Eight cross-country skiers from Alaska are going to the 2026 Olympics in Italy next month. U.S. Ski and Snowboard announced the team Thursday morning.

Alaskans make up one half of the 16-skier U.S. cross-country ski team. All eight of the athletes ski with Alaska Pacific University’s team in Anchorage. APU coach Erik Flora said it’s unusual for so many cross-country skiers on Team USA to come from one state, and one club. He said APU is one of the biggest, strongest ski clubs in the country.

Flora said the team has been steadily improving over the last decade. This year, he said, it’s very likely that Alaskans will bring home some medals for the United States.

Gus Schumacher, Hunter Wonders, Zanden McMullen and JC Schoonmaker are skiing for the U.S. men’s team.

Rosie Brennan, Kendall Kramer, Novie McCabe and Hailey Swirbul are skiing for the U.S. women’s team.

It’s Gus Schumacher’s second Olympics. He said the skiers themselves already knew who’d made it since the criteria is pretty clear, but he’s glad the news is out.

“Fun to share with everyone, officially,” he said. “Nice to tell people and just being sure about it.”

He’s feeling good, he said, because he thinks this year he and his teammates have a real chance to help Team USA bring home a men’s cross-country medal. The only other time the U.S. men’s team medaled at the Olympics was 50 years ago, in 1976. Earlier Friday, Schumacher earned a third-place podium result in a World Cup relay sprint race with teammate Ben Ogden in Switzerland.

“It’s exciting to be feeling good, and have a big opportunity to do something that hasn’t been done in a long time,” he said. “And yeah, it’s exciting. It’s a little daunting, but just got to go there and experience it and realize how lucky we are to be able to do this.”

It’s 37-year-old Rosie Brennan’s third Olympics. But this year is different for her. Brennan has been struggling with what she calls “mysterious health issues” for over a year.

Now, she’ll have what is likely her last chance to compete in the Olympics, she said. It’s bittersweet, since she had hoped to contend for medals in Cortina but she said that’s not her reality anymore. Now, she’d just love to have a race where she feels like herself again.

“It’s been a long time since I felt like the Rosie I’m accustomed to racing with for the last 15 years,” she said.

There were times she wasn’t sure she was even going to make it to this year’s Olympics.

Now that she’s going, she’s thankful her teammates are with her, helping her stay focused.

“They’re the people that have seen everything that I’ve gone through and have been there to help me through it,” she said. “So that just gives you such a sense of comfort on the road, and especially like in big events like the Olympics.”

Hailey Swirbul didn’t have a straight path to the Olympics this year either. She quit skiing in 2023 because she wanted to experience life outside a stressful ski racing career – she was burned out.

Then, this summer, she started coaching for APU. She was skiing and feeling strong and thinking about the limited time she has to do the things she loves. The idea of competing at the Olympics bumped around in her head for a few months until she eventually decided: Let’s do it, take the risk, go for something big.

But she said she’s thinking about the Olympics differently than she did when she competed four years ago in Beijing. Taking a couple years away from competitive racing has really given her a perspective about what’s important in life.

“Sports are important but what really matters is the people that you know are there through the ups and downs,” she said.

She’s talking about her teammates, and friends and family, but also her role coaching at APU.

When the news came out that she’d made the Olympic team, a big group of her middle school skiers made a video for her, cheering and chanting her name. She said it made her heart swell when she got it.

They inspire her to work harder, she said. The real inspiration in an endurance sport like cross-country skiing comes from seeing someone’s grit, she said. It comes from watching athletes as they dig deep to push through the suffering.

“Those kids are watching and they notice and they pay attention,” she said. “And I think it’s so important to try to lead by example with your effort.”

This year, she said, her goal at the Olympics is to race in a way that inspires the kids back home.

Three Alaskans sued state election officials Thursday, alleging that language adopted by the state for a ballot measure seeking to repeal Alaska’s open primary and ranked choice voting system is “untrue, incomplete, and partisan.”

They contend that the state’s ballot language is different from the language that was provided on the signature petitions circulated by the repeal campaign.

