Since then, business titans, political giants and global film stars have all been among those ringing the opening bell at the NYSE. Ronald Reagan rang the bell as president in 1985. Billionaire businessman and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Hollywood star Robert Downey Jr. have also rung the bell. The list even includes famous Muppets: Miss Piggy was once a bell ringer. President-elect Donald Trump joined that list Thursday when he opened trading at the famous stock exchange on Wall Street. He was accompanied by his wife, Melania, who interestingly enough received the honor before her husband. As first lady, she rang the bell in 2019 as part of her “Be Best” program. Bell-ringers are more commonly founders and executives from a wide range of companies. Over the last few months, the guests have included executives from Alaska Air Group, Bath & Body Works, and Ally Financial. Stock trading around the location of the NYSE's current home has deep roots that trace back to the Dutch founding of New Amsterdam and when Wall Street had an actual wall. The NYSE traces its direct roots to the “Buttonwood Agreement” signed in 1792, which set rules for stock trading and commissions. The NYSE moved into its first permanent home in 1865. The first bell in use was actually a gong. The exchange moved into its current iconic building in 1903 and started using an electronically operated brass bell. That has evolved into synchronized bells in each of the NYSE’s four trading areas.More than 10,000 civil servants jobs could be cut as part of Labour's push for 5% savings across its departments, a government source has said. Headcount in the civil service topped 513,000 this year, a 33% increase on 2016 levels and the eighth year in a row that the total has risen, according to the Institute for Government . Ministers now recognised civil service numbers "have gone up and up and in reality that is not going to be able to continue," the source told the BBC. On Monday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves launched a spending review that will force ministers to cut budgets in the run up of the 2029 general election. Current spending plans mean that ministers will face tough choices over how to allocate money in the later years of this Parliament. To save money, ministers are already looking at voluntary redundancy schemes across various departments. A government spokesperson said the plans were to make sure "every part of government is delivering on" priorities. "We are committed to making the civil service more efficient and effective, with bold measures to improve skills and harness new technologies," the spokesperson said. But a government source told the BBC there was an acceptance that the civil service had become too big and unwieldy. The government is already risking a confrontation after unions reacted with anger to proposals for a 2.8% pay increase for teachers, NHS staff and senior civil servants next year. Inflation - which measures price changes over time - is predicted to average 2.6% next year. Last week Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer drew ire from one of the largest civil service unions after claiming "too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline". Pat McFadden, the minister in charge of the Cabinet Office, echoed the PMs comments on Monday when announcing plans to shake-up to civil service hiring to make government "think a little bit more like a start-up". McFadden said he did not have a "target for headcount" in the civil service, claiming his focus was on making officials more productive. Mike Clancy, general secretary of the Prospect trade union, said: "We need a clear plan for the future of the civil service that goes beyond the blunt headcount targets that have failed in the past. "This plan needs to be developed in partnership with civil servants and their unions, and we look forward to deeper engagement with the government in the coming months."
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Albertsons said it had filed a lawsuit against Kroger, seeking a $600 million termination fee as well as billions of dollars in legal fees and lost shareholder value. Kroger said the claims were “baseless” and that Albertsons was not entitled to the fee. “After reviewing options, the company determined it is no longer in its best interests to pursue the merger,” Kroger said in a statement Wednesday. The bitter breakup came the day after two judges halted the proposed merger in separate court cases. U.S. District Court Judge Adrienne Nelson in Oregon issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday blocking the merger until an in-house judge at the Federal Trade Commission could consider the matter. An hour later, Superior Court Judge Marshall Ferguson in Seattle issued a permanent injunction barring the merger . Ferguson ruled that combining Albertsons and Kroger would lessen competition and violate consumer-protection laws. The companies could have appealed the rulings or proceeded to the in-house FTC hearings. Albertsons' decision to pull out of deal instead surprised some industry experts. “I’m in a state of professional and commercial shock that they would take this scorched earth approach,” said Burt Flickinger, a longtime analyst and owner of retail consulting firm Strategic Resource Group. “The logical thing would have been for Albertsons to let the decision sink in for a day and then meet and see what could be done. But