US NATIONAL NEWS
Jimmy Carter: White House rise depended on twists before ’76
Published
3 years agoon
PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Jimmy Carter’s path to the presidency is an oft-told story, especially by aspiring presidents trying to be the next politician to defy Washington expectations.
As a little-known Georgia governor, Carter announced in late 1974 that he’d seek the presidency. Atlanta’s largest newspaper answered with a mocking headline: “Jimmy Who?” National media mostly yawned.
Undeterred, the peanut farmer took his family and friends to Iowa and New Hampshire, where “the Peanut Brigade” set the modern standard for a retail campaign and helped elect Carter as the 39th president.
But the long odds weren’t just about 1976 for Carter, who is 98 and now receiving end-of-life care at his home in Plains, Georgia. Carter’s early life and career were replete with dominoes that could have blocked his White House road before he knew he was on it.
Here are some “What Ifs?” that, had they played out differently, may have made it impossible for Americans ever to answer that mocking question from Atlanta newspaper editors.
THE ARCHERY FARM
Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, now 95, were born in Plains. But Carter’s parents, Lillian and Earl Carter, moved their family in 1927 to a farm in the mostly Black community of Archery, just outside Plains. Thus began Carter’s exposure to divisions of race and class in the segregated, Depression-era South.
Young Jimmy had Black playmates with whom he hunted, fished and fashioned homemade toys. Like their neighbors, the Carters had “no running water, electricity or insulation” and depended on open fireplaces for heat. “We relieved ourselves in slop jars during the night,” Carter wrote in a memoir.
Yet despite the lack of luxury, the future president was still secure in relative privilege, because he was the child of the white, land-owning family at the center of a community where many impoverished Black residents worked for his parents.
One of his earliest influencers was “Miss Rachel” Clark, a Black neighbor and caregiver who was married to the unofficial foreman of the Carter farm. Carter, who spent considerable time at the Clarks’ home, would later say he “knew Rachel Clark in many ways better than my mother.”
Those experiences — seeing the humanity of his Black friends but still living under the white supremacist order of the era — undergirded his public life as a Southern Democrat. He learned early how to navigate an evolving country and party that was stacked with segregationists in Carter’s formative political years before coming to embrace civil rights. Carter did not fight for civil rights legislation in the 1950s and 1960s. He campaigned carefully for Georgia governor in 1970, avoiding explicit mentions of race. He won with a small-town, rural coalition of Black voters and white conservatives – then used it to govern more progressively on race than he had campaigned. It was a political tightrope he may never have managed if he’d grown up in the heart of Plains rather than Archery.
‘MR. EARL’
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter married in 1946 and left Plains to launch his promising career with the U.S. Navy – with no notions of returning except as visitors. But Carter’s father, who had become a prominent merchant and state lawmaker, died in 1953. Carter made the decision, without consulting Rosalynn, to move the young family back home, where the pair built the family farm operations into an impressive peanut agribusiness. Carter joined the local school board and within a decade would run for the Georgia Assembly, further replicating his father’s path. If “Mr. Earl” had lived longer, his namesake might have become an admiral in some far-flung naval post, but never commander in chief.
ELECTION FRAUD
Carter sought elected office for the first time in 1962, “somewhat quixotically,” he recalled. His Democratic opponent in the state Senate primary was a peanut buyer named Homer Moore. But, the real barrier was Joe Hurst, a neighboring county’s political boss. On Election Day, Carter and his allies caught Hurst pressuring voters and discarding ballots cast for Carter. Quitman County results showed Moore with more votes than registration rolls recorded altogether. Carter challenged the results with the party. After court tussles, Carter ended up on the general election ballot and prevailed. It took a subsequent Senate floor dispute before he was finally sworn in.
THE 1966 CHOICE
Carter wasn’t much for the legislature’s back-slapping ways. By 1966, he decided to run for Congress against a heavyweight incumbent, Bo Callaway. Then Ernest Vandiver, a former Georgia governor, dropped out of the governor’s race, allowing Callaway to step into his place against arch-segregationist Lester Maddox. With Callaway’s switch, Carter was on his way to Washington. But the young state senator was bothered by Georgians having to choose between Callaway and Maddox. (In this era, the Democratic nominee was virtually assured a November victory.) Carter tried to recruit a moderate Democrat to run against them but was unsuccessful. So, he recalled, “I decided to relinquish my assured seat in the U.S. Congress and run for governor.”