Bringing the lawsuit in Anchorage Superior Court are Cathy Giessel, a Republican state senator; Joelle Hall, president of the Alaska AFL-CIO union federation and a Democrat; and Wáahlaal Gidaag Barbara Blake, a Juneau resident and a nonpartisan.

“Deficiencies, partisan suasion, and falsehoods in that ballot language give rise to this litigation,” their complaint says.

Sam Curtis, a spokesperson with the Alaska Department of Law, said in a statement that the “ballot language at issue is accurate, neutral, and consistent with prior initiatives. The alternative language advanced by the plaintiffs would be confusing and inject advocacy where the law requires impartial description. We are confident the courts will uphold the state’s language.”

The plaintiffs support the state’s open primary and ranked choice voting system. It was approved by Alaska voters through an earlier ballot measure in 2020. They also support the ban on dark money contributions in state and local elections, according to the lawsuit.

Their complaint says the new ballot measure seeks to fully repeal the prior ballot measure and undo the three policies.

The complaint was filed by Anchorage attorney Scott Kendall, one of the main architects of the open primary and ranked choice system.

The state’s voting system, which includes allowing all primary candidates to appear on a single ballot, has altered the sway of political parties over election results since it was first implemented in 2022.

It changed the earlier system, where Alaskans voted in closed primaries governed by the state’s largest political parties.

The Alaska Republican Party has made repealing the current voting system one of its top goals.

Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy has endorsed the repeal, asserting that the current system is difficult for voters to understand.

The complaint names as defendants the state Division of Elections; Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, who administers elections in Alaska; and Carol Beecher, head of the Alaska Division of Elections.

Dahlstrom did not respond to a request for an interview placed with her office. The elections division referred questions to the Department of Law.

Last month, Dahlstrom, a Republican candidate for governor, said Repeal Now, the group seeking to repeal the open primary and ranked choice voting system, had gathered enough signatures to place the question on the ballot.

Dahlstrom said the repeal group gathered 42,837 qualified signatures, exceeding the requirement of having 34,098 total from residents of at least 30 state House districts.

The measure could appear before voters in Nov. 3 general election, or in the Aug. 20 primary, depending on when the Legislature adjourns.

Chair Judy Eledge and others with Repeal Now, the group seeking to repeal the voting system, did not respond to requests for comment.

Late last month, Dahlstrom also announced the proposed ballot title and summary for the measure that would appear on the ballot, the complaint says. That language led to the lawsuit.

The new complaint says the state created and adopted ballot language that provides “neither a ‘true’ nor ‘impartial’ summary” of the proposition that seeks to undo the current voting structure, violating state law and the Alaska Constitution.

The plaintiffs contend in the complaint that the ballot language misrepresents what the measure would do, including by saying it will “restore campaign finance laws.”

The proposed repeal measure would not restore or “add even a single campaign finance rule to Alaska’s statutes,” the complaint says.

“Rather (it) would fully repeal a litany of campaign finance disclosure requirements, and eliminate enhanced fines for certain campaign finance violations that were adopted by voters through” the earlier ballot measure, the complaint says.

The lawsuit also argues that the language adopted by the state fails to disclose that the measure would give parties the power to exclude voters who are not members of their party, including nonpartisan and undeclared voters, from voting in their primaries, Alaskans for Better Elections said in a prepared statement.

More than 60% of Alaska’s voters are not registered with either party and could be prohibited from voting in primaries, according to a statement from Alaskans for Better Elections, the group that installed the existing voting system.

“The language explaining what they’re voting on must be simple, complete, and impartial,” Giessel said in a statement from the group. “Alaska has uniquely strong dark money disclosure laws that ensure voters know who is spending money on political campaigns, and yet the current ballot language fails even to mention it would repeal these laws, along with open primaries and ranked choice voting.”

The repeal group recently reported that it has taken in $263,000 and has a deficit of about $10,000, in filings with Alaska Public Offices Commission.

The vast majority of its contributions has come from the Aurora Action Network, a political action committee registered with the Federal Election Commission, with a Wisconsin address.

A major expense in November included $59,000 for Upcard, a Florida-based signature-gathering company, according to the filing.

