Jesse Jackson’s life was defined by *** relentless fight for justice and equality. I was born in Greenville, South Carolina, uh, in rampant radical racial segregation. Had to be taught to go to the back of the bus or be arrested. In 1965, he began working for Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. I learned so much from him, such *** great source of inspiration. Both men were in Memphis in April 1968 to support striking sanitation workers. King and other civil rights leaders were staying at the Lorraine Motel. He said, Jesse, you know, you don’t even have on *** shirt and tie. You don’t even have on *** tie. We’re going to dinner. I said, Doc, you know it does not require *** tie. Just an appetite and we laughed. I said, Doc, and the bullet hit. With King gone, his movement was adrift. Years later, Jackson formed Operation Push, pressuring businesses to open up to black workers and customers and adding more focus on black responsibility, championed in the 1972 concert Watt Stacks. Watts. The Reverend set his sights on the White House in 1984. 1st thought of as *** marginal candidate, Jackson finished third in the primary race with 18% of the vote. He ran again in 1988, doubling his vote count and finishing in 2nd in the Democratic race. At the time, it was the farthest any black candidate had gone in *** presidential contest. But 20 years later when President Barack ran, we were laying the groundwork for that season. In 2017, Jackson had *** new battle to fight, Parkinson’s disease, but it did. It stop him. Late in life, he was still fighting. He was arrested in Washington while demonstrating for voting rights. His silent presence at the trial of Ahmaud Arbery’s killers prompted defense lawyers to ask that he leave the courtroom. Jackson stayed from the Jim Crow South through the turbulent 60s and into the Black Lives Matter movement. Jesse Jackson was *** constant, unyielding voice for justice.
Children of the late Rev. Jesse Jackson honor his legacy as memorial services set for next week
From jokes about his well-known stubbornness to tears grieving the loss of a parent, the adult children of the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. gave an emotional tribute Wednesday honoring the legacy of the late civil rights icon, a day after his death.Jackson died Tuesday at his home in Chicago after battling a rare neurological disorder that affected his ability to move and speak. Standing on the steps outside his longtime Chicago home, five of his children, including U.S. Rep. Jonathan Jackson, remembered him not only for his decades-long work in civil rights but also for his role as spiritual leader and father.“Our father is a man who dedicated his life to public service to gain, protect and defend civil rights and human rights to make our nation better, to make the world more just, our people better neighbors with each other,” said his youngest son, Yusef Jackson, fighting back tears at times.Memorial services were set for next week, with two days of him lying in repose at the Chicago headquarters of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the organization he founded. A public memorial dubbed “The People’s Celebration” was planned for Feb. 27 at the House of Hope, a South Side church with a 10,000-person arena. Homegoing services were set for the following day at Rainbow PUSH, according to the organization.Jackson rose to prominence six decades ago as a protege of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., joining the voting rights march King led from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. King later dispatched Jackson to Chicago to launch Operation Breadbasket, a Southern Christian Leadership Conference effort to pressure companies to hire Black workers.Jackson was with King on April 4, 1968, when the civil rights leader was killed.Remembrances have poured in worldwide for Jackson, including flowers left outside the home where large portraits of a smiling Jackson had been placed. But his children said he was a family man first.“Our father took fatherhood very seriously,” his eldest child, Santita Jackson, said. “It was his charge to keep.”His children’s reflections were poetic in the style of the late civil rights icon — filled with prayer, tears and a few chuckles, including about disagreements that occur when growing up in a large, lively family.His eldest son, Jesse Jackson Jr., a former congressman, said his father’s funeral services would welcome all, “Democrat, Republican, liberal and conservative, right wing, left wing — because his life is broad enough to cover the full spectrum of what it means to be an American.”The family asked only that those attending be respectful.“If his life becomes a turning point in our national political discourse, amen,” he said. “His last breath is not his last breath.”
CHICAGO —
From jokes about his well-known stubbornness to tears grieving the loss of a parent, the adult children of the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. gave an emotional tribute Wednesday honoring the legacy of the late civil rights icon, a day after his death.
Jackson died Tuesday at his home in Chicago after battling a rare neurological disorder that affected his ability to move and speak. Standing on the steps outside his longtime Chicago home, five of his children, including U.S. Rep. Jonathan Jackson, remembered him not only for his decades-long work in civil rights but also for his role as spiritual leader and father.
“Our father is a man who dedicated his life to public service to gain, protect and defend civil rights and human rights to make our nation better, to make the world more just, our people better neighbors with each other,” said his youngest son, Yusef Jackson, fighting back tears at times.
Memorial services were set for next week, with two days of him lying in repose at the Chicago headquarters of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the organization he founded. A public memorial dubbed “The People’s Celebration” was planned for Feb. 27 at the House of Hope, a South Side church with a 10,000-person arena. Homegoing services were set for the following day at Rainbow PUSH, according to the organization.
Jackson rose to prominence six decades ago as a protege of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., joining the voting rights march King led from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. King later dispatched Jackson to Chicago to launch Operation Breadbasket, a Southern Christian Leadership Conference effort to pressure companies to hire Black workers.
Jackson was with King on April 4, 1968, when the civil rights leader was killed.
Remembrances have poured in worldwide for Jackson, including flowers left outside the home where large portraits of a smiling Jackson had been placed. But his children said he was a family man first.
“Our father took fatherhood very seriously,” his eldest child, Santita Jackson, said. “It was his charge to keep.”
His children’s reflections were poetic in the style of the late civil rights icon — filled with prayer, tears and a few chuckles, including about disagreements that occur when growing up in a large, lively family.
Scott Olson
The children of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson Sr., Jesse Jackson Jr., Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-IL), Sanita Jackson, Ashley Jackson, and Yusef Jackson speak about their father outside their parents’ home on February 18, 2026, in Chicago, Illinois. Jesse Jackson Sr. died early yesterday morning. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
His eldest son, Jesse Jackson Jr., a former congressman, said his father’s funeral services would welcome all, “Democrat, Republican, liberal and conservative, right wing, left wing — because his life is broad enough to cover the full spectrum of what it means to be an American.”
The family asked only that those attending be respectful.
“If his life becomes a turning point in our national political discourse, amen,” he said. “His last breath is not his last breath.”
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a child of Southern segregation who rose to national prominence as a powerful voice for Black economic and racial equality, has died.
Jackson, who had battled the neurodegenerative condition progressive supranuclear palsy for more than a decade, died at home surrounded by family. His daughter, Santita Jackson, confirmed his death with the Associated Press. He was 84. Jackson was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017 before the PSP diagnosis was confirmed in April.
“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 in a statement posted online. “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, and we ask you to honor his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by.”
Handsome and dynamic, an orator with a flair for memorable rhyme, Jackson was the first Black candidate for president to attract a major following, declaring in 1984 that “our time has come” and drawing about 3.5 million votes in Democratic primaries — roughly 1 in 5 of those cast.
Four years later, using the slogan “Keep hope alive,” he ran again, winning 7 million votes, second only to the eventual nominee, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis. His hourlong speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention brought many delegates to tears and provided the gathering’s emotional high point.
Rev. Jesse Jackson and his wife, Jacqueline, acknowledge the cheers of delegates and supporters before his emotional speech to the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta on July 20, 1988.
(John Duricka / Associated Press)
“Every one of these funny labels they put on you, those of you who are watching this broadcast tonight in the projects, on the corners — I understand,” he said. “Call you outcast, low down, you can’t make it, you’re nothing, you’re from nobody, subclass, underclass; when you see Jesse Jackson, when my name goes in nomination, your name goes in nomination.”
For nearly a generation, from the 1970s into the 1990s, that ability to absorb the insults and rejection suffered by Black Americans and transmute them into a defiant rhetoric of success made Jackson the most prominent Black figure in the country. Both beneficiary and victim of white America’s longstanding insistence on having one media-anointed leader serve as the spokesman for tens of millions of Black citizens, he drew adulation and jeers but consistently held the spotlight.
Supporters greeted his speeches with chants of “Run, Jesse, run.” Opponents tracked every misstep, from audits of his grants in the 1970s to his use of the anti-Jewish slur “Hymietown” to refer to New York City during the 1984 campaign, to the disclosure, in 2001, that he had fathered a daughter in an extramarital affair.
As he dominated center stage, the thundering chorus of his speeches — “I am … somebody” — inspired his followers even as it sometimes sounded like a painful plea.
Jackson’s thirst for attention began in childhood. Born out of wedlock on Oct. 8, 1941, he often stood at the gate of his father’s home in Greenville, S.C., watching with envy as his half-brothers played, before returning to the home he shared with his mother, Helen Burns, and grandmother, Mathilda.
During high school, his father, Noah Robinson, a former professional boxer, would sometimes go to the football field to watch Jesse play. If he played well, Noah would sometimes tell others, “That’s one of mine.” For the most part, however, until Jesse was famous, he shunned his son, who was later adopted by the man his mother married, Charles Jackson.
It was his grandmother, known as Tibby, who encouraged Jackson’s ambition. A domestic in stringently segregated Greenville, Tibby brought home books and magazines, such as National Geographic, that her white employers’ children had discarded.
“Couldn’t read a word herself but she’d bring them back for me, you know, these cultural things used by the wealthy and refined,” Jackson once said. “All she knew was, their sons read those books. So I ought to read them too. She never stopped dreaming for me.”
