super ace ultimate slot machine
By Nic Maclellan A no-confidence motion in the French National Assembly has ousted the government led by Prime Minister Michel Barnier. But for New Caledonians, still reeling from the economic, cultural and social impacts of six months of conflict this year, the collapse of the Barnier government raises concern about future support from Paris. A long-serving conservative politician and former diplomat, Barnier was appointed as a Prime Minister in September by French President Emmanuel Macron, following the defeat of the presidential majority in July’s snap elections for the National Assembly. From months, Macron had delayed appointing a prime minister, given his Ensemble alliance lacked the numbers to maintain a governing majority in the French legislature. Refusing to appoint a candidate from the Left-wing political alliance Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) – even though it was the largest parliamentary group – Macron finally chose Barnier to lead the government, even though he was a member of the conservative Rassemblement party, which came fourth in the elections! At the time, Barnier’s appointment was welcomed by New Caledonian anti-independence parties, given his past support for the Pacific dependency to remain within the French Republic. Over the last few months, however, business leaders and politicians across the political spectrum in Noumea have been increasingly worried by the drift in French leadership. Since July, political and community leaders in Noumea have sought support from Paris for post-conflict reconstruction, after riots erupted on 13 May, followed by five months of clashes between Kanak activists and more than 6,000 French gendarmes, riot squads and anti-terrorist police, backed by armoured cars and military assistance. Initially, responding to the crisis was high on the Barnier government’s agenda. It formally abandoned Macron’s failed policy on electoral reform for New Caledonia’s local legislature (a constitutional amendment that triggered the riots in mid-May). Barnier deployed a series of diplomatic missions to Noumea, including Overseas Minister François-Noël Buffet, the president of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet and Senate president Gérard Larcher. His government adopted a more conciliatory tone towards the independence movement, seeking to re-start stalled negotiations on New Caledonia’s future political status. For the Government of New Caledonia, however, a central priority was to negotiate new funding in the French government’s 2025 budget to support economic reconstruction. The months of conflict had damaged local businesses, the tourism sector and the crucial nickel industry, one in six workers in the private sector have lost their jobs and many others survive on reduced hours. Under President Louis Mapou, New Caledonia’s government adopted a plan to stabilise the economy, transform the tax base, and support workers and employers battered by months of shutdown and conflict – but needed support from Paris to finance the transition over the next three years. Since Barnier took office, New Caledonian business and political leaders have travelled to Paris to lobby French politicians for extra funding in the 2025 national budget. President Mapou also flew to Paris in November, meeting with President Macron at the Elysee Palace to call for urgent action. However, after weeks of negotiations, Barnier couldn’t finalise a national budget for 2025. In office for only three months, Barnier’s government lacked the numbers to easily pass legislation. Trapped between the largest bloc in the National Assembly, the Left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire and the extreme right Rassemblement national, Barnier lacked the political authority to bang heads together. His decision to ram through changes to Social Security funding without a vote in the National Assembly was the final straw. On 4 December, a no confidence motion proposed by the NFP was backed by Rassemblement national, and 331 of 577 deputies in the National Assembly voted to bring down the government. Unlike most parliamentarians from France’s overseas colonies in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean, New Caledonia’s two deputies in the National Assembly did not vote in favour of the no-confidence motion. Loyalist politician Nicolas Metzdorf is a member of Macron’s presidential bloc and voted against the resolution. Speaking in Paris after the vote, Metzdorf said “we need to have a functioning government to discuss the future of New Caledonia, and we need to have economic and financial stability and support from the French State.” The other New Caledonian member of the French legislature is Emmanuel Tjibaou, newly elected as president of the largest pro-independence party Union Calédonienne (UC). Winning his seat in Paris last July, Tjibaou is the first pro-independence Kanak leader to serve in the National Assembly for 38 years. However, on Wednesday he was absent during the no-confidence vote, one of the few members of the Left who declined to vote for Barnier’s ousting. As UC president, Tjibaou continues to call for a pathway to sovereign independence. However, like his conservative colleague Metzdorf, Tjibaou has been working to gain extra economic assistance for New Caledonia, in preparation for planned discussions