Civil rights activist and two-time Democrat presidential candidate Jesse Jackson died Tuesday. He was 84.  Jackson’s family announced his death on Tuesday morning. A cause of death was not provided, but Jackson was placed on life support in November after he was hospitalized over a neurological condition called progressive supranuclear palsy.  “It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of Civil Rights leader and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Honorable Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. He died peacefully on Tuesday morning, surrounded by his family. His unwavering commitment to justice, equality, and human rights helped shape a global movement for freedom and dignity,” his family said. “Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world.” Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina on October 8, 1941. He graduated from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in 1964. Soon after, he began working closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and was heavily involved in King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Working for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Jackson ran “Operation Breadbasket” in Chicago. The program was meant to create economic opportunities for black people and would encourage boycotts of companies that did not “negotiate” for a “more equitable employment practice” for black people. He is survived by his wife, Jacqueline, and their children, Santita, Jesse Jr., Jonathan, Yusef, and Jacqueline. He has another daughter, Ashley Jackson, from another woman. This is a breaking story. Refresh for updates. 

Two people were killed and at least three others critically injured after a man who identifies as a woman opened fire at a high school hockey game in Rhode Island. Pawtucket Police Chief Tina Goncalves confirmed in a Monday evening press conference that Robert Dorgan, who goes by the name Roberta Esposito, killed himself after what she said was likely a targeted shooting stemming from a family dispute. A clip circulating on social media appears to show Dorgan’s daughter leaving a police station and telling reporters that her father “shot my family” and “he’s dead now.” The woman added that Dorgan “has mental health issues,” and “was very sick.” Court records from 2020 confirm that Dorgan had undergone gender reassignment surgery. Dorgan claimed to North Providence Police at the time that his father-in-law attempted to throw him out of the house following his surgery. Around that time, Dorgan’s wife filed for divorce, initially citing “gender reassignment surgery, narcissistic + personality disorder traits” as the reason before crossing them out and writing “irreconcilable differences.” Authorities have not publicly identified the victims, nor have they confirmed the precise relationships involved in the apparent family dispute. Police have also not released information about the weapon used. This is the latest shooting perpetrated by a transgender-identifying attacker. Earlier this month, a man who identified as a woman and wore a dress killed 10 people at a Canadian school. Transgender-identifying shooters perpetrated deadly attacks on schools in Nashville in 2023 and in Minneapolis in 2025. The latter attack was the subject of the last question Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was asked when he was assassinated in September. Kirk’s killer, Tyler Robinson, was, at the time of the attack, living with his “transgender partner,” a man named Lance Twiggs, who identifies as a woman. As The Daily Wire’s Mary Margaret Olohan reported this week, though the Trump administration was reportedly considering a ban on gun ownership for transgender-identifying people in the wake of the Minneapolis shooting, that ban has seemingly stalled. A source familiar with the Trump administration’s thinking said that the topic is not something that they have heard discussed since The Daily Wire’s original reporting in September. Monday’s shooting occurred at the Dennis M. Lynch Arena during a game involving multiple high school teams. Pawtucket Police Chief Tina Goncalves said the suspected gunman is also dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Federal authorities, including the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, responded to assist state and local law enforcement at the Dennis M. Lynch Arena on Monday. Police said shots were fired inside the arena while spectators and players were present for what had been scheduled as a senior night celebration for the Blackstone Valley Schools cooperative hockey team. “You don’t know what’s going on at first,” Melissa Dunn, the mother of one player, told reporters. “You just hear the loud noises … then you realize something is very wrong.” A player who was on the ice at the time said multiple shots were fired and that players ran to the locker room for safety. “We pressed against the door and just tried to stay safe,” he said. “It was very scary.” Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien called the shooting “a terrible tragedy” and said the city is working closely with law enforcement and the Rhode Island attorney general’s office. “What should have been a joyful occasion … was instead marked by violence and fear,” Grebien said. “Tonight, Pawtucket is a city in mourning.”