Her dreams propelled Jackson toward college — as did a need to avenge the childhood taunts that echoed in his head. An honors student, he turned down a contract to pitch for the Chicago White Sox to accept a football scholarship to the University of Illinois.
At Christmas break, he came home with a list of books. A librarian at the McBee Avenue Colored Branch referred him to the white library downtown and called ahead to clear the way. When he entered the main library, two police officers stood at the loan desk. A librarian told him it would take at least six days to get the books from the shelves. When he offered to get them himself, the officers told him to leave.
“I just stared up at that ‘Greenville Public Library’ and tears came to my eyes,” Jackson told a biographer, Marshall Frady.
That summer, 1960, Jackson came home and led a sit-in at the library, his arrest a first taste of civil disobedience. In the fall, he transferred to North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro. There he became the star quarterback and participated in the beginnings of the sit-ins that became a signature part of the civil rights movement led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“It wasn’t a matter of Gandhi or Dr. King then,” he said of the library sit-in, “it was just my own private pride and self-respect.”
With his height and his oratorical flourishes, Jackson was a charismatic figure who led protests in Greensboro. Once, during a demonstration outside a cafeteria, as police were about to arrest the demonstrators, Jackson suggested they kneel and recite the Lord’s Prayer.
“Police all took off their caps and bowed their heads,” he said. “Can’t arrest folks prayin’.”
Then he led the demonstrators in “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
“They stopped, put their hands over their heart,” Jackson said. “Can’t arrest folks singing the national anthem.”
After half an hour, he recalled, “we got tired and let ’em arrest us.”
Elected student body president, Jackson graduated in 1963. A grant from the Rockefeller Fund for Theological Education brought him to the Chicago Theological Seminary, where he hoped to find a venue for social activism.
That summer, Jackson traveled to Washington, where he heard King deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Two years later, he and a group of college buddies piled into vans to drive south for King’s Selma-to-Montgomery march. He met King there, and early the next year, King asked Jackson to head his Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Operation Breadbasket in Chicago. The goal was to win economic gains for Black people with a combination of consumer boycotts and negotiated settlements.
At 24, Jackson was the youngest of King’s aides. Operating out of a hole-in-the-wall office at SCLC’s South Side headquarters, he began by organizing preachers, arranging for them to urge their congregations on Easter to boycott products made by a local dairy that employed no Black workers.
During the following week, Country Delight lost more than half a million dollars in revenue. Within days, the company offered a deal: 44 jobs for Black workers. Without waiting for a boycott, other dairy companies called with offers, too.
King soon asked Jackson to be the national director of Operation Breadbasket. Jackson hesitated — the job required him to leave the seminary six months short of graduation. Jackson recounted in his autobiography that King told him, “Come with me full time and you’ll learn more theology in six months than you would in six years at the seminary.” He earned his ordination several years later.
In 1968, Jesse Jackson stands to the left of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., where King was assassinated the next day.
(Charles Kelly / Associated Press )
In April 1968, Jackson joined King in Memphis, where the civil rights leader had decided to stand with striking Black sanitation workers. Few of King’s staff supported the effort, worrying that the strike — and the planned Poor People’s Campaign in Washington — distracted from the main goal of attaining voting and political rights for Black Americans.
During a planning meeting, King blew up at his aides, including Jackson. “If you’re so interested in doing your own thing, that you can’t do what this organization is structured to do, if you want to carve out your own niche in society, go ahead,” King yelled at Jackson, according to the latter’s account. “But for God’s sake, don’t bother me!”
The next day, standing below the balcony of the Lorraine Motel where the team was staying in Memphis, King yelled down at Jackson in joviality, as if to mitigate the outburst, inviting him to dinner.
Within moments, shots rang out. Jackson later said he ran upstairs and caught King’s head as he lay dying. Andrew Young, a King aide who later became U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told Frady that he doubted Jackson had cradled King’s head, but that they all had rushed to the scene and all had gotten blood on their clothes.
But if all of them were touched by King’s blood, only Jackson wore his gore-stained olive turtleneck for days, sleeping and grieving in it, wearing it on NBC’s “Today Show” and before the Chicago City Council. In dramatizing the moment to his own benefit, Jackson provoked hostility from King’s widow and others in the movement’s leadership that lasted decades.
Richard Hatcher, the first Black mayor of Gary, Ind., and a Jackson supporter, recalled that once Jackson decided to run for president, the campaign thought it had the backing of the Black leadership.
“Big mistake. Big mistake,” Hatcher said. “Over the following months, every time things seemed to get going, here would come a statement from Atlanta, from Andy [Young] or Joe Lowery or Mrs. King, ‘We don’t think this is a good idea at all.’“
As Jackson’s media prominence grew — including a cover photo on Time magazine in 1970 — tensions erupted between Jackson and SCLC, in part because of the sloppy bookkeeping that became a Jackson characteristic. In late 1971, SCLC’s board suspended Jackson for “administrative impropriety” and “repeated violation of organization discipline.” Jackson resigned, saying, “I need air. I must have room to grow.”
Rev. Jesse Jackson raises a clenched fist from a police van after he and 11 others from Operation Breadbasket were arrested during a sit-in at the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co., offices in New York City on Feb. 2, 1971. The organization, part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, has been protesting A&P’s alleged discrimination against blacks.
(MARTY LEDERHANDLER / Associated Press)
Calling a dozen Black celebrities to New York’s Commodore Hotel, Jackson formed his own organization. Originally called People United to Save Humanity — the presumptuous title was soon changed to People United to Serve Humanity — PUSH became his pulpit. Like Operation Breadbasket, its goal was to boost minority employment and ownership.
Jackson traveled the country preaching self-esteem and self-discipline. Thousands of youngsters took pledges to say no to drugs, turn off their television sets, study. They became the core of his voter registration drives, the inspiration for the “I am somebody” chant that would define his public ministry.
As with Operation Breadbasket, Jackson used PUSH to hold corporate America to account. In 1982, for example, he launched a boycott of Anheuser-Busch with the slogan “this Bud’s a dud.”
“We spend approximately $800 million with them [annually]. Yet, out of 950 wholesale distributorships, only one is Black-owned,” Jackson said.
Shortly thereafter, Anheuser-Busch contributed $10,000 to Jackson’s Citizenship Education Fund, contributed more than $500,000 to the Rainbow PUSH coalition, and established a $10-million fund to help minorities buy distributorships.
In 1998, 16 years later, the River North beer distributorship in Chicago was purchased by two of Jackson’s sons, Yusef and Jonathan. (Jackson’s eldest son, Jesse Jackson Jr., won election to Congress from Chicago in 1995, but resigned and was convicted of fraud in 2013 for misuse of campaign funds. Jackson and his wife, Jacqueline, also had two daughters, Jacqueline and Santita. A third daughter, Ashley Laverne Jackson, was the child of his relationship with a PUSH staff member, Karin Stanford.)
Critics called the PUSH campaigns elaborate shakedowns. Others, like Jeffrey Campbell, president of Burger King when Jackson opened negotiations in 1983, found the encounter with Jackson and his rhetoric of economic empowerment inspiring.
“Before they came in, my view was that we ought to fight them, that this guy Jackson was a monster, and I had the backing of my bosses to walk out if necessary,” Campbell told the Los Angeles Times in 1987. But Campbell said he quickly changed his mind.
“He got to me very quickly, without me realizing it, when he started talking about fairness. He would say: What is fair? Blacks give you 15% of your business — isn’t it fair that you give 15% of your business, your jobs, your purchases back to the Black community, the Black businesses?
“That little seed began to grow in the back of my mind,” Campbell said. “It was the right question to ask me.”
How Jackson handled money gave critics additional openings. Between 1972 and 1988, PUSH and its affiliates attracted more than $17 million in federal grants and private contributions. After many audits, the Justice Department sought $1.2 million in repayments, citing poor recordkeeping and a lack of documentation.
Jackson gave little thought to such issues. “I am a tree-shaker, not a jelly-maker,” he would often say.
Management held little interest for him. But politics was a different matter.
From the moment he began urging and registering Black Americans to vote, Jackson found his milieu. He used PUSH resources to staff get-out-the-vote drives that helped elect Hatcher in Gary, Kenneth Gibson in Newark, N.J., and Carl Stokes in Cleveland.
In those days, he also advocated participating in both parties, what he called “a balance of power.” In 1972, he claimed he had registered 40,000 Black voters to support Illinois’ white Republican senator, Charles Percy.
That same year, at the Democratic convention in Miami, Jackson unseated Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s 58-member Illinois delegation and replaced it with a “rainbow” of his own, even though he had never voted in a Democratic primary. Liberal Democrats who despised Daley as a corrupt big-city boss hailed Jackson as a hero.
In the decade to come, Jackson basked in celebrity and international travel, including a controversial meeting with Yasser Arafat. Jackson met the then-leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1979 when he traveled to Syria to free U.S. pilot Robert Goodman, who’d been shot down while on a bombing mission. By the time Jackson declared his 1984 presidential campaign, he had burnished his foreign policy credentials.
At the convention that year in San Francisco, he predicted that in an era of Reaganomics, a Rainbow Coalition of ethnic and religious identities could retake the White House.
“We must leave the racial battleground and come to economic common ground and moral higher ground,” he said in a memorable speech.
“America, our time has come. We come from disgrace to amazing grace. Our time has come,” he said. “Give me your tired, give me your poor, your huddled masses who yearn to breathe free and come November, there will be a change, because our time has come.” Delegates roared to their feet.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a candidate for the democratic nomination for President, works the crowd from onstage following a speech at the Cincinnati Convention center, Friday, April 13, 1984.
