Author: PolitCens

Plains, Georgia — It never got old. 

No matter how many times one crammed into the modest sanctuary at Maranatha Baptist Church, there was always some wisdom to be gleaned from the measured, Bible-inspired words of Jimmy Carter. 

This was another side of the 39th president, a down-to-earth man of steadfast faith who somehow found time to teach Sunday school classes when he wasn’t building homes for the needy, or advocating for fair elections, or helping eradicate awful diseases. 

For young and old, straight and gay, believers and nonbelievers, Black and white and brown, Maranatha was a far-off-the-beaten path destination in southwest Georgia where Carter, well into his 90s, stayed connected with his fellow citizens of the world. 

Anyone willing to make the trek to his hometown of Plains, with its one blinking caution light and residents numbering in the hundreds, was rewarded with access to a white-haired man who once occupied the highest office in the land. 

Carter taught his Sunday school class roughly twice a month to accommodate crowds that sometimes swelled to more than 500. (On the other Sundays, no more than a couple dozen regulars and a handful of visitors usually attended services). 

Here, the former commander-in-chief and the onetime first lady, his wife of more than seven decades, were simply Mr. Jimmy and Ms. Rosalynn. And when it came to worshipping with them, all were welcome. 

Sundays with Mr. Jimmy 

Before the former president entered the sanctuary, with a bomb-sniffing dog outside and Secret Service agents scattered around, a strict set of rules would be laid out by Ms. Jan — Jan Williams, a longtime church member and friend of the Carters. She would have made quite a drill sergeant. 

It felt like a good-cop, bad-cop routine. Ms. Jan barking out rules you knew had come straight from Mr. Jimmy, who studied nuclear physics and approached all things with an engineer’s orderly mind. 

Most important for those wanting a photo with the Carters — and nearly everyone did — you had to stay for the main 11 a.m. church service. Picture-taking began around noon. 

If you left the church grounds before that, there was no coming back. If you stayed, you followed rules. No autographs. No handshakes. No attempts at conversation beyond a brief “good morning” or “thank you.” 

Carter, consistently in sports jacket, slacks and bolo tie, would start his lesson by moving around the sanctuary, asking with a straight face if there were any visitors — that always got a laugh — and where they were from. In my many trips to Maranatha, I’m sure I heard all 50 states, not to mention an array of far-flung countries. 

If anyone answered Washington, D.C., the answer was predictable. “I used to live there,” the one-term president would say, breaking into that toothy grin. 

Carter’s Bible lessons focused on central themes: God gives life, loves unconditionally and provides the freedom to live a completely successful life. But the lesson usually began with an anecdote about what he’d been up to or his perspective on world affairs. 

Carter could talk about building homes with Habitat for Humanity or bemoan U.S. conflicts since World War II. He could talk about his work with The Elders, a group of former world leaders, or a trip out West to go trout fishing with Ted Turner. He could talk about The Carter Center’s successes in eliminating the guinea worm, or his long friendships with Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan. 

“Willie Nelson is an old friend. He used to come visit me in the White House,” Carter related once, touching ever so gently on Nelson’s affection for weed. 

“I don’t know what Willie and my children did after I went to bed. I’ve heard rumors,” the former president said, with a sly grin and a wink that suggested he believed every word. 

My favorite: Carter telling of his latest book project and how he had long used encyclopedias for research. 

Carter decided the collection was taking up too much space, so he boxed it up and headed out to local schools and libraries, figuring someone would eagerly take a donation from an ex-president. Instead, he got a standard refrain: Sorry, no one uses encyclopedias anymore. 

I recall the punchline. “How do I look up things now?” asked the man born five years after World War I ended. Pause. Then: “Google.” 

Memories of visits 

During most of my visits to Maranatha, Carter spoke for 45 minutes without sitting down. His mind remained sharp, with only an occasional glance at the notes tucked inside his Bible, but his body became more and more feeble as he moved deeper into his 90s. He talked openly about the ravages of aging. 

He resisted church members’ pleadings to take a seat while teaching. I was there the first time he tried it, in August 2018. 

“I’m uncomfortable sitting down,” he said, “but I guess I’ll get used to it.” 

Not that time. Carter sat for less than 10 minutes before rising. He stood at the table for the rest of class. 

Returning the following year, Carter had relented to using a white, remote-controlled chair. After climbing aboard — voilà — a flick of a switch would slowly lift him above the lectern, visible even to those sitting in the back. 

If there wasn’t enough room in the sanctuary, rows of folding chairs were set up in the fellowship hall and a handful of tiny classrooms. Carter’s lesson would be shown on TVs linked to a feed from the main room. 

A letdown for visitors? Perhaps. But relegation to a back room had its benefits. 

Carter, who usually arrived about 15 minutes before the start of his 10 a.m. lesson, would swing by these rooms before heading to the sanctuary. He would even take a few questions, which didn’t happen in front of the big crowd. 

After a 2018 profile by The Washington Post told of the Carters having regular Saturday night dinners at friend Jill Stuckey’s house, which included one glass each of “bargain-brand Chardonnay,” I asked Carter how many glasses of wine he’d had the night before. 

“I’ll say one,” Carter replied with a sly grin. Stuckey, standing behind him, shook her head and held up two fingers. 

No matter where you sat — main sanctuary or back room — everyone got their picture taken with Mr. Jimmy and Ms. Rosalynn. For many, this seemed the biggest reward. 

When we first started attending, those pictures were taken under a tree just outside the church. After being diagnosed with cancer in 2015, Carter and his wife would pose with visitors inside the sanctuary. Carter liked to joke about what a burden it was to sit for all those pictures, which surely numbered in the hundreds of thousands. 

“I’ll be delighted to have photographs made with all of you,” he quipped after one of his final lessons. “Actually, since I’m in church, I better say I’ll be willing to have photographs made with all of you.” 

For my family, those pictures show a son growing from boy to man with Mr. Jimmy and Ms. Rosalynn filling out the frames. What a treasure they are. 

The final lesson 

Turnout for Carter’s Sunday school lessons dipped during the Great Recession. But the crowds returned after his cancer announcement, with some folks lining up outside the church the night before. 

Carter declared himself cancer-free, but other health challenges began to catch up with him. After an October 2019 fall at his home left him with a slightly fractured pelvis, the church announced Carter would not teach his next class on Nov. 3, a lesson we had planned to attend. Disappointed, we canceled our hotel reservation. 

But Mr. Jimmy wasn’t done just yet. 

The church had canceled without checking with him. He made it clear that he was NOT cancelling. We quickly rebooked. Carter’s lesson that day, based on the Book of Job, was especially poignant in retrospect. 

“I’m going to start by asking you a very profound question,” he said. “How many of you believe in life after death?” 

Carter conceded to having doubts for most of his life, right up to being stricken by cancer, which finally erased any skepticism. When the end on this world came, he would be ready. 

“We don’t have anything to dread after death,” Carter said with a reassuring smile. 

At the end of his lesson, he challenged everyone to do one good deed for a stranger. “I’m going to hold you to it,” Carter promised. 

He never got the chance. 

His health continued to decline, sidelining him through the Christmas season. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world in 2020. 

By that summer, it was clear that Mr. Jimmy’s treasured role as spreader of the gospel, which he began at 18 and resumed after his presidency, was over. 
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Will TikTok in the U.S. be banned this month?

That’s the pressing question keeping creators and small business owners in anxious limbo as they await a decision that could upend their livelihoods. The fate of the popular app will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on Jan. 10 over a law requiring TikTok to break ties with its Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance, or face a U.S. ban.

At the heart of the case is whether the law violates the First Amendment with TikTok and its creator allies arguing that it does. The U.S. government, which sees the platform as a national security risk, says it does not.

For creators, the TikTok doomsday scenarios are nothing new since President-elect Donald Trump first tried to ban the platform through executive order during his first term. But despite Trump’s recent statements indicating he now wants TikTok to stick around, the prospect of a ban has never been as immediate as it is now with the Supreme Court serving as the final arbiter.

