Dear Commons Community,

My colleague, David Bloomfield, was quoted extensively in a piece yesterday in ChalkBeat outlining the education agenda for New York in 2025.  School funding, cellphone ban, class size, and Trump’s financial policies top the list.  Below is the article.

David offers good insights.

Tony

——————————————————————–

Debate over how to update NY’s school funding formula continues

Lawmakers and observers expect discussions over how to revise the Foundation Aid formula to play a major role in the state budget process.

That formula, first implemented in 2007, relies on decades-old data to calculate district needs, such as using poverty figures from the 2000 census. Though most agree the formula is in dire need of updates, a recent report offering 20 recommendations spurred mixed reactions among advocates and lawmakers.

State Sen. John Liu, a Queens Democrat who chairs the Senate’s New York City education committee, said the report included helpful suggestions. Still, it didn’t address several key issues that impact New York City, like the growing population of students in temporary housing, he said.

“The report gives us good ideas and some of the logic behind possible changes,” Liu said. “But it doesn’t constrain us in any way in terms of determining what the new state budget is going to be and how much will be invested in education.”

Mayer said discussions over the formula will begin with the release of the governor’s budget proposal later this month. She added that lawmakers will want to see the district-level impacts of any proposed changes to the formula.

Trump’s return sparks fears about funding cuts

In New York City and in Albany, Trump’s return to the White House has set lawmakers and education advocates on edge — as his policies could potentially weaken federal support for schools and harm local immigrant communities.

The president-elect has vowed to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education, enact mass deportations, and slash federal funding.

Bloomfield believes the biggest threat to New York City schools lies in potential federal funding cuts — whether directly related to education or not.

“Education funding directly could be cut,” he said. “But if transportation funding is cut, or other areas of massive federal aid, the budget may have to adjust away from education to fill other gaps.”

NeQuan McLean, president of the city’s District 16 Community Education Council, has been working to raise alarm over potential cuts to Title I funding, which provide city schools with millions in federal dollars meant to support students from low-income backgrounds.

Part of the issue, McLean added, is a lack of accounting of what city schools use the federal funding for — meaning the full extent of potential cuts remains unclear.

“What does that mean for New York State?” he said. “What does that look like for districts that really rely on this money?”

Mayer is concerned about the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — widely seen as a blueprint for the Trump administration — that calls for Title I funding to be turned into vouchers and then phased out over time, among other changes.

“We have Republicans from New York, and we have to impress upon them that to carry through with the Project 2025 agenda would be absolutely devastating for the kids of New York City,” she said.

Mayer added she’s concerned about the Trump administration’s plans to ramp up deportations. It’s a fear shared among local families and educators, as New York City’s schools are home to thousands of asylum-seeking and other migrant students.

“In the first Trump presidency, some of these parents just said, ‘I’m not willing to take the chance of ICE coming and pulling my kid at school,’” Mayer said. “We as a community need to assure parents that school is a safe place.”

NYC must construct more school buildings, lawmaker says

New York City is approaching its first major test in meeting a state law mandating smaller class sizes, with 60% of classrooms required to be in compliance by September 2025.

That law — which caps class sizes at 20 for kindergarten to third grade, 23 for fourth to eighth grade, and 25 for high school — will require a historic reduction in class sizes across the school system. Around 40% of the city’s classes were below the caps as of last year.

Liu said he’s open to conversations with the city about providing further resources. But he wants to see a more substantial effort by the city in 2025 toward meeting the mandate — including retrofitting additional school building spaces into classrooms, constructing additional classrooms where space exists on school campuses, and developing new school buildings.

Mayoral control, SHSAT, and other issues could resurface

Other issues that have previously taken center stage could also reemerge in 2025.

Though the current mayoral control deal will last until 2026, the city’s polarizing school governance structure could spark some conversations this year.

Liu said that legislative action about the issue was “always a possibility.”

To Bloomfield, recent federal charges against Adams and the departure of many top city officials may offer further fuel to critics of the current system.

Meanwhile, he anticipates debates over the Specialized High School Admissions Test — a standardized exam that acts as the sole metric of admission to the city’s prestigious specialized high schools, like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science — could resurface this year.

