Politics
News Analysis: Carter, during and after presidency, changed way world saw the U.S. — often for the better
WASHINGTON — Jimmy Carter ended his one-term presidency in defeat. For years he was derided as a weak leader.
But over time a fundamental shift took place in how Carter was regarded, fueled by his decades of post-presidential good works and the enduring power of his White House achievements.
Perhaps more than any single post-World War II president, Carter changed the way many saw the U.S. by attempting to inject American values of altruism, democracy and human rights into foreign policy.
Sometimes he succeeded; oftentimes not. But his effort left an indelible mark on nearly two generations of diplomats, public officials and global activists.
Carter is to be remembered Thursday at a state funeral inside the cavernous Washington National Cathedral. President Biden will deliver the eulogy and all four living former presidents are expected to attend, including one inspired by him — President Obama — and one who routinely attacks him — President-elect Donald Trump. No major foreign leader is expected — at age 100, he outlived all those he interacted with.
Keith Mines, a 32-year veteran of the departments of State and Defense, working from Mexico to the Middle East, recalled being stationed at Ft. Benning, Ga., with a military officer from Burkina Faso. During downtime, Mines suggested they check out Georgia’s beaches, mountains or the hopping city of Atlanta.
“I want to go to one place,” Mines recalled the African officer saying. “I want to go to Plains, Ga. I want to see the … place that produced this remarkable man, Jimmy Carter.”
Carter’s legacy is mixed. His administration succeeded in building key security platforms that endure to this day, while also promoting a broader global and domestic social agenda. As president, he officially made human rights the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy, with particular impact in Latin America.
And he set a precedent for former presidents by continuing his public service, and charitable and human rights work, after leaving office.
Carter attempted to change the way the world viewed America at a particularly fraught time.
The 1950s and ‘60s were characterized by U.S.-sponsored coups that overthrew governments that rulers in Washington didn’t like; then came the torturous Vietnam War and the scandalous tenure of Richard Nixon.
Carter rose from nowhere, and became a president who spoke more about peacemaking than foreign conquest, about humanity over self-interest.
He was willing to wield hard power when necessary but also saw the value of soft power, what he would call after his presidency the combination of “enticement, persuasion and influence,” which he often thought was even more effective in winning hearts and changing minds.
“I’ve seen the foundational nature of Carter’s contributions to U.S. foreign policy … in advancing U.S. interests in the Middle East, China, Russia … but it does not end there,” Thomas Donilon, a former national security advisor under Obama and senior State Department official under President Clinton, said in an essay for Foreign Affairs.
His stewardship led to the first peace treaty between Israel and a warring neighbor, Egypt, which still stands today as the most important such accord. Although tensions on the Middle East have ebbed and flowed, the successful Camp David negotiation won acclaim among Israelis and Arabs alike, who praised it as an evenhanded approach from the U.S.
Carter was a peacemaker but not a pacifist, and saw the need for military strength. In 1980, in response to the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he declared the Carter Doctrine, which committed the U.S. to protecting oil production in the Persian Gulf and laid the basis for security infrastructure in that part of the world for Democratic and Republican administrations that followed for decades.
In the waning weeks of his presidency, Carter approved the creation of the Joint Special Operations Force, a group of elite military from all branches that would train and plan top-secret reconnaissance missions and other clandestine deadly attacks.
Carter saw its need after the failed attempt to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran. It remained in place, expanded through the years and eventually became involved in numerous controversial operations from Afghanistan to Iraq.
Carter seemed most proud of his work on human rights and democracy building.
His decision in 1977 to return the Panama Canal — long regarded regionally as a symbol of U.S. imperialism — to the government of Panama was widely praised in Latin America. It was a move initiated by Nixon at the urging of the U.S. military, which said operating it and the American military colony around it was expensive and unsustainable.
In the first years of his government, Carter also looked south and saw brutal military dictatorships controlling Argentina, Chile and other nations. He drastically reduced U.S. military aid to those countries and blocked their access to some international loans. Many of these steps, historians believe, were the first dominoes in toppling dictatorships and ushering in democracy to the region.