If the government prevails as it did in a lower court, TikTok says it would shut down its U.S. platform by Jan. 19, leaving creators scrambling to redefine their futures.

“A lot of my other creative friends, we’re all like freaking out. But I’m staying calm,” said Gillian Johnson, who benefited financially from TikTok’s live feature and rewards program, which helped creators generate higher revenue potential by posting high-quality original content. The 22-year-old filmmaker and recent college graduate uses her TikTok earnings to help fund her equipment for projects such as camera lens and editing software for her short films “Gambit” and “Awaken! My Neighbor.”

Johnson said the idea of TikTok going away is “hard to accept.”

Many creators have taken to TikTok to voice their frustrations, grappling with the possibility that the platform they’ve invested so much in could soon disappear. Online communities risk being disrupted, and the economic fallout could especially be devastating for those who mainly depend on TikTok and have left full-time jobs to build careers and incomes around their content.

For some, the uncertainty has led them to question whether to continue creating content at all, according to Johnson, who says she knows creators who have been thinking about quitting. But Nicla Bartoli, the vice president of sales at The Influencer Marketing Factory, said the creators she has interreacted with have not been too worried since news about a potential TikTok ban has come up repeatedly over the years, and then died down.

“I believe a good chunk think it is not going to happen,” said Bartoli, whose agency works to pair influencers and brands.

It’s unclear how quickly the Supreme Court will issue a decision. But the court could act swiftly to block the law from going into effect if at least five of the nine justices deem it unconstitutional.

Trump, for his part, has already asked the justices to put a pause on the ban so he could weigh in after he takes office. In a brief — written by his pick for solicitor general — Trump called the First Amendment implications of a TikTok ban “sweeping and troubling” and said he wants a “negotiated resolution” to the issue, something the Biden administration had pursued to no avail.

While waiting for the dust to settle in Washington, some creators are exploring alternatives ways to promote themselves or their business, encouraging users to follow them on other social media platforms or are investing more time producing non-TikTok content.

Johnson says she is already strategizing her next move and exploring alternative opportunities. While she hasn’t found a place quite like TikTok, she’s begun to spend more of her time on other platforms, such as Instagram and YouTube, both of whom are expected to benefit financially if TikTok vanishes.

According to a report by Goldman Sachs, the so-called creator economy, which has been fueled in part by TikTok, could be worth $480 billion by 2027.

Because the opportunity to monetize content exists across a range of platforms, a vast amount of creators have already diversified their social media presence. However, many TikTok creators have credited the platform — and its algorithm — with giving them a type of exposure they did not receive on other platforms. Some say it has also boosted and provided opportunities for creators of color and those from other marginalized groups.

Despite fears about the fate of TikTok, industry analysts note creators are generally avoiding making any big changes, like abandoning platform, until something actually happens.

“I’m anxious but also trying to be hopeful in a weird way,” said Brandon Hurst, who credits TikTok with rescuing his business from obscurity and propelling it into rapid growth.

A year after joining TikTok, the 30-year-old Hurst, who sells plants, said his sales doubled, outpacing the traction he’d struggled to gain on Instagram. He built his clientele through the live feature on TikTok, which has helped him sell more than 77,000 plants. The business has thrived so much that he says he now employs five people, including his husband and mom.

“For me, this has been my sole way of doing business,” Hurst said.

Billion Dollar Boy, a New York-based influencer marketing agency, has advised creators to download all of their TikTok content into a personal portfolio, which is especially important for those who post primarily on the platform, said Edward East, the agency’s founder and group CEO. This can help them quickly build their audiences elsewhere. Plus, it can serve as a resume for brands who might want to partner with them for product advertisements, East said.

But until the deadline of Jan. 19 comes around, East said creators should continue to post regularly on TikTok, which has 170 million monthly U.S. users and remains highly effective in reaching audiences.

If the Supreme Court does not delay the ban, as Trump is asking them to do, app stores and internet service providers would be required to stop providing service to TikTok by Jan. 19. That means anyone who doesn’t have TikTok on their phone would be unable to download it. TikTok users would continue to have access, but the prohibitions — which will prevent them from updating the app — will eventually make the app “unworkable,” the Justice Department has said.

TikTok said in court documents that it estimates a one-month shutdown would cause the platform to lose approximately a third of its daily users in the U.S. The company argues a shutdown, even if temporary, will cause it irreparable harm, a legal bar used by judges to determine whether to put the brakes on a law facing a challenge. In under three weeks, Americans will know if the Supreme Court agrees.
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Beverly Hills, California — Viola Davis’ journey to becoming one of Hollywood’s most revered actors was driven by a straightforward mantra: Embrace every role, using each as a paycheck and a chance to explore new characters while honing her skills.

Davis delivered a moving, 16-minute speech while accepting the prestigious Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Gala: An Evening of Excellence on Friday night. She reflected on how her turbulent upbringing fueled her passion for acting as an escape and how financial necessity often influenced her choice of roles.

“If I waited for a role that was written for me, well crafted, then I wouldn’t be standing up here,” said Davis, who along with Ted Danson, recipient of the Carol Burnett Award, were celebrated for their career achievements in film and television during a star-studded, black-tie gala dinner in Beverly Hills, California, just two nights before the 82nd annual Golden Globes on Sunday.

Some of the popular names in attendance included Carol Burnett, Jane Fonda, Anthony Anderson, Steve Guttenberg and singer-songwriter Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds. It’s the first time the Globes hosted a separate event dedicated to both awards.

Davis said she couldn’t afford to wait for the perfect role, especially as a “dark-skinned Black woman with a wide nose and big lips.”

“So I took it for the money,” said Davis, who won praise for a string of compelling characters in films such as “Fences,” “The Woman King,” “The Help” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” while captivating TV audiences through the legal thriller drama “How to Get Away with Murder.”

“I don’t believe that poverty is really the answer to craft,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any nobility in poverty.”

Meryl Streep presented the award to Davis, who she called a pure artist who “delivers the truth every time.” Both actors worked together in the 2008 film “Doubt,” where Streep first became in awe of Davis, who she called her “favorite actor in the world.”

The DeMille Award has been bestowed on Hollywood’s greatest talents. Past recipients include Tom Hanks, Jeff Bridges, Oprah Winfrey, Morgan Freeman, Streep, Barbra Streisand and Sidney Poitier.

When Danson accepted his award, he congratulated Davis, calling her an “amazing actor.”

“It’s such a pleasure to be in the same room with you,” said Danson, a three-time Globes winner, who has been a fixture on TV since he broke out as Boston bartender Sam Malone on NBC’s comedy “Cheers.” His other credits include “The Good Place,” “Mr. Mayor,” “Fargo,” “CSI” and “CSI: Cyber,” “Damages” and “Becker.”

Danson currently stars in Netflix’s “A Man on the Inside,” which earned his first nomination since 2008 and 13th overall.

“Bia Iftikhar, who does his hair on set, said it best: ‘Ted sets the tone,'” said his wife, actor Mary Steenburgen, who presented Danson with the Carol Burnett Award, which was inaugurated in 2019. Past recipients include Norman Lear, Ryan Murphy and Ellen DeGeneres. The first was Burnett herself.

Danson and Steenburgen appeared in a few projects together including “Pontiac Moon,” “Gulliver’s Travels” and “It Must Be Love.”

“He’s so loving and takes such joy in acting that all of us who are hard at work away from our families for long hours get to work on a set that is dictated by his kindness,” Steenburgen said. “As his wife, watching the respect and love … for Ted, it made me very proud.”

Danson traded “I love you” with Burnett, showing admiration for each other. He thanked a number of writers, producers and actors along with the “Cheers” co-creators Glen and Les Charles, who surprised him by showing up to the event.

“I feel so grateful,” he said. “I’m truly the luckiest… on Earth.”

Davis quipped, “Little Viola is squealing,” referring to how her younger self would be overjoyed at the actor’s journey from an impoverished childhood to Hollywood stardom.

