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The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a longtime civil rights leader, two-time Democratic presidential candidate and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, died Tuesday morning at the age of 84, his family said in a statement.

"It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of civil rights leader and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Honorable Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson Sr. He died peacefully on Tuesday morning, surrounded by his family," the statement said.

"Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world," the Jackson family said. "We shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extended family. His unwavering belief in justice, equality, and love uplifted millions."

A cause of death was not mentioned, but Jackson had suffered from multiple health problems in recent years. In 2017, Jackson revealed that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He was also treated for progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare degenerative neurological disorder. Despite health setbacks that weakened his voice and mobility, he continued advocating for civil rights and was arrested twice in 2021 while protesting the Senate filibuster rule.

REV. JESSE JACKSON HOSPITALIZED AMID HEALTH BATTLE WITH NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASE

Born Oct. 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, Jackson grew up in a segregated community. As a teenager, he excelled academically and earned a football scholarship to the University of Illinois before transferring to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, where he graduated in 1964.

He became involved in civil rights activism as a teenager and was arrested at 18 for participating in a sit-in at a segregated public library. The protest marked the beginning of his rise in the student-led movement challenging segregation across the South.

After graduation, Jackson left his studies at Chicago Theological Seminary to join the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama, and later became a key figure in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. With King’s support, he led Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, a campaign aimed at expanding economic opportunities for Black Americans.

TATIANA SCHLOSSBERG, JFK'S GRANDDAUGHTER, DIES AT 35 AFTER YEAR-AND-A-HALF LEUKEMIA BATTLE

Jackson was in Memphis in 1968 when King was assassinated. In the years that followed, Jackson founded what became the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, an organization focused on civil rights, voter registration and economic empowerment. Over decades of activism, he received dozens of honorary degrees and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000 by President Bill Clinton.

Jackson ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988. In 1984, he won 18% of the primary vote. His campaign faced controversy over an antisemitic remark he made about New York’s Jewish community.

In 1988, Jackson won nearly 7 million votes — about 29% of the total — and finished first or second in multiple Super Tuesday contests. Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis ultimately secured the nomination.

Though he never held elected office, Jackson remained an influential political figure, advocating for expanded voter registration, lobbying for Washington, D.C., statehood, and at times serving as a diplomatic envoy, including efforts to secure the release of Americans held overseas.

In 2001, Jackson publicly acknowledged that he had fathered a daughter, Ashley, with a woman affiliated with his advocacy organization. He later apologized.

Jackson is survived by his wife of more than 60 years, Jacqueline; their children — Santita, Jesse Jr., Jonathan, Yusef and Jacqueline — daughter Ashley Jackson; and grandchildren.

Public observances will be held in Chicago with final funeral arrangements yet to be announced. 

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Gavin Newsom, who delights in using Trump-like trolling tactics, is widely viewed as the Democratic Party’s presidential front-runner.

He is riding a wave of interviews and podcasts, boosted by a new memoir, and trying to make the case that as California governor he is not as liberal as his record might suggest. Unlike most of his party, for instance, he opposes trans women athletes competing against men.

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But there is a central fact about Newsom that, while it may be known to insiders and to some in his home state, is undoubtedly news to most Americans.

Gavin Newsom is dyslexic. Seriously dyslexic. And as a new profile in the New Yorker makes clear, that affects his life every single day. 

Newsom showed author Nathan Heller a "folder of his printed material, his reading from the previous evening. Almost every word of text was underlined. He flipped through a galley proof of his memoir, in which the underlining covered whole pages–the only way, he said, that he could read any book, even his own. He produced another folder filled with lined paper and covered with his handwriting; he copies all the text he underlines onto writing pads."

And then it goes on yellow index cards.

The bottom line is that the governor struggles to do what every working politician needs to routinely do, and that’s deliver speeches. He has to copy each word down and memorize it. On a TelePrompTer, "he sees the lines of text … as a single image, like a Chinese character, which he uses to recall the next line."

California congresswoman Lateefah Simon says a four-hour podcast is easier for Newsom than a 10-minute speech.

NEWSOM’S DAVOS DETOUR: 5 CRINGE MOMENTS THAT OVERSHADOWED HIGH-PROFILE SUMMIT

This disability affected his self-image growing up, when Newsom would sometimes fake being sick to be picked up early from school. "He always called himself stupid," his sister said.

During the 90-minute commute to Sacramento with his wife, a documentary filmmaker, and their four children, he makes notations that are later transferred to cards and pads.