the lawsuit seems to make that a moot issue.” Albertsons is unlikely to find another merger partner because it has significant debt and underperforming stores in most of its markets., Flickinger said. Consumers will feel the most immediate impact of the deal's demise, he said, since Albertsons charges 12% to 14% more than Kroger and other grocery rivals. “They had so much debt they had to pay it off it's reflected in their pricing and promotional structure,” Flickinger said. Albertsons CEO Vivek Sankaran testified during the federal hearing in September that his company might consider “structural options” like laying off employees, closing stores and exiting certain markets if the merger with Kroger didn’t go through. “I would have to consider that,” he said. “It’s a dramatically different picture with the merger than without it.” But in a statement Wednesday, Sankaran said Albertsons would “start this next chapter in strong financial condition with a track record of positive business performance." In the company's most recent quarter, Albertsons' revenue rose 1% to $18.5 billion and it reported $7.9 billion in debt. Kroger said it would also move forward in a strong financial position, with revenue down slightly to $33.6 billion in its most recent quarter. The company announced a $7.5 billion share buyback program Wednesday after a two-year pause. Kroger and Albertsons first proposed the merger in 2022 . They argued that combining would help them better compete with big retailers like Walmart, Costco and Amazon, which are gaining an increasing share of U.S. grocery sales. Together, Kroger and Albertsons would control around 13% of the U.S. grocery market. Walmart controls around 22%. Under the merger agreement, Kroger and Albertsons — who compete in 22 states — agreed to sell 579 stores in places where their locations overlap to C&S Wholesale Grocers , a New Hampshire-based supplier to independent supermarkets that also owns the Grand Union and Piggly Wiggly store brands. But the Federal Trade Commission and two states — Washington and Colorado — sued to block the merger earlier this year, saying it would raise prices and lower workers' wages by eliminating competition. It also said the divestiture plan was inadequate and that C&S was ill-equipped to take on so many stores. On Wednesday, Albertsons said that Kroger failed to exercise “best efforts” and to take “any and all actions” to secure regulatory approval of the companies’ agreed merger transaction. Albertsons said Kroger refused to divest the assets necessary for antitrust approval, ignored regulators' feedback and rejected divestiture buyers that would have been stronger than C&S. “Kroger’s self-serving conduct, taken at the expense of Albertsons and the agreed transaction, has harmed Albertsons’ shareholders, associates and consumers,” said Tom Moriarty, Albertsons’ general counsel, in a statement. Kroger said that it disagrees with Albertsons “in the strongest possible terms.” It said early Wednesday that Albertsons was responsible for “repeated intentional material breaches and interference throughout the merger process.” Kroger , based in Cincinnati, Ohio, operates 2,800 stores in 35 states, including brands like Ralphs, Smith’s and Harris Teeter. Albertsons , based in Boise, Idaho, operates 2,273 stores in 34 states, including brands like Safeway, Jewel Osco and Shaw’s. Together, the companies employ around 710,000 people. Kroger sued the FTC in August in federal court in Ohio, claiming that the federal agency’s in-house administrative hearings were unlawful because the FTC was also able to challenge the merger in federal court in Oregon. In paperwork filed Wednesday, the FTC said it expected to update the court on its next steps in that case by Dec. 17. In Colorado, which also sued to block the merger, Attorney General Phil Weiser said Tuesday that he still was awaiting a decision from a state judge. In that case, Colorado also was challenging an allegedly illegal no-poach agreement Kroger and Albertsons made during a 2022 strike. Shares of Albertsons fell 1.5% Wednesday, while Kroger's stock was up 1%.Alex Gault, Watertown Daily Times, N.Y. (TNS) A special election still hasn’t been formally called for New York’s 21st Congressional District, but that isn’t stopping Upstate New York businessman Anthony T. Constantino from starting his campaign for the House seat. Constantino, 42, is a businessman and somewhat recent political activist — he runs Sticker Mule, a well-known printing, labeling and manufacturing company based in Amsterdam, Montgomery County. Constantino is also a recent feature in national headlines — he’s a big fan of President-elect Donald Trump, and recently got attention for putting a large Vote for Trump sign on his company’s factory in downtown Amsterdam. The 100-foot sign, lit day and night, can be seen from the New York State Thruway, and led to a court fight between Constantino and Amsterdam elected officials who believed the sign violated city ordinances. The state courts sided with Constantino, who has vowed to keep the sign up in perpetuity going forward. Constantino bills himself as a local tech CEO, and said he wasn’t heavily involved in politics before Trump entered the political world, although he’s supported Trump and donated to him in 2016. “I was one of the first people to get canceled,” he said in an interview at his factory. “I supported him when [he] was candidate Trump, made a $500 donation, and I got