Politics
Carter Never Took to Washington. The Feeling Was Mutual.
Former President Jimmy Carter is set to arrive in Washington on Tuesday to be honored in death as the city never truly honored him in life.
That he will end his long story with a pomp-and-circumstance visit to the nation’s capital is a nod to protocol not partiality, a testament to the rituals of the American presidency rather than a testimonial to the time he presided in the citadel of power.
To put it more bluntly, Mr. Carter and Washington did not exactly get along. More than any president in generations before him, the peanut farmer from Georgia was a genuine outsider when he took occupancy of the white mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — and determinedly, stubbornly, proudly remained so.
He never cared for the culture of the capital, never catered to its mandarins and doyens, never bowed to its conventions. The city, in turn, never cared for him and his “Georgian mafia,” dismissing them as a bunch of cocky rednecks from the hinterlands who did not know what they were doing. Other outsider presidents eventually acclimated to Washington. Not Mr. Carter. And by his own admission, it would cost him.
“I don’t know which was worse — the Carter crowd’s distrust and dislike of unofficial Washington or Washington’s contempt for the new guys in town from Georgia,” recalled Gregory B. Craig, a longtime lawyer and fixture in Washington who served in two other Democratic administrations. “I do know it was there on Day 1.”
Between the two camps, the blend of piety, pettiness, jealousy and condescension proved toxic. It was not partisan — Mr. Carter’s most profound differences were with fellow Democrats. But the litany of slights and snubs on both sides was long and lingering. Everyone remembered the phone call that went unreturned, the invitation that never came, the project that was not approved, the appointment that was not offered.
Mr. Carter, after all, had run against Washington when he came out of nowhere to win the presidency in 1976 and unlike others who did that, he really meant it. He vaulted to office as the antidote to Watergate, Vietnam and other national setbacks. He had not come to town to become a creature of it.
He saw the demands of the Washington power structure as indulgent and pointless. He had no interest in dinner at the home of Katharine Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post, and aides like Hamilton Jordan, his chief of staff, and Jody Powell, his press secretary, radiated his disregard.
“Carter’s state funeral in Washington is full of ironies,” said Kai Bird, who titled his 2021 biography of Mr. Carter “The Outlier” for a reason. “He really was an outsider running against the Washington establishment. And when he improbably entered the Oval Office, he declined more than one dinner invitation from the Georgetown set.”
In their conversations for the book, Mr. Bird added, “he later told me he thought that was a mistake. But he preferred pizza and beer with Ham Jordan and Jody Powell — or working late into the night.”
As E. Stanly Godbold Jr., the author of a two-volume biography of Mr. Carter and the first lady Rosalynn Carter, put it: “Carter arrived at the White House virtually unbeholden to anyone except Rosalynn, his family and those millions of people who had voted for him. He had a free hand, within the limits of the Constitution and the presidency, to do as he wished.”
Or so he thought. But what Mr. Carter saw as principled, Washington saw as naïve and counterproductive. The framers conceived a system with checks and balances, but historically it has been lubricated by personal relationships, favors, horse trading and socializing.
“When it came to the politics of Washington, D.C., he never really understood how the system worked,” Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., the House speaker, wrote in his memoir. Mrs. Graham wrote in hers that “Jimmy Carter was one of those outsider presidents who found it difficult to find the right modus operandi for Washington.”
This was an era of giants in Washington, the likes of whom do not exist today. It was a time when titans of law, lobbying, politics and journalism like Joseph A. Califano Jr., Edward Bennett Williams, Ben Bradlee and Art Buchwald would meet for lunch every Tuesday at the Sans Souci to hash over the latest events. Mr. Carter was a frequent topic of discourse, and not always lovingly so.
Mr. Carter got off to a rough start with Mr. O’Neill, a necessary ally to pass any agenda. Shortly after the election, Mr. Carter visited the speaker but seemed dismissive of Mr. O’Neill’s advice about working with Congress, saying that if lawmakers did not go along, he could go over their heads to appeal to voters. “Hell, Mr. President, you’re making a big mistake,” Mr. O’Neill recalled replying.
