LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ron Cephas Jones, a veteran stage actor who won two Emmy Awards for his role as a long-lost father who finds redemption on the NBC television drama series “This Is Us,” has died at age 66, a representative said Saturday.

Jones’ manager, Dan Spilo, said in an emailed statement the actor died “due to a long-standing pulmonary issue.”

“Throughout the course of his career, his warmth, beauty, generosity, kindness and heart were felt by anyone who had the good fortune of knowing him,” Spilo said.

Jones had a double lung transplant in 2020 because of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and spent nearly two months in a Los Angeles hospital.

On “This Is Us,” Jones played William “Shakespeare” Hill, a biological father whose life is renewed through his relationship with the family of his son Randall Pearson, played by Sterling K. Brown.

“One of the most wonderful people the world has ever seen is no longer with us,” Brown said in an Instagram post after Jones’ death. “The world is a little less bright. Brother, you are loved. And you will be missed.”

Jones played a more central role in the series’ early seasons, but appeared in some form in all six seasons of the show, which included time-jumping narratives offering recurring opportunities for its actors even after their characters’ deaths.

Jones won Emmys for best guest actor in a drama series in 2018 and 2020 and was nominated for two more.

“Ron was the best of the best — on screen, on stage, and in real life,” “This Is Us” creator Dan Fogelman said on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. “My God: what an actor. I don’t think I ever changed a single take of his in a cut because everything he did was perfect.”

Jones spent most of his career in the theater before and after “This Is Us,” returning to Broadway even after his transplant forced him to learn to breathe and walk again.

“My whole life has been the stage,” Jones said in a late 2021 interview with the The New York Times, in which he revealed he had quietly been suffering from respiratory problems since about the time he began on “This Is Us.”

“The idea of not performing again seemed worse to me than death,” Jones said.

He was nominated for a Tony Award and won a 2022 Drama Desk Award for the Broadway role as a truck-stop cook in playwright Lynn Nottage’s “Clyde’s.”

A native of Paterson, New Jersey, Jones graduated from nearby Ramapo College, where he had intended to study jazz but switched to theater during his sophomore year. He spent the late 1970s and early 1980s traveling the country, working as a bus driver in Southern California for several years.

In the mid 1980s he moved to New York, where his career got a jumpstart when he began hanging out and collaborating at the Nuyorican Poets Café, a vital creative hub for poetry, hip-hop and the performing arts.

A breakout role came in 1994, when he landed the lead in playwright Cheryl West’s drama, “Holiday Heart.”

He would spend the ensuing decades constantly in the theater, often in Off Broadway plays in New York, including a title turn as Shakespeare’s “Richard III” at The Public Theater, and in roles with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.

Jones also had TV guest stints on “Mr. Robot,” “Luke Cage” and “Lisey’s Story.”

His film appearances included 2006’s “Half Nelson” with Ryan Gosling and 2019’s “Dolemite Is My Name” with Eddie Murphy.

He is survived by his daughter, Jasmine Cephas Jones.

NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump now says he won’t be holding a news conference next week to unveil what he claims is new “evidence” of fraud in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election — even though no fraud has ever been substantiated — citing the advice of lawyers as he prepares to face trial in two criminal cases that stem from his election lies.

No compelling evidence of the wide-scale fraud Trump alleges has emerged in the two-and-a-half years since the election in Georgia or elsewhere, despite Trump’s baseless claims. Republican officials in the state have long said he lost fairly and three recounts there confirmed President Joe Biden’s win.

“Rather than releasing the Report on the Rigged & Stolen Georgia 2020 Presidential Election on Monday, my lawyers would prefer putting this, I believe, Irrefutable & Overwhelming evidence of Election Fraud & Irregularities in formal Legal Filings as we fight to dismiss this disgraceful Indictment,” Trump wrote on his social media site Thursday in announcing his reversal.

Trump had announced that he would be holding the event hours after a Georgia grand jury voted to charge him and others late Monday in what they allege was a sweeping conspiracy to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election and stop the peaceful transition of power.

He had said he would use the “major News Conference” at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club Monday morning to release what he claimed was an “almost complete” report that would exonerate him.

Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence that the election was tainted. The former president’s allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges Trump appointed.

In Georgia, the state at the center of his latest indictment, three recounts were conducted after the election — each of which confirmed his loss to Biden.

Advisers have long urged the former president to spend less time airing his grievances about the 2020 election as he runs for reelection and more time focused on his plans for the future. While such rhetoric animates his loyal base, it alienates more moderate and independent voters and is also often criticized in interviews by longtime Trump supporters, who say they feel it’s time to move on.

But the cases against him have dramatically raised the stakes. The federal judge overseeing the election conspiracy case brought against Trump in Washington last week warned him that there are limits to what he can publicly say about evidence in the investigation as he campaigns for a second term in the White House.

The judge said that the more “inflammatory” statements are made about the case, the greater her urgency will be to move quickly to trial to prevent witness intimidation or jury pool contamination.

“I will take whatever measures are necessary to safeguard the integrity of the case,” she said.

Still, Trump has made clear that he sees the cases brought against him in Georgia and Washington as an opportunity to try to relitigate his false claims.

Trump’s renewed attacks on the integrity of Georgia’s vote this week drew swift criticism from state’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, whom Trump had tried to lobby as part of his efforts to overturn his loss in the battleground state.

“The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen. For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward – under oath – and prove anything in a court of law,” Kemp wrote on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, whom Trump had tried to pressure to unilaterally overturn the results of the election and who is now challenging Trump for the Republican nomination, echoed that message.

“The Georgia election was not stolen and I had no right to overturn the election on January 6th,” he said this week.

Trump, the first former president in U.S. history to be indicted, is also facing criminal charges in Florida over his handling of classified documents and his alleged efforts to obstruct the investigation, as well as in New York in connection to hush money payments made to women during his 2016 campaign.