Politics
Jimmy Carter, 39th president, remembered for his integrity and devotion to humanity
Jimmy Carter, the nation’s 39th president, has died at the age of 100. He served a single term as president, but he also will be remembered for his decades of humanitarian work.
Those who knew him – opponents and supporters alike – described him as a man of integrity, whatever flaws he may have had as president.
“When we look at the whole thrust of Jimmy Carter’s life, it’s an amazing American story,” Douglas Brinkley, author of The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond the White House, told Fox News Digital.
“He grew up with no electricity, went to work in the… Navy. He became President of the United States at the height of the Cold War and won the Nobel Prize for his post-presidency,” Brinkley said. “All the time, his ambitious humanity was aimed at trying to make sure that everybody he came in contact with, had a better, fair shake at life.”
JIMMY CARTER HAD ONE OF THE ‘GREATEST SECOND ACTS’ IN AMERICAN HISTORY, CONSERVATIVE HISTORIAN SAYS
FILE: Former president Jimmy Carter prior to the game between the Atlanta Falcons and the Cincinnati Bengals at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on September 30, 2018 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Scott Cunningham/Getty Images)
A peanut farmer and former one-term governor of Georgia, Carter beat the odds and was elected president in 1977.
“Nobody thought Carter could procure the Democratic nomination. But Carter had a unique amount of bulldog tenacity [and] gumshoe perseverance,” Brinkley said.
American politician Jimmy Carter smiles and waves to the auditorium at the close of the 1976 Democratic National Convention, where Carter was confirmed as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, held at Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York, 15th July 1976, Later that year, the former Governor of Georgia won the 1976 United States presidential election. (Archive Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
His campaign befuddled Democrats, as Carter was deeply religious and ran to the right of his Republican opponent, Gerald Ford, on some social issues. As a Washington outsider, Carter’s agricultural background and accent endeared him to the deep south.
He took office at a time when Watergate, the Vietnam War, and stagflation had left the country in a sour mood. In Washington, his populist campaign inevitably collided with establishment Democrats who never fully accepted Carter.
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“He never had a full grip on his own Democratic Party. Ted Kennedy liberals didn’t like Carter, and the Scoop Jackson Cold War hawks didn’t like him,” Brinkley said. “So, he was kind of an island unto himself as president.”
Carter’s foreign policy wins included brokering Mideast peace by keeping Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the bargaining table for nearly two weeks in 1978. At home, Carter partially deregulated the airline, railroad, and trucking industries and established the departments of Education and Energy and the Federal Emergency Manager Agency.
Jimmy Carter signs Federal Mine Safety and Health Amendments Act of 1977 ca. 9 November 1977. (Hum Images/Universal Images Group)
Carter designated millions of acres in Alaska as national parks or wildlife refuges and he appointed a then-record number of women and non-whites to federal posts. He also built on Nixon’s opening with China and pushed Latin America from dictatorships to democracy.
Yet, his president was also marked by double-digit inflation, long gasoline lines, and the 444-day hostage crisis in Iran. His bleakest hour came when eight Americans died in a failed hostage rescue in April 1980, helping to ensure his landslide defeat.
FILE: Former President Jimmy Carter addresses the crowd gathered for his 28th annual town hall meeting at Emory University on September 16, 2009, in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)
Carter was also crippled by his – as Brinkley put it – “lack of communication chops.” Oratory, Brinkley said, was not his strong suit.
In 1979, Carter delivered his famous “Crisis of Confidence” speech in which he lamented that the United States, once a nation “proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God” had descended into “self-indulgence and consumption.”
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“Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning,” Carter said. “We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”
Craig Shirley, a Reagan biographer and historian, recalled watching the speech while working for a senator on Capitol Hill.
“I remember watching it that Sunday night and feeling for the first time in my life, I felt scared as an American. The speech was such a downer. It was so depressing,” Shirley said. “A president is supposed to tell the truth to the American people, but also appeal to the American people’s hopes and aspirations and not their worst feelings or desires.”
President Jimmy Carter and his Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan, shake hands as they greet one another before their debate on the stage of the Music Hall in Cleveland, Ohio. (Getty Images)
Carter ultimately served a single, tumultuous term and was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.
But whatever flaws his presidency may have had, Carter will perhaps be most fondly remembered for the decades he spent post-presidency advocating for democracy, public health, and human rights via The Carter Center.