It’s a polarizing issue that has remained dormant in recent years. But as the city’s Panel for Educational Policy considered a new contract for a computer-based version of the exam last month, some members signaled they want to see reforms to the admissions system.

“It resurrects a previously dead issue,” Bloomfield said. “It’s unlikely to change things, but there’s an opening that didn’t exist a month ago.”

Dear Commons Community,

Donald Trump used the deadly New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans to bolster his fearmongering about “criminals” crossing into the U.S. from abroad and did not correct that assertion after the suspect was identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a Texas-born US citizen and Army veteran who served in Afghanistan.   The 42-year-old Jabber who police say drove a pickup truck into a crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street, killed at least 15 people and injureddozens more.  Trump, however, lied that Jabbar was an immigrant.  As reported by The Huffington Post.

“When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true,” the president-elect posted on Truth Social on Wednesday morning.

“The crime rate in our country is at a level that nobody has ever seen before. Our hearts are with all of the innocent victims and their loved ones, including the brave officers of the New Orleans Police Department.”

He said his incoming administration would “fully support the City of New Orleans as they investigate and recover from this act of pure evil!”

Fox News had reported minutes prior to Trump’s Truth Social post that the vehicle used by the suspect had crossed into Eagle Pass, Texas, from Mexico two days before the attack.

Just over an hour later, the conservative network retracted that reporting, saying its sources had advised that the truck crossed the border on Nov. 16 apparently driven by someone else. Later in the afternoon, it reported that the truck never crossed over from Mexico.

The suspect was identified in the early afternoon by the FBI as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a U.S. Army veteran from Texas. It said he drove a rented truck. Jabbar said in a 2020 YouTube video about himself that he was born in Beaumont, Texas, according to CNN.

The suspect drove the vehicle into a crowded Bourbon Street in the early hours of New Year’s Day, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens more. He died after exchanging gunfire with police.

Trump has not offered any correction to his statement, and has since made an additional post attacking “OPEN BORDERS” and accusing U.S. law enforcement of spending “all of their waking hours unlawfully attacking their political opponent, ME, rather than focusing on protecting Americans from the outside and inside violent SCUM that has infiltrated all aspects of our government, and our Nation itself.”

He posted overnight, “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!”

Trump’s transition team did not immediately return HuffPost’s request for comment.

Trump:  the liar in chief.

Tony

Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson.  Courtesy of The Hill – Greg Nash.

Dear Commons Community,

President Joe Biden is bestowing the second highest civilian medal on Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson — the lawmakers who led the congressional investigation into the violent Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot by Donald Trump’s supporters, and who Trump has said should be jailed.

Biden will award the Presidential Citizens Medal to 20 people in a ceremony today at the White House, including Americans who fought for marriage equality, a pioneer in treating wounded soldiers, and two of the president’s longtime friends, former Sens. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn.

“President Biden believes these Americans are bonded by their common decency and commitment to serving others,” the White House said in a statement. “The country is better because of their dedication and sacrifice.”

Biden last year honored people who were involved in defending the Capitol from the rioters, or who helped safeguard the will of American voters during the 2020 presidential election, when Trump tried and failed to overturn the results.

Cheney, who was a Republican representative from Wyoming, and Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, led the House committee that probed the insurrection. Cheney later said she would vote for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race even campaigned with her, raising Trump’s ire. Biden has been considering whether to offer preemptive pardons to Cheney and others Trump has targeted.

Trump, who won the 2024 election and will take office Jan. 20, still refuses to back away from his lies about the 2020 presidential race and has said he would pardon the rioters once he takes office.

During an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Trump said, “Cheney did something that’s inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the un-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps,” claiming without evidence they “deleted and destroyed” testimony they collected.

“Honestly, they should go to jail,” he said.

Biden is also giving the award to attorney Mary Bonauto, who fought to legalize same-sex marriage, and Evan Wolfson, a leader of the marriage equality movement.

Other honorees include Frank Butler, who set new standards for using tourniquets on war injuries; Diane Carlson Evans, an Army nurse during the Vietnam War who founded the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation; and Eleanor Smeal, an activist who led women’s rights protests in the 1970s and fought for equal pay.

He’s also giving the award to photographer Bobby Sager, academics Thomas Vallely and Paula Wallace, and Frances Visco, the president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition.