canceled for it.” Constantino said someone on social media discovered he had made the donation, which is a matter of public record, and took to the internet to denounce Constantino. At the time, Sticker Mule had become an established name in the branding and merchandising world. The company was a leader in labelmaking, T-shirt screenprinting and sticker making. Plenty of politically involved groups, including a number of campaigns for federal office, use Sticker Mule products, and some people spoke out against Constantino for supporting a candidate who, at the time, seemed to be unlikely to win. He did, and although Constantino continued supporting Trump through his first term and second run for the office, he stayed relatively quiet. He even registered as a Democrat to assist a friend in a primary campaign for Albany city mayor, although he has since registered as a Republican. Constantino reengaged with national politics after the first assassination attempt on the president-elect, while he spoke at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania in July. That’s when he put up the sign on his factory in Amsterdam, and when he sent out a letter in support of Trump to the Sticker Mule customer list — a move that garnered more backlash from some customers who said they felt it was an inappropriate use of their information. Constantino said he felt it was important to speak up then, because the stakes of the political disagreements in the U.S. had hit a fever pitch. “It gone to the point where bullets are flying, I want to do something as a citizen to try to fix this situation,” he said. “I decided the best way was simply to admit I support him.” And now, Constantino is eyeing a shot at boosting his influence even more, representing Northern New York in Congress. He’s got a similar early background to longtime Rep. Elise M. Stefanik , R-Schuylerville, who is slated to become the Trump White House’s U.N. ambassador next year. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., speaks before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) AP Constantino is two years older than Stefanik, and attended the Albany Academy for Boys, the brother school of the congresswoman’s alma mater, the Albany Academy for Girls. He said he’s stayed in touch with the congresswoman and recently discussed his campaign with her. A spokesperson for Stefanik didn’t respond to a request for comment on that discussion. When news that Stefanik was to vacate her seat came through, Constantino said he started getting calls from a number of people in his orbit, urging him to run for the seat. It’s not a traditional campaign by any means — in a special election, there is no primary race. Instead, for both Republicans and Democrats, the party chairs in each of the counties vote on a candidate, with their votes weighted by their proportion of the party’s total registered voters in the district. Constantino said he’s starting his campaign by speaking to each of the 15 Republican committee chairs, starting with his home county and moving north and west over the coming weeks. He has some competition in that process. People with knowledge of discussions have said that state Sens. Daniel G. Stec, R-Queensbury and Jacob Ashby, R-Rensselaer, Assemblymen Chris L. Tague, R-Catskill, and Robert J. Smullen, R-Herkimer, Rensselaer County Executive Steven F. McLaughlin, outgoing Rep. Marcus J. Molinaro, R-Tivoli, and a handful of local business leaders are considering running as well. If he gets the party’s support and their nomination in the special election, he said he’ll be campaigning on his tech and marketing background, trying to bring a new energy to the race for Congress in a region that has handily reelected its incumbent congressperson for a decade by wider and wider margins each time. “I’m going to do things that people have never seen before,” he said. He’s pledged to sink $2.6 million of his own money into his campaign — money he made by buying stock in Tesla after Elon Musk bought X, formerly Twitter, and investors showed concerns over the company’s strength. Constantino sees himself as similar to big name tech CEOs like Musk, OpenAI’s Samuel H. Altman or Mark Cuban of “Shark Tank” fame. Like those men have gotten involved in politics, on one side or the other, Constantino said he has done the same. He said he believes he is one of the reasons New York swung so far to the right in this year’s election — Trump did more than 11 percentage points better among New York voters than he did in 2020, the biggest shift of any one state. “I think you could say, objectively, I’m the strongest voice for President Trump in New York state, I think probably across the entire state.” He said he believes the sign on his factory is one of the most effective in American history, because it was discussed in the news and generated controversy and attention in a Democratic-leaning region. Constantino also took on other political projects — he’s held debate sessions discussing Trump’s policies with anyone who wants to, and held one such session in Manhattan, where he said he changed many minds on Trump. He’s also founded a group called Trump for Peace, taking the position that Trump is the candidate who will end the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and protect global peace going forward, and he founded a group called StickerPAC, which focused on creating and distributing pro-Trump memorabilia during the campaign. Trump is a big