So if Newsom were to make it to the Oval Office, he would clearly rely heavily on verbal briefings rather than poring over reports and documents.

The governor describes himself as having a hardscrabble upbringing, getting by on giant bowls of mac and cheese. One former associate told the New Yorker this was Newsom’s "‘I was born a poor Black child’ story."

In reality, he vacationed with John Paul Getty’s family, thanks to his father’s connections. Newsom’s parents separated when he was three,

There’s more to the narrative. Newsom’s sister Hilary chided him for continuing to work while their mother was engaging in assisted suicide. 

NEWSOM LASHES OUT AT TRUMP OVER 'CARNIVAL OF CHAOS' AMID MINNESOTA ICE SHOOTING FUROR

Other parts of the life story recounted here are better known. The failure of Newsom’s marriage to Kimberly Guilfoyle, then a left-leaning lawyer in the DA’s office (who later joined Fox News, had an ill-fated engagement to Donald Trump Jr. and is now ambassador to Greece). How he had an affair with the city’s appointments secretary, who was married to one of his top aides, and admitted: "Everything that you’ve heard and read is true." 

And most damaging, during the pandemic, when the governor was urging Californians to avoid large gatherings, he dined, maskless, with medical executives and a lobbyist at the super-chic French Laundry. That led to a recall effort, which Newsom trounced by 24 points.

The governor, who has repeatedly failed to resolve the state’s homelessness problem, is an unusual dude. He worked against a union petition to raise taxes on billionaires, saying it would drive them out of the state. He told President Donald Trump that keeping the border sealed was crucial, and he wanted to drop California’s sanctuary-state status.

On Election Day last year, Newsom met with aides after spending three hours reading about electric vehicle policy.

"It’s a hell of a way to start every single day," he said. "How many books I could have read! Literature! Philosophy!"

Is America ready for Gavin Newsom, who has a massive social media following, as a potential president? Are voters ready for him as a person, dyslexia and all, and as a politician, when California is so easily caricatured as a liberal La-La-Land? 

I don’t know, and I don’t think he does, either. But we may soon find out.

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The partial government shutdown stretched into another week after negotiators failed to reach a deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over the weekend.

Congress is on a weeklong recess and is not scheduled to return to Washington, D.C., until next week, leaving the shutdown's end in limbo as both parties remain far apart on key provisions.

Senate Democrats are demanding a series of reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a position they have maintained since the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good during ICE operations in Minnesota.

FETTERMAN BUCKS DEMOCRATS, SAYS PARTY PUT POLITICS OVER COUNTRY IN DHS SHUTDOWN STANDOFF

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus are standing by a list of 10 proposed reforms, including requiring ICE agents to obtain judicial warrants and limiting the use of face coverings — proposals Republicans have described as red lines.

"Americans are tired of masked agents conducting warrantless operations in their communities — secret police," Schumer said. "They're tired of chaos, secrecy and zero accountability. That is not what law and order looks like, and Republicans simply cannot pretend that this outrage does not exist."

However, ICE received additional funding under previously passed legislation, and core enforcement operations are expected to continue. Other DHS agencies, including the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Coast Guard, remain affected by the shutdown.

GOVERNMENT TO SHUT DOWN AT MIDNIGHT AFTER DEMS, WHITE HOUSE FAIL TO STRIKE DHS DEAL

The White House has led negotiations for Senate Republicans and offered Senate Democrats a proposal that they have rejected. Details of that proposal have not been made public.

"This is a Democrat-driven shutdown caused by their intransigence and desire to use government funding for services all Americans rely on as a hostage in order to achieve an unrelated political goal," a senior White House official said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said lawmakers would receive 24 hours’ notice to return if a deal is reached.

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"I think all those reasonable efforts and requests have been overshadowed by the fact that the Democrats don't seem to want to play ball," Thune said.

On the House side, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told lawmakers they would receive 48 hours’ notice to return if the Senate passes a bill. The House is also in recess until Feb. 23.

Johnson and other Republicans have expressed support for the original DHS funding bill crafted by House and Senate appropriators, but the speaker said he does not want further delays in DHS funding to be attributed to the House.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., has said Democrats will not accept a funding bill that does not include significant reforms to ICE.

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Be afraid. Be very afraid.

That’s the message that has caught fire in the media-tech world when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI).

This column, for what it’s worth, is being written by a fallible human being on a battered keyboard with no technological assistance.