(Al Behrman / Associated Press)
But they did not nominate him. Nor did the convention of 1988. Addressing Black ministers in Los Angeles in 1995, the hurt still showed as Jackson railed at the injustice of beating Al Gore in the presidential primaries, only to watch as he was tapped by Bill Clinton to be his running mate in 1992.
“In 1988, I beat him in Iowa, a state 98% white; he said it was ’cause of liberals and farmers. So I beat him in New Hampshire; he said it was ’cause he was off campaigning in the South. So I beat him in the South on Super Tuesday; he said Dukakis had split his support. I beat him then in Illinois, in Michigan; he said he wasn’t really trying. I beat him then in New York; said he ran out of money. But now, here I am this afternoon, talking to y’all in this church in South Central L.A. — and he’s vice president of the United States.”
To many of his Democratic opponents, however, Jackson’s “rainbow coalition” symbolized not common ground, but the party’s devolution into a collection of identity caucuses whose narrow causes doomed them to defeat. In 1992, many of those critics gathered around Clinton as he formulated his “New Democrat” campaign. Clinton soon used Jackson as a foil.
The occasion came when Jackson invited rap singer and activist Sister Souljah to a political event featuring the Arkansas governor. In an interview, Souljah had wondered why after all the animus of white people toward Black people, it was unacceptable for Black people to kill whites. Clinton, instead of delivering the usual liberal-candidate-seeks-Black-votes hominy, lashed out at her words.
The moment bought Clinton a priceless image of willingness to speak truth to the party’s interest groups but came at the price of Jackson’s rage.
“I can maybe work with him, but I know now who he is, what he is. There’s nothin’ he won’t do,” Jackson said to Frady. “He’s immune to shame.”
By then, however, Jackson’s prominence had already begun to wane. Indeed, the role of race leader, itself, had started to disappear. The civil rights revolution in which Jackson had figured so prominently had allowed a new and more diverse generation of Black elected officials, corporate executives and public figures to flourish. Their success eroded his singular platform.
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., right, laughs after saying goodbye to Rev. Jesse Jackson, reflected left, after Obama addressed the Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s annual conference breakfast in Rosemont, Ill. on June 4, 2007
(Charles Rex Arbogast / Associated Press)
Jackson continued to travel, agitate, protest, but the spotlight had moved on. He dreamed that Jesse Jr. might one day win the office he had pursued. When, instead, another Black Democrat from Chicago, Barack Obama, headed toward the Democratic nomination in 2008, Jackson’s frustration spilled into public with a vulgar criticism of Obama caught on microphone.
In Obama’s White House, he suffered what for him might have been the severest penalty — being ignored.
Yet to those who had seen him in his prime, his image remained indelible.
“When they write the history of this campaign,” then-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo said after the 1984 contest, “the longest chapter will be on Jackson. The man didn’t have two cents. He didn’t have one television or radio ad. And look what he did.”
Jackson is survived by his wife, Jacqueline, and six children, Jesse Jr., Yusef, Jonathan, Jacqueline, Santita and Ashley.
the Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks at the League of United Latin American Citizens convention Friday, June 30, 2006, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
Yergan Jones, CEO of American Sound Design and AEE Productions, was sentenced Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, in Miami federal court to one year and nine months in prison for his role in the fraud scheme of former Jackson Health Foundation executive.
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Betrayal of Trust
Former Jackson Health Foundation COO Charmaine Gatlin pled guilty to bilking millions in charity funds. A look at the investigation.
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An Atlanta businessman who paid millions in bribes to an executive for the charity arm of Miami-Dade County’s public hospital system was sentenced Monday to one year and nine months in prison — thanks to his cooperation with federal authorities early on in the fraud investigation.
Yergan Jones, 63, president of an audiovisual company, pleaded guilty in August in Miami federal court to conspiring to commit fraud with Jackson Health Foundation’s former chief operating officer, Charmaine Gatlin. She approved 53 wire payments totaling $2.1 million to Jones, even though he provided no services to the Foundation between 2019 and 2024.
In return, Jones kicked back 74 payments via wires and checks totaling about $1.1 million to Gatlin, 52, who used the money to buy luxury Italian and French handbags, vacations in the Caribbean and a membership at an upscale golf club near her home in Weston.
During the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra chastised the out-of-towner for conspiring with Gatlin to steal millions of dollars from the nonprofit charity benefitting the county-subsidized Jackson Health System, as she stressed the importance of its healthcare services, especially for Miami-Dade low-income patients.
Where did the money go?
“In terms of fraud, this is as serious as it gets,” Becerra told Jones. “This is absolute rank, gross, disgusting greed.”
At one point, the judge asked Jones’ defense attorney what the defendant did with the $1 million he kept in the billing scheme directed by Gatlin. “Where is that money?” Becerra asked.
“Some of it went into his business,” attorney Hector Flores told her. “Some of it went into everyday life,” including a leased Porsche.
In addition to prison time, the judge ordered Jones to pay about $2.1 million in restitution to Jackson Health System, along with imposing a $1.1 million forfeiture judgment that represents his portion of the ill-gotten funds stolen from the Foundation.
According to court records, Jones plans to make a payment this month of $783,000 — funds that will go toward repaying the Foundation that raises money for Jackson Health System. Jones said he plans to sell his Atlanta business and other assets to pay back more of the stolen money.
“I will continue to work until every dollar is repaid,” Jones told the judge, as he apologized for his crime. “I stand before you today fully accountable.”
Becerra reluctantly allowed Jones to surrender on Feb. 21 to prison authorities in Atlanta, mainly because the judge said she wanted him to sell his audiovisual business and repay as much money as possible to the Foundation and Jackson. She almost made him surrender at the end of January, but allowed him a few extra weeks of freedom after he said that his daughter will be getting married in mid-February.
The judge reached her decision on Jones’ prison term after federal prosecutor Elizabeth Young recommended that he receive a one-third reduction on his originally recommended sentence of 2-1/2 years because of his early assistance to the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami.
While Young called his crime “an obviously egregious fraud scheme” because the Foundation and Jackson received no services for his theft, she noted that Jones is at least trying to back the stolen funds.
She also pointed out that his co-conspirator, Gatlin, the leader of the billing scheme, committed a far worse crime, including stealing $55,000 in charity funds meant for burn victims at Jackson.
Stealing funds meant for Jackson patients
At Monday’s sentencing nearing, the Foundation’s chief executive officer, Flavia Llizo, said Gatlin and Jones “didn’t just steal money. They stole hope.”
“They chose to steal from people they never met — patients fighting for their lives, families in crisis, neighbors who depend on Jackson for hope and healing,” Llizo told the judge.
By comparison, last Wednesday, Gatlin was given a harsher sentence of six years and eight months by U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom. She pleaded guilty in September to a wire-fraud conspiracy charge accusing her of stealing about $7 million from her employer, involving Jones and several other vendors.
An unidentified man, left, escorts Arthur Gatlin and his wife Charmaine Gatlin, right, the former chief operating officer of the Jackson Health Foundation, for sentencing at Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. Courthouse on Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025, in Miami, Florida. Carl Juste cjuste@miamiherald.com
Gatlin, who was immediately sent to prison, must repay that sum to the Foundation — though she was only able to pledge $30,000 borrowed from a family member. She also faces a $1 million forfeiture judgment that accounts for the illicit funds Jones kicked back to her.
Gatlin came to know Jones when they worked on charitable projects for a mentorship organization in Atlanta, where she had worked before she was hired by the Foundation in 2014.
Before Jackson officials learned of her theft of the Foundation’s funds in the fall of 2024, Gatlin was making about $300,000 as the Foundation’s chief operating officer and was being considered for its top job as chief executive officer.
Terminated in November
But in late October, she was put on paid administrative leave while an internal investigation “related to potential misconduct” got underway. In early November, she was “terminated for cause” by the Foundation’s chairman. Her termination letter, obtained by the Miami Herald, did not elaborate.
Jackson officials alerted the FBI and federal prosecutors.
In May, Gatlin was arrested on charges of fleecing $3.6 million from her former employer, fabricating fake invoices from vendors — including Jones — and receiving kickbacks from them. Her defrauding of the Foundation, however, surpassed that figure as FBI agents dug deeper into her theft. Her billing scheme also extended well beyond Miami, according to an indictment and other court records.
In his plea, Jones admitted that he submitted dozens of invoices to Gatlin through his company, American Sound Design, that were for “audiovisual services that did not occur” at Jackson Health System or the Foundation.
Instead, those services were provided by his company to a civic organization in Atlanta, according to court records. The Herald confirmed that the organization is 100 Black Men of America, with chapters nationwide including South Florida. While at the Foundation, Gatlin continued to work with them as a part-time volunteer while Jones was a contractor for the organization.
“At times, Charmaine Gatlin instructed [Jones] how to falsify invoices to the Foundation for services ASD did not provide,” according to a factual statement filed with his plea agreement signed by him, defense lawyer Hector Flores and the prosecutor, Young.
For example, on Jan. 7, 2024, Jones emailed Gatlin’s personal email with a draft invoice extending audiovisual equipment at the Jackson “Holiday Parties” for two “additional days” for a total of $50,172.50, the statement says. The following day, Gatlin responded: “Get [the bill] to $58,477. When you email it over ask for the status of the payment.”
