A250 commissions in all 56 states and territories to support local history organizations. The congressional delegation hasn’t received a response.
— Gary Fields
“I can tell you President Nicolás Maduro is the legitimate president,” Venezuela’s Delcy Rodriguez said in an NBC News interview.
With the comments, Rodriguez is continuing to make the case that last month’s U.S. operation to capture Maduro last was a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty even as the Trump administration says she’s cooperating with their effort to overhaul Venezuela’s vast oil industry.
U.S. forces whisked Maduro and his wife to New York to face drug conspiracy charges. Rodriguez in the interview said the Maduros are “innocent.”
Rodriguez met with Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Wednesday in Caracas.
A new AP-NORC poll also finds the Republican Party’s advantage on Trump’s signature political issue has shrunk since October.
About 3 in 10 U.S. adults trust Republicans to do a better job handling immigration, while a similar share say the same of Democrats. An additional 3 in 10, roughly, don’t think either party would do a better job handling the issue, and about 1 in 10 say both parties would handle it equally well.
In October, 39% of U.S. adults said they trusted the Republicans to better handle immigration, while 26% said that about the Democrats, giving the GOP a 13-point edge. In the new poll, the difference between the parties is only 4 points.
About 6 in 10 U.S. adults say President Donald Trump has “gone too far” in sending federal immigration agents into U.S. cities, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
The new polling comes as the nation watches the human impact of Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, where thousands of heavily armed masked agents have descended upon the capital city to find and remove immigrants in the country illegally.
There have also been numerous violent clashes with protesters, including two U.S. citizens were killed by federal agents in recent weeks.
About 6 in 10 Americans also believe Trump has “gone too far” when it using federal law enforcement at public protests in U.S. cities, the poll found.
President Donald Trump speaks during an event on coal power in the East Room of the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Donald Trump speaks during an event on coal power in the East Room at the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