“She’s standing behind me and she’s pulling on my dress,” said Davis, who achieved EGOT status after winning a Grammy last year for best audio book, narration, and storytelling for the recording for her memoir “Finding Me.”

“She’s wearing the same red rubber boots that she wore rain or shine because they her feel ‘purty'” she continued. “What she’s whispering is: ‘I told you I was a magician.'”
…

NEW YORK — New York’s new toll for drivers entering the center of Manhattan debuted Sunday, meaning many people will pay $9 to access the busiest part of the Big Apple during peak hours. 

The toll, known as congestion pricing, is meant to reduce traffic gridlock in the densely packed city while also raising money to help fix its ailing public transit infrastructure. 

Drivers of most passenger cars will pay $9 to enter Manhattan south of Central Park on weekdays between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m. and on weekends between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. During off hours, the toll will be $2.25 for most vehicles. 

After years of studies, delays and a last-ditch bid by New Jersey to halt the toll, the program launched without major hiccups early Sunday. But transit officials cautioned the first-in-the-nation scheme could require adjustments — and likely would not get its first true test until the workweek. 

“This is a toll system that has never been tried before in terms of complexity,” Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said at a news conference held at Grand Central Terminal Sunday. “We don’t expect New Yorkers to overnight change their behavior. Everybody’s going to have to adjust to this.” 

The fee — which varies for motorcyclists, truck drivers and ride-share apps — will be collected by electronic toll collection systems at over 100 detection sites now scattered across the lower half of Manhattan. 

It comes on top of tolls drivers pay for crossing various bridges and tunnels to get to the city in the first place, although there will be a credit of up to $3 for those who have already paid to enter Manhattan via certain tunnels during peak hours. 

On Sunday morning, hours after the toll went live, traffic moved briskly along the northern edge of the congestion zone at 60th Street and 2nd Avenue. Many motorists appeared unaware that the newly activated cameras, set along the arm of a steel gantry above the street, would soon send a new charge to their E-Z Passes. 

“Are you kidding me?” said Chris Smith, a realtor from Somerville, New Jersey, as he drove against traffic beneath the cameras, circumventing the charge. “Whose idea was this? Kathy Hochul? She should be arrested for being ignorant.” 

Some residents and transit riders, meanwhile, said they were hopeful the program would lessen the bottlenecks and frequent honking in their neighborhoods, while helping to modernize the subway system. 

“I think the idea would be good to try to minimize the amount of traffic down and try to promote people to use public transportation,” said Phil Bauer, a surgeon who lives in midtown Manhattan, describing the constant din of traffic in his neighborhood as “pretty brutal.” 

President-elect Donald Trump, a Republican, has vowed to kill the program when he takes office, but it’s unclear if he will follow through. The plan had stalled during his first term while it waited on a federal environmental review. 

In November, Trump, whose namesake Trump Tower is in the toll zone, said congestion pricing “will put New York City at a disadvantage over competing cities and states, and businesses will flee.” 

Lieber, the MTA head, said he was not overly concerned that the president-elect would succeed in unwinding the program, even if he did follow through. “I think he understands living on 59th and 5th Avenue what traffic is doing to our city,” Lieber said Sunday. 

Other big cities around the world, including London and Stockholm, have similar congestion pricing schemes, but it is the first in the U.S. Proponents of the idea note the programs were largely unpopular when first implemented, gaining approval as the public felt benefits like faster bus speeds and less traffic. 

In New York City, even some transit riders voiced skepticism of a plan intended to raise much-needed funds for the subway system. 

“With my experience of the MTA and where they’ve allocated their funds in the past, they’ve done a pretty poor job with that,” said Christakis Charalambides, a supervisor in the fashion industry, as he waited for a subway Sunday morning in Lower Manhattan. “I don’t know if I necessarily believe it until I really see something.” 

The toll was supposed to go into effect last year with a $15 charge, but Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul abruptly paused the program before the 2024 election, when congressional races in suburban areas around the city — the epicenter of opposition to the program — were considered to be vital to her party’s effort to retake control of Congress. 

Not long after the election, Hochul rebooted the plan at the lower $9 toll. She denies politics were at play and said she thought the original $15 charge was too much, though she had been a vocal supporter of the program before halting it. 

Congestion pricing also survived several lawsuits seeking to block the program, including a last-ditch effort from the state of New Jersey to have a judge put up a temporary roadblock against it. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, has vowed to continue fighting against the scheme. 

In response, Lieber described the New Jersey governor’s views as the “definition of hypocrisy,” adding that he expected the state to adjust its strategy after “losing again and again and again” in court.
…

President Joe Biden visits New Orleans on Monday in the wake of a deadly New Year’s Day terrorist attack. The FBI is investigating and says the assailant was inspired by Islamic State. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has the story.
…

Washington — U.S. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will visit New Orleans on Monday to grieve with relatives of the 14 people who were killed and 35 injured there when a man drove a rented pickup truck at high speed through a group of pedestrians in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

The Bidens plan to meet with family members of the victims who were run over when the suspect, identified by authorities as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old military veteran from Houston, sped down bustling Bourbon Street, a prime tourist restaurant and bar locale. Police fatally shot Jabbar after he opened fire on officers.

Biden, with two weeks remaining in office before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated, is also meeting with investigators who say that Jabbar acted alone in the attack but was inspired by the Islamic State to carry out the terror attack.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said that Jabbar posted five videos on social media expressing support for the Islamic State terrorist group, IS, over the roughly hour and a half before the attack as New Orleans revelers celebrated the first hours of 2025. An IS flag was found in the back of the truck.

On the day of the attack, Biden, speaking from the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, offered condolences to the victims’ families in a national address. “I want you to know I grieve with you,” he said.

Biden said investigators told him the suspect had a remote detonator in his truck that was meant to set off two explosive devices placed inside ice coolers along Bourbon Street.

Representative Mike Turner, chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, on Sunday reiterated to CBS’s “Face the Nation” show a previously disclosed U.S. claim, that there are Islamic State members and other terrorist organizations that are inside the United States “working in conjunction with ISIS with the intention of harming Americans.”

“We don’t know where they are,” Turner said.

Outgoing Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas told ABC’s “This Week” show that there has been a “significant increase” over the last 10 years in “homegrown violent extremism.”

“It is a very difficult threat landscape,” Mayorkas said. He pledged a smooth transition to Trump’s appointment as the incoming Homeland Security secretary, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem.

“I have spoken with Governor Noem a number of times, including on New Year’s Day and immediately thereafter, with respect to the horrific terrorist attack,” Mayorkas said.

“We have spoken substantively about the measures that we take, and I am incredibly devoted to a smooth and successful transition to the success of Governor Noem, should she be confirmed as the secretary of Homeland Security,” Mayorkas said.

Biden’s Monday visit to New Orleans is occurring with heightened security concerns in Washington as Congress meets to certify that Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election.

It is four years to the day after Trump supporters rampaged through the U.S. Capitol, ransacking congressional officers and attacking law enforcement officers to block certification of Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election. Trump has vowed, within hours of taking office on January 20, to pardon many of those arrested and imprisoned in the January 6, 2021, attack.

 
…

While much remains unknown about the man who carried out an attack in New Orleans on New Year’s and another who died in an explosion in Las Vegas the same day, the violence highlights the increased role of people with military experience in ideologically driven attacks, especially those that seek mass casualties.

In New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a veteran of the U.S. Army, was killed by police after a deadly rampage in a pickup truck that left 14 others dead and injured dozens more. It’s being investigated as an act of terrorism inspired by the Islamic State group.

In Las Vegas, officials say Matthew Livelsberger, an active duty member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, shot himself in the head in a Tesla Cybertruck packed with firework mortars and camp fuel canisters, shortly before it exploded outside the entrance of the Trump International Hotel, injuring seven people. On Friday, investigators said Livelsberger wrote that the explosion was meant to serve as a “wakeup call” and that the country was “terminally ill and headed toward collapse.”