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The Center, which Carter opened with his wife, Rosalynn, in 1982, has been a pioneer of election observation, monitoring at least 113 elections in Africa, Latin America, and Asia since 1989. In perhaps its most widely hailed public health effort, the organization recently announced that only 14 human cases of Guinea worm disease were reported in all of 2021, the result of years of public health campaigns to improve access to safe drinking water in Africa. Carter’s work with the Center garnered a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Haitian President Michel Martelly (2L) and former US President Jimmy Carter (C) visit a housing project on November 8, 2011, in Leogane (33 Km in the south of Port-au-Prince) which built by Carter Foundation for 500 families, victims of the last quake on January 12, 2010, in Port-au-Prince. (THONY BELIZAIRE/AFP via Getty Images)
For his humanitarian work, Shirley argued, Carter will be remembered as “one of the best ex-presidents of the 20th century.”
“Carter really wasn’t for PR stunts. He really threw himself into his charitable works and did so for many years,” Shirley said.
“We’re going to remember him kindly. He was a terrific former president with what he did with the Carter Center and the various initiatives around the country. His book writing stands out [as does] his charitable works. So, he goes down in his history as an extraordinarily good, former president.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
By Hamed Aleaziz, Alexandra Ostasiewicz, Jon Hazell, Gilad Thaler, Stephanie Swart and Rafaela Balster
June 10, 2026
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BLUE HILL, Maine – Graham Platner, the progressive left, and Donald Trump appear to be the big winners in Tuesday’s high-profile primaries in Maine and South Carolina.
Platner, the oyster farmer and military combat veteran who has been facing plenty of incoming fire amid mounting controversies, cruised to the Democratic nomination Tuesday in left-leaning Maine and will now face longtime moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins in a key race that is among a handful which will likely determine if Republicans hold their Senate majority in the midterm elections.
Meanwhile, in solidly red South Carolina, Trump-backed Sen. Lindsey Graham won a majority of the vote in the Senate GOP primary and will avoid a runoff against a primary challenger from the right.
And the candidate the president endorsed in the state’s Republican gubernatorial primary, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, finished on top of a crowded field of contenders and will advance to a runoff election in two weeks against longtime South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, who came in second.
Here’s what we learned in the key June 9th primaries.
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Graham Platner and his wife wave on stage to supporters after winning the Democratic Senate primary in Maine, on June 9, 2026 in Blue Hill, Maine (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
The left storms back
The convincing victory by Platner, who was backed by progressive champions Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Rep. Ro Khanna of California, looks to be another feather in the cap for the left in their intra-party face-off with the establishment.
The primary in Maine was held a week after Iowa state Rep. John Turek, who was supported by longtime Senate Democratic Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, won the Democratic Senate primary and will face Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson in another crucial midterm showdown.
Turek, a wheelchair basketball player who won two Paralympic gold medals, defeated the more progressive candidate, state Sen. Zach Wahls. The divisive and expensive primary battle was viewed as a proxy war between the establishment and anti-establishment wings of the party.
Fast-forward a week and the ballot box performance by Platner, who promotes an economically populist agenda as he takes aim at corporate influences and advocates for the working class, gives a boost to the left.
“The Democratic establishment and powerful interests spent months trying to stop Graham Platner. Instead, they demonstrated that voters in Maine and across America want to elect shake-up-the-system outsiders,” Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Adam Green emphasized.
And Green warned that Platner’s victory “should be a wake-up call for a Democratic establishment that has spent too long underestimating the appeal of economic populism and outsider politics.”
EMBATTLED PLATNER WINS DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY TO TEE UP CRUCIAL MIDTERM SHOWDOWN
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner stand together during a “Fighting Oligarchy” tour stop at the Collins Center for the Arts on the University of Maine campus in Orono, Maine, on May 24, 2026. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
What controversies?
Platner in recent weeks has been facing one of the roughest stretches of his bid for the U.S. Senate.
The candidate has been playing defense the past month, amid multiple controversies. They include inflammatory online comments made on Reddit, a well-publicized and now covered-up tattoo on his chest that resembled a Nazi symbol, recent reports that he exchanged sexually explicit messages with several women while married, and new allegations last week from ex-girlfriends of a history of rape fantasies, heavy drinking and violent episodes. Platner has called the latest allegations of violence untrue.
On Monday, a day before the primary election, a former high-level staffer from the Platner campaign wrote in the Washington Post that Platner “is not someone who would be good for Maine or for the country.”
While the mounting controversies triggered some Democrats in the nation’s capital to question whether Platner was damaged goods and needed to be replaced, the candidate this past weekend thanked Maine voters for continuing to support him.
“When hurtful things I said on the internet a decade ago came out into the public as I shared my personal journey through PTSD and darkness of recovery and accountability and growth. Maine had my back,” Platner said at a rally Friday not far from his hometown in Down East Maine. “Now, as every single piece of that past and journey gets dug up, litigated, and weaponized, you have my back. And when politically motivated, serious and false accusations are made against me. Maine, you have my back.”
