WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 44 years after Jimmy Carter left the nation’s capital in humbling defeat, the 39th president returns to Washington for three days of state funeral rites starting on Tuesday.

Carter’s remains, which have been lying in repose at the Carter Presidential Center since Saturday, will leave the Atlanta campus Tuesday morning, accompanied by his children and extended family. Special Air Mission 39 will depart Dobbins Air Reserve Base north of Atlanta and arrive at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, with a motorcade into Washington and the Capitol, where members of Congress will pay their respects at an afternoon service.

WATCH: Jimmy Carter funeral events – 39th president will be transported to Washington

Carter, who died Dec. 29 at the age of 100, will then lie in state Tuesday night and again Wednesday. He then receives a state funeral Thursday at Washington National Cathedral. President Joe Biden will deliver a eulogy.

There will be the familiar rituals that follow a president’s death — the Air Force ride back to the Beltway, a military honor guard carrying a flag-draped casket up the Capitol steps, the Lincoln catafalque in the Rotunda. There also will be symbolism unique to Carter: His hearse will stop at the U.S. Navy Memorial, where his remains will be transferred to a horse-drawn caisson for rest of his trip to the Capitol. The location nods to Carter’s place as the lone U.S. Naval Academy graduate to become commander in chief.

All of the pomp will carry some irony for the Democrat who went from his family peanut warehouse to the Governor’s Mansion and eventually the White House. Carter won the presidency as the smiling Baptist and technocratic engineer who promised to change the ways of Washington — and eschewed many of those unwritten rules when he got there.

“Jimmy Carter was always an outsider,” said biographer Jonathan Alter, explaining how Carter capitalized on the fallout of the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal that toppled Richard Nixon. “The country was thirsting for moral renewal and for Carter, as this genuinely religious figure, to come in and clean things up.”

From 1977 to 1981, Carter was the city’s highest-ranking resident. But he never mastered it.

“He could be prickly and a not very appealing personality” in a town that thrives on relationships, Alter said, describing a president who struggled with schmoozing lawmakers and reporters.

The gatekeepers of Washington society never embraced Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, either, not quite knowing what to make of the small-town Southerners who carried their own luggage and bought their clothes off the rack. Carter sold what had been the presidential yacht, a perk his predecessors had used to wine and dine Capitol power players.

Early in Carter’s presidency, Washington Post society columnist Sally Quinn tagged the Carters and their West Wing as “an alien tribe,” incapable of “playing ‘the game.’” An elite Georgetown hostess herself, Quinn nodded to Washington’s “frivolity” but nonetheless mocked “the Carter people” as “not, in fact, comfortable in limousines, yachts, or in elegant salons, in black tie” or with “place cards, servants, six courses, different forks, three wines … and after-dinner mingling.”

He endured a rocky four years that left him without enough friends in the town’s power circles and, ultimately, across an electorate that delivered nearly 500 Electoral College votes to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election.

Long after leaving office, Carter still bemoaned a political cartoon published around his inauguration that depicted his family approaching the White House with his mother, “Miss Lillian,” chewing on a hayseed.

Carter often flouted the ceremonial trappings that have been on display in Georgia and will continue in Washington.

As president, he wanted to keep the Marine Band from playing “Hail to the Chief,” thinking it elevated the president too much. His advisers convinced him to accept it as part of the job. And the song played Saturday as he arrived at his presidential center after a motorcade through his hometown of Plains and past his boyhood farm.

He also never used his full name, James Earl Carter Jr., even taking the oath of office. His full name was printed on memorial cards given to all mourners who paid their respects in Atlanta.

He once addressed the nation from the White House residence wearing a cardigan, now on display at his museum and library. His remains now rest in a wooden casket being carried and guarded by military pallbearers in their impeccable dress uniforms.

“He was a simple man in so many ways,” said Brad Webb, an Army veteran who was one of more than 23,000 people who came to honor the former president at his library, which is on the same campus as The Carter Center, where the former president and first lady based their decades of advocacy for democracy, public health and human rights in the developing world.