on a new political statute in 2025 (as he recently said “you can’t negotiate on an empty stomach”). In recent weeks, the New Caledonian parliamentarians have been successful in gaining pledges of extra support from Paris. The Barnier government committed financial assistance until the end of 2024 and included important provisions just for New Caledonia in the draft budget for 2025. Just before the no-confidence motion, the National Assembly passed a bill to continue funding for the 2024 financial year, including important commitments made by France’s Overseas Minister during his October visit to Noumea (additional loan guarantees; funding to rebuild schools, town halls and other public buildings damaged by arson or rioting over the last six months; financial subsidies to employers to retain workers who have lost full-time jobs). However, this month’s parliamentary no-confidence motion – the first in more than 60 years – blows the draft 2025 budget out of the water. Barnier has now formally resigned, with the dubious distinction that his 90-day tenure was the shortest period as prime minister since the French Fifth Republic was created in 1958. Funding for New Caledonia Before the vote on 4 December, Overseas Minister François-Noël Buffet acknowledged that the government had failed to lock in its pledges to New Caledonia. “We are in an extremely difficult situation,” he said. “The government had made commitments at the time of my visit to New Caledonia [last October] and they had to be translated into concrete terms in the budget.” In a statement, Buffet outlined the provisions that would lapse if the government lost office. The draft financial program for next year included: a loan guarantee of 1 billion euros to underwrite budgetary initiatives by the Government of New Caledonia; plans for tax incentives to encourage post-conflict investment in the islands; and legislation and funding to conduct a census next year (New Caledonia’s five-yearly census was last held in 2019 and was due this year, but could not proceed during the months of turmoil since May). Last month, the French Parliament deferred local elections in New Caledonia until November 2025, leaving the Mapou government in office until New Caledonian citizens can again vote for their three provincial assemblies and national Congress. The year-long delay is designed to give time for supporters and opponents of independence to negotiate a new political statute to replace the 1998 Noumea Accord. Now, the collapse of the French government and ongoing political uncertainty in Paris may delay the timing of crucial negotiations on New Caledonia’s future. For Loyalist leader Nicolas Metzdorf, the no-confidence motion “plunges France into a major political crisis at a time when New Caledonia needs stability more than ever. This vote, with serious consequences, comes while significant progress had been obtained within the framework of the finance bill for 2025.” On 11 December, the Congress of New Caledonia must now vote on legislation that would validate the loans and grants committed for 2024 worth 27 billion Pacific francs (AUD$350 million). Beyond this, prospects for next year are still uncertain. Macron’s folly On the night after the collapse of the Barnier government, French President Emmanuel Macron made a televised speech to the nation, pledging to appoint a new prime minister quickly. However, he showed no humility or acknowledgement of his own responsibility for the current crisis. Instead he thrust responsibility back to the parliament, suggesting they must finalise a new budget before Christmas: “It is necessary to have this budget at the very beginning of next year to allow the country to invest, as has been planned, in our armed forces, our court system, our law enforcement, but also to help our farmers in difficulty who were waiting for the budget, or to support New Caledonia.” Macron still has two years in office until the next presidential elections in 2027, but his capacity to drive politics and policy is diminished. Even as he struts the world stage as a statesman, he is on the nose with most French voters – one opinion poll taken after the no-confidence motion reported that 63% of French citizens want him to resign. The New Popular Front has called for Macron’s resignation, but – returning to Paris from a diplomatic visit to Saudi Arabia – Macron was defiant: “If I am here before you, it is because I was elected twice by the French people. I am extremely proud of this, and I will honour this trust with all the energy that is mine, until the last second, I can be useful to the country.” His political future remains uncertain however, given that many of the key players in the National Assembly also intend to run for the presidency in 2027, including Marine Le Pen of Rassemblement national (National Rally), Jean-Luc Mélenchon of La France Insoumise (France unbowed) and even Macron allies like Edouard Philippe, a former Prime Minister dumped in the 2021, or outgoing Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu. Widely seen as arrogant or out of touch, the French President has been criticised by his own supporters for last June’s decision to call snap elections, which left his parliamentary group without the numbers to pass legislation. After the collapse of the Barnier government, an editorial in Le Monde noted that “Macron is still