Other former lawmakers being honored include former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J.; former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, the first woman to represent Kansas; and former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., who championed gun safety measures after her son and husband were shot to death.

Biden will honor four people posthumously: Joseph Galloway, a former war correspondent who wrote about the first major battle in Vietnam in the book “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young”; civil rights advocate and attorney Louis Lorenzo Redding; former Delaware state judge Collins Seitz; and Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi, who was held with other Japanese Americans during World War II and challenged the detention.

The Presidential Citizens Medal, created by President Richard Nixon in 1969, is the country’s second highest civilian honor after the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It is awarded to those who “performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.”

Cheney and Thompson are most deserving of this honor!

Tony

Chip Roy.  Courtesy of NBC News.

Dear Commons Community,

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) could lose his bid to keep the gavel when the chamber votes later this week.

“Right now, I don’t believe that he has the votes on Friday and I think we need to have the conference get together so that we can get united,” Roy told Fox Business host Ashley Webster on Tuesday.

Johnson’s hopes of retaining his leadership post rest on near unanimity among his party, with The Hill noting that just two GOP defections could be enough to sink his bid.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has already said he will vote against Johnson, and several others haven’t committed to him, including Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.).

Roy indicated that he’s also not in Johnson’s corner ― at least not yet.

“Victoria’s a good friend and Thomas is a good friend and they raise reasonable concerns,” Roy told Webster. “I remain undecided, as do a number of my colleagues, because we saw so many of the failures last year that we are concerned about that might limit or inhibit our ability to advance the president’s agenda.”

President-elect Donald Trump endorsed Johnson, but that may not be enough to convince the holdouts, including Roy. Asked who might step up should Johnson get voted out, Roy suggested Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) or Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

“But what we need to do is unite around a plan to deliver for the president,” Roy said. “Right now, I do not believe the conference has that.”

The House cannot conduct business until a speaker is selected, something that’s been a struggle for the GOP since it took control of the chamber after the 2022 midterm elections.

In January 2023, it took four days for Republicans to coalesce around Kevin McCarthy, who lost the gavel later that year when several members of his own conference turned against him.

It took three weeks for Republicans to settle on Johnson as McCarthy’s replacement.

Trouble in GOP land?

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I wish everybody a Happy, Healthy, and Peaceful New Year in 2025!

Tony

This electron microscope image provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a cluster of norovirus virions. (Charles D. Humphrey/CDC via AP, File)

Dear Commons Community,

Cases of a wretched stomach bug are surging in parts of the United States this winter, according to government data.

The most recent numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show there were 91 outbreaks of norovirus reported during the week of Dec. 5, up from 69 outbreaks the last week of November.  As reported by The Associated Press.

Numbers from the past few years show a maximum of 65 outbreaks reported during that first week of December.

A norovirus infection is characterized by sudden vomiting and diarrhea. Outbreaks are often seen on cruise ships, in congregate living situations like nursing homes and jails, as well as schools and places where people are close together.

Here are a few things to know about the virus.

What is norovirus?

Norovirus is the leading cause of foodborne illness in the United States, responsible for 58% of such infections acquired in the country each year, according to the CDC.

Norovirus infections are caused by a group of viruses that spread easily, with as few as 10 viral particles having the ability to make someone sick, health experts say.

There are about 2,500 norovirus outbreaks reported annually in the United States. The outbreaks can occur throughout the year but are most common from November to April.

Along with with vomiting and diarrhea, common symptoms include nausea, stomach pain, body ache, headache and fever.

How do you get it?

Most norovirus outbreaks occur when people who are already infected spread the virus to others by direct means, such as through sharing food or eating utensils. Outbreaks can also be spread through food, water or contaminated surfaces .

How long do you stay sick?

Illness caused by norovirus typically starts suddenly, with symptoms developing 12 to 48 hours following exposure to the virus. Most people get better within one to three days and recover fully.

But with 19 to 21 million illnesses each year in the United States, norovirus nevertheless causes on average 900 deaths and 109,000 hospitalizations annually, mostly among adults aged 65 and older. It also leads to 465,000 emergency department visits, mostly involving young children.

Who’s at risk?