He lost to Maddox. But the decision was the start of a four-year campaign that resulted in his 1970 gubernatorial win.
NO GRAND PLANS
History often reveals happenstance in the lives of every president. Carter even chose “Turning Point” as the title of his book about the 1962 state Senate election that changed his career trajectory. Lyndon Baines Johnson won a disputed early congressional race. Bill Clinton lost his first reelection bid as a young Arkansas governor and required a rehabilitation follow-up victory before he reached the national stage a decade later in 1992. George W. Bush narrowly won the Texas governor’s race in 1994, the same night his brother Jeb lost the Florida governor’s race as a favorite. The Texan would be president six years later. Floridian Jeb, once thought of as the political darling in that generation of the Bush dynasty, likely will never be.
Yet the Bushes were a blue-blooded political family already anchored in the national establishment. Johnson and Clinton had no political birthrights but set out from young ages to reach the nation’s highest office. As a young congressman, Johnson even dubbed himself “LBJ,” patterned after Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s moniker, “FDR.”
For Carter, ambition was a driving force generally. But it was not singularly focused.
Carter would serve just one term. His struggles to corral inflation, ease energy shortages and quickly free American hostages in Iran overshadowed achievements at home and abroad. He signed notable legislation on the environment, education and mental health care, and started deregulation of key industries, including airlines. Abroad, he struck a peace deal between Egypt and Israel, normalized relations with China and negotiated treaties turning over control of the Panama Canal.
Carter would say later that he never focused on winning a second term — to his political peril — just as he had no grand design to win his first.
Those four years in the White House “were the pinnacle of my political life,” he recalled around his 90th birthday, but “there was never an orderly or planned path to get there during my early life.”
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Tech
NASA Rolls Out Massive SLS Rocket Stage for Artemis III Mission to Kennedy Space Center
Published
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April 13, 2026By
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NEW ORLEANS (FNN) — NASA will roll out the largest section of its Space Launch System rocket on Monday, April 20, marking a major milestone for the Artemis III mission.
The section, representing the top four-fifths of the SLS core stage, is being moved from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. It includes the liquid hydrogen tank, liquid oxygen tank, intertank and forward skirt. The structure will be loaded onto NASA’s Pegasus barge for transport to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
CORE STAGE DELIVERY AND INTEGRATION
Once the core stage arrives at Kennedy Space Center, teams will complete final outfitting and vertical integration. The hardware will then be transferred to NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems Program for stacking and launch preparation.
The Artemis III engine section and boat-tail, which protects the engines during launch, were previously moved to the Vehicle Assembly Building in July 2025. The four RS-25 engines are scheduled to arrive from Stennis Space Center in Mississippi no later than July 2026 for integration.
POWERING THE ARTEMIS III MISSION
Equipped with four RS-25 engines, the SLS core stage will generate more than 2 million pounds of thrust, enabling the launch of astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft.
Artemis III is currently targeted for launch in 2027, following the successful Artemis II mission, which completed a crewed flight around the Moon on April 10.
NASA’S MOON-TO-MARS STRATEGY
The Artemis III mission is part of NASA’s broader Artemis program, aimed at returning astronauts to the Moon and establishing a sustained human presence.
The mission will test critical capabilities, including rendezvous and docking between the Orion spacecraft and commercial systems needed for future lunar landings, currently planned for 2028.
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Tech
NASA’s Artemis II Astronauts Begin Historic Journey Around the Moon After Key Orion Engine Burn
Published
1 month agoon
April 3, 2026By
Willie David
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (FNN) — For the first time in more than 50 years, astronauts on a NASA mission are headed around the Moon after successfully completing a critical burn of the Orion spacecraft’s main engine.
The approximately six-minute firing of Orion’s service module engine Thursday — known as the translunar injection burn — accelerated the spacecraft and its crew beyond Earth’s orbit, placing them on a trajectory toward the Moon.