Service members and veterans who radicalize make up a tiny fraction of a percentage point of the millions who have honorably served their country. But an Associated Press investigation published last year found that radicalization among both veterans and active duty service members was on the rise and that hundreds of people with military backgrounds had been arrested for extremist crimes since 2017. The AP found that extremist plots they were involved in during that period had killed or injured nearly 100 people.

The AP also found multiple issues with the Pentagon’s efforts to address extremism in the ranks, including that there is still no force-wide system to track it, and that a cornerstone report on the issue contained old data, misleading analyses and ignored evidence of the problem.

Since 2017, both veterans and active duty service members radicalized at a faster rate than people without military backgrounds, according to data from terrorism researchers at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland. Less than 1% of the adult population is currently serving in the U.S. military, but active duty military members make up a disproportionate 3.2% of the extremist cases START researchers found between 2017 and 2022.

While the number of people with military backgrounds involved in violent extremist plots remains small, the participation of active military and veterans gave extremist plots more potential for mass injury or death, according to data collected and analyzed by the AP and START.

More than 480 people with a military background were accused of ideologically driven extremist crimes from 2017 through 2023, including the more than 230 arrested in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — 18% of those arrested for the attack as of late last year, according to START. The data tracked individuals with military backgrounds, most of whom were veterans, involved in plans to kill, injure or inflict damage for political, social, economic or religious goals.

The AP’s analysis found that plots involving people with military backgrounds were more likely to involve mass casualties, weapons training or firearms than plots that didn’t include someone with a military background. This held true whether or not the plots were carried out.

The jihadist ideology of the Islamic State group apparently connected to the New Orleans attack would make it an outlier in the motivations of previous attacks involving people with military backgrounds. Only around 9% of such extremists with military backgrounds subscribed to jihadist ideologies, START researchers found. More than 80% identified with far-right, anti-government or white supremacist ideologies, with the rest split among far-left or other motivations.

Still, there have been a number of significant attacks motivated by the Islamic State and jihadist ideology in which the attackers had U.S. military backgrounds. In 2017, a U.S. Army National Guard veteran who’d served in Iraq killed five people in a mass shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport in Florida after radicalizing via jihadist message boards and vowing support for the Islamic State. In 2009, an Army psychiatrist and officer opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas, and killed 13 people, wounding dozens more. The shooter had been in contact with a known al-Qaida operative prior to the shooting.

In the shadow of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — led in part by veterans — law enforcement officials said the threat from domestic violent extremists was one of the most persistent and pressing terror threats to the United States. The Pentagon has said it is “committed to understanding the root causes of extremism and ensuring such behavior is promptly and appropriately addressed and reported to the proper authorities.”

Kristofer Goldsmith, an Army veteran and CEO of Task Force Butler Institute, which trains veterans to research and counter extremism, said the problem of violent extremism in the military cuts across ideological lines. Still, he said, while the Biden administration tried to put in place efforts to address it, Republicans in Congress opposed them for political reasons.

“They threw, you know, every roadblock that they could in saying that all veterans are being called extremists by the Biden administration,” Goldsmith said. “And now we’re in a situation where we’re four years behind where we could have been.”

During their long military careers, both Jabbar and Livelsberger served time at the U.S. Army base formerly known as Fort Bragg in North Carolina, one of the nation’s largest military bases. One of the officials who spoke to the AP said there is no overlap in their assignments at the base, now called Fort Liberty.

Goldsmith said he is concerned that the incoming Trump administration will focus on the New Orleans attack and ISIS and ignore that most deadly attacks in the United States in recent history have come from the far right, particularly if Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is confirmed.

Hegseth has justified the medieval Crusades that pitted Christians against Muslims, criticized the Pentagon’s efforts to address extremism in the ranks and ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration in the weeks after the Jan. 6 attack was himself flagged by a fellow National Guard member as a possible “insider threat.”
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Her greatest fear, dormant for decades, came rushing back in an instant: had she adopted and raised a kidnapped child?

Peg Reif’s daughter, adopted from South Korea in the 1980s, had sent her a link to a documentary detailing how the system that made their family was rife with fraud: documents falsified, babies switched, children snatched off the street and sent abroad.

Reif wept.

She was among more than 120 who contacted The Associated Press this fall, after a series of stories and a documentary made with Frontline exposed how Korea created a baby pipeline, designed to ship children abroad as quickly as possible to meet Western demand. The reporting shook adoption communities around the world with details about how agencies competed for babies — pressuring mothers, bribing hospitals, fabricating documents. Most who wrote were adoptees, but some were adoptive parents like Reif, horrified to learn they had supported this system.

“I can’t stand the thought that somebody lost their child,” Reif said. “I can’t stop thinking about it. I don’t know how to make it right. I don’t know if I can.”

Forty years ago, she was struggling with infertility. She and her husband pinned their dreams for a family on adopting a baby from Mexico, paid an agency thousands of dollars and waited for months. Then the agency’s directors were arrested, and they learned that those Mexican babies had been taken from their families against their will. Reif was heartbroken but recalls even now looking at her husband and saying, “Thank God we don’t have a child who was stolen.”

But now she isn’t sure of that. Because then they adopted two Korean children, and brought them to their home in rural Wisconsin, first a son and then a daughter. The two were not biological siblings, but both arrived with strangely similar stories in their files: their young unmarried mothers worked in factories with fathers who disappeared after they got pregnant.

Back then, Reif still believed the common narrative about foreign adoption: it saved children who might otherwise live the rest of their lives in an orphanage, die or be damned to poverty.

“I don’t believe that anymore,” Reif said. “I don’t know what to believe.”

Cameron Lee Small, a therapist in Minneapolis whose practice caters to adoptees and their families, said many are feeling an intense sense of betrayal. Individual adoptees had long shared stories of falsified identities. But the revelations this year pointed to systemwide practices that routinely changed babies’ origin stories to process adoptions quickly, including listing them as “abandoned” even when they had known parents.

Small, who was also adopted from Korea in the 1980s, summarized what he’s been hearing from adoptees: “I’m kind of back to nothing. What do I believe now? Who can I believe?”

Reif’s daughter, Jenn Hamilton, spent her life thinking she was unwanted, often quipping, “That’s what happens when you’re found in a dumpster as a baby.”

It has taken a toll on her all her life: She’s been happily married for nine years, she said, but she has this insatiable insecurity: “I constantly find myself asking my husband, ‘Are you mad at me? Did I do something wrong?’ Do you want to leave me?'”

She has no idea anymore if abandonment was ever really her story, with revelations of abuses so systemic that even the Korean government likened it to “trafficking.”

“You can’t make that many mistakes. It has to be intentional. It was this huge tree of deception,” she said. “I feel disgusted.”

Holt International, the U.S.-based agency that pioneered adoptions from Korea, did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.

Reform is sweeping across Europe — countries have launched investigations, halted foreign adoptions and apologized to adoptees for failing to protect them. But the United States, which has taken in the most adopted children by far, has not done a review of its own history or culpability.

The U.S. State Department told AP this summer that it would work with its historian to piece together its history, and detailed initial findings that some documents might have been falsified. But it said there was no evidence that U.S. officials were aware of it. The State Department has since said that it has “been unable to identify any records that could provide insight into the U.S. government role in adoptions from South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.”

Korea’s National Police Agency confirmed an increase in adoptees registering their DNA for family searches — both at domestic police stations and diplomatic offices across North America and Europe — in the weeks following the release of the AP stories and documentary in September. More than 120 adoptees registered their DNA in October and November, compared to an average of fewer than 30 a month from January to August.

Korea’s government has maintained that adoptions were a necessary tool to care for needy children, including babies of unwed mothers or other children deemed as abandoned. However, Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare acknowledged to AP that the adoption boom in the 1970s and 80s was possibly fueled by a desire to reduce welfare costs.

Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been investigating government accountability over foreign adoption problems since 2022, prompted by complaints filed by hundreds of adoptees, and is expected to release an interim report in February. The Commission has posted the AP stories on its website.