On Jan. 16, Gatlin wired that same amount to the bank account of Jones’ company, ASD, which did not provide the invoiced audiovisual services at Jackson or the Foundation, according to the statement. Two days later, Jones wired a kickback of about $25,000 to Gatilin’s personal bank account — then, Jones made a $20,000 payment on his American Express card using the Jackson funds.
In other instances, “to conceal the kickbacks, Charmaine Gatlin sent [Jones] false invoices making it appear as though she was consulting for” his company, American Sound Design, the statement says.
On Jan. 31, 2021, for example, Gatlin emailed Jones the following false invoices: Jackson Rehab Ribbon Cutting ($29,625); MTI 50th Anniversary/Jungle Island ($21,625); Virtual Conference Jackson Residents ($26,215), and Jackson Covid Media Village ($43,562.50).
“These payments were kickbacks to Charmaine Gatlin for paying [American Sound Design] via the Foundation,” the statement says.
At Jones’ sentencing on Monday, Becerra zeroed on how long he collaborated with Gatlin in her billing scheme over six years. She discounted the words of a few of his supporters who appeared in court, including a pastor from his church in Atlanta.
“It went to line your pockets so you could live a life better than the life you were living,” Becerra told Jones. “I cannot understand how you ended up doing this except for greed.”
This story was originally published December 15, 2025 at 6:45 PM.
Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson remains hospitalized and is receiving care to stabilize his blood pressure, a source close to Jackson’s family told CNN on Sunday.In a statement released late Sunday afternoon, the family said he is breathing on his own without the assistance of machines and not on life support. The source added he is receiving medication to raise his blood pressure, which is a form of life support.In the last 24 hours, Jackson’s condition has improved and he has been able to maintain a stable blood pressure without the assistance of medication.Jackson, 84, a protégé of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has been under observation for progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), the Rainbow PUSH Coalition said Wednesday evening.Further details about his condition have not been released.The family source says Jackson has had brief moments of energy due to a medication he has been on for two days. Jackson had a significant drop in blood pressure Saturday night, but a medical team responded to him immediately, the source added.Even while under treatment, he has shown brief but meaningful signs of responsiveness, the source said.Video below: Rev. Jesse Jackson encourages young voters to cast ballotsIn the Sunday afternoon statement, his son Yusef said: “In fact, today he called for 2,000 churches to prepare 2,000 baskets of food to prevent malnutrition during the holiday season.”Last week, there had been “significant improvement” in the civil rights leader’s condition under medical care, his son Jesse Jackson Jr. said Thursday in a segment during his weekday radio show.PSP is “a rare neurological disorder that affects body movements, walking and balance, and eye movements,” according to the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.The disease typically begins in a person’s 60s and has some symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease, it adds. Most people with PSP develop severe disability within three to five years.Jackson “has been managing this neurodegenerative condition for more than a decade,” the organization previously said in a statement. “He was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease; however, last April, his PSP condition was confirmed.”Jackson rose to national prominence in the 1960s as a close aide to King. After King’s assassination in 1968, Jackson became one of the most transformative civil rights leaders in America.In 1971, he founded Operation PUSH as a way to improve Black communities’ economic conditions across the US. Jackson later launched the National Rainbow Coalition in 1984, with the goal of obtaining equal rights for all Americans, according to the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.Twelve years later, the two organizations merged to form Rainbow PUSH Coalition.One of Jackson’s signature phrases has been “Keep hope alive,” and was a force for social justice over three eras: the Jim Crow period, the civil rights era and the post-civil rights era, culminating with the election of Barack Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement.This story has been updated with additional information.CNN’s Amanda Musa contributed to this report.
CNN —
Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson remains hospitalized and is receiving care to stabilize his blood pressure, a source close to Jackson’s family told CNN on Sunday.
In a statement released late Sunday afternoon, the family said he is breathing on his own without the assistance of machines and not on life support. The source added he is receiving medication to raise his blood pressure, which is a form of life support.
In the last 24 hours, Jackson’s condition has improved and he has been able to maintain a stable blood pressure without the assistance of medication.
Jackson, 84, a protégé of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has been under observation for progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), the Rainbow PUSH Coalition said Wednesday evening.
Further details about his condition have not been released.
The family source says Jackson has had brief moments of energy due to a medication he has been on for two days. Jackson had a significant drop in blood pressure Saturday night, but a medical team responded to him immediately, the source added.
Even while under treatment, he has shown brief but meaningful signs of responsiveness, the source said.
Video below: Rev. Jesse Jackson encourages young voters to cast ballots
In the Sunday afternoon statement, his son Yusef said: “In fact, today he called for 2,000 churches to prepare 2,000 baskets of food to prevent malnutrition during the holiday season.”
Last week, there had been “significant improvement” in the civil rights leader’s condition under medical care, his son Jesse Jackson Jr. said Thursday in a segment during his weekday radio show.
The disease typically begins in a person’s 60s and has some symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease, it adds. Most people with PSP develop severe disability within three to five years.
Jackson “has been managing this neurodegenerative condition for more than a decade,” the organization previously said in a statement. “He was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease; however, last April, his PSP condition was confirmed.”
Jackson rose to national prominence in the 1960s as a close aide to King. After King’s assassination in 1968, Jackson became one of the most transformative civil rights leaders in America.
In 1971, he founded Operation PUSH as a way to improve Black communities’ economic conditions across the US. Jackson later launched the National Rainbow Coalition in 1984, with the goal of obtaining equal rights for all Americans, according to the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
Twelve years later, the two organizations merged to form Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
One of Jackson’s signature phrases has been “Keep hope alive,” and was a force for social justice over three eras: the Jim Crow period, the civil rights era and the post-civil rights era, culminating with the election of Barack Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement.
This story has been updated with additional information.
Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson remains hospitalized and is now receiving a form of life support to stabilize his blood pressure, a source close to Jackson’s family told CNN on Sunday.Jackson, 84, a protégé of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has been under observation for progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), the Rainbow PUSH Coalition said Wednesday evening.Further details about his condition have not been released.The family source says Jackson has had moments of brief energy due to a medication he has been on it for two days. Jackson had a significant drop in blood pressure Saturday night, but a medical team responded to him immediately, the source added.Even while under treatment, he has shown brief, but meaningful signs of responsiveness, the source said.Last week, there had been “significant improvement” in the civil rights leader’s condition under medical care, his son Jesse Jackson Jr. said Thursday in a segment during his weekday radio show.PSP is “a rare neurological disorder that affects body movements, walking and balance, and eye movements,” according to the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.The disease typically begins in a person’s 60s and has some symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease, it adds. Most people with PSP develop severe disability within three to five years.Jackson “has been managing this neurodegenerative condition for more than a decade,” the organization previously said in a statement. “He was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease; however, last April his PSP condition was confirmed.”Jackson first rose to national prominence in the 1960s as a close aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. After King’s assassination in 1968, Jackson became one of the most transformative civil rights leaders in America.In 1971, he founded Operation PUSH as a way to improve Black communities’ economic conditions across the US. Jackson later launched the National Rainbow Coalition, in 1984, with the goal of obtaining equal rights for all Americans, according to the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.Some 12 years later, the two organizations merged to form Rainbow PUSH Coalition.One of Jackson’s signature phrases was “Keep hope alive,” and was a force for social justice over three eras: the Jim Crow period, the civil rights era and the post-civil rights era, culminating with the election of Barack Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement.This story has been updated with additional information.CNN’s Amanda Musa contributed to this report.
CNN —
Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson remains hospitalized and is now receiving a form of life support to stabilize his blood pressure, a source close to Jackson’s family told CNN on Sunday.
Jackson, 84, a protégé of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has been under observation for progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), the Rainbow PUSH Coalition said Wednesday evening.
Further details about his condition have not been released.
The family source says Jackson has had moments of brief energy due to a medication he has been on it for two days. Jackson had a significant drop in blood pressure Saturday night, but a medical team responded to him immediately, the source added.
Even while under treatment, he has shown brief, but meaningful signs of responsiveness, the source said.
Last week, there had been “significant improvement” in the civil rights leader’s condition under medical care, his son Jesse Jackson Jr. said Thursday in a segment during his weekday radio show.
The disease typically begins in a person’s 60s and has some symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease, it adds. Most people with PSP develop severe disability within three to five years.
Jackson “has been managing this neurodegenerative condition for more than a decade,” the organization previously said in a statement. “He was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease; however, last April his PSP condition was confirmed.”
Jackson first rose to national prominence in the 1960s as a close aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. After King’s assassination in 1968, Jackson became one of the most transformative civil rights leaders in America.
In 1971, he founded Operation PUSH as a way to improve Black communities’ economic conditions across the US. Jackson later launched the National Rainbow Coalition, in 1984, with the goal of obtaining equal rights for all Americans, according to the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
Some 12 years later, the two organizations merged to form Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
One of Jackson’s signature phrases was “Keep hope alive,” and was a force for social justice over three eras: the Jim Crow period, the civil rights era and the post-civil rights era, culminating with the election of Barack Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement.
This story has been updated with additional information.
Jackson Hopkins scored his third goal in four games and 10-man D.C. United held on for a 1-1 draw against visiting Orlando City on Saturday night in Washington.
Luis Barraza made a career-best 10 saves for D.C. (5-15-10, 25 points), whose numbers were reduced upon Lukas MacNaughton’s 57th-minute dismissal.
Those performances helped the Black-and-Red remain unbeaten in four matches (1-0-3) under new manager Rene Weiler despite having already been eliminated from postseason contention.