He “challenged the assumption that security assistance to repressive regimes furthered Cold War aims, and instead adopted the view that … U.S. support for these regimes had damaged its global leadership and made the U.S. complicit in human rights abuses,” Enrique Roig, a deputy assistant secretary of State, said in a recent forum at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
The son of Chilean parents, Roig credited Carter as a “beacon of hope” that showed him the United States could be a champion for democracy and human rights.
In June 1979, when the U.S. still supported the dynastic Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, Carter was horrified to see television footage of Somoza’s troops shooting dead an American reporter, ABC’s Bill Stewart, his hands raised at a military checkpoint. Carter immediately broke with the Somoza regime, which collapsed within weeks and gave rise to the Sandinista National Liberation Front, a revolutionary but eventually anti-American group. They launched social programs and were initially welcomed by a long-abused population — as was Carter’s perceived intervention.
But within two years, Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, worked to undo his reforms and soon launched wars in both Nicaragua, to oust the Sandinistas, and neighboring El Salvador to support its right-wing military government. Neither turned out as Reagan intended.
Fast-forward to 1990. Carter, a decade out of office, was in Nicaragua to monitor what were supposed to be the country’s first democratic elections. Sandinista President Daniel Ortega had agreed to allow the election — but was refusing to accept the results when it appeared he was losing to his matronly opponent, Violeta Chamorro, owner of the country’s leading opposition newspaper.
Carter sat up all of one night with Ortega, trying to persuade him to accept the results. “I know what it’s like to lose,” Carter told Ortega. Eventually, Ortega relented and allowed a peaceful transition to democracy.
Such post-presidency missions to bolster foreign elections, fight disease and build homes for the poor made the increasingly elderly but always engaged and gracious Carter a hero to many abroad. His picture would hang in activists’ homes; crowds would greet him in the streets in cities in Latin America and Africa.
“Luck broke against him in many ways during his time in office,” Carter’s former speechwriter, James Fallows, said this week on CNN. “But he then had the luck to bring out the best in himself, the best in fellow citizens, the best in what he hoped to bring to the world.”
Politics
Graham’s death ignites GOP scramble for Senate seat as Trump hints he already has a favorite
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Sen. Lindsey Graham’s, R-S.C., sudden death from an undisclosed illness has triggered a two-pronged approach to replace him, and President Donald Trump will likely be a focal point in the process.
Graham’s passing overnight comes at a time when Republicans in the upper chamber need every vote they can get. The Senate GOP now holds a 52-seat majority, and with the timetable for Sen. Mitch McConnell’s, R-Ky., absence still unclear, that majority is now effectively 51 votes.
That will up the pressure, and drama, to find a replacement for the longtime South Carolina lawmaker.
LINDSEY GRAHAM, SOUTH CAROLINA SENATOR WHO ROSE FROM SMALL-TOWN ROOTS TO GOP POWER BROKER, DIES AT 71
Sen. Lindsey Graham speaks with reporters aboard Air Force One with President Donald Trump and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on the way back to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 4, 2026. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump, during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, said, “I have somebody that I think would be great.”
“But I don’t want to say it now because it’s just, it’s too soon with Lindsey,” Trump said. “I don’t wanna even talk about anybody, but I do have somebody that I think is really good.”
It’s a process guided by the Constitution and state law. The first step will require South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, to appoint a replacement for Graham on a temporary basis.
McMaster, a close ally of Trump, can appoint a temporary replacement as soon as he wants. That pick will serve until the next special or general election.
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Fox News Digital did not immediately hear back from McMaster’s office on when he would make the announcement, or who he was considering for the seat.
Graham was already in-cycle running for a fifth term in the upper chamber, and he easily cruised to a primary victory early last month. That means that whoever McMaster taps would serve until the end of the year to finish off the remainder of Graham’s fourth term.
The second prong is finding his long-term successor.
