Anna Odine Stroem wins her 2nd gold at Milan Cortina in Olympic debut of women's large hill ski jump

PREDAZZO, Italy (AP) — Anna Odine Stroem made the Olympic debut of women's large hill ski jumping a night to remember for Norway.

Stroem sailed to her second gold medal of the Milan Cortina Games as Norway took the top two spots, with Eirin Maria Kvandal winning silver. Slovenian favorite Nika Prevc settled for bronze.

Stroem said she hadn’t dared to believe she would leave the Olympics with two gold medals and a silver as she praised her team and Kvandal.

“It’s been an unbelievable championship for me. I don’t think much can top this,” Stroem said. “We’ve pushed each other all the way, and now we’ve pushed each other to the top of the podium.”

Women’s ski jumping on the normal hill was first included in the 2014 Sochi Games but until this year, the contest on the large hill had been limited in the Olympics to men.

“These girls — 10 or 15 years ago — had to fight against resistance in the ski jumping system just to be allowed to compete,” said Norway's Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, who watched the event. “And now they’re jumping like this. It’s impressive, and it’s exactly how it should be.”

Stroem won with a final jump of 132 meters (433 feet). Kvandal's jump was 133.5 meters (438 feet), but Stroem made up for it in style points from the judges and compensation points for wind.

The three jumpers on the podium have amassed a lot of hardware at the Predazzo Ski Jumping Stadium.

Stroem won gold on the normal hill, edging out Prevc, who comes from a famous ski jumping family.

They reversed positions on the podium in the mixed team event with Prevc and her brother, Domen, winning gold with Anze Lanisek and Nika Vodan. Stroem and Kvandal shared silver in the mixed team event with Marius Lindvik and Kristoffer Eriksen Sundal.

Prevc is the defending world champion on both hills, the world record holder for the longest jump by a woman and the defending World Cup champion. She holds a significant lead in this season's standings.

But she struggled to hit the big jumps she’s known for — a problem she also had on the normal hill.

After the first round on the large hill, Prevc was fifth behind four Norwegians.

Kvandal, a two-time world champion, led. Stroem was second and Silje Opseth was behind her.

Prevc was able to overcome the third- and fourth-place jumpers, but couldn't make up for the point deficit after her first jump to climb above third.

The two medals gave Norway 26 in these Games, four more than second-place Italy. Norway also leads in gold medals with 12 to Italy’s eight.

It was the first ski jumping competition in this Olympics without a Japanese athlete on the podium. Nozomi Maruyama, who won bronze in the normal hill and in mixed team, finished eighth.

As the Norwegians celebrated, a weeping Prevc got a bear hug from her father, a ski jumping referee.

Prevc will leave this Olympics with a gold, silver and bronze. She became the first sister to join a brother — two in her case — to have won Olympic medals in the sport.

She followed in the footsteps of her brothers, Peter, a four-time Olympic medalist who won gold in the mixed team jump four years ago in Beijing, and Cene, who shared a team silver with his brother in that Olympics.

She and Domen then became the first brother and sister to win a ski jumping medal at the same Olympics when they won the mixed team event.

Domen won the men's large hill on Saturday and will jump in the debut of the men's super team event Monday.

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

Anna Odine Stroem, of Norway, soars through the air during her first round jump of the ski jumping women's large hill individual at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Predazzo, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Silver medalist Eirin Maria Kvandal, of Norway, right, hugs gold medalist Anna Odine Stroem, also of Norway, after the ski jumping women's large hill individual at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Predazzo, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Nika Prevc, of Slovenia, soars through the air during her first round jump of the ski jumping women's large hill individual at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Predazzo, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Gold medalist Anna Odine Stroem, of Norway, applauds as silver medalist Eirin Maria Kvandal, also of Norway, celebrates and bronze medalist Nika Prevc, of Slovenia, right, applauds after the ski jumping women's large hill individual at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Predazzo, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

Anna Odine Stroem, of Norway, reacts after winning the gold medal in the ski jumping women's large hill individual at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Predazzo, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

WASHINGTON (AP) — When acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed off on a nearly $1.8 billion fund meant to compensate President Donald Trump's allies for alleged political prosecution, he may have pleased his boss.

But the eyebrow-raising move — the latest in his push to prove his loyalty to Trump — has agitated the same Republican lawmakers if he is nominated for the permanent job.

Blanche insists he’s not auditioning for the job of attorney general. But a succession of splashy steps the Justice Department has taken under his watch since he took the position on an acting basis last month, including an indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, has left no doubt about the impression he’s hoping to make on the president who appointed him.

The fund in particular has put Blanche at the center of a Republican firestorm at a time when he aims to establish himself as the perfect person for the job for the remainder of Trump’s term. And it sharpened concerns from Democrats and other Blanche critics that he has not shed his mantle as the president’s personal attorney.

“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — Take your pick,” Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former majority leader, said in a statement.