People of all ages can get infected and fall sick from norovirus. Young children, older people and those with weakened immune systems are most at risk, with dehydration from vomiting and diarrhea the top concern.

There is no medication to treat norovirus. Rehydration is recommended by drinking water and other liquids, with the exception of coffee, tea and alcohol.

Anyone suffering from dehydration should seek medical help. Symptoms of dehydration include a decrease in urination, dry mouth and throat, and feeling dizzy when standing. Dehydrated children may be unusually sleepy or fussy and cry with few or no tears.

How can I protect myself?

Rigorous and frequent handwashing is the best defense against norovirus during the peak winter season, scrubbing the hands with soap and warm water for 20 seconds before meals.

Scrubbing surfaces with household disinfectants can also help.

This is a nasty sounding ailment.

Tony

E. Jean Carroll and Donald Trump. Trump sexually abused Carroll in the 1990s and then defamed her by branding her a liar.  (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters, Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Dear Commons Community,

A federal appeals court yesterday upheld a $5-million verdict that E. Jean Carroll won against Donald Trump when a jury found the U.S. president-elect liable for sexually abusing and later defaming the former magazine columnist.

A unanimous three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan rejected Trump’s argument that the trial judge should not have let jurors hear evidence about the Republican’s alleged past sexual misconduct, making the trial and verdict unfair.  As reported by Reuters.

The court said that evidence, including Trump bragging about his sexual prowess on an “Access Hollywood” video that surfaced during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, established a “repeated, idiosyncratic pattern of conduct” consistent with Carroll’s allegations.

“Taking the record as a whole and considering the strength of Ms. Carroll’s case, we are not persuaded that any claimed error or combination of errors in the district court’s evidentiary rulings affected Mr. Trump’s substantial rights,” the court said in an unsigned decision.

The May 2023 verdict stemmed from an incident around 1996 in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan, where Carroll, now 81, said Trump raped her, and an October 2022 Truth Social post where Trump denied Carroll’s claim as a hoax.

Though jurors in federal court in Manhattan did not find that Trump, 78, committed rape, they awarded the former Elle magazine advice columnist $2.02 million for sexual assault and $2.98 million for defamation.

A different jury ordered Trump in January to pay Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her and damaging her reputation in June 2019, when he first denied her rape claim.

In both denials, Trump said he did not know Carroll, she was “not my type,” and that she fabricated the rape claim to promote her memoir.

Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesperson, said in a statement that Americans “demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll Hoax, which will continue to be appealed.”

It was not clear if any appeal would go to the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump tapped Cheung last month to be his White House communications director.

Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll, said in a statement: “E. Jean Carroll and I are gratified by today’s decision.”

Carroll’s cases are continuing despite Trump’s having won a second four-year White House term.

In 1997, in a case involving former President Bill Clinton, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that sitting presidents have no immunity from civil litigation in federal court over actions predating and unrelated to their official duties as president.

Trump argued the $5-million verdict should be thrown out because the trial judge, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is not related to Roberta Kaplan, should not have let jurors hear testimony from two other women who accused him of sexual misconduct.

One, businesswoman Jessica Leeds, said Trump groped her on a plane in the late 1970s. The other, former People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff, said Trump forcibly kissed her at his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2005.

Trump’s lawyers also said the trial judge should not have let jurors watch the 2005 “Access Hollywood” video, where Trump boasted graphically about forcing himself on women.

But the appeals court said that in each of these encounters, “Mr. Trump engaged in an ordinary conversation with a woman he barely knew, then abruptly lunged at her in a semi-public place and proceeded to kiss and forcefully touch her without her consent.”

It said this was “relevant to show a pattern tending to directly corroborate witness testimony and to confirm that the alleged sexual assault (of Carroll) actually occurred.”

The court also rejected Trump’s claim that Kaplan should have allowed evidence that a prominent Democratic critic, billionaire LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, funded Carroll’s case, saying it had “little probative value.” Carroll is also a Democrat.

Judge Kaplan also oversaw the trial that ended with the $83.3 million verdict.

What a guy!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The image above says it all.

Thank you to my colleague, Patsy Moskal, for forwarding it to me.