“He was also a complicated man, who took his defeat and did so much good in the world,” said Webb, who voted for Republican Gerald Ford in 1976 and Reagan in 1980. “And, looking back, some of the things in his presidency — the inflation, the Iran hostages, the energy crisis — were really things that no president can actually control. We get to look back with some perspective and understand that he was an excellent former president but also had a presidency we can appreciate more than we did as it was happening.”

Alabama replenished its depth at the running back position Monday night by adding Louisiana transfer Dre’lyn Washington. The rising redshirt senior will have one year of eligibility remaining for the Crimson Tide.

Washington started two games over 11 appearances for Louisiana last season. The 5-foot-9, 218-pound back carried the ball 73 times for 478 yards (6.55 yards per carry) with five touchdowns. He also recorded six receptions for 107 yards and a score through the air.

Alabama decided to dip into the portal for a running back after seeing Justice Haynes make way for Michigan earlier this month. The Tide returns starter Jam Miller as well as Richard Young, Daniel Hill and Kevin Riley. Along with Washington, Alabama added Rivals100 freshman Akylin Dear as part of its 2025 class.

Washington signed with Louisiana as an unranked recruit in the 2021 class. The Hemphill, Texas native has rushed for 1,343 rushing yards and nine touchdowns and recorded 14 receptions for 154 yards and a pair of scores through the air during his college career.

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

In today’s edition, “Meet the Press” researcher and production associate Juhi Doshi explores how the anti-incumbent wave has extended well beyond Washington in recent months. Plus, senior national political reporter Natasha Korecki examines how Kamala Harris handled her election certification role. And our Captiol Hill team look ahead to the obstacles awaiting Donald Trump’s agenda in Congress.

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Republicans take over Washington amid a worldwide anti-incumbent wave

By Juhi Doshi

As the newly sworn-in Republican Congress on Monday formalized Donald Trump’s election win, it’s worth widening the lens for the global context: Last year, voters worldwide delivered a striking rebuke to incumbents and traditional political parties on both the right and left, propelled by sour feelings over inflation, deepening cultural divisions, international conflicts and frustration with the status quo and political elites.

In fact, the incumbent party lost almost every Western election in 2024. And heading into 2025, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a mid-December no-confidence vote, setting the stage for elections next month, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, facing internal revolt, said Monday that he would resign as prime minister and leader of his Liberal Party ahead of 2025 elections there.

The trends crossed ideological and continental boundaries. In the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party saw its 14-year rule end in its worst electoral loss since 1832. For the first time in nearly 60 years, Botswana’s Democratic Party lost control in a dramatic defeat. In South Korea, voters handed the opposition Democratic Party a majority in the National Assembly, seen as a check on President Yoon Suk Yeol of the People Power Party.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party held power but were forced into a coalition government. In France, President Emmanuel Macron and his centrist alliance, Ensemble, lost ground to both the left-wing New Popular Front and the right-wing National Rally.

And in the U.S., the incumbent party lost for the third straight presidential election — the first time that has happened since the 19th century.

“I think that Kamala Harris was considered part of the institution,” said Basil Smikle Jr., a Democratic strategist and professor at Columbia University. “A lot of younger voters saw her connected to all the problems they saw with political parties.” 

A set of Pew Research Center surveys found that large majorities in many nations believe elected officials don’t care what people like them think and that no political party represents their views well. 

“Big numbers in many countries say, ‘I don’t feel like I’ve got a voice in politics.’ So, in lots of ways, people don’t feel like representation is working the way it should,” said Richard Wike, director of global attitudes research at Pew. 

A big force behind that trend: A Pew study conducted in 34 countries with over 40,000 respondents found that economic challenges were a consistent theme globally, with 64% of adults saying their economy was in bad shape. In surveyed nations that held elections in 2024 — France, Japan, South Korea, South Africa and the U.K. — more than 70% held this view. 