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Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner and his wife greet supporters after he won his party’s nomination, at his victory celebration in Blue Hill, Maine on June 9, 2026. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
And voters in Maine’s Democratic Senate primary seemed to shrug off the controversies.
“In trying so hard to understand me, they failed to understand that this is not about me at all,” Platner said in his victory speech as he dismissed news reports about his past misdeeds as immaterial to the Senate election.
“This is a movement about us, about the far too many working far too hard and struggling far too much.”
Trump has a big night
The president wasn’t on the ballot in South Carolina, but he had plenty on the line in the GOP Senate and gubernatorial primaries.
One week after Trump’s endorsement-winning streak in high-profile Republican primaries was snapped, the president’s immense clout over the GOP was on the line again, this time in South Carolina.
And the president easily passed the test.
The candidate Trump endorsed in the Palmetto State’s GOP gubernatorial primary, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, finished first in a crowded field of candidates and clinched one of the two tickets in the race for the nomination.
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Evette, who repeatedly spotlighted Trump’s support, now advances to a Republican runoff election in two weeks against South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, the second place finisher, in the race to succeed term-limited GOP Gov. Henry McMaster.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, and Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette stand on stage during an election night watch party at the State Fairgrounds in Columbia, S.C., on Feb. 24, 2024. Trump defeated Nikki Haley in the South Carolina Republican primary. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Since no candidate topped 50% of the primary vote to land a majority, Evette and Wilson will battle for the nomination in the June 23 runoff, and the winner will be considered the clear favorite in the general election in the solidly red southeastern state.
Meanwhile, in the South Carolina GOP Senate primary, longtime Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham did win a majority of the vote, and will avoid a runoff, the Associated Press reported.
Graham, who was endorsed by Trump, was facing primary challenges from five candidates, including conservative businessman Mark Lynch, who took aim at the senator over his support for the war in Iran. Lynch was backed by some MAGA leaders who have been critical of the president.
Graham’s campaign and allied political groups spent nearly $20 million to highlight Trump’s support. And the president joined Graham and Evette for a primary eve tele-rally.
The brute force of the president’s endorsement power has been on display in GOP primaries over the past month, with his candidates ousting incumbents he targeted in showdowns in Indiana, Louisiana, Kentucky and Texas that grabbed plenty of national attention.
But his 11th-hour endorsement of Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra of Iowa a week and a half ago — which came on the same day he also backed Evette — in the race to succeed retiring GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds wasn’t enough to muscle the three-term congressman to victory.
Feenstra was narrowly edged by Zach Lahn, a businessman, farmer and former political strategist who was backed by the political wings of MAHA — the acronym for the Make America Healthy Again movement aligned with Trump Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — and Turning Point USA, the powerful conservative organization co-founded by the late Charlie Kirk.
In the South Carolina GOP gubernatorial primary, the major contenders had long been highlighting their support for Trump and his agenda, in hopes of landing his support.
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Trump, after staying neutral for months, endorsed Evette, praising her as an “America First Patriot” and a “WINNER” in his announcement.
In her primary night speech, Evette thanks the president and touted that she’s a “Trump-endorsed businesswoman and conservative who’s going to take the fight to the radical left.”
Supporters of a half-cent sales tax proposed to help fund health services in Los Angeles County declared victory Tuesday after days of steadily gaining ground as more ballots were counted.
The latest results show the “yes” camp ahead by a slim margin, with just more than 50% of the vote. The measure needs a simple majority to win.
“Today, Angelenos sent a clear message: we take care of each other,” said Jim Mangia, chief executive of St. John’s Community Health and a spokesperson for the campaign, in a statement. “For months, we watched Washington make decisions that stripped healthcare away from hundreds of thousands of our neighbors — and today, Los Angeles County answered.”
The campaign said it would be organizing a news conference Wednesday to celebrate the “historic win.”
The proposal, on the ballot as Measure ER, had gained traction since election night, when results showed the tax had failed to gain a majority of support among early voters. Voters have not rejected a sales tax hike in L.A. County since 2012, when a transportation measure fell just short of a needed two-thirds majority with 66.1% support.
Approval of Measure ER would impose a new sales tax of half a penny of every dollar spent in the county, with the proceeds going to local hospitals and clinics that say they’re bleeding funding after federal cuts. Officials anticipate it will bring in $1 billion annually to patch the holes in the health services network.
The tax, which was championed by a coalition of healthcare advocates, takes effect Oct. 1 and will last for five years.
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