A law passed in 2023 mandates that all adoption records be transferred from private agencies to a government department called the National Center for the Rights of the Child by July, to centralize the handling of family search requests. The center has confirmed that private agencies hold about 170,000 adoption files, but director Chung Ick-Joong doubts it will acquire a space to store and manage all these records in time, due to financial constraints and other challenges. The agency expects family search requests to increase dramatically – “possibly by tenfold,” according to Chung — yet has funding to add only five staff members to its team of six searchers.

Chung acknowledged that flaws in adoption laws had persisted for decades, and Korea only required adoptions to go through courts and birth records to be preserved after 2012.

“It’s difficult to determine who was responsible for the inaccuracies in records before then,” he said. “The adoption agency might have been at fault, the biological parents may have lied, or something might have gone wrong at the orphanage … no one truly knows what the truth is.”

Korean adoption agencies have mostly declined AP’s requests for comment in recent months, often citing privacy concerns.

Advocates insist that most adoptive families thrive, with both the parents and children happily living their lives without questioning the industry as Reif and Hamilton have.

Hamilton grew up in a rural, almost exclusively white community in Wisconsin, and back then all she wanted was to be accepted. But having children of her own changed that. When her first child was born, she looked at him, and it took her breath away.

“It can’t explain it, like this is the first person I know in my life that I’m biologically related to,” she said.

She wanted to learn her own history, so her children could know theirs. She wrote a letter to her adoption agency, which within weeks connected her with a woman they said was her mother. It was emotional, shocking.

But soon she felt like she had more questions than answers. The woman’s name didn’t match the one listed on paperwork, and the name she gave for the father was also different. Birthdates didn’t match, the birthplace didn’t either. They had not met in a factory, she said, they had been pen pals.

Hamilton asked the woman to take a DNA test, but she said she didn’t know how to access one. Hamilton came to believe this woman was not her birth mother.

The AP’s reporting found numerous cases where agencies connected adoptees with supposed birth families, only for them to later discover after emotional meetings that they weren’t related at all.

Hamilton has been trying to untangle the DNA results on her father’s side, contacting people distantly related, cousins once removed, half great aunts.

“It becomes an obsession,” Hamilton said. “It’s like a puzzle that you start, and you have to find the missing pieces.”

Lynelle Long, the founder of InterCountry Adoptee Voices, the largest organization of adoptees in the world, said governments at the very least need to legally mandate that agencies provide adoptees with their full and redacted documents, without the payment now often required.

Long said parents like Reif have an important role, because in Western countries, laws always favored the desires of adoptive parents — designed to make adoptions quicker and easier. Many clung to the narrative that they saved needy orphans who should be grateful, she said, especially in the U.S., where the reckoning rocking Europe has not taken hold.

“We really need adoptive parents in the United States, if they have any inkling of guilt or shame or loss, to step up, take responsibility and demand that legislation be put in place to criminalize these practices and prevent it from ever happening again,” Long said.

Hamilton is close to her parents; she just renovated the basement to accommodate their visits. She’s sad for herself, she said, but she’s sadder for her mother, who is desperate to learn if her children actually had parents somewhere, searching for them.

“And I’m like, ‘Why, so you can send us back?” Hamilton said. “I don’t want to be a victim.”

She said she’s glad she was adopted, and does not long for that different, alternative life in Korea.

Reif loves her children profoundly, she said. But she doesn’t think she would adopt from abroad again, if she’d known then what she knows now.

“I’d rather be childless than think I have somebody else’s child that didn’t want to give them up,” she said. “I think of somebody taking my child. Those poor families, I just can’t imagine it.”
…

ATLANTA, GEORGIA — Six days of funeral observances for former President Jimmy Carter began Saturday in Georgia, where he died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100.

The first events reflected Carter’s climb up the political ladder, from the tiny town of Plains, Georgia, to decades on the global stage as a humanitarian and advocate for democracy.

Here is what to know about the initial ceremonies and what happens next:

The start honors Carter’s deep roots in rural south Georgia

The proceedings began at 10:15 a.m. local time Saturday with the Carter family arriving at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus.

Former Secret Service agents who protected Carter served as pallbearers, walking alongside the hearse as it exited the campus on its way to Plains.

James Earl Carter Jr. lived more than 80 of his 100 years in and around the town, which still has fewer than 700 people, not much more than when he was born on Oct. 1, 1924. Some other modern presidents — Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton — also grew up in small-town settings but Carter stands out for returning and remaining in his birthplace for his long post-presidency.

The motorcade moved through downtown Plains, which spans just a few blocks, passing near the girlhood home of former first lady Rosalynn Smith Carter, who died in November 2023 at the age of 96, and near where the couple operated the family peanut warehouses. The route also included the old train depot that served as Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign headquarters and the gas station once run by Carter’s younger brother, Billy.

The motorcade passed by the Methodist church where the Carters married in 1946, and the home where they lived and died. The former president will be buried there alongside Rosalynn.

The Carters built the one-story house, now surrounded by Secret Service fencing, before his first state Senate campaign in 1962 and lived out their lives there with the exception of four years in the Governor’s Mansion and four more in the White House.

A stop at Carter’s boyhood home — a blend of privilege, hard work

After going through Plains, the procession stopped in front of Carter’s family farm and boyhood home in Archery, just outside the town, after passing the cemetery where the former president’s parents, James Earl Carter Sr. and Lillian Carter, are buried.

The farm now is part of the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park. The National Park Service rang the old farm bell 39 times to honor the 39th president.

Carter was the first president born in a hospital. But the home had no electricity or running water when he was born, and he worked his father’s land during the Great Depression. Still, the Carters had relative privilege and status. Earl employed Black tenant farming families. The elder Carter also owned a store in Plains and was a local civic and political leader. Lillian was a nurse and she delivered Rosalynn. The property still includes a tennis court Earl had built for the family.

It was Earl’s death in 1953 that set Jimmy on course toward the Oval Office. The younger Carters had left Plains after he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. But Jimmy abandoned a promising career as a submarine officer and early participant in the Pentagon’s nuclear program to take over the family’s peanut business after his father’s death. Within a decade, he was elected to the Georgia state Senate.

Lying in repose in Atlanta, where Carter was a politician and global figure

From Archery, the motorcade headed north to Atlanta. The military-run motorcade stopped outside the Georgia Capitol, where Carter served as a state senator from 1963-67 and governor from 1971-75. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens led a moment of silence. While former governors are honored with state-run funerals, presidents — even if they served as governors — are memorialized with national rites run by the federal government.

The motorcade then proceeded to the Carter Presidential Center, which includes Carter’s presidential library and The Carter Center, established by the former president and first lady in 1982. Carter’s son, James Earl “Chip” Carter III, and his grandson, Jason Carter, spoke to an assembly that included many Carter Center employees whose work concentrating on international diplomacy and mediation, election monitoring, and fighting disease in the developing world continues to set a standard for what former presidents can accomplish.

Jimmy Carter, who delivered the center’s annual reports until 2019, won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize in part for this post-presidential work.

Carter was scheduled to lie in repose from 7 p.m. Saturday to 6 a.m. Tuesday, with the public able to pay respects around the clock.

What’s next: A return to Washington

Carter’s remains will travel next to Washington, where he will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until his funeral at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Washington National Cathedral. All the living presidents have been invited, and Joe Biden, a Carter ally, will deliver a eulogy. Biden also signed a bill to name a U.S. Postal Service facility in Plains after Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.

The Carter family then will return to bury its patriarch in Plains after a private hometown funeral at 3:45 p.m. at Maranatha Baptist Church, where Carter, a devout evangelical, taught Sunday School for decades.

Carter will be buried afterward in a private graveside service, in a plot visible from the front porch of his home.
…

Two Federal Reserve policymakers said Saturday they feel the U.S. central bank’s job on taming inflation is not yet done, but also signaled they do not want to risk damaging the labor market as they try to finish that job. 

The remarks, from Governor Adriana Kugler and San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly, highlight the delicate balancing act facing U.S. central bankers this year as they look to slow their pace of rate cutting. The Fed lowered short-term rates by a full percentage point last year, to a current range of 4.25%-4.50%. 