The U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense on Sunday for the first time transported a small nuclear reactor on a cargo plane from California to Utah to demonstrate the potential to quickly deploy nuclear power for military and civilian use. The agencies partnered with California-based Valar Atomics to fly one of the company’s Ward microreactors on a C-17 aircraft — without nuclear fuel — to Hill Air Force Base in Utah. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Michael Duffey were on the C-17 flight with the reactor and its components, and hailed the event as a breakthrough for U.S. nuclear energy and military logistics. “This gets us closer to deploy nuclear power when and where it is needed to give our nation’s warfighters the tools to win in battle,” Duffey said. President Donald Trump’s administration sees small nuclear reactors as one of several ways to expand U.S. energy production. Trump last May issued four executive orders aimed at boosting domestic nuclear deployment to meet growing demand for energy for national security and competitive AI advancements. The Energy Department in December issued two grants to help accelerate development of small modular reactors. Proponents of microreactors also have touted them as energy sources that can be sent to far-flung and remote places, offering an alternative to diesel generators which require frequent deliveries of fuel. But skeptics have argued that the industry has not proven that small nuclear reactors can generate power for a reasonable price. “There is no business case for microreactors, which — even if they work as designed — will produce electricity at a far higher cost than large nuclear reactors, not to mention renewables like wind or solar,” said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. The Energy Department plans to have three microreactors reach “criticality” — when a nuclear reaction can sustain itself — by July 4, Wright said. The microreactor in Sunday’s event, a little larger than a minivan, can generate up to 5 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 5,000 homes, according to Valar CEO Isaiah Taylor. It will start operating in July at 100 kilowatts and peak at 250 kilowatts this year before ramping up to full capacity, he said. Valar hopes to start selling power on a test basis in 2027 and become fully commercial in 2028. Although private industry funds its own development of nuclear technology, it also needs the federal government “doing some enabling actions to allow fuel fabrication here and uranium enrichment here,” he said. Fuel for Valar’s reactor will be transported from the Nevada National Security site to the San Rafael facility, Wright told reporters. However, even small generators result in a significant amount of radioactive waste, Lyman said. Other experts have said designers are not compelled to consider waste at inception, beyond a plan for how it will be managed. Although disposal of nuclear waste remains an unresolved issue, the Energy Department is in talks with a few states, including Utah, to host sites that could reprocess fuel or handle permanent disposal, Wright said. (Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Sergio Non and Lincoln Feast.)

Actor Ted Levine apologized recently for his iconic turn as cross-dressing serial killer Jame Gumb in the 1991  horror classic “The Silence of the Lambs,” saying that it was “f*cking wrong” that the film had “vilified” the apparent gender confusion of his character. Levine told The Hollywood Reporter that his intent had always been to play Gumb — nicknamed “Buffalo Bill” — as a “f*cked-up heterosexual man” despite the fact that the character dresses in women’s clothing, wears makeup, and skins his female victims in an effort to make himself a suit of female flesh. “There are certain aspects of the movie that don’t hold up too well,” he said. “We all know more, and I’m a lot wiser about transgender issues. There are some lines in that script and movie that are unfortunate.” Levine said that when they were making the film — based on the 1988 Thomas Harris novel by the same title — he had not been particularly concerned, but that “over time and having gotten aware and worked with trans folks, and understanding a bit more about the culture and the reality of the meaning of gender — it’s unfortunate that the film vilified that, and it’s f*cking wrong. And you can quote me on that.” “I didn’t play him as being gay or trans. I think he was just a f*cked-up heterosexual man. That’s what I was doing,” Levine explained. Director Jonathan Demme offered a similar take on Buffalo Bill’s motivations, arguing during a 2014 interview that the character was drowning in self-loathing and that turning himself into a woman was a means of escape from who he was rather than an effort to become something he specifically wanted to be. “He didn’t wish to be another gender. He didn’t really have a sexual preference. He loathed himself — he wanted to transform himself so that there was no sense of him in the ‘new’ him [and] becoming a woman … that was his method of doing it.” “We were really loyal to the book. As we made the film, there was just no question in our minds that Buffalo Bill was a completely aberrant personality — that he wasn’t gay or trans,” producer Edward Saxon added. “He was sick. To that extent, we missed it. From my point of view, we weren’t sensitive enough to the legacy of a lot of stereotypes and their ability to harm.” “There’s regret, but it didn’t come from any place of malice. It actually came from a place of seeing this guy. We all had dear friends and family who were gay. We thought it would just be very clear that Buffalo Bill adapts different things from society, from a place of an incredibly sick pathology,” he continued. Despite the confusion surrounding Buffalo Bill, “The Silence of the Lambs” became the third film in Academy history to sweep all five major awards: Best Picture, Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins), Best Actress (Jodie Foster), Best Director (Demme), and Best Screenplay (adapted). The other two films to do so were “It Happened One Night” (1934) and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975).

About 100 U.S. military personnel have arrived in Nigeria as Washington scales up an operation to target Islamist insurgents, a Nigerian defence spokesperson said. U.S. President Donald Trump has accused Nigeria of failing to protect Christians from Islamist militants in the northwest. Nigeria denies discriminating against any religion, saying its security forces target armed groups that attack both Christians and Muslims. The U.S. carried out strikes targeting Islamic State-linked militants in December, and a small U.S. military team has been operating on the ground to boost Nigeria’s intelligence capabilities. In recent days, several planes carrying U.S. troops and equipment have headed to Nigeria’s northern states, according to flight tracking data reviewed by Reuters. Major General Samaila Uba, spokesperson for Nigeria’s Defense Headquarters, said the troops would train and advise local forces, but not take part in combat. Earlier this month, Nigeria’s military said it expected around 200 more U.S. troops. Presidential spokesperson Sunday Dare said Nigeria needed “massive support from the U.S. government” in terms of fighter jets and munitions, but declined to give numbers or a timeframe. Nigeria’s 240 million people are evenly split between Christians mainly in the south and Muslims mainly in the north. It acknowledges serious security problems, including from Islamist fighters, but denies that Christians face widespread or systematic persecution. (Reporting by Jessica Donati, and MacDonald Dzirutwe in Lagos; Editing by Timothy Heritage and Kevin Liffey)