paying for, and making the country pay for, his disastrous dissolution of the National Assembly in June, which resulted in no governing majority, three political blocs unable to agree, and the feeling amongst many voters that they had been democratically cheated during the interminable appointment of Prime Minister Barnier.” The leading newspaper argued “there is now a real risk that the political crisis will degenerate into an institutional crisis, given the high level of mistrust not only of the President but also of parliamentarians.” Macron’s misjudgement on domestic French politics echoes a series of policy blunders in recent years that have affected people in New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna and French Polynesia, even as the small island states try to deal with post-Covid debt, cost-of-living pressure, the climate emergency and growing US-China strategic competition. At the Pacific Islands Forum in Nuku’alofa last August, President of French Polynesia Moetai Brotherson told Islands Business that misjudged decisions taken by President Macron since 2021 had contributed to mid-May’s explosion of conflict in New Caledonia. “Unfortunately, all the events since 13 May were easy to foresee,” Brotherson said. “I’ve been telling France for three years now about the stepping stones that led to those events.” “First of all, the decision by the French State to maintain the third referendum on self-determination in December 2021, that was the first mistake. Then the nomination of [Loyalist leader] Madame Backès as Secretary of State for Citizenship – that was a huge mistake, because it was the first time that the French State was clearly no longer respecting the neutral position that was their position since the [1998 Noumea] Accord.” Brotherson noted that President Macron’s attempt to ram through electoral reforms for New Caledonia – without a local consensus – added to this breakdown of trust between independence supporters and the French State: “The third and major mistake was this push around modification of the voting constituency in New Caledonia, and that was a major mistake, especially in the light of dissolving the French National Assembly right after creating all this havoc!” So, what comes next? Michel Barnier will remain as caretaker leader until President Macron can appoint a successor (who will become the fifth prime minister the French leader has churned through since his re-election in 2022). Macron may now seek to split the Left’s New Popular Front, offering the prime minister’s job to a politician from the Socialist Party or Greens, while isolating Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise. However, whoever takes up this poisoned chalice will not have a governing majority in the parliament, Macron cannot call new parliamentary elections until July 2025 (after calling snap elections last June, the law requires him to wait a year before he can dissolve the legislature again). When Barnier first took office three months ago, a Le Monde editorial on New Caledonia said that “France has a duty there to achieve what it has so often failed to do in the past: decolonisation.” That remains the challenge for France’s next Prime Minister. Many independence supporters will be reaffirmed in their belief that it’s time to move on from the French colonial empire, as an independent nation.... PACNEWS/ISLANDS BUSINESSFormer President Jimmy Carter dies at age 100
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Cameron Huefner scored 20 points as Sam Houston beat Dallas 111-65 on Saturday. Huefner added eight rebounds for the Bearkats (7-6). Lamar Wilkerson went 7 of 13 from the field (3 for 8 from 3-point range) to add 17 points. Dorian Finister shot 5 for 11 (1 for 3 from 3-point range) and 4 of 4 from the free-throw line to finish with 15 points. Thomas Fleming led the Crusaders in scoring, finishing with 16 points. Dallas also got 15 points from Johny Olmsted. Chandler Holmes finished with 13 points. Sam Houston took the lead with 16:32 remaining in the first half and did not give it up. The score was 50-34 at halftime, with Huefner racking up 11 points. Sam Houston extended its lead to 91-53 during the second half, fueled by a 17-2 scoring run. Erik Taylor scored a team-high 10 points in the second half for the Bearkats. The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar .Kenyan President William Ruto has promised to stop abductions of government critics, in an apparent change of stance for a leader who has previously called the wave of disappearances “fake news.” Ruto, his government officials and police have maintained for months that there were no abductions. Ruto has also demanded names of the missing from families, and told parliament that the reports were fabricated to tarnish his government’s name. At least 82 government critics have allegedly gone missing after a youth-led protest movement erupted in June against a controversial finance bill , though some have resurfaced. Ruto’s remarks on Saturday did not acknowledge government culpability for those missing, however. The Kenyan leader also said that parents should better “take care” of their children. “What has been said about abductions, we will stop them so Kenyan youth can live in peace, but they should have discipline and be polite so that we can build Kenya together,” Ruto said at a stadium in