Defender Alex Freeman pulled Orlando level in the 53rd minute with his fifth goal of the season. But the Lions were otherwise a combination of wasteful and the victim of Barraza’s excellent night, failing to take three points despite leading 26-6 in shots and 11-3 in efforts on target.
Orlando (13-7-9, 48 points) dropped one spot into sixth in the Eastern Conference via Columbus’ victory at Atlanta.
Hopkins put D.C. ahead against the run of play in the run of play in the 33rd minute on one of D.C.’s rare forays forward.
Conner Antley did the most impressive work in the buildup, taking Joao Peglow’s pass, making a hard cut to evade a defender on the right side of the box, and then picking out Hopkins in front of goal.
Hopkins then used his back to spin his defender before firing a low finish past Pedro Gallese.
Freeman leveled 20 minutes later during a sequence that also eventually resulted in MacNaughton’s ejection.
Pasalic forced Barraza into an initial save after he was played down the right. Freeman was first to the rebound to poke it over the line. And after referee Chris Penso was summoned to the replay monitor, he ruled that MacNaughton had made a dangerous enough challenge on Freeman in his attempt to deny the rebound effort to warrant a red card.
Barraza could have done better to push that rebound to a less dangerous area. But he made up for it in the late stages with two late denials of Marco Pasalic and another of Eduard Atuesta.
As Donald Trump threatens to deploy national guard units to Chicago and Baltimore, ostensibly to quell violence, a pattern has emerged as he describes which cities he talks about.
Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington DC and Baltimore.
But not Jackson, Birmingham, St Louis or Memphis.
An analysis of crime trends over the last four years shows two things. First, violent crime rates in America’s big cities have been falling over the last two years, and at an even greater rate over the last six months. The decrease in violence in America is unprecedented.
Second, crime in large cities in the aggregate is lower in states with Democratic leadership. But the president focuses his ire almost exclusively on large blue cities in blue states, sidestepping political conflict with red Republican governors.
The four cities of populations larger than 100,000 with the highest murder rates in 2024 are in Republican states: Jackson, Mississippi (78.7 per 100,000 residents), Birmingham, Alabama (58.8), St Louis, Missouri (54.1) and Memphis, Tennessee (40.6).
On Tuesday, Trump called Chicago “the most dangerous city in the world”, and pledged to send military troops there, as well as to Baltimore. “I have an obligation. This isn’t a political thing,” he said at a press conference. “I have an obligation when 20 people are killed over the last two and a half weeks and 75 are shot with bullets.”
When talking about crime in Chicago, Trump regularly refers to the number of people who may have been shot and killed there. But Chicago has a population of about 2.7 million, which is larger than each of the least-populous 15 states. It is roughly the same population as Mississippi. Chicago’s homicide rate for 2024 was 17.5 murders for every 100,000 residents, only a few points higher than that of the state of Louisiana, which was 14.5 per 100,000 in 2024.
As has become tradition, news outlets reported how many people were killed in Chicago over the Labor Day weekend. At Louisiana’s rates, one would predict almost twice as many people to have been murdered there over the long weekend.
But those numbers are harder to count. Chicago police report a single figure. One has to scour a hundred local news sites around Louisiana to aggregate the count for comparison.
Notably, Trump discussed sending troops to New Orleans this week. “We’re making a determination now,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “Do we go to Chicago or do we go to a place like New Orleans, where we have a great governor, Jeff Landry, who wants us to straighten out a very nice section of this country that’s become quite, you know, quite tough, quite bad?”
And Landry signaled his willingness to accede. “We will take President Trump’s help from New Orleans to Shreveport!” he wrote on X, posting a clip of the exchange.
Still, Chicago is bracing to be the next city targeted by the Trump administration. To date this year, 278 people have been killed in Chicago, 118 fewer people killed when compared with 2024. It is at pace for 412 deaths for the year, which would be a rate of about 15 per 100,000 residents. The rate is likely to be lower still than that, because homicide rates increase during summer months.
The Windy City ranked 37th in homicide rate in 2024 for cities larger than 50,000 residents in the United States. For cities with more than 100,000 residents, it placed 14th. This year, it is likely to slide farther down the list, even as violence falls to 60-year lows.
***
As reported by the FBI’s crime data unit in August, the United States had a homicide rate of about 4.6 per 100,000 residents in 2024. It is the lowest figure since 2014, and very close to the generational lows of 4 to 4.5 per 100,000 last experienced in the early 1960s. The pandemic wave of increased violence has largely receded.
“We know that across the nation [violence is] going down,” said Dr Thaddeus Johnson, a former Tennessee police officer and senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, a policy thinktank.
The 2024 homicide rate in the US decreased by about 15%, one of the largest drops in American history. Most of that decrease can be attributed to declines in the largest cities, Johnson said.
Criminal justice researchers tend to place higher value on murder rates than other indicators of violent crime, because murder statistics are harder to manipulate. “It’s the most trustworthy data point,” Johnson said. But it’s not the only data point. “When you start talking about aggravated assaults and robberies, generally, we’ve seen that going down across the nation as well.”
Both Chicago and Baltimore implemented or expanded antiviolence programs in 2022 using American Rescue Plan funding – much of which has been cut under Trump. Baltimore’s homicide rate has fallen about 40% since 2020, and in 2025 is pacing a 50-year low to date.
Violent crime had also been falling in Washington DC by substantial margins before Trump took over the city’s policing. His announcement last month referenced DC’s 2023 crime rates, which spiked during the pandemic, while saying nothing about the precipitous fall since.
In January, the Metropolitan police department and US attorney’s office reported that total violent crime in DC in 2024 was down 35% from the prior year, marking the lowest rate in over 30 years.
The Guardian analyzed the murder rates for the largest 50 cities in the US and found that cities in blue states had the lowest, with just 7.8 murders per 100,000 people. The cities in red states have a much higher murder rate, of 12.9. Cities in swing states sit in the middle, with a murder rate of 10.2.
Baltimore ranks fifth on a list of cities over 50,000 population by murder rate in 2024, as reported to the FBI statisticians. Washington DC is 15th. Between them are Wilmington, Delaware; Detroit; Cleveland; Dayton, Ohio; North Little Rock, Arkansas; Kansas City, Missouri; Shreveport, Louisiana; Camden, New Jersey, and Albany, Georgia.
Compliance with federal rules on crime reporting is incomplete, and some agencies report incomplete data. One notable example of this is Jackson, Mississippi, which has consistently gathered crime data but only started submitting it to the FBI’s system this year. Jackson recorded 111 homicides in 2024, in a population of about 141,000: a rate of 78.7, the highest in America for any city with a population over 50,000.
Though St Louis posted the second-highest homicide rate in 2024, violence there has been falling since 2023, and is on pace today for a 10% annual drop. Its rate will fall less sharply, however, because St Louis is losing population.
Memphis led the country’s homicide rate in 2023. To date in 2025, murders and non-negligent homicides are down about 25%, after a 22% decrease in 2024. Like Baltimore, Memphis leaders attribute the decrease in part to an aggressive gun violence reduction initiative, Memphis Allies.
Notably, small changes in smaller cities can have a big statistical effect.
Birmingham, with a population of about 200,000, has cut its murder rate by more than half since the start of the year. Local officials attribute this, in part, to the arrest of a handful of people accused of violence, including Damien McDaniel, who has been charged in the murders of 18 people as a hired hitman. His arrest in October – and that of four other people who are linked to him – coincides with a 55% drop in Birmingham’s homicide rate since.
Central Florida is easing into Scott Frost’s second tenure as its head coach.
After a shaky opening victory over Jacksonville State, UCF (1-0) has a date with struggling FCS squad North Carolina A&T (0-1) on Saturday night in Orlando, Fla.
There is uncertainty at quarterback for UCF as opening game starter Cam Fancher, a transfer who started two seasons at Marshall and last year at Florida Atlantic, was injured in the second quarter.
With Fancher sidelined, Indiana transfer Tayven Jackson completed 17 of 24 passes for 282 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions, leading the Knights to a 17-10 victory.
On a Thursday radio show, Frost confirmed that Fancher will not play Saturday.
‘Cam’s going to be out this week,’ Frost said on SiriusXM’s Dusty and Danny in the Morning. ‘He just kind of landed on his back funny and has some back issues that I think are going to go away fairly soon, but we’re going into the game with Tayven and JB (Jacurri Brown), and that’s fine. Tayven did a great job coming in and replacing him last week and he’s getting another shot this week.’
Frost credited Jackson for being prepared in his backup role after showing disappointment when he was told that Fancher would start the opener.
‘I saw an uptick in him,’ Frost said. ‘If it takes something to get him angry to get him to play the way he played, then I’m going to keep him angry all the time.’
After Saturday’s game, Frost will have additional time to evaluate Fancher as the Knights have a bye week before hosting Bill Belichick and North Carolina and then embarking on their Big 12 schedule.
North Carolina A&T, which has yet to win a conference game in 16 tries since joining the Coastal Athletic Association in 2023, is on an 11-game skid.
The Aggies had a chance to end the streak last Saturday at Tennessee State but Andrew Brown’s late 38-yard field-goal attempt was blocked, resulting in a 24-21 loss.
The big positive for the Aggies was the play of quarterback Braxton Thomas, who came off the bench to run for a touchdown and throw for another score. Thomas completed 11 of 13 passes for 169 yards without an interception. Thomas did lose a fumble — one of three fumbles the Aggies lost.