Jim Messina, who served as the campaign manager for President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election in the U.S. and has also worked for the U.K. Conservative Party, noted how difficult it is to overcome voter anger over the economy.

“Obama said to me over and over and over, ‘We have to win the middle,’ ‘We have to win the economic argument,’” Messina said. “And Democrats lost the economic argument, or Kamala Harris did, by almost 10 points. And you just cannot win a democratic or a presidential election in the United States if you lose the economic argument.”

Harris oversees the certification of Trump’s election win on a drama-free Jan. 6

By Natasha Korecki

Upon entering the Senate chamber on Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris issued a simple declaration when asked by NBC News about presiding over the certification of the 2024 election: “Democracy prevails.” 

Minutes later, Harris carried through, steering Congress’ collective endorsement of the Electoral College vote that she lost and affirming Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

Harris’ message of this Jan. 6 was one that both she and her predecessor on the campaign trail, President Joe Biden, conveyed time and again to voters. They advocated for “freedom” and democracy and shunned the events of the violent riot by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, that saw an unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Missing on this day compared to four years earlier were gallows and a noose constructed outside the Capitol grounds. Or chants in support of hanging the vice president for failing to reject the will of the people and the true outcome of the election. Instead, the event transpired in the way it was meant to unfold, pro forma, taking all of 30 minutes. 

Ultimately, the American electorate rejected Harris, ushering in Trump and his vows to blow up the status quo. Unlike Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of 2020, Harris conceded her loss and attempted to offer her supporters comforting words a day after the election. 

After Monday’s election certification, Harris said: “I do believe very strongly that America’s democracy is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it. Otherwise, it is very fragile, and it will not be able to withstand moments of crisis. And today, America’s democracy stood.”  

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Pardon politics: Meanwhile, the details of Trump’s plans to pardon Jan. 6, 2021, defendants when he takes office in two weeks remain unclear, Ryan J. Reilly reports. More than 1,580 defendants have been charged and about 1,270 have been convicted in a sprawling investigation that has resulted in more than 660 prison sentences, according to statistics released Monday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys chairman who is serving 22 years in federal prison after he was convicted of seditious conspiracy in relation to the Capitol attack, asked Trump on Monday for a pardon.

Johnson’s push to pass Trump’s agenda in one massive bill faces big hurdles

By Sahil Kapur, Scott Wong and Julie Tsirkin

House Speaker Mike Johnson is laying out a highly ambitious strategy to answer Donald Trump’s call for passing his agenda in “one big, beautiful bill“ — a plan that will test the limits of his wafer-thin Republican majority. 

Johnson said Sunday that the party-line bill will contain provisions on border security, energy, manufacturing and tax policy. He also called for extending the debt ceiling in the same bill and passing it out of the House as early as the first week of April.

Republicans plan to use the budget “reconciliation” process to pass the massive package. That allows them to bypass the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, where Republicans have 53 seats and can cut Democrats out of the process.

Key senators, including Majority Leader John Thune, have been pushing for breaking it up into two bills — allowing Republicans to score a quick victory on border funding and take some time to craft a second tax bill. 

But Johnson and Trump say they prefer a single package. 

“The plan in the House has been one bill. We met for two days over the weekend — two full days of discussion and strategizing with that in mind. And so that’s our assumption right now,” Johnson told reporters on Monday. “The Senate has a little different opinion and perspective on reconciliation, and what the wisest strategy is, than the House. And that’s okay, that’s part of this process.”

“We are going to get this mission accomplished,” Johnson said. 

To appease lawmakers and Trump allies who want to deal with the border immediately, House and Senate Republicans will bring a series of immigration and border security bills up for votes in the coming weeks, according to two people with knowledge of those plans.

“We’ve got six months to a year to demonstrate to the American people that we’re going to bring change,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. “Now whether you do it in one bill or two bills, frankly, I can teach that round or flat. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.”

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That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner, Scott Bland and Bridget Bowman.

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