Homa Bay, in the west of the country. Among the disappeared are two young men who shared AI-generated images of Ruto in a casket that some considered offensive and a popular cartoonist whose images of the president went viral. Despite Ruto’s speech, a state-funded human rights body says 29 people remain unaccounted for, including six people who disappeared days before Christmas. Human rights defenders allege that all of the missing activists and critics are believed to have been tracked down by government intelligence who tapped into phone signals. The protests were widely mobilized online, before they spread onto the streets. Human rights activist Bob Njagi, who said he was abducted this summer, reacted to Ruto’s comment: “It was an admission that they’re happening under their watch, if not by them.” “This is just damage control, but it does not absolve them of the previous abductions, and we want all the missing people to be set free,” he told CNN. Njagi leads the Free Kenya Movement, which he described as a consortium of organizations united in pursuit of change for the country. He was one of the most prominent figures behind the protests against Ruto’s government before he disappeared. The 47-year-old told CNN he was forcibly dragged out of a matatu (minibus) one night in August by four hooded men wearing black balaclavas, then was blindfolded, beaten and waterboarded. Njagi said that he was driven to an undisclosed location, stripped naked and chained to the floor for the first two days of his detention. He said that Kenyan security officers held him incommunicado, handcuffed and blindfolded in solitary confinement for 30 more days but was released after a judge threatened to jail the police chief for not revealing his whereabouts. “They’re Kenyan security officers who took us because they told me we had become a threat to the state. These men would just give us one meal a day – ugali (cornmeal) and cabbage or beans,” he said. Until President Ruto’s comments, the Kenyan government has always denied that anyone was missing. “Social media has been used to perpetuate the narrative that certain lawful arrests were abductions when, in fact, those arrested were either awaiting trial or have been released after necessary legal procedures,” Chief Minister Musalia Mudavadi said last week. Njagi said that he was never formally questioned, “but the guys who brought us food would ask random questions, like, ‘who’s been funding you?’ and who our associates were.” The detention was excruciating for many reasons, he said, including that he couldn’t communicate with his family. Njagi was expecting a daughter. She was born nine days before he was released. “I was very traumatized,” he told CNN. He was held in the same premises and released alongside two brothers who are also his neighbors – Jamil and Aslam Longton. Aslam organized and led many protests in the area. He says he was beaten constantly and asked to explain the sources of their funding. Njagi is now reunited with his now three-month-old daughter. But others like Gideon Kibet, a 24-year-old college student who drew the viral cartoon of Ruto, are still missing. Kibet disappeared after meeting opposition senator Okiya Omtatah on Christmas Eve. Kibet’s younger brother Ronny Kiplangat, who is also still missing, had disappeared a few days earlier. The brothers’ family fears that security forces used Kiplangat as bait to lure Kibet – who was studying outside the capital – to Nairobi. Omtatah said that both Njagi and Kibet were abducted by security forces after leaving his office. “(Kibet) boarded a matatu after my driver dropped him off in the city center. As they have done with others, they must have blocked the matatu and snatched him from it,” he said. “If you look at the attitude of the police, they know what is happening. The state is simply allowing it or acquiescing to it,” Omtatah said. Like many young Kenyans, Kibet was once a fervent Ruto supporter. But he turned into a sharp critic as the euphoria that propelled Ruto to power has turned into disappointment with his government over corruption, unemployment, and an anemic economy. Kibet is among many youth that voted for Ruto’s “hustler-in-chief” promise of a better future, but have soured on his government just two years in. Twenty-two-year-old Peter Muteti Njeru was abducted from a suburb outside Nairobi last week. Njeru had posted an AI-generated image of Ruto in a casket on social media, but deleted it after some commenters said it could amount to treason under Kenyan law. CCTV footage from a shop in Njeru’s apartment building showed two men ambushing him before dragging him into a car that speeds off. “Where do you draw the line between power and dictatorship?,” Njeru’s cousin Ansity Kendi Christine said in reference to the abduction. Christine, who says their whole family voted for Ruto, added: “It’s a shame I will carry for the rest of my life.” Kenya’s recently impeached Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has claimed that a rogue unit of security officers outside of the command of the police was carrying out abductions and killings in the country. Some youth who went out to protest and disappeared were later found dead. “Your guess is as good as mine as to who is the commander of that unit,” he told reporters, demanding that it be dismantled. Gachagua hinted that his former boss and