The blocked kick and turnovers were ‘the recipe for getting your butt kicked,’ head coach Shawn Gibbs said after his North Carolina A&T debut.
Van and Rachel discuss Beyoncé’s exclusion from the CMAs (5:47) before reacting to the fallout from Janet Jackson’s questioning of Kamala Harris’s Blackness (25:28) and Chingy backing out of performing at a GOP event (36:19). Then NFL legend Michael Vick joins to talk about the new docuseries Evolution of the Black Quarterback (46:07) before discussing the way Jerry Jones talks about his players and what’s between their legs (1:16:28).
Hosts: Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay Guest: Michael Vick Producer: Donnie Beacham Jr.
A former friend of Kevin Hart has accused Hart in a lawsuit of submitting fabricated evidence to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office stemming from his 2017 sex tape scandal, and alleging that investigators accepted the evidence and acted upon it without proper vetting.
In an amended complaint filed Aug. 6 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Jonathan “J.T.” Jackson — who sued the “Get Hard” star in July for breach of written contract — further alleged that Hart and the D.A.’s office contributed to false extortion accusations against him that hurt his reputation.
Representatives for Hart did not immediately respond to The Times’ requests for comment.
Jonathan “J.T.” Jackson, left — a Navy veteran, professional bowler and actor — has updated his lawsuit against comedian Kevin Hart.
(Arnold Turner/ Chris Pizzello / Associated Press)
Jackson — a Navy veteran, professional bowler and actor — sued Hart for allegedly botching a settlement agreement meant to clear Jackson’s name relating to the fallout from Hart’s 2017 scandal. He accused Hart of not using the “meticulously negotiated” and agreed-upon wording from their 2021 settlement when Hart addressed the scandal in an Instagram post that same year, resulting in July’s $12-million breach of written contract lawsuit that Jackson updated last week.
Jackson’s amended complaint includes a transcript of a 2017 interview of Hart by D.A.’s investigator Robin Letourneau said to confirm “multiple key points” that refute the claims made against Jackson and show that Hart allegedly instigated criminal extortion charges that led to Jackson’s arrest.
The amended complaint said that Hart and his legal team “fabricated evidence and provided misleading statements that contributed and led to [Jackson’s] wrongful implication and arrest.” According to the original complaint, the alleged evidence was an April 2018 email addressed to Hart by someone identified as Juan Carlos Yépez, who demanded 20 bitcoins to prevent the tape’s release (after the tape had been released eight months earlier). The email, a copy of which is included in the complaint, also included accusations of molestation and attempted rape.
Jackson, 47, was the target of a January 2018 raid at his home in which he and his wife were held at gunpoint by investigators with the district attorney’s office. Investigators were looking into allegations of extortion in the raid, which Jackson believes Hart’s allegations instigated. Jackson was arrested a few months later, and the complaint said a voice recording made during his arrest captured Letourneau “specifically stating that Plaintiff was responsible for the extortion email that Hart allegedly received on April 27, 2018.”
Jackson claimed in his lawsuit that the extortion report hinged on the email, and he argued that it had not been properly authenticated, although Hart claimed to have forwarded it to his legal team, which then forwarded it to the D.A. But the email lacked forwarding headers and other digital markers, leading Jackson to believe that it was potentially fabricated, according to the lawsuit. However, Jackson alleged, investigators were expected to further scrutinize and verify the digital evidence but allegedly did not and the email was still used to prosecute him.
“The District Attorney’s blanket reliance on Hart’s authentication, despite clear discrepancies, raises significant doubts about the validity of the evidence and the thoroughness of its verification,” the lawsuit said.
A spokesperson for the district attorney’s office said Friday that the office did not comment on pending litigation.
Jackson, who also goes by “Action Jackson,” was charged in May 2018 with attempting to extort money from Hart after claiming to have a secret video of the comedian engaging in extramarital sex in Las Vegas in August 2017. The charges were eventually dropped by prosecutors (whom Jackson also sued in December), but Jackson claimed that his “reputation was unjustly tarnished due to a series of malicious actions by the defendants,” including when Hart released the 2019 Netflix docuseries “Don’t F— This Up.” In the series, Hart mentioned extortion and alleged that Jackson had been involved in the creation and dissemination of the sex tape. Jackson was later cleared of all charges brought against him by the D.A. A $60-million lawsuit filed by Montia Sabbag, the model who appeared with Hart in the sex tape, was dismissed in 2020.
Hart told Letourneau that no one else was in his private bedroom within his suite on the night of the sex tape recording except Sabbag and another female friend, identified as Morgan in the lawsuit.
“Hart emphasizes that no one else had access to his room,” the amended complaint said. “Hart states he was discombobulated and not in control of his actions but implies that Sabbag was aware of the camera’s placement. Hart suggests Sabbag knew where to position herself and Hart to be recorded.”
In the Sept. 18, 2017, interview transcript, the “Jumanji” and “Die Hart” star also admitted to taking the hallucinogenic drug Molly, claiming that a friend, whose identity he did not reveal, pressured him to do the drug.
“F— it, I said, and I put it in my drink,” Hart said in the D.A. interview, which is included in the complaint. “I had some water there. It was watered down. Because it’s in my drink, I’m fine. I’m fine with drinking. The night is good. As the night goes, I’m now with the girl Montia at the end of the night.”
Hart said that he did not have sex with Sabbag that night, but had sex with her the next morning when he “woke up to sexual activity.” That’s when he realized she was trying to get closer to the hidden camera that recorded the sex tape, although he noted that he never felt Sabbag leave the bed.
Hart also mentioned that his friends, including Jackson, were downstairs in his suite for about only 10 minutes and that his private bedroom was upstairs. That claim contradicts “any implication that [Jackson] had an opportunity to place or manipulate the camera.” Hart also noted that Sabbag and Morgan were the only people who could have taken pictures or been involved in the recording or have access to Hart’s private bedroom upstairs in the suite, “strengthening the claim that Plaintiff was not involved,” the complaint said.
“I am a calculated guy. And I know how to maneuver. There’s no way, there’s no way that I can [be] videotaped sleeping in bed with somebody else in the room with me not having knowledge of a person in the room,” Hart said in interview, adding that he “100%” believes that it was all “calculated” by Sabbag during the time he was sleeping in bed by himself.
Hart also explained how he later learned about the sex tape being “shopped” around to celebrity media outlets, indicating a focus on selling the tape rather than extortion, the complaint said.
Hart stated that he was “informed” about the video by a person from Media Take Out, not directly by the purported seller, “highlighting that he was not directly contacted or threatened or extorted,” according to the lawsuit. He was told that the tape would not “come cheap” and that it could ruin his career, “framing it as a sales pitch and business deal rather than a direct threat … supporting that it was a negotiation to sell the video, not extortion.”
The complaint said that Hart’s representatives engaged in this alleged negotiation and that the seller of the sex tape had no idea that he or she was negotiating with Hart’s representatives. The actor-comedian, a seller identified in the documents as a “Hollywood Sex Tape Broker” named Kevin Blatt and Fred Mwangaguhunga from Media Take Out negotiated a price for the recording, “reinforcing the transactional nature of the interaction,” the complaint alleged.
In a Friday statement to The Times, Mwangaguhunga,, said that neither he nor Media Take Out “has ever engaged in any negotiation for a sex tape.”
“That is illegal. We were approached by a person looking to sell a purported video of Kevin Hart, and we immediately notified his representatives. Weeks later, law enforcement asked us for a copy of the email solicitation and we provided it,” Mwangaguhungasaid. “To be clear, it is not true that I, or any representative of Media Take Out, solicited or entered into any business agreement over an illegal video. It is also not true that either I, or anyone at Media Take Out, have ever acted as a representative for Kevin Hart in any negotiation.”
Blatt told The Times on Friday that he was contacted to buy the tape but was never told who the seller was.
Letourneau confirmed under oath at a Sept. 23, 2019, preliminary hearing that the interaction between all parties “was seen as a business deal and not extortion,” Jackson’s amended complaint said. “This detailed evidence collectively shows that Hart was involved in a negotiation over the sale of the video, not extorted, which is extremely crucial for understanding the legal and public perception of the incident.”
After that fated Las Vegas trip, Hart met with Sabbag in Los Angeles, which further contradicts Hart’s “claims and narrative of being a victim of any crime committed,” the complaint said.
“Additionally, officials named in [the complaint], including members of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, contributed to the false accusations against [Jackson] by accepting and acting upon the fabricated evidence without proper investigation and verification. The media then sensationalized these false accusations against [Jackson], further damaging his reputation,” the amended complaint said.
“[Jackson] was wrongfully accused of extorting Hart using the sex tape, leading to significant social and professional fallout. This forced [Jackson] to navigate the legal system and endure hostile public opinion.”
Jackson’s lawsuit initially accused Hart and his co-defendants — Hartbeat LLC and several individuals identified as John or Jane Doe — only of breach of written contract, fraud and intentional infliction of emotional distress, but the amended complaint updated the allegations to include fraud in the inducement, malicious prosecution and defamation. Jackson claimed that the fabricated evidence and fraudulent actions induced him to enter into the contract with Hart, one he argued “was seemingly designed to mitigate the fallout from the fabricated accusations” against him.
In addition to $12 million, Jackson is seeking punitive damages to be determined at trial, legal costs and fees and injunctions requiring the defendants to exonerate him, as well as the removal of “all the false statements” about him in Hart’s 2019 Netflix docuseries.