Aboard the spacecraft are NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
“Today, for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972, humans have departed Earth orbit,” said Dr. Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. “Reid, Victor, Christina and Jeremy now are on a precise trajectory toward the Moon. Orion is operating with crew for the first time in space, and we are gathering critical data and learning from each step.”
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft lifted off from Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center at 6:35 p.m. EDT on April 1, beginning a planned 10-day test mission around the Moon and back.
Successful Launch and Spacecraft Activation
Shortly after reaching space, Orion deployed its four solar array wings, allowing the spacecraft to generate power from the Sun. The crew and mission controllers then began transitioning the spacecraft from launch to normal flight operations while checking critical onboard systems.
About 49 minutes into the flight, the rocket’s upper stage fired to place Orion into an elliptical orbit around Earth. A second burn propelled the spacecraft — named “Integrity” by the crew — into a high Earth orbit extending roughly 46,000 miles above the planet for nearly 24 hours of system testing.
Following the maneuver, Orion separated from the upper stage and began flying independently.
System Tests and Crew Operations in Space
During the early phase of the mission, the astronauts conducted a manual piloting demonstration to evaluate Orion’s handling capabilities using the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage as a docking target.
After the test, Orion executed an automated departure burn to safely move away from the stage. The propulsion stage later performed a disposal burn before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere over a remote area of the Pacific Ocean.
Before its re-entry, four small CubeSats were deployed from the rocket’s Orion stage adapter to conduct separate scientific missions.
Mission teams also transitioned communications to NASA’s Deep Space Network while the crew adjusted to the space environment. Astronauts completed their first rest periods, performed onboard exercise routines, restored the spacecraft’s toilet to normal operations and prepared the spacecraft for the translunar injection burn.
Lunar Flyby and Artemis Program Goals
The crew is scheduled to conduct a lunar flyby Monday, April 6, when astronauts will capture high-resolution images and make observations of the Moon’s surface — including portions of the lunar far side rarely seen directly by humans.
Although the far side will only be partially illuminated during the flyby, the lighting conditions are expected to cast long shadows across the terrain, highlighting ridges, slopes and crater rims that are difficult to observe under full sunlight.
After completing the flyby, the astronauts will return to Earth and splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.
The mission marks a major milestone for NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to send astronauts on increasingly ambitious missions to explore the Moon, advance scientific discovery, stimulate economic growth and prepare for the first crewed missions to Mars.
Politics
Donald Trump Marks Policy Shift on Gender Identity, Education, and Federal Programs
Published
1 month agoon
March 31, 2026By
Willie David
WASHINGTON (FNN) — The administration of Donald Trump announced a series of policy changes affecting federal positions on gender identity, education standards, health care funding, and military service. Officials say the actions are intended to redefine federal policy around biological sex and limit government involvement in gender-related medical and educational programs.
The policy changes follow criticism from Republicans of earlier initiatives introduced during the administration of Joe Biden that expanded federal recognition of transgender individuals in several areas of public policy.
Federal Policy Defines Sex as Male or Female
The Trump administration declared that the official policy of the federal government recognizes only two sexes — male and female — based on biological characteristics.
Administration officials say the policy affects federal documents, agency rules and programs across multiple departments. The move also ended the practice of gender self-identification on certain federal records, including passports, according to officials.
Supporters say the change restores clarity to federal policy, while critics argue it removes recognition for transgender Americans in official government documentation.
Funding and Health Care Policies Adjusted
Federal agencies were directed to halt funding, sponsorship or promotion of certain medical procedures related to gender transition for minors. Administration officials say the directive is intended to prevent what they describe as irreversible medical interventions involving children.
Following the policy shift, several major health systems announced reviews, suspensions or changes to pediatric gender-related medical programs. The administration also directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to review existing medical evidence surrounding gender-related care for minors.
Changes in Education, Sports, and Military Policies
The administration also ended federal support for gender identity and equity curricula in public education programs receiving federal funds, stating the move reinforces parental rights and state oversight of school content.
Additional directives address athletic competition and military service. The administration announced policies intended to ensure that women’s sports competitions are limited to biological female athletes and reinstated standards for military service based on biological sex through the United States Department of Defense.
Officials say the changes are intended to focus federal programs on what they describe as fairness, safety and readiness across government institutions.