Tony

Former President Jimmy Carter accepts the O’Connor Justice Prize from former U.S. Ambassador to Finland Barbara Barrett at The Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University in Phoenix, Jan. 27, 2017. The prize recognizes people who have made extraordinary contributions to advancing the rule of law, justice and human rights. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)

Dear Commons Community,

Former President Jimmy Carter died yesterday in Plains, Georgia.  Below is beautiful obituary courtesy of The Associated Press, describing him as a “citizen of the world.” I remember his presidency well. I always felt he was too decent a person for the position.

May he rest in peace!

Tony

———————————————-

Many evolutions for a centenarian ‘citizen of the world’

By  BILL BARROW

PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Newly married and sworn as a Naval officer, Jimmy Carter left his tiny hometown in 1946 hoping to climb the ranks and see the world.

Less than a decade later, the death of his father and namesake, a merchant farmer and local politician who went by “Mr. Earl,” prompted the submariner and his wife, Rosalynn, to return to the rural life of Plains, Georgia, they thought they’d escaped.

The lieutenant never would be an admiral. Instead, he became commander in chief. Years after his presidency ended in humbling defeat, he would add a Nobel Peace Prize, awarded not for his White House accomplishments but “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

The life of James Earl Carter Jr., the 39th and longest-lived U.S. president, ended Sunday at the age of 100 where it began: Plains, the town of 600 that fueled his political rise, welcomed him after his fall and sustained him during 40 years of service that redefined what it means to be a former president.

With the stubborn confidence of an engineer and an optimism rooted in his Baptist faith, Carter described his motivations in politics and beyond in the same way: an almost missionary zeal to solve problems and improve lives.

Carter was raised amid racism, abject poverty and hard rural living — realities that shaped both his deliberate politics and emphasis on human rights.

“He always felt a responsibility to help people,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend of Carter’s in Plains. “And when he couldn’t make change wherever he was, he decided he had to go higher.”

Defying expectations

Carter’s path, a mix of happenstance and calculation, pitted moral imperatives against political pragmatism; and it defied typical labels of American politics, especially caricatures of one-term presidents as failures.

“We shouldn’t judge presidents by how popular they are in their day. That’s a very narrow way of assessing them,” Carter biographer Jonathan Alter told the Associated Press. “We should judge them by how they changed the country and the world for the better. On that score, Jimmy Carter is not in the first rank of American presidents, but he stands up quite well.”

Later in life, Carter conceded that many Americans, even those too young to remember his tenure, judged him ineffective for failing to contain inflation or interest rates, end the energy crisis or quickly bring home American hostages in Iran. He gained admirers instead for his work at The Carter Center — advocating globally for public health, human rights and democracy since 1982 — and the decades he and Rosalynn wore hardhats and swung hammers with Habitat for Humanity.

Yet the common view that he was better after the Oval Office than in it annoyed Carter, and his allies relished him living long enough to see historians reassess his presidency.

“He doesn’t quite fit in today’s terms” of a left-right, red-blue scoreboard, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who visited the former president multiple times during his own White House bid.

At various points in his political career, Carter labeled himself “progressive” or “conservative” — sometimes both at once. His most ambitious health care bill failed — perhaps one of his biggest legislative disappointments — because it didn’t go far enough to suit liberals. Republicans, especially after his 1980 defeat, cast him as a left-wing cartoon.

It would be easiest to classify Carter as a centrist, Buttigieg said, “but there’s also something radical about the depth of his commitment to looking after those who are left out of society and out of the economy.”

‘Country come to town’

Indeed, Carter’s legacy is stitched with complexities, contradictions and evolutions — personal and political.

The self-styled peacemaker was a war-trained Naval Academy graduate who promised Democratic challenger Ted Kennedy that he’d “kick his ass.” But he campaigned with a call to treat everyone with “respect and compassion and with love.”

Carter vowed to restore America’s virtue after the shame of Vietnam and Watergate, and his technocratic, good-government approach didn’t suit Republicans who tagged government itself as the problem. It also sometimes put Carter at odds with fellow Democrats.

The result still was a notable legislative record, with wins on the environment, education, and mental health care. He dramatically expanded federally protected lands, began deregulating air travel, railroads and trucking, and he put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy. As a fiscal hawk, Carter added a relative pittance to the national debt, unlike successors from both parties.