Protect Alaska’s Elections, a group formed to defend the open primary and ranked-choice system, recently reported raising $209,000, with $162,000 remaining.

Nearly all the money so far has come from Unite America PAC, a Denver-based group that was the largest funder of the campaign that enacted the open primary and ranked-choice system.

The group lists lawsuit plaintiffs Giessel and Hall as some of the deputy treasurers, in filings with the public offices commission.

A previous effort to repeal the open primary and ranked-choice system narrowly failed in the 2024 election.

In that election, proponents of open primaries and ranked choice voting spent millions of dollars on advertising, far outspending the grassroots effort to repeal.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon will take aim at a contracting program that’s become a critical part of the business portfolios for many Alaska Native corporations.

“We’re actually taking a sledgehammer to the oldest DEI program in the federal government,” Hegseth said in a video posted to social media on Jan. 16, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion policies the Trump administration and its allies have attacked extensively.

He was referring to the 8(a) Business Development Program, overseen by the Small Business Administration. Established during the Civil Rights era, 8(a) is a “federal contracting and training program for experienced small business owners who are socially and economically disadvantaged,” according to the SBA.

The program has created substantial opportunities and benefits for Alaska Native corporations, the regional and village entities established under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act to benefit tribal members holding shares in the companies. The most lucrative of those benefits is access to no-bid federal contracts, with none of the dollar limits that many other 8(a)-eligible companies are subject to, and fewer restrictions on subsidiary activities.

The head of the Native American Contractors Association, a group representing Indigenous-owned companies dealing with federal contracts, said the organization is willing to work with the Pentagon on improving the 8(a) program, but disputed the assertion it is a “DEI program.”

Members of Alaska’s congressional delegation say they support the program, and are working with the Trump administration on the issue.

Speaking in general terms, Hegseth said the program’s stated goals are “laudable,” but that 8(a) had morphed into “swamp code words for DEI race-based contracting.”

Hegseth said that effective immediately, the Pentagon would review all sole-source 8(a) contracts worth more than $20 million.

“If a contract doesn’t make us more lethal, it’s gone. We have no room in our budget for wasteful DEI contracts that don’t help us win wars,” he said in the video. “Second, we’re doing away with these pass-through schemes. We’ll make sure that every small business getting a contract is the one actually doing the work.”

The defense budget for 2026 is $901 billion, according to the Associated Press, which reported that earlier this month President Donald Trump demanded the 2027 military budget increase to $1.5 trillion.

Hegseth framed the move as part of the Pentagon’s broader “effort to transform our acquisition infrastructure” in ways that do not “line the pockets of Beltway fraudsters” or “advance the agendas of DEI apologists.”

The message added a culture war framing to an issue that, over the years, has drawn criticism from across the political spectrum. But members of the Trump administration, as well as some of its Republican allies, have stepped up their attacks on 8(a) over the previous few months.

Last June, the Justice Department announced guilty pleas from four men in a bribery scheme dating back to 2013 that involved unlawfully steering $550 million in federal contracts, enriching themselves in the process. Two of the four individuals had small businesses that were certified under the 8(a) program.

That case was held up as an example by U.S. Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler last summer, used as a justification for launching a “full-scale audit” of the 8(a) program.

“In recent years, SBA’s 8(a) Business Development Program has seen rampant fraud — and increasingly egregious instances of abuse,” Loeffler said in a prepared statement from June. “We must hold both contracting officers and 8(a) participants accountable — and start rewarding merit instead of those who game the system.”

In December, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa sent letters to several government agencies flagging instances of contract awards that appear to violate federal laws.

“Unfortunately, the 8(a) program’s no-bid, unlimited sole-source contracts are a fraud magnet,” Ernst wrote to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. “While there’s no doubt that the Biden Administration’s indifference toward 8(a) program integrity enabled swindlers and fraudsters to treat federal contracting programs like personal piggy banks, 8(a) program flaws have raised alarm bells for decades.”

Ernst cited four different Alaska Native corporations in her letters. The infractions alleged are violations related to SBA rules barring an 8(a) company from operating multiple subsidiaries working in overlapping industries at the same time.