The candidate filing period for that special election to win the GOP nomination opens July 21. The election is slated for Aug. 11, according to South Carolina law.
That race could see several familiar faces in South Carolina GOP politics jumping in, including McMaster himself, who is termed out as governor.
TRUMP’S ENDORSEMENT POWER FACES ANOTHER GOP TEST IN SOUTH CAROLINA AFTER ALAN WILSON ADVANCES
Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., departs the U.S. Capitol after a series of House votes on funding for Homeland Security and a War Powers resolution on Iran on March 5, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Trump heaped praise on McMaster, noting that he endorsed his first bid for the White House in 2016.
“Henry’s been a great governor, you know now he’s termed out, but he’s going to do the right thing,” Trump said. “I think Henry will be fantastic.”
There are six members of South Carolina’s GOP congressional delegation who could toss their hats into the mix. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., who recently lost a bid for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, is eyeing jumping into the special election.
A person familiar with Mace’s plans told Fox News Digital, “Congresswoman Mace is considering a bid to run.”
Then there’s Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., the longest-serving Republican member of the Palmetto State’s delegation. He quickly snuffed speculation about whether he’d leap into the fray.
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“I was grateful to speak with President Trump today reminiscing about our mutual friend, Senator Lindsey Graham,” Wilson said on X. “I assured him my goal is to remain in the House to keep his two-vote majority for the American people!!!”
Then there’s the remaining four: South Carolina Republican Reps. Ralph Norman, who also lost out on scoring the GOP nomination for governor, Russell Fry, William Timmons and Sheri Biggs, none of whom, so far, have signaled that they would jump into the battle for Graham’s seat.
Meanwhile, South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette could also be in the mix.
A source familiar told Fox News Digital that Evette is receiving “tons of encouragement from all across the state and from around the country” to serve as the temporary caretaker for Graham’s seat.
The source said that Evette is also being encouraged to run to seek a full six-year term in the Senate.
Evette, a top South Carolina ally of Trump’s and McMaster’s, was endorsed by both as she finished first in South Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial primary in this year’s race to succeed McMaster.
But after Trump also endorsed her GOP rival in the runoff, State Attorney General Alan Wilson, she was trounced by Wilson a few weeks ago in the runoff election
Fox News Digital did not immediately receive responses to requests for comment from possible contenders in the House.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s conservative justices say they decide cases based on the words and original history of the Constitution — and not on their personal or political views.
Following the lead set by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, they say they see history and “originalism” as a guiding principle to prevent judges from changing the Constitution to adjust to new and changing times.
This text-and-history approach is said to contrast with an evolving or “living Constitution” favored by progressives and liberal activists.
But this year saw a flip of sorts on birthright citizenship.
The foremost conservatives agreed with President Trump that the surge of illegal immigration called for reconsidering the promise of citizenship at birth set out in the 14th Amendment of 1868.
“The number of illegal immigrants in this country exploded” in recent years, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in dissent. The rule of citizenship at birth provides “a powerful incentive to enter or remain in this country illegally,” he added.
“The Constitution is an enduring document,” wrote Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, but its rules and meaning must adjust to “modern situations that were unknown or unanticipated by the Constitution’s Framers.”
In a concurring opinion, he said that “significant illegal immigration into the United States is a new circumstance that was largely unknown as of 1868.”
There were no federal immigration laws in the mid-19th century, but it was an era when a surge of Irish immigrants had settled on the East Coast and large numbers of Chinese immigrants came to California.
Under the law, their children were deemed to be citizens at birth.
Among the conservative originalists, only Justice Amy Coney Barrett signed the majority opinion that was written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and joined by the three liberals.
The opening words of the 14th Amendment of 1868 say: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States.”
In 1898, the Supreme Court upheld the rule of citizenship at birth in the case of Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents.
In an executive order, Trump proposed to end birthright citizenship for the newborns whose parents were in the country illegally or temporarily.
Writing for the court, the chief justice said the words of the 14th Amendment were clear and were clearly understood at the time. He dismissed the “dramatically revisionist view” that has been cited recently.