part of Constantino’s platform. He said he’ll go with the president-elect on anything he puts forward as president. Broadly, he said the key to improving things for NY-21 is to end the long-running outmigration in New York, and get the state back on track to gaining population in proportion to the rest of the country. “I’m the strongest voice for championing the fact that people need to come back to New York state,” he said. On Trump’s plan to enforce tariffs on goods shipped into the United States from abroad, Constantino said he would be supportive. As a business owner, he said he isn’t worried about tariffs. He didn’t know how many of his company’s products would be impacted by a tariff, but said as a business owner he is happy to work within the lines set by government, as long as those lines are equally enforced on everyone. “I’m fine with whatever regulatory structure the president thinks makes the most sense,” he said. On agricultural policy, Constantino didn’t have an answer. Congress is set to pass another yearlong extension of the Farm Bill, which sets agricultural policy for the country as well as food benefits programs. It’s already a year overdue, and with Republican control in Washington next year now assured, that party’s priorities are likely to guide the next five-year Farm Bill. Constantino said that if he was elected he would hire advisers to help him navigate agricultural policy. “I’m gonna learn from very talented advisors and also from talking to farmers what makes the most sense,” he said. “I’ll advocate for what makes the most sense, but I don’t have a specific answer on that.” Congress is also set to decide on the next steps for tax policy. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expires in 2025 and with Republican control, it’s likely to be reauthorized with some changes. One expected change is the removal of the State and Local Tax deduction cap, which allows taxpayers to deduct what they pay in sales, property and other local and state taxes from their federal taxable income. A cap of $10,000 was put on SALT deductions in 2017, but Trump has said he would like to remove it next year. “Taxes being too high, we gotta get costs under control to fix that,” Constantino said. “But in terms of specific mechanisms we (use to) get taxes down, I’m gonna need to spin up my team and really study the issues to make a correct judgment.” On the border, Constantino supports a broad lockdown on border crossings, an end to the catch-and-release policy that allows people awaiting asylum to remain in the U.S. For immigration, he believes the U.S. needs to be incredibly selective on who it allows to become a resident or citizen as well. “I think the United States of America is sort of a giant corporation,” he said. “It should operate in the same way. If you run a company, I want the best people coming in for my business. We want the best possible people coming into our country.” Constantino said he would support the construction of a missile defense site on Fort Drum, a project that Stefanik has been pushing for years with limited success. The plan calls for a multi-million dollar installation for a missile system that could shoot down incoming ICBMs from hostile nations in the east. For years, the annual defense funding bill has required the Department of Defense move forward with an installation on Fort Drum, but DoD has repeatedly said they don’t see a need to build a site on the east coast, and defense technology and policy experts have said that missile defense systems are spotty at best, and an east coast installation would be ultimately unnecessary. “Elise was championing the missile defense site at Fort Drum,” Constantino said. “I’m going to be following through on that, making sure it gets done.” When asked about the technological and operational concerns over the installation, Constantino said he would push for the project to be as effective as possible. “I’m a perfectionist,” he said. “I think the idea of a missile defense system makes a lot of sense, but we want everything done the best possible way.” While Constantino sets up his campaign, he’ll be talking with the rest of the NY-21 Republican committee chairs. The chairs can’t make a formal announcement of who they’re nominating until Stefanik formally vacates her seat, likely to happen sometime in January, which will start a roughly 3-month timeline from then to the election for the Republican and Democratic, plus any independent or third-party nominees who qualify, to make their case to voters. ___ RECOMMENDED • silive .com Top ’80s and ’90s indie band leaves Elon Musk-owned X following Trump election Nov. 21, 2024, 1:32 p.m. Trump’s lawyers tell judge to drop hush money conviction and ignore prosecutors Nov. 20, 2024, 5:32 p.m. (c)2024 Watertown Daily Times (Watertown, N.Y.) Visit Watertown Daily Times (Watertown, N.Y.) at www.watertowndailytimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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.” 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.” 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.” 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 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. 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. 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.Minnesota Congressman Pete Stauber hopes GOP trifecta ushers in new BWCA miningWith Bill Belichick, UNC signs on for an awkward, miserable experience