It got worse when Mr. O’Neill asked for tickets for his family to attend an inaugural eve gala at the Kennedy Center only to discover that his relatives were seated far off in the balcony. Mr. O’Neill called Mr. Jordan the next day to yell at him. He nicknamed the chief of staff “Hannibal Jerkin.” In his memoir, Mr. O’Neill complained that Mr. Jordan and other Carter aides were “amateurs” who “came to Washington with a chip on their shoulder and never changed.”
But if they had a chip, it was fueled by plenty of patronizing quips mocking the Carter team’s Southern roots, including cartoons in the paper portraying them as hayseeds. It did not help that Mr. Carter arrived in a city full of politicians who thought they should have been the one to win in 1976, not this nobody from Georgia.
Mr. Carter styled himself as a man of the people from the start by getting out of his limousine during the inaugural parade to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. He initially banned the playing of “Hail to the Chief” when he entered a room and sold Sequoia, the presidential yacht often used in the past to woo key congressional leaders.
He took it as a badge of honor to do things that were not politically expedient, like cutting off water projects important to lawmakers trying to deliver for their districts or forcing them to vote on an unpopular treaty turning over the Panama Canal. It did not go over well either when Washington concluded that he did not fight hard enough for Ted Sorensen, the old John F. Kennedy hand, to become C.I.A. director or when he fought with Mr. Califano, the Washington powerhouse serving as secretary of health, education and welfare.
“I believe President Carter tried to make peace when he came into office,” said Chris Matthews, who was a speechwriter for him before going on to work for Mr. O’Neill and then embarking on a long career in television journalism. But “Carter told me he should have done more work getting control of the Democratic Party.” And Mr. Matthews noted that “his challenge in Washington derived from odd places,” like the squabble over the gala seats.
The spats had consequences, both legislatively and politically. Ultimately, he got a lot of his bills through Congress, but not all and not easily. And eventually, he was challenged for the party nomination in 1980 by Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a challenge that fell short but damaged him for the fall contest that he would lose to former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California.
“His poor relationships with Democrats in both the House and the Senate hindered his ability to drive his agenda through Congress,” said Tevi Troy, a presidential historian at the Ronald Reagan Institute. “In addition, those poor relations hurt his reputation in Washington, as many Democratic members who would ordinarily advocate for the administration in the press were less willing to do so.”
Mr. Carter did not naturally take to the schmoozing that comes with politics. At one point, an aide persuaded him to invite a couple of important senators to play tennis at the White House. He consented, but as soon as the set was done, he headed back into the mansion without chit-chatting or inviting them in for a drink. “You said to play tennis with them, and I did,” Mr. Carter later explained to the disappointed aide.
“Carter didn’t like politics, period,” said Douglas Brinkley, the author of “The Unfinished Presidency,” about Mr. Carter’s much-lauded humanitarian work after leaving office. “And he didn’t like politicians.”
After an official dinner, Mr. Carter would be quick to take his leave. “He would be curt,” Mr. Brinkley said. “He would just get up because he had work to do. He never developed any Washington friendships.”
Mr. Williams was a prime example of a missed opportunity. A founder of the law firm Williams & Connolly, owner of the team then called the Washington Redskins and later of the Baltimore Orioles, and treasurer of the Democratic Party, Mr. Williams was a quintessential capital insider.
But he felt shunned by Mr. Carter. Mr. Williams recalled meeting the future president at the 1976 convention and all he got was “a wet flounder” of a handshake. He was irked that Mr. Carter never came to the Alfalfa Dinner, one of the most exclusive black-tie events on Washington’s social circuit. “Carter’s a candy-ass,” Mr. Williams groused to the president of Georgetown University, according to “The Man to See,” by Evan Thomas.