Inflation by the Fed’s preferred measure is well down from its mid-2022 peak of around 7%, registering 2.4% in November. Still, that’s above the Fed’s 2% goal, and in December policymakers projected slower progress toward that goal than they had earlier anticipated. 

“We are fully aware that we are not there yet — no one is popping champagne anywhere,” Kugler said at the annual American Economic Association conference in San Francisco, California. “And at the same time … we want the unemployment rate to stay where it is” and not increase rapidly. 

In November, unemployment was 4.2%, consistent in both her and colleague Daly’s view with maximum employment, the Fed’s second goal alongside its price stability goal. 

“At this point, I would not want to see further slowing in the labor market — maybe gradually moving around in bumps and chunks on a given month, but certainly not additional slowing in the labor market,” said Daly, who was speaking on the same panel. 

The policymakers were not asked, nor did they volunteer their views, about the potential impact of incoming President-elect Donald Trump’s economic policies, including tariffs and tax cuts, which some have speculated could fuel growth and reignite inflation.  
…

LONDON — Prince William expressed his shock and sadness Saturday at the news of the death of his former nanny’s stepson in the New Year’s truck attack in New Orleans that killed 14 people.

London’s Metropolitan Police confirmed Saturday that they are supporting the family of 31-year-old Edward Pettifer, including helping them through the process of returning his body to the United Kingdom. Pettifer, who is from west London, is the final victim to be identified.

In a statement on social media, the Prince of Wales said he and his wife, Catherine, were “shocked and saddened by the tragic death of Ed Pettifer. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the Pettifer family and all those innocent people who have been tragically impacted by this horrific attack.”

Pettifer was the stepson of Tiggy Legge-Bourke, who was the nanny for William and his brother, Prince Harry, between 1993 and 1999, which included the time after the death of their mother, Princess Diana, in 1997. Legge-Bourke, who is also known as Alexandra Pettifer, was regularly photographed with Diana.

British media also reported that King Charles III is said to be deeply saddened by the news and that he has sent his condolences to Pettifer’s family.

In a statement, Pettifer’s family said they were “devastated at the tragic news of Ed’s death” and described him as “a wonderful son, brother, grandson, nephew and a friend to so many.”

“We will all miss him terribly. Our thoughts are with the other families who have lost their family members due to this terrible attack,” the family added.

Authorities say 14 people were killed and about 30 were injured in the attack early Wednesday by Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a former U.S. Army soldier who posted several videos on his Facebook account hours before the attack previewing the violence he would unleash and proclaiming his support for the Islamic State militant group. The coroner’s office listed the cause of death for all 14 victims as “blunt force injuries.”

Jabbar, 42, was fatally shot in a firefight with police at the scene of the deadly crash on Bourbon Street, famous worldwide for its festive vibes in New Orleans’ historic French Quarter.
…

WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department has informed Congress of a planned $8 billion weapons sale to Israel, U.S. officials say, as the American ally presses forward with its war against Hamas in Gaza.

Some of the arms in the package could be sent from current U.S. stocks, but the majority would take a year or several years to deliver, according to two U.S. officials Saturday who spoke on condition of anonymity because the notification to Congress hasn’t been formally sent.

The sale includes medium-range air-to-air missiles to help Israel defend against airborne threats, 155 mm projectile artillery shells for long-range targeting, Hellfire AGM-114 missiles, 500-pound bombs and more.

The weapons package would add to a record of at least $17.9 billion in military aid that the U.S. has provided Israel since the Hamas terror attack on Oct. 7, 2023, launched the war.

The United States, Britain and other Western nations designate Hamas as a terror group.

The Biden administration has faced criticism over the mounting number of deaths of Palestinian civilians. There have been demonstrations on college campuses and unsuccessful efforts in Congress by Senator Bernie Sanders and some Democrats to block sales of offensive weapons to Israel.

The United States paused a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel in May over concerns about civilian casualties if the bombs were to be used during an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. The Biden administration has demanded that Israel increase humanitarian aid into the enclave. But in November, citing some limited progress, it declined to limit arms transfers as it threatened to do if the situation did not improve.

In recent days, Israel has been conducting airstrikes in Gaza that have killed dozens of people, adding to the tens of thousands of deaths since the war began more than a year ago.

The Israeli army said Friday that it had struck dozens of Hamas gathering points and command centers throughout Gaza. Israel’s military says it targets only militants and blames Hamas for civilian deaths because its fighters operate in dense residential areas.

The war has caused widespread destruction and displaced about 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, many of them multiple times. Winter has now arrived, and hundreds of thousands are sheltering in tents near the sea.

The informal notice to Congress isn’t the final notification before a sale. Now the leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee or the Senate Foreign Relations Committee can review the package.

News of the weapons sale was first reported by Axios.
…

ATLANTA, GEORGIA — Six days of funeral observances for former President Jimmy Carter begin Saturday in Georgia, where he died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100.

The first events reflect Carter’s climb up the political ladder, from the tiny town of Plains, Georgia, to decades on the global stage as a humanitarian and advocate for democracy.

Here is what to know about the initial ceremonies and what happens next:

Start honors Carter’s roots in rural Georgia

The proceedings are scheduled to begin at 10:15 a.m. Saturday with the Carter family arriving at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus.

Former Secret Service agents who protected Carter will serve as pallbearers, walking alongside the hearse as it exits the campus on its way to Plains.

James Earl Carter Jr. lived more than 80 of his 100 years in and around the town, which still has fewer than 700 people, not much more than when he was born on October 1, 1924. Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton also grew up in rural settings, but Carter stands out for returning and remaining in his birthplace for his long post-presidency.

The motorcade will move through downtown Plains, which spans just a few blocks, passing near the girlhood home of first lady Rosalynn Smith Carter, who died in November 2023 at the age of 96, and near where the couple operated the family peanut warehouses. The route also includes the old train depot that served as Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign headquarters and the gas station once run by Carter’s younger brother Billy.

The motorcade will then pass by the Methodist church where the Carters married in 1946, and the home where they lived and died. The former president will be buried there alongside Rosalynn.

The Carters built the one-story house, now surrounded by Secret Service fencing, before his first state Senate campaign in 1962 and lived out their lives there with the exception of four years in the Governor’s Mansion and four more in the White House.

A stop at Carter’s boyhood home

The military-run schedule calls for a 10:50 a.m. stop in front of Carter’s family farm and boyhood home in Archery, outside Plains, after passing the cemetery where the former president’s parents, James Earl Carter Sr. and Lillian Carter, are buried.

The farm now is part of the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park. The National Park Service will ring the old farm bell 39 times to honor the 39th president.

Carter was the first president born in a hospital. But the home had no electricity or running water when he was born, and he worked his father’s land during the Great Depression.

Still, the Carters had relative privilege and status. Earl employed Black tenant farming families. The elder Carter also owned a store in Plains and was a local civic and political leader. Lillian was a nurse, and she delivered Rosalynn. The property still includes a tennis court Earl had built for the family.

It was Earl’s death in 1953 that set Jimmy on course toward the Oval Office. The younger Carters had left Plains after he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. But Jimmy abandoned a promising career as a submarine officer and early participant in the Pentagon’s nuclear program to take over the family’s peanut business after his father’s death. Within a decade, he was elected to the Georgia state Senate.

Lying in repose in Atlanta

From Archery, the motorcade will head north to Atlanta and will stop at 3 p.m. outside at the Georgia Capitol, where he served as a state senator from 1963 to 1967 and governor from 1971 to 1975. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens will lead a moment of silence.

While former governors are honored with state-run funerals, presidents — even if they served as governors — are memorialized with national rites run by the federal government.

The motorcade then is scheduled to arrive at the Carter Presidential Center at 3:45 p.m., with a private service at 4 p.m. The campus includes Carter’s presidential library and The Carter Center, established by the former president and first lady in 1982.

