Brittany Russell, with husband Sheldon riding, could make Preakness history with Taj Mahal

Brittany Russell is the latest woman with a chance to etch her name into horse racing history.

Two weeks after Cherie DeVaux became the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner with Golden Tempo and after Jenna Antonucci won the 2023 Belmont with Arcangelo, Russell has the chance to complete the Triple Crown sweep of female trainers when she saddles Taj Mahal in the 151st running of the Preakness Stakes on Saturday.

“It would sort of feel probably a little fairytale-like," Russell said. "Jena opened the door just a couple years ago with Arcangelo, and Cherie got it done in the Kentucky Derby. The fact that I feel like I have a live one in the Preakness here, look, there’s some pressure and I certainly hope we can do it, but it would mean an awful lot.”

Where the race is taking place and who will be aboard could make it mean even more. The Preakness is being run at Russell's home track, Laurel Park, for the first time, and husband Sheldon is the jockey. They would be the first married couple, at least as trainer and jockey, to win a Triple Crown race.

“The dream, the goal was always to get one that would take us to one of the big races, and he’s sort of taken us there,” Sheldon Russell told The Associated Press. “Just like a normal day, really.”

Most weekends, the Russells take their children to Laurel Park, which is just off I-95 between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and 6-year-old daughter Edy and 4-year-old son Rye are expected to be in attendance.

They were a little younger when they went to the Breeders' Cup at Del Mar in Southern California, in the fall of 2024 when Post Time, trained by their mother and ridden by their father, finished second in a world championship mile-long dirt race. It was a cross-country introduction to the sport.

“That was a big event for them,” Sheldon Russell said. “They didn’t really understand what we were doing there until we sort of got there. (This time) it’s not like we have to travel.”

And, unlike the usual Maryland-based horses who go into the Preakness as long shots, Taj Mahal is right in the mix of contenders in the wide-open field of 14 that does not include Golden Tempo. He opened at odds of 5-1, just behind morning line favorite Iron Honor.

Taj Mahal is unbeaten in three races, all at Laurel Park, including going wire to wire to win the Federico Tesio Stakes on April 18 by more then eight lengths.

“Immediately everybody started talking, just the way that horse won it,” Maryland Jockey Club president and CEO Bill Knauf said. “To have Brittany as our leading trainer for many years now here, she’s obviously one of the best in the country, and Sheldon has done an unbelievable job.”

Brittany Russell called it a dominant effort, and she hopes the home track advantage could be a major one. Her husband rides most of her horses, and that's another relationship edge they have over everyone else as they watch replays together and discuss strategy.

“Most of the time, it’s great,” Brittany said. "Now, look, does everything go to plan? Is everything always perfect? No, and it can be a little tricky. But at the end of the day, it’s horse racing and some things are out of our control. In this particular instance, I think it’s great. He knows the horse. He’s won on it three times. He knows the racetrack better than anybody. I think it’s a good thing.”

This is Brittany Russell's first Preakness horse in her eighth year of training. It's her husband's fourth chance to ride in the middle leg of the Triple Crown after finishing fifth aboard Chase the Chaos in 2023, sixth aboard Excession in 2020 and 10th aboard Concealed Identity in 2011.

This is different, though Sheldon Russell said he has not pondered the big-picture ramifications. His thoughts keep coming back to the little things, like, “We have a chance.”

“I guess if it happened, it’s going to be something,” he said. "We both know that he has a decent chance of showing up on the big day.”

AP horse racing: https://apnews.com/hub/horse-racing

Laurel Park, set to become a training facility, spruced things up for a chance to relive its glory days by hosting its first and probably only Preakness Stakes. __ This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.

Horses work out at Laurel Park during sunrise, Friday, May 8, 2026, in Laurel, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Jockeys ride horses out of the paddock during Laurel Park's Preakness Meet, Friday, May 8, 2026, in Laurel, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Horses work out at Laurel Park during sunrise, Friday, May 8, 2026, in Laurel, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal immigration court in Lower Manhattan has come to represent the Trump administration’s deportation campaign in New York City, with agents carrying out chaotic and sometimes violent arrests in the hallway as migrants leave hearings.

Now the court is serving as a front in a different kind of battle: one of the city’s most closely watched congressional races.

In the Democratic primary between incumbent U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman and former city Comptroller Brad Lander — for a district so solidly blue that the June primary is considered its deciding election — both candidates have made the Trump administration's treatment of migrants at 26 Federal Plaza a feature of their campaigns, but with decidedly different approaches.

Goldman — an heir to the Levi Strauss denim fortune and former prosecutor who was lead counsel for President Donald Trump’s first impeachment — has approached the topic with a lawyerly bent that leverages the power of his office.

He sued the administration to open immigration detention centers to members of Congress, conducts oversight visits and turned his office across the street into what he's called a triage center that connects immigrants with advocacy groups and legal services.

After a recent visit, Goldman credited his oversight work as a reason conditions at a holding facility inside the building have improved.

“What you see from our multipronged approach is the way that I push back, which is not performative, but it is substantive,” he told The Associated Press outside 26 Federal Plaza after he toured the detention center that is closed to the public.

Meanwhile, Lander — a progressive city government stalwart who is running with the support of Mayor Zohran Mamdani — has acted as protester and court observer, watching hearings and attempting to accompany immigrants out of the building past masked federal agents.

His efforts have gotten him arrested twice, the most recent headed to a trial scheduled to take place just before the primary.

“I would characterize his oversight function as strongly worded letters," Lander told AP when asked about Goldman's approach. “And my oversight function is: Show up with hundreds of your neighbors and bear witness and accompany people and demand access and stay until they give it to you or they arrest you.”

Lander's first arrest happened last year when he linked arms with a person authorities were attempting to detain in the hallway outside the court. Lander was running for mayor at the time, and the arrest gave his campaign a jolt of excitement at a time when Mamdani and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo were considered the front-runners in the race.

A few months later, after losing the mayoral primary but not long before launching his congressional campaign, Lander was arrested again during a large protest at the building and hit with a misdemeanor obstruction charge.

But instead of accepting a deal that would have made the case go away in six months, Lander instead opted to go to trial. He said the case would extract information about the federal government's immigration enforcement efforts at the building.

Goldman dismissed Lander's efforts as performative.

"I don't understand why someone would reject a dismissal of a case so that he can have a public trial, ostensibly to ask for information that I could provide him whenever he wanted because I have the answers from doing my oversight,” Goldman said.

This week, Lander returned to 26 Federal Plaza to sit in on hearings. But just before entering the building, his team got word that federal agents were lingering outside an immigration hearing at a different federal courtroom in a building across the street. He raced over and eventually found the agents, who were wearing masks and milling around in the court's waiting room.

“The challenge is trying to figure out who they're going to arrest,” Lander said, popping out of the hearing, where he sat in a back row and took notes. After a while, the agents walked away from the hearing room, down a hallway and exited the floor. It was not clear why they left.

“Maybe we have different styles," Lander said of his opponent after the agents departed. He later went back across the street and filmed a campaign video in front of 26 Federal Plaza.

FILE - Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., left, speaks to the federal agents at the Jacob K. Javits federal building, June 18, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)

FILE - New York City Comptroller Brad Lander is arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and FBI agents outside federal immigration court, June 17, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Olga Fedorova, File)

FILE - Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol, July 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, file)

Candidate for U.S. Congress Brad Lander appears outside a Federal Immigration Courtroom, in New York, Monday, May 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)