Only after a couple of years in Washington did the Carter team finally seek Mr. Williams’s help, in this case to quash negative media reports involving Mr. Jordan. When he succeeded, he was invited to a state dinner and Mr. Carter later came to sit in Mr. Williams’s box for a football game at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. But Mr. Williams never warmed to Mr. Carter and joined a futile last-minute effort to thwart his nomination at the convention in 1980.
Mr. Carter never warmed to Washington either, calling it an island “isolated from the mainstream of our nation’s life.” After losing re-election, he grappled with his distant relationship with the capital. In “White House Diary,” he cast it largely as a matter of social butterflies resentful of his diffidence rather than something larger.
Rosalynn Carter, Mr. Powell and others, he wrote, had criticized him because “neither I nor my key staff members participated in Washington’s social life,” much to his detriment. “I am sure this apparently aloof behavior drove something of a wedge between us and numerous influential cocktail party hosts,” he wrote. “But I wasn’t the first president to object to this obligation.”
He wrote that he and Mrs. Carter had resolved to avoid going out regularly when he was governor of Georgia “and for better or worse, I never had any intention of changing this approach when we moved into the White House.”
At this point, of course, all of that is ancient history. Washington’s focus on Tuesday will be on the successes of Mr. Carter’s presidency, the inspiration of his post-presidency and the decency of his character. He will be brought by horse-drawn caisson to the Capitol and lie in state. He will be honored at Washington National Cathedral on Thursday.
No matter how Washington feels, it has a way of putting on a great funeral.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Saturday that the Trump administration is sanctioning a senior Nicaraguan official over alleged human rights violations.
Rubio said the U.S. is designating Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa for his role in “gross violations of human rights” under the government of President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo, marking what he said was the latest effort to hold the regime accountable.
“The Trump administration continues to hold the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship accountable for brutal human rights violations against Nicaraguans,” Rubio said in a post on X. “I’m designating Nicaraguan Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa for his role in human rights violations.”
RUBIO TESTIFIES IN TRIAL OF EX-FLORIDA CONGRESSMAN ALLEGEDLY HIRED BY MADURO GOVERNMENT TO LOBBY FOR VENEZUELA
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks at the State Department, April 14, 2026. The U.S. announced sanctions on a Nicaraguan official tied to alleged human rights abuses under the Ortega-Murillo government. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The designation was made under Section 7031(c), which allows the State Department to bar foreign officials and their immediate family members from entering the United States due to involvement in significant corruption or human rights abuses.
The State Department has said the Ortega-Murillo government has engaged in arbitrary arrests, torture and extrajudicial killings following mass protests that began in April 2018.
“Nearly eight years ago, the Rosario Murillo and Daniel Ortega dictatorship unleashed a brutal wave of repression against Nicaraguans who courageously stood against the regime’s increased tyranny, corruption, and abuse,” the statement reads.
The State Department said that the sanction marked the anniversary of the 2018 protests, after which more than 325 protesters were murdered in the aftermath.
A panel of U.N.-backed human rights experts previously accused Nicaragua’s government of systematic abuses “tantamount to crimes against humanity,” following an investigation into the country’s crackdown on political dissent, according to The Associated Press.
The experts said the repression intensified after mass protests in 2018 and has since expanded across large parts of society, targeting perceived opponents of the government.
TRUMP ADMIN ANNOUNCES EXPANSION OF VISA RESTRICTION POLICY IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE
Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega delivers a speech during a ceremony to mark the 199th Independence Day anniversary, in Managua, Nicaragua Sept. 15, 2020. (Nicaragua’s Presidency/Cesar Perez/Handout via Reuters)
Nicaragua’s government has rejected those findings.
The designation follows a series of recent U.S. actions targeting the Ortega-Murillo government. In February, the State Department sanctioned five senior Nicaraguan officials tied to repression, citing arbitrary detention, torture, killings and the targeting of clergy, media and civil society.
Earlier this week, the department also announced sanctions on individuals and companies linked to Nicaragua’s gold sector, including two of Ortega and Murillo’s sons, accusing the regime of using the industry to generate foreign currency, launder assets and consolidate power within the ruling family.