It’s extremely rare–once in a blue moon–that I read a piece that completely changes my view of an issue.

Like most people, I have viewed the rise of AI with a mixture of concern, skepticism and bemusement.

DEMOCRATS ARE LOSING AI BECAUSE OF A BIG MESSAGING PROBLEM

It’s fun to conjure up images on ChatGPT, for instance, and I get that some people use it for hyperspeed research. But then you hear anecdotes about AI screwing up math problems or spewing stuff that’s simply untrue.

Sure, we’ve all seen warnings that this fast-growing technology will cost some people their jobs, but I assumed that would be mainly in Silicon Valley. The era of plane travel didn’t wipe out passenger trains or buses, though it was curtains for the horse-and-buggy business.

But now comes Matt Shuman, who works in AI, and he’s not simply joining the prediction sweepstakes. He tells us what is happening right now.

Last year, he says, "new techniques for building these models unlocked a much faster pace of progress. And then it got even faster. And then faster again. Each new model wasn't just better than the last... it was better by a wider margin, and the time between new model releases was shorter. I was using AI more and more, going back and forth with it less and less, watching it handle things I used to think required my expertise."

On Feb. 5, two major companies, OpenAI and Anthropic, released new models that Shuman likens to "the moment you realize the water has been rising around you and is now at your chest."

Bingo: "I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job. I describe what I want built in plain English, and it just ... appears. Not a rough draft I need to fix. The finished thing. I tell the AI what I want, walk away from my computer for four hours, and come back to find the work done. Done well, done better than I would have done it myself, with no corrections needed. A couple of months ago, I was going back and forth with the AI, guiding it, making edits. Now I just describe the outcome and leave."

Wait, there’s more. The new GPT model "wasn't just executing my instructions. It was making intelligent decisions. It had something that felt, for the first time, like judgment. Like taste. The inexplicable sense of knowing what the right call is that people always said AI would never have. This model has it, or something close enough that the distinction is starting not to matter."

This goes well beyond the geeky world of techies, in case you were feeling immune. "Law, finance, medicine, accounting, consulting, writing, design, analysis, customer service. Not in ten years. The people building these systems say one to five years. Some say less. And given what I've seen in just the last couple of months, I think ‘less’ is more likely."

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My knee-jerk reaction is, well, I’ll be okay because no super-smart bot could talk about news on TV or podcasts with the same attitude and verve that I do. Then I remember, even as a writer, that news organizations are increasingly relying on AI.

What about musicians who bring soul to their rock ’n roll or bop to their pop? Well, the most popular AI singer is Xania Monet. Some fans were stunned to discover she wasn’t real, though created by an actual poet, Telisha "Nikki" Jones, and most listeners didn’t care. In fact, "Xania" now has a multimillion-dollar recording deal.

One other sobering thought: "Dario Amodei, who is probably the most safety-focused CEO in the AI industry, has publicly predicted that AI will eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years."

Gulp.

This has really hit the media echo chamber, reverberating from Axios to the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, among others.

The fact that Matt Shuman presents this in a measured tone, not a sky-is-falling shout, adds to his credibility.

Anthropic, for its part, released a study that defended its Claude Opus model, "against any attempt to autonomously exploit, manipulate, or tamper" with a company’s operations "in a way that raises the risk of future catastrophic outcomes."

The report added: "We do not believe it has dangerous coherent goals that would raise the risk of sabotage, nor that its deception capabilities rise to the level of invalidating our evidence."

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Meanwhile, National Review provides a counterweight to what's called "doomerism."

For one thing, "most predictions anticipate that AI will be a top-down disruption rather than a bottom-up phenomenon."

For another, writes Noah Rothman, "there is almost no room in the discourse for undesirable outcomes that fall short of catastrophism. After all, modesty and prudence do not go viral."

And what about the positive impact?

"Rather than wiping out whole sectors, it is just as possible that the workers displaced by AI will be retained in the sectors in which they’re already employed.

It defies logic to assume that an industry that grows as rapidly as AI is predicted to will not need human data scientists, research analysts, specialized engineers, and, yes, even support and administrative staff. In addition, sectors such as health care, agriculture, and emerging industries will require as much, or even more, human talent than they currently employ."

The conservative magazine is also annoyed that "participants in this debate default to the assumption that the only solution to AI’s disaggregating potential, whatever its scale, is big government."

Well, take your pick.