From 7 p.m. Saturday through 6 a.m. Monday, Carter will lie in repose for the public to pay respects around the clock.

The ceremony is expected to include some of The Carter Center’s global staff of 3,000, whose work concentrating on international diplomacy and mediation, election monitoring and fighting disease in the developing world continues to set a standard for what former presidents can accomplish.

Jimmy Carter, who delivered its annual reports until 2019, won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize in part for this post-presidential work. His grandson Jason Carter now chairs the board.

A return to Washington

Carter’s remains will travel next to Washington, where he will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until his funeral at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Washington National Cathedral. All the living presidents have been invited, and Joe Biden, a Carter ally, will deliver a eulogy.

The Carter family then will return to bury its patriarch in Plains after a private hometown funeral at 3:45 p.m. at Maranatha Baptist Church, where Carter, a devout evangelical, taught Sunday School for decades.

Carter will be buried afterward in a private graveside service, in a plot visible from the front porch of his home.
…

WASHINGTON — The highly decorated Special Forces soldier who died by suicide in a Cybertruck explosion on New Year’s Day confided to a former girlfriend who had served as an Army nurse that he faced significant pain and exhaustion that she says were key symptoms of traumatic brain injury.

Green Beret Matthew Livelsberger, 37, was a five-time recipient of the Bronze Star, including one with a V device for valor under fire. He had an exemplary military record that spanned the globe and a baby born last year. But he struggled with the mental and physical toll of his service, which required him to kill and caused him to witness the deaths of fellow soldiers.

Livelsberger mostly bore that burden in private but recently sought treatment for depression from the Army, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details that have not been made public.

He also found a confidant in the former nurse, who he began dating in 2018.

Alicia Arritt, 39, and Livelsberger met through a dating app while both were in Colorado Springs. Arritt had served at Landstul Regional Medical Center in Germany, the largest U.S. military medical facility in Europe, where many of the worst combat injuries from Iraq and Afghanistan were initially treated before being flown to the United States.

There she saw and treated traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, which troops suffered from incoming fire and roadside bombs. Serious but hard to diagnose, such injuries can have lingering effects that might take years to surface.

“I saw a lot of bad injuries. But the personality changes can happen later,” Arritt said.

In texts and images he shared with Arritt, Livelsberger raised the curtain a bit on what he was facing.

“Just some concussions,” he said in a text about a deployment to Helmand Province in Afghanistan. He sent her a photo of a graphic tattoo he got on his arm of two skulls pierced by bullets to mark lives he took in Afghanistan. He talked about exhaustion and pain, not being able to sleep and reliving the violence of his deployment.

“My life has been a personal hell for the last year,” he told Arritt during the early days of their dating, according to text messages she provided to The Associated Press. “It’s refreshing to have such a nice person come along.”

On Friday, Las Vegas law enforcement officers released excerpts of messages Livelsberger left behind showing the way Livelsberger killed himself was intentional, meant both as a “wakeup call” but also to “cleanse the demons” he was facing from losing fellow soldiers and taking lives.

Livelsberger’s death in front of the Trump Hotel using a truck produced by Elon Musk’s Tesla company has raised questions as to whether this was an act of political violence.

Officials said Friday that Livelsberger apparently harbored no ill will toward President-elect Donald Trump, and Arritt said she and Livelsberger were Tesla fans.

“I had a Tesla, too, that I rescued from a junkyard in 2019, and we used to work on it together, bond over it,” Arritt said.

The pair stopped talking regularly after they broke up in 2021, and she had not heard from him in more than two years when he texted out of the blue on Dec. 28, and again on Dec. 31. The upbeat messages included a video of him driving the Cybertruck and another one of its dancing headlights; the vehicle can sync up its lighting and music.

But she also said Livelsberger felt things “very deeply, and I could see him using symbolism” of both the truck and the hotel.

“He wasn’t impulsive,” Arritt said. “I don’t see him doing this impulsively, so my suspicion would be that he was probably thinking it out.”

Arritt served on active duty from 2003 to 2007 and then was in the Army Reserve until 2011. With Livelsberger, she saw symptoms of TBI as early as 2018.

“He would go through periods of withdrawal, and he struggled with depression and memory loss,” Arritt said. “I don’t know what drove him to do this, but I think the military didn’t get him help when he needed it.”

But Livelsberger was also sweet and kind, she recalled: “He had a really deep well of inner strength and character, and he just had a lot of integrity.”

Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Friday that it has turned over all Livelsberger’s medical records to local law enforcement and encouraged troops facing mental health challenges to seek care through one of the military’s support networks.

“If you need help, if you feel that you need to seek any type of mental health treatment, or just to talk to someone — to seek the services that are available, either on base or off,” Singh said.

When Livelsberger struggled during the time they were dating, Arritt prodded him to get help. But he would not, saying it could cost him his ability to deploy if he was found medically unfit.

“There was a lot of stigma in his unit; they were, you know, big, strong, Special Forces guys there. There was no weakness allowed, and mental health is weakness is what they saw,” she said.

Livelsberger seeking treatment for depression was first reported by CNN.
…

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE — Just days after Tennessee announced it had a new manual for executing death row inmates, the state’s top prison officials said they aren’t going to release the document to the public.

The Tennessee Department of Correction had told The Associated Press to file a public records request to obtain a copy of the latest execution manual, known as a protocol. However, the agency this week denied the AP’s request, saying it needs to keep the entire document secret to protect the identities of the executioner and other people involved.

The decision to maintain secrecy differs from how the state has handled similar requests in the past, but mirrors efforts across the U.S. to suppress public access surrounding executions, especially after anti-death penalty activists used records to expose problems.

Here’s what to know:

What is an execution protocol?

The protocol is typically a detailed set of procedures describing how the state executes death row inmates. Tennessee had been operating under a 2018 protocol that included directions on selecting execution team staff and the training they should undergo. It explained how lethal injection drugs should be procured, stored and administered. It gave instructions on the inmate’s housing, diet and visitation in the days leading up to execution. It provided directions on how to choose media witnesses.

For lethal injection, the 2018 protocol required a series of three drugs administered in sequence.

The new version unveiled last week requires only a single dose of pentobarbital. But that is all that is known about the revised protocol.

What reason does Tennessee give for not releasing the new protocol?

In an email sent Monday, Tennessee correction spokesperson Kayla Hackney told the AP the “protocol is not a public record” and cited a Tennessee statute that makes the identities of the people carrying out executions confidential.

However, that same statute says the existence of confidential information in a record is not a reason to deny access to it, noting that the confidential information should be redacted.

What has Tennessee done in the past?

In 2018, Tennessee’s correction agency provided a redacted copy of the protocol to an AP reporter over email.

In 2007, a previous version of the protocol was treated as a public record and provided to the AP after former Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, announced a surprise halt to executions. A reporter’s review of that 100-page “Manual of Execution” found a jumble of conflicting instructions that mixed new lethal-injection instructions with those for electrocution.

Why did Tennessee update its protocol?

Executions have been on hold in Tennessee since 2022, when the state admitted it had not been following the 2018 protocol. Among other things, the Correction Department was not consistently testing the execution drugs for potency and purity.

An independent review of the state’s lethal injection practice later found that none of the drugs prepared for the seven inmates executed since 2018 had been fully tested. Later, the state Attorney General’s Office conceded in court that two of the people most responsible for overseeing Tennessee’s lethal injection drugs “incorrectly testified” under oath that officials were testing the chemicals as required.

So what’s with all the secrecy?

Executions in the U.S. have remained at historic lows for years, but the small group of states still carrying out the death penalty have only increased the secrecy surrounding the procedures, particularly over how and where the state secures the drugs used for lethal injections.

Many states argue that secrecy is critical to protect the safety of those involved in the execution process. Yet in a 2018 report, the Washington-D.C.-based nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center found that this argument often led to these states refusing to provide information about the qualifications of their execution teams and some courts have criticized such arguments for lack of evidence that more public disclosure would result in threats against prison officials.