The State Department said the move is part of ongoing efforts to hold the Nicaraguan government accountable for its actions.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Nicaraguan government and its embassy in Washington for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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A man waves a Nicaraguan flag during a demonstration to commemorate Nicaragua’s national Day of Peace, which is celebrated in the country on April 19, and to protest against the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in San Jose, Costa Rica on April 16, 2023. (Jose Cordero/AFP)
The Trump administration has taken an increasingly aggressive posture in the Western Hemisphere in recent months, including a Jan. 3, 2026, operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
The U.S. has also carried out a series of strikes targeting suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the region, part of a broader crackdown tied to regional security and narcotics enforcement efforts.
WASHINGTON — Upbeat claims from President Trump over an imminent peace deal to end the war with Iran were met with deep skepticism Friday across the Middle East, where Iranian and Israeli officials questioned the prospects for a lasting agreement that would satisfy all parties.
The outlines of an agreement began to emerge that would provide Iran with a major strategic victory — and a potential financial windfall — allowing the Islamic Republic to leverage its control over the Strait of Hormuz to exact significant concessions from the United States and its ally Israel as Trump presses for a swift end to the conflict.
In a series of social media posts and interviews with reporters, Trump announced that the strait was “fully open,” vowing Tehran would never again attempt to control it. But Iranian officials and state media said that conditions remained on passage through the waterway, including the imposition of tolls and coordination with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iranian diplomats posted threats that its closure could resume at any time of their choosing, and warned that restrictions would return unless the United States agreed to lift a blockade of its ports. Trump had said Friday that the blockade would remain in place.
“The conditional and limited reopening of a portion of the Strait of Hormuz is solely an Iranian initiative, one that creates responsibility and serves to test the firm commitments of the opposing side,” said a top aide to Iran’s president, dismissing Trump’s statements on the contours of a deal as “baseless.”
“If they renege on their promises,” he added, “they will face dire consequences.”
In an overture to Iran, Trump said Israel would be “prohibited” from conducting additional military strikes in Lebanon, where the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeks to prevent Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy militia, from rearming, a potential threat to communities in the Israeli north.
But in a speech delivered in Hebrew, Netanyahu would say only that Israel had agreed to a temporary ceasefire, while members of his Cabinet warned that Israel Defense Forces operations in southern Lebanon were not yet finished. A top ally of the prime minister at a right-wing Israeli news outlet warned that Trump was “surrendering” to Iran in the talks.
It was a day of public messaging from a president eager to end a war that has proved historically unpopular with the American public, and has driven a rise in gas prices that could weigh on his party entering this year’s midterm elections.
Yet, Republican allies of the president have begun warning him that an agreement skewed heavily in Tehran’s favor could carry political costs of its own.
Trump was forced to deny an Axios report Friday that his negotiating team had offered to release $20 billion in frozen Iranian assets in exchange for Tehran agreeing to hand over its fissile material, buried under rubble from a U.S. bombing raid last year.
That sum would amount to more than 10 times what President Obama released to Iran under a 2015 nuclear deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, that was the subject of fierce Republican criticism in the decade since.
“I have every confidence that President Trump will not allow Iran to be enriched by tens of billions of dollars for holding the world hostage and creating mayhem in the region,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a strong supporter of the war. “No JCPOAs on President Trump’s watch.”
Still, Trump said in a round of interviews that a deal could be reached in a matter of days, ending less than two weeks of negotiations.
He claimed that Tehran had agreed to permanently end its enrichment of uranium — a development that, if true, would mark a dramatic reversal for the Islamic Republic from decades developing its nuclear program, and from just 10 days ago, when Iranian diplomats rejected a U.S. proposal of a 20-year pause on domestic enrichment in favor of a five-year moratorium.
He said Iran had agreed never to build nuclear weapons — a pledge Tehran has made repeatedly, including under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, in a religious decree from then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and in the 2015 agreement — while continuing nuclear activities viewed by the international community as exceeding civilian needs.