Carter nonetheless struggled to make his achievements resonate with the electorate he charmed in 1976. Quoting Bob Dylan and grinning enthusiastically, he had promised voters he would “never tell a lie.” Once in Washington, though, he led like a joyless engineer, insisting his ideas would become reality and he’d be rewarded politically if only he could convince enough people with facts and logic.

This served him well at Camp David, where he brokered peace between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Epypt’s Anwar Sadat, an experience that later sparked the idea of The Carter Center in Atlanta. Carter’s tenacity helped the center grow to a global force that monitored elections across five continents, enabled his freelance diplomacy and sent public health experts across the developing world. The center’s wins were personal for Carter, who hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm parasite, and nearly did.

As president, though, the approach fell short when he urged consumers beleaguered by energy costs to turn down their thermostats. Or when he tried to be the nation’s cheerleader, beseeching Americans to overcome a collective “crisis of confidence.”

Republican Ronald Reagan exploited Carter’s lecturing tone with a belittling quip in their lone 1980 debate. “There you go again,” the former Hollywood actor said in response to a wonky answer from the sitting president. “The Great Communicator” outpaced Carter in all but six states.

Carter later suggested he “tried to do too much, too soon” and mused that he was incompatible with Washington culture: media figures, lobbyists and Georgetown social elites who looked down on the Georgians and their inner circle as “country come to town.”

A ‘leader of conscience’ on race and class

Carter carefully navigated divides on race and class on his way to the Oval Office.

Born Oct. 1, 1924, Carter was raised in the mostly Black community of Archery, just outside Plains, by a progressive mother and white supremacist father. Their home had no running water or electricity but the future president still grew up with the relative advantages of a locally prominent, land-owning family in a system of Jim Crow segregation.

He wrote of President Franklin Roosevelt’s towering presence and his family’s Democratic Party roots, but his father soured on FDR, and Jimmy Carter never campaigned or governed as a New Deal liberal. He offered himself as a small-town peanut farmer with an understated style, carrying his own luggage, bunking with supporters during his first presidential campaign and always using his nickname.

And he began his political career in a whites-only Democratic Party.

As private citizens, he and Rosalynn supported integration as early as the 1950s and believed it inevitable. Carter refused to join the White Citizens Council in Plains and spoke out in his Baptist church against denying Black people access to worship services.

“This is not my house; this is not your house,” he said in a churchwide meeting, reminding fellow parishioners their sanctuary belonged to God.

Yet as the appointed chairman of Sumter County schools he never pushed to desegregate, thinking it impractical after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board decision. And while presidential candidate Carter would hail the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed by fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson when Carter was a state senator, there is no record of Carter publicly supporting it at the time.

Carter overcame a ballot-stuffing opponent to win his legislative seat, then lost the 1966 governor’s race to an arch-segregationist. He won four years later by avoiding explicit mentions of race and campaigning to the right of his rival, who he mocked as “Cufflinks Carl” — the insult of an ascendant politician who never saw himself as part the establishment.

Carter’s rural and small-town coalition in 1970 would match any victorious Republican electoral map in 2024. Once elected, though, Carter shocked his white conservative supporters — and landed on the cover of Time magazine — by declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over.”

Before making the jump to Washington, Carter befriended the family of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whom he’d never sought out as he eyed the governor’s office. Carter lamented his foot-dragging on school integration as a “mistake.” But he also met, conspicuously, with Alabama’s segregationist Gov. George Wallace to accept his primary rival’s endorsement ahead of the 1976 Democratic convention.

“He very shrewdly took advantage of his own Southerness,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor and expert on Carter’s campaigns.

A coalition of Black voters and white moderate Democrats ultimately made Carter the last Democratic presidential nominee to sweep the Deep South. Then, just as he did in Georgia, he used his power in office to appoint more non-whites than all his predecessors had, combined.

He once acknowledged “the secret shame” of white Americans who didn’t fight segregation. But he also told Alter that doing more would have sacrificed his political viability – and thus everything he accomplished in office and after.

King’s daughter, Bernice King, described Carter as wisely “strategic” in winning higher offices to enact change. “He was a leader of conscience,” she said in an interview.