running mate Ruto was ultimately responsible after Kenya’s police chief denied involvement in the disappearances. “For the avoidance of doubt, the National Police Service is not involved in any abduction, and there is no police station in the country that is holding the reported abductees,” Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja said in a statement last week. The country’s senior-most police officer declined an interview requested by CNN on the cases. Omtatah has called on Kanja and Kenya’s chief detective to “come clean” on the abductions or quit. Meanwhile, Ruto’s promise to stop the abductions can’t come soon enough for the families of the missing. Retired civil servant Gerald Mwangi, whose son has been missing since Saturday, is hoping Ruto will keep his word. Billy Mwangi, 24, disappeared from his barbershop’s doorstep the day after a now suspended X account believed to belong to him, posted a doctored photo showing Ruto’s head emerging from a casket. Mwangi’s barber told CNN that unidentified men jumped out of a car and grabbed Mwangi, who was waiting for a haircut, from his shop. Mwangi’s father hopes his son will be released after Ruto’s announcement. In the meantime, he says, he is continuing what he calls a “layman’s investigation” into his son’s disappearance. Civil society groups and professional bodies have condemned the abductions, calling them enforced disappearances with the regional cartoonists society decrying a return to the “ dark days of censorship , detention without trial, torture and murder of voices critical of the government.” And, while a civilian-led police oversight body is investigating, many Kenyans have little faith in their independence. “We believe in God and I believe that my son is going to be released,” Mwangi said.
The Ducks have made a short, dense road trip feel long and grueling, extracting a solitary point from their opportunities to accumulate six more in the standings ahead of this journey’s fourth and final game in Columbus on Saturday against the Blue Jackets. They would love a high note on which to conclude a stammering staccato that earned them a point from a toss-up game in Montreal before it got them bombarded at Ottawa and then kept at arm’s length by Toronto, all in the span of just four days. While the theme of opposing individual dominance carried over – Ottawa’s Drake Batherson had four points in a 5-1 drilling before Toronto veteran Max Pacioretty turned in three during a 3-2 victory – the Ducks’ back-to-back efforts varied immensely in quality. “Ottawa was skating 100 miles an hour and we were skating about 60, (whereas in Toronto) we had a lot of pace and urgency,” Ducks coach Greg Cronin told reporters in Toronto. That was consistent with his harsh assessment of the outing in Ottawa, which saw 10 power plays split evenly between the two teams but all three man-advantage markers in the match being scored by the Senators. “We didn’t have good special teams, but we weren’t good five-on-five either,” Cronin told reporters in Kanata. “I mean, I don’t remember the last game we played that was that bad.” Their struggles endured despite the fact that the Ducks have gotten reinforcements all along the way. Trade acquisition Jacob Trouba debuted in Montreal, Leo Carlsson returned from an upper-body injury against Ottawa and Robby Fabbri made his way back from knee surgery versus Toronto. They also got relatively good news on Trevor Zegras’ left knee, as a torn meniscus will cause him to miss six weeks rather than the lengthier period once feared. Prior to those reappearances, veteran defender Cam Fowler hopped back aboard, but in his five games since returning from an upper-body injury, the Ducks have been winless (0-4-1) after they had gone 2-2-1 in their previous five and 4-0-1 before that. With Fowler in the lineup this season, the Ducks have meandered to a 4-10-3 mark, posting a 6-4-1 record without him in their mix. Fowler, who is in the penultimate season of a contract that pays him $6.5 million annually against the salary cap and carries heavy trade protection (he submitted a four-team trade list before the season, narrowing suitors considerably), is the Ducks’ longest-tenured player. He recently surpassed Corey Perry for the second-most games played in franchise history. Yet now his presence has signified undesired evenings in the pressbox for promising young blue-liners like Pavel Mintyukov, Jackson LaCombe and Olen Zellweger. Related Articles LaCombe and Carlsson were among the four goal-scorers in a victory over Columbus at Honda Center on Nov. 10, which snapped a four-game losing winless slump for the Ducks while condemning Columbus to its fifth of six straight losses. Columbus sat in last place in the Metropolitan Division entering Friday’s schedule, but was an eyelash below .500. Zach Werenski is one of just three defensemen who lead their respective clubs in scoring – he’s in illustrious company with Nashville’s Roman Josi and Vancouver’s Quinn Hughes – while Sean Monahan and Kirill Marchenko each anchor a forward line presently. When: Saturday, 4 p.m. PT Where: Nationwide Arena, Columbus, Ohio TV: KCOP (Ch. 13), Victory+By BILL BARROW, Associated Press 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.” —- Bill Barrow, based in Atlanta, has covered national politics including multiple presidential campaigns for the AP since 2012.