Before dawn Tuesday, more than 100 law enforcement officers in riot gear marched into the quad of Cal Poly Humboldt, clutching guns and batons.
They encircled a small group of protesters — including a furry one in a lime-green costume — who knelt on the ground, holding hands and reciting native chants.
“Resistance is justified!” the crowd yelled as officers informed them they were being arrested before pulling them up, one by one, and fastening their hands with zip ties.
The scene capped an extraordinary weeklong protest at this public university that has emerged as California’s strongest epicenter of civil disobedience over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
Students at the state’s major campuses, including USC and Berkeley, have made the news over the last week. But Cal Poly Humboldt, tucked at the base of a redwood forest in rural Northern California and home to 5,976 students in Arcata, has taken on an out-sized role. Students have engaged in more vigorous disruption, occupying an academic and administrative building, painting buildings with graffiti and twice forcing police to retreat.
Humboldt is one of the smallest and most isolated of the Cal State schools, a hub for students in the rural towns and former logging communities of California’s far north coast and interior.
Yet those on campus understand why it has become such flashpoint.
Faculty leaders say activism is in the college’s DNA, noting that students and professors have practiced nonviolent civil disobedience for more than half a century — from the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s to the forest defense movement of the 1980s and 1990s.
“People ask, ‘Well, why do they occupy? Why don’t they do what everybody else does and sit outside in tents?’ ” said Anthony Silvaggio, the chair of the sociology department.
“It’s because we’re Humboldt,” he said, noting that as a graduate student in 1997 he was arrested during the Headwaters Campaign to save the last remaining old-growth redwood forests. “We occupy space! We have a rich history of taking over space and a long genealogy of direct-action tactics.”
After resisting multiple attempts by police in riot gear to remove them from a building, students renamed it “Intifada Hall.” They scrawled slogans such as “land back,” “destroy all colonial walls” and “pigs not allowed” up and down its corridors and wrote “BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS” across the wood-paneled walls of President Tom Jackson Jr.’s office.
They said they would not leave until the university disclosed all holdings and collaborations with Israel, cut all ties with Israeli universities, divested from companies “complicit in the occupation of Palestine” and publicly called for a cease-fire. They also called for the dropping of any legal charges against student organizers.
Jackson said Tuesday “it breaks my heart” to see arrests. “Unfortunately, serious criminal activity that crossed the line well beyond the level of a protest had put the campus at ongoing risk.”
But some faculty and students reject that narrative, accusing administrators and authorities of escalating a peaceful situation by bringing in riot police the first evening of the occupation. The closure of the entire campus, they argue, was unnecessary.
“These are the actions of conscientious individuals working to end a genocide, not the actions of criminals,” the faculty union, the university chapter of the California Faculty Assn., said in a statement
One of the activists arrested, assistant professor Rouhollah Aghasaleh, vowed to reject any bond and embark on a hunger strike until he and all his students were released.
“I refuse to accept the label of criminal for standing up for an ethical reason.” he wrote in a statement before his arrest. ::
At the heart of the showdown is a dispute that stretches beyond the Middle East to the question of how central activism is to the university’s mission.
Faculty leaders blame Jackson, who became president in 2019 and has overseen the university’s transition to a polytechnic. The new designation, made in 2022, was designed to increase sagging enrollment with high-demand STEM education and research offerings.
Officials hope the changes will result in a better university. But critics accuse Jackson of being out of sync with campus culture and failing to appreciate the university’s long history of environmental and social justice activism.
According to Silvaggio, Jackson has ruffled feathers by telling faculty, “We’re not here to train activists.”
Silvaggio — who said he learned tactics of non-violent civil disobedience from his professors, who were activists on the defense of native forests — now teaches courses in community organizing and social movements.
He noted that last week was hardly the first occupation of a Humboldt campus building: In 2015, students occupied the university’s Native American Forum for a week to protest the abrupt firing of the then-chair of the Indian Natural Resource Science & Engineering Program.
At the time, the university’s president visited the sit-in to talk to students, praising their action as “a real demonstration of your commitment to student access, achievement and completion.”
“Look at our mission,” Silvaggio said, pointing to the university’s purpose and vision statement, which commits to being a “campus for those who seek above all else to improve the global human condition.” It also commits to “partnering with indigenous communities to address the legacy of colonialism.”
Still, the occupation involved far more disruption than the one in 2015. Supporters of the movement acknowledge that they have developed bolder tactics and become more willing to eschew rules and leaders in the last decade with the coalescing of movements such as Black Lives Matter and the Black Bloc.
“There is no organization or leader,” Silvaggio said. “When these rudderless movements happen, you’re gonna have property destruction, vandalism. That’s the natural course of occupations these days.”
::
The occupation of Cal Poly Humboldt began April 22 when students showed up at Siemens Hall, an academic building that includes the university president’s office, with sleeping bags, board games and decks of cards. They barricaded the entrance with chairs and tables and erected a banner that said, “STOP THE GENOCIDE.”
Students planned a peaceful sit-in in the president’s office to protest Israel’s actions in Gaza, said a 23-year-old student from San Jose who asked to be known only as “Mango” because he feared retaliation. Transgender indigenous students started holding a prayer, he said, and then police showed up and started hitting.
The university gave a different account, saying students and faculty had to be evacuated as protesters disrupted classes and vandalized university property. In addition to defacing the building with graffiti, the university said, protesters blocked entrances and elevators with tents and in some locations shut doors using chains and zip ties, violating fire codes and “creating extreme safety hazards for those inside.”
Video taken from inside showed protesters blocked law enforcement from entering, a police officer beat a protester with a baton and a protester beat an officer’s helmet with an empty five-gallon water jug — a scene that swiftly turned viral, inspiring “jug of justice” memes with the catchphrase “Bonk the police.”
Three students were arrested. Citing safety concerns, officials announced a hard closure of campus, first through last Wednesday, then Sunday, and eventually for the rest of the semester.
Hundreds of students living on campus were told they could leave their dorms only if they had a valid reason and could be cited for trespassing.
Aaron Donaldson, a lecturer in the communications department and secretary of the faculty union, said students who tried to leave campus to get groceries complained of confrontations with police. He had 50 outlines to grade, but could not go get them for fear of arrest.
After another standoff Friday — police moved in that evening to enforce an order to disperse, students resisted and police ultimately withdrew — the university again condemned activists, claiming the occupation “has nothing to do with free speech or freedom of inquiry.”
But the administration said it would “continue to talk to anyone willing to have productive and respectful dialogue.”
In a gesture of good faith, the occupiers moved out of Siemens Hall on Sunday, clearing the building and moving their occupation to outdoor space.
::
By Monday afternoon, the tree-lined campus with glimmering views of Humboldt Bay had the feel of a nearly deserted, surreal summer camp.
Activists in pink, brown, and white furry costumes roamed outside the main administration building and quad, which was encircled with barricades of chairs, tables, trash bins and fencing.
After a faculty led teach-in about ablism, there was a march, followed by a Passover seder. As some munched matzo, others chanted: “From the river to the sea.”
As dusk fell, some activists put on goggles and helmets, carried makeshift shields, jangled tambourines and beat drums as they prepared for another standoff with law enforcement.
Just after 9:30 p.m., a patrol car rolled through campus, broadcasting a recorded message urging demonstrators to immediately disperse. If they did not move, protesters could face rubber bullets and chemical spray.
“Cops off campus!” the crowd chanted in unison.
Many faculty, barred from campus, massed on the street outside, saying they wanted to bear witness to what was happening to their students.
Dominic Corva, a professor of sociology, said he blamed Cal Poly Humboldt’s president for creating conditions that led to the standoff.
“This [university] has a president … completely at odds with [the] culture and pedagogy of the university,” Corva said. “His actions have escalated the situation.”
Jackson could not be reached for comment Tuesday. But in a statement, he said: “Our focus for the entire time has been on doing all we could do to protect the safety of all involved, and we were very patient and very disciplined with that.”
Donaldson said the standoff between activists and administrators had reinforced some key lessons of the social advocacy class he taught this semester: Direct democracy, he said, is fundamentally about non-violence and is never convenient; the point is to interrupt and to stop and to say, “Wait, we have to talk and pay attention.”
For Rick Toledo, 32, a student organizer on campus who did not occupy the building but supported the movement, the most pressing concern Tuesday morning was raising $10,000 per person for bail.
There had been some conflicts among activists over strategy and the value of graffiti, Toledo said. But in the course of the occupation, they had tried to come to a consensus and develop some rules.
“When you have varying ideologies and no strict guidelines, clashes are bound to happen,” Toledo said.
Going forward, Toledo hoped activists could develop guidelines before they occupied again.
“The movement can’t die here,” he said. “There’s so much pain in Palestine. What the students have done is huge and we need to keep that momentum.”
The Gods are among us as Joanna and Mal return to dive deep into the season finale of Percy Jackson and the Olympians (08:10). They take an extended look at the season’s final episode and break down all of the significant story elements of the show (15:41). Later, they talk about book spoilers to see what may happen next in a potential Season 2 (02:03:42).
Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Social: Jomi Adeniran
The finale episode of the first season of Disney Plus’ Percy Jackson series finishes up the adaptation of The Lightning Thiefwith a fight on the beach, a traitor revealed, and a teary reunion.
Previous episodes ended with a post-credits tease of what comes next, but is there a preview for season 2? No, but there is a little post-credits scene that shows the fate of one important character.