Kelley Henry, chief of the federal public defender’s habeas unit that represents many of Tennessee’s death row inmates, described the state’s refusal to release the new protocol, given that background, as “mystifying.”

“The secrecy, which cloaked the former execution protocol, created a culture of incompetence and lack of accountability,” she said in an email.
…

honolulu — In recent years, occasions large and small — parties, Super Bowls, mixed martial arts fights, even Thanksgiving — have provided a reason for residents across Hawaii to set off illegal fireworks. 

The increasingly sophisticated displays, loved by some and loathed by others, are so prevalent that some people consider them part of the state’s culture. They have rattled neighborhoods of tightly packed houses, started fires, terrorized pets and knocked a light fixture off the ceiling of an Associated Press reporter’s home, where it narrowly missed a child and shattered on the floor. 

Each New Year’s Day, Honolulu officials publish a list of fireworks casualties from the night before, typically a litany of burns, shrapnel wounds or amputations. Sometimes there are deaths. 

But none of the damage has matched Tuesday night’s tragedy, when a lit bundle of mortar-style aerials tipped over and shot into crates of unlit fireworks, causing a rapid-fire series of blasts that killed three women and injured more than 20 people, including children. 

On Friday, the Honolulu medical examiner’s department identified two of the women as Nelie Ibarra, 58, and Jennifer Van, 23. The cause and manner of death for both were listed as pending. The identity of the third was not yet confirmed, the department said in a news release. 

Another person was killed in an unrelated fireworks explosion on Oahu. 

Authorities and residents alike are now wondering whether the toll will dissuade people from putting on such shows in the future, or whether it will prompt more effective efforts by police to crack down. 

“This incident is a painful reminder of the danger posed by illegal fireworks,” Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi told a news conference. “They put lives at risk, they drain our first responders and they disrupt our neighborhoods.” 

Efforts to crack down on contraband fireworks have had limited effect. In 2023, lawmakers created an illegal fireworks task force. Based on the ease with which it seized fireworks, including three shipping containers in its first few months in operation, the state Department of Law Enforcement concluded illegal fireworks are likely smuggled into Hawaii on a daily basis. 

The task force has seized 227,000 pounds (about 103,000 kilograms) of fireworks in all, according to Governor Josh Green. 

And yet, the Honolulu Fire Department reported Thursday that there were 30 fireworks-related blazes between Tuesday and Wednesday, a 30% increase from last New Year’s celebrations. 

Representative Gregg Takayama, who sponsored legislation passed last year to tighten fireworks controls, said he remembers setting them off when he was younger and agrees it’s a tradition for many. But the ones he played with, including Roman candles, pale in comparison to those on the black market today. 

“The kind of aerial fireworks that are being used now are really explosive bombs,” he said. “And so the danger is magnified.” 

Charmaine Doran, the vice chair of the neighborhood board in Pearl City, northwest of Honolulu, called the notion that fireworks are part of Hawaii culture a misconception: “They have been outlawed for all of my life … and I’m pretty old.” 

In her neighborhood, the fireworks ramp up after Halloween, exploding in the middle of the night until New Year’s. Doran said she can tell if there is a big mixed martial arts fight on TV because the booms begin earlier in the day. 

Enforcement is complicated because people are reluctant to report their neighbors on a small island where “we’re related to everybody, everybody knows everybody,” Doran said. 

People fear retribution, she added: “If I dial 911, they’re going to egg my house.” 

That was the theme of some testimony to the Legislature last January. Beverly Takushi, a Pearl City resident, described once being threatened by a neighbor when she told his brother to stop launching illegal fireworks in a show that lasted from 5:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve until after midnight. 

“It was the first time I was threatened not only by the danger of the aerial fireworks to my family and property, but also for my safety from this neighbor who accused me of not respecting his culture,” Takushi said. “He has since apologized, but this is the reason why no one wants to get involved and report their neighbors setting off bombs and aerials.” 

Many historians believe fireworks were invented in China more than 2,000 years ago and their use came to signify joy and prosperity, as well as warding off evil. In Hawaii they are celebrated not just by residents of Chinese descent but all across the state’s diverse communities. 

Takushi echoed Takayama’s point about the big difference between today’s large, professional-grade fireworks and the smaller ones of yesteryear. 

“A string of firecrackers at midnight to ward off bad spirits is cultural, not loud explosives that sound like you are in the middle of a war,” Takushi said. 

Richard Oshiro, secretary of the neighborhood board for Waipahu, known as one of Oahu’s hot spots for aerial displays, said he hopes this week’s deaths will spur a change of mentality about playing with explosives. 

He said he tries to report them whenever he can, even though he knows there is not much police can do if “they can’t catch people in the act.” 

Possession of over 50 pounds (about 23 kilograms) of aerial or other illegal fireworks in Hawaii is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Takayama noted the law now allows photographs and videos of fireworks to be submitted as evidence in court, but said prosecutions still face hurdles. 

“We already have laws on the books. We need to find better ways to enforce them,” he said. “I mean, we constantly hear about people who report on their neighbors using illegal aerials, but nothing is done about it.” 

The best way to control fireworks is to stop them at Hawaii’s ports, Takayama said. Law enforcement has intelligence about which shipments contain illegal fireworks, and U.S. authorities have the power to open suspicious cargo. The task force has made seizures but needs to do more, he said. 

“We need to find ways to restrict the amount of fireworks that are coming in, because once they arrive and once they’re in the community, it’s very difficult to track them down,” Takayama said.
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PLAINS, GEORGIA — Mourners are to begin paying their respects to Jimmy Carter on Saturday, kicking off a carefully choreographed six-day farewell for America’s longest-lived president.

Flags have been flying at half-staff across the country since Carter died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100 in his hometown of Plains, Georgia.

Carter’s state funeral officially begins on Saturday with Secret Service agents from his current and former protective detail carrying his casket to a hearse for a tour through Plains.

The motorcade bearing his remains is to pause at Carter’s boyhood family peanut farm while a farm bell rings 39 times in honor of America’s 39th president.

His body will then be taken to Atlanta for a brief stop at the Georgia Capitol, where Carter served as a state senator before becoming governor, and a moment of silence.

From there, Carter will be escorted to the Carter Presidential Center where he will lie in repose from 7 p.m. on Saturday (0000 GMT Sunday) to 6 a.m. (1100 GMT) on Tuesday to allow the public to pay their respects.

Carter’s remains will be flown on Tuesday morning from a military base in Georgia to Joint Base Andrews outside Washington on a U.S. Air Force plane dubbed Special Air Mission 39.

A motorcade will then transport the body of the former commander-in-chief to the U.S. Navy Memorial.

Carter, who attended the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating in 1946, and served on submarines, will be transferred from a hearse to a horse-drawn caisson for a funeral procession to the U.S. Capitol.

Military pall bearers will carry his flag-draped casket to the rotunda of the Capitol where his body will lie in state until 7 a.m. (1200 GMT) on Thursday, surrounded by a guard of honor of service members.

Carter will be the 13th former U.S. president to lie in state in the Capitol. Abraham Lincoln, assassinated in 1865, was the first.

A national funeral service is to be held on Thursday at the National Cathedral, an Episcopal church in the nation’s capital that also hosted state funerals for former presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.

All four living former presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump — are expected to attend.

President Joe Biden is to deliver the eulogy for his fellow Democrat, who served in the White House from 1977-81.

Biden has declared Thursday to be a national day of mourning, and federal government offices are to be closed for the day.

He has also ordered flags to be flown at half-staff for 30 days as is customary, which means that will be the case during Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

That drew the ire of the president-elect, who took to Truth Social to say “no American can be happy” about having flags at half-staff when he takes office.

Following the cathedral service, Carter’s remains will be flown aboard Special Air Mission 39 back to Georgia for a private funeral service at the Baptist church in Plains where Carter taught Sunday school.

A final motorcade through his hometown will ferry Carter’s body to a burial plot at his residence.

U.S. Navy jets will conduct a flyover in his honor before he is laid to rest alongside his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, who died in 2023 at the age of 96. 
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