And he repeatedly stated that Iran had agreed to the removal of its enriched uranium from the country, either to the United States or to a third party. Iranian state media stated Friday afternoon that a proposal to remove the country’s highly enriched uranium had been “rejected.”
Iran’s agreement to allow safe passage for commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz is linked to a ceasefire in Lebanon that the Israeli Cabinet approved for only a 10-day period. Regardless of whether it holds or is extended, Israeli officials said their military would not retreat from its current positions in southern Lebanon — opening up Israeli forces to potential attack by Hezbollah militants unbound by a truce brokered by the Lebanese government.
The Lebanese people, Hezbollah officials said, have “the right to resist” Israeli occupation of their land. Whether the fighting resumes, the group added, “will be determined based on how developments unfold.”
An Iranian official threw cold water on the prospects of reaching a comprehensive peace deal in the coming days, telling Reuters that a temporary extension of the current ceasefire, set to expire Tuesday, would “create space for more talks on lifting sanctions on Iran and securing compensation for war damages.”
“In exchange, Iran will provide assurances to the international community about the peaceful nature of its nuclear program,” the official said, adding that “any other narrative about the ongoing talks is a misrepresentation of the situation.”
Trump told reporters Friday that the talks will continue through the weekend.
While Trump claimed there aren’t “too many significant differences” remaining, he said the United States would continue the blockade until negotiations are finalized and formalized.
“When the agreement is signed, the blockade ends,” the president told reporters in Phoenix.
Times staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.
CHAMBERS OF
JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN
Supreme Court of the United States Washington, D. C. 20343
February 7, 2016
Memorandum to the Conference
Re: 15A773 West Virginia, et al. v. EPA, et al.
15A776 Basin Elec. Power Cooperative, et al. v. EPA, et al. 15A787 Chamber of Commerce, et al. v. EPA, et al.
15A778 Murray Energy Corp., et al. v. EPA, et al.
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15A793 North Dakota v. EPA, et al.
I agree with Steve that we should direct the States to seek an extension from the EPA before asking this Court to intervene. We could also include, at the end of such an order, language along the lines of the following, to encourage the D. C. Circuit to act expeditiously in its resolution of this matter: “In light of that court’s agreement to consider this case on an expedited schedule, we are confident that it will [or even: we urge it to] render a decision with appropriate dispatch.” See Doe v. Gonzales, 546 U. S. 1301, 1308 (2005) (GINSBURG, J., in chambers); Kemp v. Smith, 463 U. S. 1344, 1345 (1983) (Powell, J., in chambers); Holtzman v. Schlesinger, 414 U. S. 1304, 1305, n. 2 (1973) (Marshall, J., in chambers).
The unique nature of the relief sought in these applications gives me real pause. The applicants ask us to enjoin a regulation pending initial review in the court of appeals. As we often say, “we are a court of review, not of first view.” See Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U. S. 709, 718 n. 7 (2005); cf. Doe, 546 U. S., at 1308 (“Re- spect for the assessment of the Court of Appeals is especially warranted when that court is proceeding to adjudication on the merits with due expedition.”). As far as I can tell, it would be unprecedented for us to second-guess the D. C. Circuit’s deci sion that a stay is not warranted, without the benefit of full briefing or a prior judi- cial decision.
On the merits, this is a difficult case involving a complex statutory and regu- latory regime. Although the parties’ abbreviated discussion of the issues at stake here makes it difficult for me to determine with any confidence which side is likely to ultimately prevail, it seems to me that at this stage the government has the bet- ter of the arguments. The Chief’s memo focuses on the applicants’ argument that the “best system of emission reduction” refers “solely [to] installation of control technologies (e.g., scrubbers).” 2/5 Memo, at 2. The ordinary meaning of “system” is in fact quite broad, appearing to encompass what EPA has done here. Of course, we would want to consider this term in the larger context of the Clean Air Act’s regula-
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