In the post-credits scene, Sally Jackson’s scumbag ex-husband Gabe (Timm Sharp) tries to get inside her apartment while on the phone with his lawyer. She wisely changed the locks, though, so he can’t get in. But he spots a package on the Jacksons’ doorstep and decides to open it. This happens to be a return-to-sender package, addressed to Percy — aka the one containing Medusa’s severed head.
He opens it, looks directly inside, and immediately gets turned to stone. Get wrecked, Gabe.
Gabe doesn’t appear in any of the books after the first one, and considering the only reason Sally married him is because his gross mortal-stink masked Percy’s scent from monsters, it’s no one’s loss. In fact, we’re all pretty glad to see him out of the way.
Image: Disney
This is actually similar to the infamous movie’s post-credits scene, where Gabe returns to the apartment to pack up his stuff. He goes to the kitchen to get a beer, only to find the fridge locked and a note from Percy saying that no one should open the fridge. Unperturbed, Gabe smashes open the lock — and then is frozen by Medusa’s head.
Yet, somehow, neither of these versions is anywhere near as deliciously brutal as his fate in the book series. In the books, it’s actually Sally who uses the head to freeze Gabe and then sells his petrified corpse as a sculpture. It’s a big hit in the art world, and she uses the proceeds to put down a deposit for a new apartment and fund a semester of tuition at NYU, where she goes on to study writing. She reports Gabe as missing, but he never turns up! (“Goodbye Earl” by The Chicks plays in the background.)
Word’s out on if Sally will find the frozen Gabe and profit off him in the show, but she definitely deserves to make a splash in the art world and finance her passion for writing.
Mal and Jo are here to dive into Episodes 3 and 4 of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. They begin with their initial thoughts on these two episodes and the general reviews the show has gotten (8:20). Then they dive into each episode, discussing the journey we’re on with each character, new characters that appear, and much more (20:09). Later on they talk about some Easter eggs and some book spoilers that could potentially show up in future episodes (2:12:53).
Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Producer: Isaiah Blakely Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Social: Jomi Adeniran
We just need some more wine. Mal and Jo are here to dive into the first two episodes of Percy Jackson and the Olympians (07:20). After their initial impressions, they delve into their thoughts on Percy and the many characters and lore that stem from this beloved book series (16:22). Later, they also dive into book spoilers to see what may come ahead (1:54:22).
Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Social: Jomi Adeniran
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump is calling on the Department of Justice to investigate why Dexter Wade ― a Mississippi man who authorities say was hit and killed by an off-duty police officer’s vehicle ― was quietly buried by the city in a pauper’s grave as his mother repeatedly contacted police for help finding him.
“For six months, she didn’t know where he was at,” Crump said at a press conference Monday alongside Wade’s mother, Bettersten Wade, who says she filed a missing person report with the Jackson Police Department days after her son’s disappearance in March, and that she repeatedly asked police to check their morgue.
“They had my address. They had my phone number — the same thing on his medical records. How could they not, how could they not put all of that together?” Bettersten Wade said. “Our police department is supposed to help.”
Bettersten said it wasn’t until Aug. 24 that she learned that her son was dead, and that his body had been discharged by the morgue and buried in a pauper’s field. His grave was given a marker reading “No. 672.”
Wade was found buried in a pauper’s cemetery under the marker “672.” The family is seeking an exhumation so Wade’s body can undergo an independent autopsy and receive a proper burial.
Crump said Dexter Wade, 37, was found without identification cards, but that the coroner’s office was able to identify him through his fingerprints and a prescription medication that was found on him.
The coroner’s office tried calling Bettersten Wade. When the attempt was unsuccessful, the coroner shared her number with the police department so they could reach out as well, and the coroner repeatedly checked in with police to see if they’d made contact, Crump said.
“The coroner was saying, ‘Have you called her? Have you called her? Have you made contact?’” Crump said.
Both Crump and Bettersten Wade expressed suspicion about whether police ever actually tried to call.
“She didn’t see anything where she was getting contacted… by the Jackson Police Department,” Crump said.
The police department did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Bettersten Wade alleges that police intentionally didn’t reach out to her because of a lawsuit she’d previously filed against the department related to her brother’s death in 2019. Her brother, George Robinson, 62, died two days after he was beaten by police during a traffic stop. Robinson’s death was ruled a homicide and an officer involved was later convicted of manslaughter, though he is now appealing his conviction.
Bettersten believes that because of that lawsuit, local police have a “vendetta” against her.
The city’s mayor, who addressed Dexter Wade’s death in public remarks last week, blamed a lack of communication between the police department’s missing persons division and the coroner’s office, but said there’s no evidence of police misconduct or malicious intent.
“The accident was investigated, and it was determined that it was, in fact, an accident and that there was no malicious intent,” said Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, who said Dexter was fatally struck while he attempted to cross a highway.
Crump said he wants Dexter’s body to be exhumed so it can undergo an independent autopsy and receive a proper burial.
“We will not rest until the full truth is revealed, and those responsible for this injustice are held accountable,” Crump said in a statement. “Dexter’s memory will not be forgotten, and his story will fuel our fight for a fair and just society where every life is valued and protected, regardless of who they are.”
A spokesperson for the DOJ told HuffPost that the department is aware of the investigation request, but that it had no further comment.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell set a high bar for additional interest-rate hikes, economists said Sunday in their commentary on all the talk at the U.S. central bank’s summer retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyo.
Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist for JPMorgan Chase, said that the Fed chair certainly did not give a clear signal that more tightening was coming soon. He noted that Powell stressed the Fed would “proceed carefully” and balance the risks of tightening too much or too little.
“We remain comfortable in our view that the FOMC will stay on hold for the next several meetings,” Feroli said.
The caveat to this forecast is if inflation surprises to the upside or the labor market does not continue to soften.
Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon, said that Powell’s speech seemed hawkish to some, particularly because the Fed chair made threats to hike again.
But Shepherdson said he thought the Fed “is likely done.”
“Behind the caveats, Mr. Powell’s speech fundamentally was optimistic, though cautious,” Shepherdson said.
Boston Fed President Susan Collins also emphasized patience in an interview with MarketWatch on the sidelines of the Jackson Hole summit.
Other regional Fed officials who spoke “hinted that further action may be needed, but also observed that inflation is moving in the right direction and that the surge in yields would help cool down the economy,” said Krishna Guha, vice chairman of Evercore ISI, in a note to clients.
Traders in derivative markets expect a rate hike in November, but it is a close call, with the odds just above 50%.
The first test of the careful and patient Fed will come this coming Friday, when the government will release the August employment report.
Economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal expect the U.S. economy added 165,000 jobs in the month. That would be the weakest job growth since December 2020.
In his speech on Friday, Powell emphasized that evidence that the labor market was not softening could “call for a monetary policy response.”
Economists at Deutsche Bank think an upside surprise in the employment data could provide enough discomfort for the Fed, and raise expectations for further tightening.
Guha of Evercore said he detected a careful effort by the officials not to surprise markets.
The exception to this rule might have been Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel, who said in a television interview that it was too early for the ECB to think about a rate-hike pause.
BOULDER, Colorado (AP) — New Colorado coach Deion Sanders can’t yet point to any on-field wins in Boulder, but signs of a massive shift in mood and expectation abound at this school and in this city around what has been a forlorn football program.
Hired in December after a highly successful run as Jackson State’s head coach, the NFL Hall of Fame cornerback is in the midst of running practices with his new team in preparation for Colorado’s annual intrasquad spring game on April 22.
The school announced earlier this week that the game, which is also being nationally televised on ESPN, had sold out with more than 45,000 people expected to be on hand. It would stand out as the highest attendance ever for Colorado’s spring game, eclipsing the previous high of 17,800 in 2008. Indeed, according to the school, the anticipated attendance will be higher than the combined total for the previous nine spring games.
“We haven’t won a game. There’s no impact right now,” Sanders said at a news conference Saturday. “The financial aspect of what’s going on, that’s a blessing. Somebody’s profiting really well and I’m happy for that, especially this university because they deserve it. And to display and show what’s here, in your beloved city, I think that’s a beautiful thing to bring that to fruition.”
Sanders, popularly known as “Primetime” in his playing days but better known now as “Coach Prime,” said he likes the way the team is starting to mesh. He can sense the eagerness and desire among his players and the students he’s met to turn around the program.
“I can’t wait for the spring game, really looking forward to it, because I want to see the difference in the atmosphere and the feeling and the spirit of everything,” said Sanders, who is taking over a program that has had a losing record in its last six seasons, including a 1-11 finish last season.
“I spoke to the School of Business yesterday and it was phenomenal,” Sanders said. “Those kids were hungry. Every kid had a pencil and piece of paper and taking notes and they were on every darn word, every thought, everything I uttered, they were on it. They wanted it. I loved that.”
Sanders insists change has to be made by both players and fans.
“If we’re going to change the game here, that means the fans have got to change, too,” he said. “We want to impact them as well. We want them to be ready for us like we want to be ready for them.”
If his players are anything like their coach, they’ll be ready, for primetime. Sanders attended the conference wearing a cowboy hat with a gold chain and traditional coach’s whistle draped around his neck. He was asked if he would like to see some of his players, which include his son, quarterback Shedeur Sanders, take on any of his football characteristics as is sometimes wont between players and coaches.
“I hope so,” Sanders said with a smile. “God, I hope so. That’s what I want. That’s what I’m looking for.”
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