Rosalynn was Carter’s closest advisor

Rosalynn Carter, who died on Nov. 19 at the age of 96, was identified by both husband and wife as the “more political” of the pair; she sat in on Cabinet meetings and urged him to postpone certain priorities, like pressing the Senate to relinquish control of the Panama Canal.

“Let that go until the second term,” she would sometimes say.

The president, recalled her former aide Kathy Cade, retorted that he was “going to do what’s right” even if “it might cut short the time I have.”

Rosalynn held firm, Cade said: “She’d remind him you have to win to govern.”

Carter also was the first president to appoint multiple women as Cabinet officers. Yet by his own telling, his career sprouted from chauvinism in the Carters’ early marriage: He did not consult Rosalynn when deciding to move back to Plains in 1953 or before launching his state Senate bid a decade later.

Many years later, he called it “inconceivable” that he didn’t confer with the woman he described as his “full partner,” at home, in government and at The Carter Center.

“We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business, and it continued when Jimmy got involved in politics,” Rosalynn Carter told AP in 2021.

So deep was their trust that when Carter remained tethered to the White House in 1980 as 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, it was Rosalynn who campaigned on her husband’s behalf.

“I just loved it,” she said, despite the bitterness of defeat.

Reevaluating his legacy

Fair or not, the label of a disastrous presidency had leading Democrats keep their distance, at least publicly, for many years, but Carter managed to remain relevant, writing books and weighing in on societal challenges.

He lamented widening wealth gaps and the influence of money in politics. He voted for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and later declared that America had devolved from fully functioning democracy to “oligarchy.”

Yet looking ahead to 2020, with Sanders running again, Carter warned Democrats not to “move to a very liberal program,” lest they help re-elect President Donald Trump. Carter scolded the Republican for his serial lies and threats to democracy, and chided the U.S. establishment for misunderstanding Trump’s populist appeal.

He delighted in yearly convocations with Emory University freshmen, often asking them to guess how much he’d raised in his two general election campaigns. “Zero,” he’d gesture with a smile, explaining the public financing system candidates now avoid so they can raise billions. Carter still remained quite practical in partnering with wealthy corporations and foundations to advance Carter Center programs.

Carter recognized that economic woes and the Iran crisis doomed his presidency, but offered no apologies for appointing Paul Volcker as the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate hikes would not curb inflation until Reagan’s presidency. He was proud of getting all the hostages home without starting a shooting war, even though Tehran would not free them until Reagan’s Inauguration Day.

“Carter didn’t look at it” as a failure, Alter emphasized. “He said, ‘They came home safely.’ And that’s what he wanted.”

Well into their 90s, the Carters greeted visitors at Plains’ Maranatha Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School and where he will have his last funeral before being buried on family property alongside Rosalynn. Carter, who made the congregation’s collection plates in his woodworking shop, still garnered headlines there, calling for women’s rights within religious institutions, many of which, he said, “subjugate” women in church and society.

Carter was not one to dwell on regrets. “I am at peace with the accomplishments, regret the unrealized goals and utilize my former political position to enhance everything we do,” he wrote around his 90th birthday.

Pilgrimages to Plains

The politician who had supposedly hated Washington politics also enjoyed hosting Democratic presidential contenders as public pilgrimages to Plains became advantageous again. Carter sat with Buttigieg for the final time March 1, 2020, hours before the Indiana mayor ended his campaign and endorsed eventual winner Joe Biden.

“He asked me how I thought the campaign was going,” Buttigieg said, recalling that Carter flashed his signature grin and nodded along as the young candidate, born a year after Carter left office, “put the best face” on the walloping he endured the day before in South Carolina.

Never breaking his smile, the 95-year-old host fired back, “I think you ought to drop out.”

“So matter of fact,” Buttigieg said with a laugh. “It was somehow encouraging.”

Carter had lived enough, won plenty and lost enough to take the long view.

“He talked a lot about coming from nowhere,” Buttigieg said, not just to attain the presidency but to leverage “all of the instruments you have in life” and “make the world more peaceful.”

In his farewell address as president, Carter said as much to the country that had embraced and rejected him.

“The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language,” he declared. “Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.”

Carter pledged to remain engaged with and for them as he returned “home to the South where I was born and raised,” home to Plains, where that young lieutenant had indeed become “a fellow citizen of the world.”