A former federal prosecutor in New York, Blanche came to public prominence for his lead role on Trump's defense team, including during the Republican's hush money trial in New York. That perch afforded him, he has said, a firsthand look at what he contends was the weaponization of the criminal justice system against Trump.

He was brought into the Justice Department as deputy attorney general, the No. 2 job, then was elevated last month after Trump ousted Pam Bondi.

Now he finds himself the latest Trump-appointed attorney general to simultaneously confront expectations from subordinates to uphold institutional norms and demands from the president to do his bidding.

Trump's first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was forced out after the 2018 midterms after infuriating the president over his recusal from an investigation into ties between Russia and the 2016 presidential campaign. Another, William Barr, resigned after their relationship fizzled over Barr's refusal to back Trump's baseless claims of massive election fraud. Bondi was removed after struggling to bring successful prosecutions against Trump's political opponents.

Two weeks after becoming acting attorney general, Blanche announced the appointment of Joseph diGenova, an 81-year-old former Justice Department prosecutor from the Reagan administration, to a special position inside the department. He'll oversee a Florida-based investigation into whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired over the last decade to undermine Trump.

“At some point, at the right time, that will be made public and the American people will see exactly what happened to this administration and President Trump over the past decade," Blanche told Fox News.

Prior government reviews of the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation, a centerpiece of the current conspiracy investigation, have failed to produce criminal charges against senior officials or evidence of criminal conduct by them. It's not clear what, if any, new information the continuing investigation has developed.

The Justice Department also last month obtained an indictment charging Comey, a Trump foe whose prosecution the president has long called for, with threatening Trump through a social media photo of seashells in the numerical arrangement of “86 47" — a case legal experts say will be challenging for prosecutors. Comey has said he wouldn't be surprised if the Justice Department pursues additional indictments.

In other moves, Blanche announced an indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that has been the target of conservative outrage, with misleading donors about its activities, and has publicly defended a Justice Department crackdown on leaks to the news media, including subpoenas to reporters.

Arguably the most audacious demonstration of loyalty to Trump came this week when the Justice Department announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund to compensate people who feel they've been unjustly investigated and prosecuted, coupled with a guarantee of immunity from tax audits for Trump and his eldest sons.

As Republican concerns grew, Blanche held a tense meeting with GOP lawmakers Thursday. Shortly afterward, Senate Republicans abruptly left Washington without voting on a roughly $70 billion bill to fund immigration enforcement agencies.

Blanche, who defended the fund at a congressional hearing this week, has said anyone who believes they've been persecuted can apply for compensation regardless of political affiliation. But the fund has been widely understood as a boon to Trump allies investigated during the Biden administration.

“It’s pretty clear that he’s not the attorney general for the United States as much as he's the attorney general for President Trump,” said Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington University law professor and senior Justice Department official in the 1980s. He said Blanche would get an A+ if report cards were issued for fealty to Trump.

David Laufman, a former chief of staff to the deputy attorney general in President George W. Bush's administration, said that rather than protecting the Justice Department's independence, Blanche has been a “willing and ardent accomplice for carrying out any partisan or corrupt scheme the White House may devise.”

Blanche’s supporters dismiss the suggestion he is trying to curry favor with Trump to secure the permanent job.

“What he is doing is he is seeking justice based on facts and the law,” said Jay Town, who served as a U.S. attorney in Alabama during the first Trump administration. “And I don’t think that will ever change about him, whether he is the attorney general going forward or doesn’t spend another day in the administration. He is an honorable man and anybody that knows him knows that to be true.”

Blanche also says he is not angling to keep his job or feeling pressure to placate Trump.

He has told reporters he would be honored to be nominated but, "if he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say, ‘Thank you very much. I love you, sir.’ I don’t have any goals or aspirations beyond that.”

In recent days, he's functioned as the fund's public face and most visible defender, a role consistent with his comfort in the spotlight. He sometimes holds multiple press conferences a week and grants interviews to a variety of news outlets, a contrast to Bondi, who largely stuck to Fox News appearances.

His defenders say his experience as a federal prosecutor has made him a more sophisticated communicator for the department than Bondi, but his statements have at times invited backlash, including his refusal to rule out that violent Jan. 6 rioters could be eligible for payouts.

Though Blanche will appoint the five commissioners tasked with processing claims, his precise role in the fund’s implementation is unclear. He told CNN it was developed through negotiations with Trump’s private lawyers, not him.

For some Democrats, that's a difference without a distinction.

“Mr. Attorney General, you are acting today like the president's personal attorney," Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, told Blanche during a combative exchange in the Senate hearing, "and that's the whole problem."

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche arrives for a closed-door meeting with Republican senators who are expected to abandon a proposal for $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Donald Trump's ballroom after it has failed to win enough party support, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche arrives for a closed-door meeting with Republican senators who are expected to abandon a proposal for $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Donald Trump's ballroom after it has failed to win enough party support, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)