Kavanaugh voted with the majority to block Trump’s order from taking effect. He did so because Congress had adopted birthright citizenship in a 1952 law.
“Consistent with the 14th Amendment, Congress could … enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship,” he wrote.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Alito wrote long dissents arguing that the framers of the 14th Amendment did not or would not have favored birthright citizenship.
They pointed to recent scholarship by law professors that raised questions about the accepted understanding of the 14th Amendment and the citizenship rule.
Thomas said citizenship of the child should turn on whether the parents were “domiciled” in this country. Black people who were enslaved were undoubtedly domiciled here, but the same is not true of temporary visitors.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch agreed in part with Thomas and questioned whether the newborns of temporary visitors should be deemed as citizens at birth.
Many court commentators were surprised by the close 5-4 divide on the constitutional issue.
“Given how clear the language was, I expected it to be 7 to 2,” said Melissa Murray, a New York University law professor. “I really gasped when I saw it was 5-4. This is not settled. We’re not done with this debate.”
Sarah Isgur, a podcaster and SCOTUSblog analyst, said that “originalism is getting more and more muddled. Either the history matters or it doesn’t.”
However, she agreed with Kavanaugh’s approach of leaving it to Congress to reconsider the issue.
Not all originalists are conservative.
Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar, a constitutional historian, argued that the history of birthright citizenship is clear and not subject to revisionist thinking. He said the Reconstruction Congress adopted this principle of citizenship at birth and stated their intent in clear words in the 14th Amendment.
“When a baby is born on American soil and an American flag flies above, that baby is a birthright citizen, as the Reconstruction Republicans across the land understood,” he wrote in February. This rule “has virtually nothing to do with the baby’s parents.”
Last week, he was mostly cheered by the court’s ruling.
“It’s a triumph, but it should have been 9-0,” Amar said on a review of the court term sponsored by SCOTUSblog. “Shame on the dissenters. They didn’t even the address the statute” and its wording.
But the majority led by Roberts “clearly affirmed the plain meaning of the constitutional text and its history. And that’s a win,” he said.
History has a recurring role at the Supreme Court.
Isgur noted the court will hear arguments in the fall on whether the 2nd Amendment of 1791 gives gun owners a right to have “assault weapons” like AR-15 rifles.
She said the court will decide then between history and changed circumstances.
At issue is whether these modern rapid-fire rifles fit within the history of the gun rights protected by the 2nd Amendment or instead represent a new and dangerous threat to public safety that was unknown in 1791.
Scalia’s opinion upholding gun rights in 2008 is often cited as a model of originalism, but it too emerged from a court divided 5-4.
The 2nd Amendment says, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bears Arms, shall not be infringed.”
For decades, the Supreme Court had all but ignored the 2nd Amendment, viewing it as a somewhat outdated provision involving militias, akin to the 3rd Amendment. It forbids having soldiers “quartered in any house … in time of peace.”
Four liberal dissenters in 2008 said the court should stand by that understanding of history.
Justice John Paul Stevens said the 2nd Amendment was added to the Constitution to protect state militias from federal interference. Moreover, the reference to “bear arms” suggests it was about militias, he said.
But Scalia’s opinion stands as the landmark precedent, and he said the dissenters had the history all wrong.
The right to have guns for self-defense arose in England and came to the American colonies. “By the time of the founding, the right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects,” he wrote.
The 2nd Amendment did not establish a new right, he said. Rather, it “codified a pre-existing right [of] having and using arms for self-preservation and [defense],” he wrote.
“There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history,” Scalia wrote, “that the 2nd Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.”
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Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., died Saturday evening following a “brief and sudden” illness, according to a statement from his office.
“On the evening of Saturday, July 11, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham passed away from a brief and sudden illness,” his office said.
“Senator Graham’s family appreciates prayers at this time and asks for privacy during this incredibly difficult period,” it continued.
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Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaks with reporters about aid to Ukraine, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, March 10, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
This is a breaking story; check back for updates.
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