In her letter to Hegseth, Ernst wrote that the “Pentagon awarded approximately $8.5 billion through the 8(a) program, including $6.5 billion in total 8(a) sole-source dollars and $2 billion in total 8(a) set-aside dollars.”

It’s not clear how many of those Defense appropriations, or similar ones from other government agencies, were paid to Alaska Native corporations. Tracking expenditures related to 8(a) is notoriously tricky, in part because the program is ingrained in so many separate federal entities and administered through dozens of regional SBA offices with no centralized data tracking, according to a 2016 Government Accountability Office report that looked specifically at Alaska Native corporations.

“Unlike most other 8(a) small businesses, ANC-owned firms receive an exclusion from affiliation with their larger parent corporation and therefore can be subsidiaries in large corporations that may have worldwide operation, annually generate revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and provide a range of goods and services to federal procuring agencies,” the GAO authors wrote.

The report estimated that in 2014, the 8(a) program committed $4 billion worth of federal contracts to some 344 companies owned by Alaska Native corporations.

Critics, though, have long alleged that the preferential access to lucrative federal business under 8(a) has not translated to profitable dividend payments to Indigenous shareholders or improved circumstances at the community level in Alaska. A series of articles by the investigative outlet ProPublica published in 2010 and 2011 documented the rise in 8(a) contracts among Alaska Native corporations, which drastically outpaced increases among other eligible constituencies like Lower 48 tribes.

“While contracting dollars to 8(a) firms grew nearly fivefold from 2000 to 2009, money to ANC companies in the program increased more than twentyfold — from $280 million to $5.7 billion — thanks to a rule that allows them to obtain no-bid contracts of unlimited size,” ProPublica reporter Michael Grabell wrote in one of the series’ stories.

Quinton Carroll, executive director of the Native American Contractors Association, wrote in a statement that the organization is committed to preventing waste and fraud. He disputed the thesis of Hegseth’s remarks.

“Native participation in the SBA 8(a) Program is not a DEI initiative. It is grounded in the unique political and legal status of Tribal Nations under U.S. law and fulfills longstanding federal trust and treaty obligations to Tribes, Alaska Native Corporations, and Native Hawaiian Organizations,” Carroll wrote in an email Thursday.

He added that the 8(a) program had eliminated racial preference in awards as of 2023.

“As this process moves forward, it is critical that oversight efforts preserve a program that has proven its value — strengthening national security, reinforcing the defense industrial base, and supporting economic growth in Native and surrounding communities,” Carroll said.

Besides audits and reviews, it’s not clear what permanent or legislative actions Hegseth and other agencies will take.

In the meantime, Alaska’s three Republican members of Congress say they remain staunch supporters of the 8(a) program.

“My office is actively working with the Administration, Alaska Native Corporations, and their trade organizations to ensure Washington fully understands the unique history of Alaskan participation in the 8(a) program,” Rep. Nick Begich wrote in an email Tuesday. “I am committed to continue engaging directly with Administration officials to ensure that any reforms strengthen the mission and economic opportunities that 8(a) has long provided for Alaska and the nation.”

A spokesperson for Sen. Dan Sullivan said the senator had used his position on the Senate Armed Services Committee to get commitments from Pentagon appointees “affirming that they would work to strengthen the (Department of War’s) work with 8(a) firms.”

“The senator had a productive conversation with Secretary Hegseth on these issues this weekend and will continue direct engagement with the secretary and other senior DOW officials as they look to review the 8(a) program,” said Amanda Coyne, Sullivan’s communications director, on Tuesday.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski said that overall, the 8(a) program “promotes economic self-sufficiency in some of the most geographically and economically isolated communities across the nation.”

She added that she’d received clarification from the Small Business Administration that Executive Order 14151 — Trump’s day-one policy on “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing” — doesn’t apply to the activities or businesses of Alaska Natives or American Indians.

“Oversight of all federal programs is necessary but it should not undermine lawful participation in a program that delivers high quality services to the federal government and that supports Native communities,” Murkowski said Thursday.