If AI, which can now code well enough to reproduce itself, doesn’t wipe out zillions of jobs, or society finds ways to adapt, we can all breathe a very human sigh of relief.

And if artificial intelligence is as destructive as Shuman’s alarming article says it already is, we can’t say we weren’t warned–but perhaps we can harness it to do our jobs for us while we work three days a week with three-hour lunches.

I’m agnostic at this point, except to say it’s going to be a wild ride.

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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced he has filed a lawsuit against officials in Dallas, alleging the city failed to properly fund its police department as required by a voter-approved public safety measure.

Paxton, a Republican running for U.S. Senate, accused Dallas of unlawfully refusing to comply with Proposition U, a public safety measure approved by the city's voters in 2024.

Proposition U requires that 50% of all new annual revenue the city receives be directed toward police and fire pensions. The measure also mandates that the city maintain a minimum of 4,000 police officers — roughly 900 more than the department had in 2024.

SAN ANTONIO ENDS ITS ABORTION TRAVEL FUND AFTER NEW STATE LAW, LEGAL ACTION

The lawsuit, announced on Friday, names Dallas City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert and Chief Financial Officer Jack Ireland Jr. as defendants.

"I filed this lawsuit to ensure that the City of Dallas fully funds law enforcement, upholds public safety, and is accountable to its constituents," Paxton said in a press release.

"When voters demand more funding for law enforcement, local officials must immediately comply," he continued. "As members of law enforcement across the country increasingly face attacks from the radical Left, it’s crucial that we fully fund the brave men and women in law enforcement defending law and order in our communities. This lawsuit aims to do just that by ensuring Dallas follows its own charter and gives police officers the support they need to protect the public."

Paxton alleges Dallas officials under-calculated the total of excess money the city had in its current budget to put toward safety measures in Proposition U. The additional revenue for the 2025-2026 fiscal year should be $220 million, according to Paxton, but the city only reported approximately $61 million in excess revenue. 

The lawsuit also accuses Dallas of failing to hire an independent third-party firm to conduct an annual police compensation survey, as required under the measure.

FEDERAL JUDGE ALLOWS TEXAS AG TO CHALLENGE HARRIS COUNTY BAIL REFORMS: 'UNLEASHING CRIMINALS'

The complaint demands that the city properly allocate the excess revenue towards police pensions, officer pay and increasing the number of officers in accordance with Proposition U.

Dallas city leaders have taken action to comply with Proposition U, according to Fox 4. In December, the city council approved a 30-year, $11 billion dollar pension funding plan for the police department.

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The American Culture Quiz is a weekly test of our unique national traits, trends, history and people — including current events and the sights and sounds of the United States.

This week's quiz highlights retro recipes, Olympic origins — and a lot more. 

Can you get all 8 questions right?

Give it a try and see how you do!

CLICK HERE FOR MORE LIFESTYLE STORIES

To try your hand at more quizzes from Fox News Digital, click here. 

Also, to take our latest News Quiz — published every Friday — click here.

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Police departments nationwide offered a unique suggestion for a Valentine’s Day gift and urged people to turn in exes with outstanding warrants.

The Uxbridge Police Department in Massachusetts posted a tongue-in-cheek poem urging residents to get revenge by reporting exes with active warrants.

"Roses are red, violets are blue," the post begins. "If your ex has a warrant, we’ve got something special for you."

"This Valentine’s Day, give the gift that really delivers — a ride with flashing lights and guaranteed closure," the post continues.

FLORIDA AG INVITES PEOPLE TO ALERT HIS OFFICE IF THEIR EX IS IN US ILLEGALLY: 'WE’D BE HAPPY TO ASSIST'

The department humorously ended its post by reminding residents, "Love fades. Warrants don’t."

A heart-covered flyer included in the post provided additional instructions for residents, while cracking jokes about how the department can’t take over for Cupid, but can make the holiday memorable.

"Have an ex with a warrant?"

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"We can’t fix your love life, but we can help with outstanding warrants," the flyer states. "Send us their whereabouts — We’ll make sure they get a Valentine’s Day visit."

A jail cell is included in the flyer, along with the department's main phone number.

Earlier this week, the Bradenton Police Department in Florida shared a similar post that was liked nearly 230,000 times.

"Help us keep our community safe while mending your broken heart," the department wrote.

In California, the Santa Maria Police Department posted a video of an officer opening a heart-shaped box, only to reveal a pair of handcuffs.

"Still thinking about that ex with a felony warrant? Give us a call," the video caption reads.

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