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The World and Everything In It
12.30.24 An environmental lawsuit, the economic year in review, and remembering President Jimmy Carter
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- [00:04]
Nick Icker
Good morning. Just today and tomorrow remain in our year end giving drive. We are not there yet. Now of course we love last minute drama as much as anybody but we really, really need you. Please give today and save us the stress. Save a stamp too by giving online@wng.org yearndgift.
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Jenny Ruff
Good morning. Today on legal the environmental movement's weapon of choice.
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Jim Vines
What the public interest groups here do is use environmental impact statements to kill development projects.
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Nick Icker
Also today, the Monday money beat. David Bonson is standing by. We'll talk about the year that was 2024 and look ahead to 2025 and later the death of former President Jimmy Carter at age 100. We have a remembrance and I have.
- [00:59]
Paul Clement
Just taken the oath of office on the Bible my gave me just a few years ago.
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Jenny Ruff
It's Monday, December 30th. This is the world and everything in it from listener supported World Radio. I'm Jenny Ruff.
- [01:22]
Nick Icker
And I'm Nick Icker. Good morning.
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Jenny Ruff
Up next, Mark Mellinger with today's news.
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Mark Mellinger
America's longest living president Jimmy Carter has died. The 39th president who turned 100 nearly three months ago passed away peacefully and surrounded by family in Plains, Georgia Sunday afternoon. That's according to the humanitarian organization Jimmy Carter founded, the Carter Center. Carter held the Oval Office for one term from 1977 to 1981 before losing re election. When asked in 2014 what he was most proud of, he said, I kept.
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Paul Clement
My country at peace during very difficult times when I was in the White House and I helped promote peace between other countries that were potentially at war.
- [02:09]
Mark Mellinger
Upon learning of Carter's passing, President Biden said the world lost an extraordinary leader, statesman and humanitarian, and he lost a dear friend. Much more on the former president's life, faith and career is coming up. Later in the program. A rare late December outbreak of severe storms killed at least four people and left more than a dozen hurt in the southern US this weekend there were 45 reports of tornado damage across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, though not all those reported tornadoes are confirmed. Near Charlotte, North Carolina. A 70 year old man died Sunday while driving North Carolina highway patrol trooper D.J. mafucci. He's driving about, probably about 40 miles an hour down the roadway and all of a sudden that tree falls and it falls direct. I don't even think he saw it coming and I'm almost 100% sure he died instantly. The storms also knocked out power to tens of thousands of people across the Southeast and caused more than 600 flight delays. Sunday. At Atlanta's airport, a passenger jet burst into flames during a disastrous landing in Muon, South Korea, Sunday, killing 179 people. There were only two survivors. Video shows the plane's landing gear did not deploy as it skidded across the airstrip, overshot the Runway and slammed into a barrier at the airport, setting off an explosion. Workers have recovered the flight data and cockpit voice recorders of the plane's black box. Aviation safety analyst David Susi says those will be key to figuring out just what went wrong.
- [03:52]
David Bonson
There's so many different unanswered questions, and yes, flight data recorder will give us those answers.
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Mark Mellinger
The plane was arriving from Bangkok and the pilot sent out a distress signal shortly before it overshot that Runway. Air Canada suspects a landing gear issue is to blame for a rough landing on one of its express flights over the weekend. The plane arriving at Halifax International Airport Saturday, experienced trouble upon landing and never made it to the terminal. The crew and all 73 passengers offloaded onto a bus and no one was hurt. But one of the passengers recounted a harrowing experience to Canada's CBC News.
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Justice Elena Kagan
We heard a pretty loud what almost sounded like a crash sound as the wing of the plane started to skid along the pavement along with what I presume was the engine. The plane shook quite a bit and we started seeing fire on the left side of the plane and smoke started coming in the windows.
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Mark Mellinger
The flight was coming in from St. John's Newfoundland, and the incident temporarily shut down all flights at the airport. Canada's Transportation Safety Board is investigating the sounds of mourners at a funeral service in Baku, Azerbaijan, honoring the pilots who died in last week's plane crash in Kazakhstan. Now, Azerbaijan's president says Russian fire caused that flight to go down. The plane en route from Azerbaijan to the Russian city of Grozny went down Christmas Day in Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people on board Sunday. Azerbaijan's president asserted he can say with complete clarity that the airliner was shot down by Russia, albeit unintentionally. He also criticized Moscow for trying to hush up the issue for days. The Kremlin admits its air defense systems were firing in the area to deflect Ukrainian drone strikes. Russian leader Vladimir Putin called the crash a tragic incident but stopped short of publicly accepting responsibility, though Azerbaijan's president says Putin did apologize to him over the weekend. President Elect Trump is changing his position on H1B visas aimed at bringing skilled foreign workers to the US after criticizing such visas in his first term, he now tells the New York Post he supports siding with Elon Musk and others who say they helped the tech industry find workers for critical but hard to fill jobs. Some of Trump's vocal supporters oppose the visas, saying they're at odds with the president elect's America first vision. Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett supports Trump's new position, but says the US needs to find ways to lessen potential H1B visa security risks.
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Jim Vines
As in the case with the Chinese, they leave family members behind and the Communist Chinese know that and they compromise them. They say, hey, you know, you got an aunt or an uncle over here, they might just disappear. We just need a little bit of information. Time and time again, they've done that.
- [07:03]
Mark Mellinger
That is Burchett talking to FOX News Live. Trump has not said whether he'll pursue changes to the H1B visa program when he takes office. I'm Mark Millinger. Straight ahead, a federal environmental statute takes center stage at the Supreme Court. Plus, the Monday Money beat with David Bonson. This is the WORLD and Everything in it.
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Jenny Ruff
It's Monday, the 30th of December. Glad to have you along for today's edition of the WORLD and Everything In It. Good morning. I'm Jenny Ruff.
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Nick Icker
And I'm Nick Iker. Well, I think we have all seen aggressive environmental protests. This audio comes from CBS News. And by the way, don't panic. Nobody's actually honking at you, blocking traffic.
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Mark Mellinger
Throwing red powder on a case housing the U.S. constitution.
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Lindsay Mast
We can still cause a little bit of a scene.
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Justice Elena Kagan
What exactly are you guys doing tonight?
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Nick Icker
We're going to a fancy schmancy gala that J.D.
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Lindsay Mast
Vance is going to be speaking at.
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Justice Clarence Thomas
J.D.
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Nick Icker
Vance is a climate supervillain.
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Jim Vines
Get out.
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Paul Clement
Amazing.
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Justice Clarence Thomas
Immediately, security guards, hands around the neck.
- [08:25]
Paul Clement
And bosses right hands.
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Justice Clarence Thomas
And their goal is media attention.
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Nick Icker
Sunlight, people die. You have sold our futures and you've.
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Justice Elena Kagan
Gotten rich doing it.
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Nick Icker
Not everybody loves us.
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William J.
You don't need to be popular to be effective.
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Nick Icker
Environmental activism happens in the streets and in the courts. And it's in the courts where it may be the most effective. Today on legal docket, one of the most powerful tools environmentalists use to get their way and how they do it is not the way you you might expect. It's not necessarily by way of the Clean Air act to fight particulates we might breathe or the Clean Water act to fight, say, river pollution or even sicking the Environmental Protection Agency on businesses.
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Jim Vines
Oh, boy. This is one of the odd federal environmental statutes that's at play here.
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Jenny Ruff
Jim Vines is an attorney who specializes in environmental law.
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Jim Vines
Nepa.
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Jenny Ruff
Nepa, the National Environmental Policy Act Never heard of it. Well, I hadn't either. The Supreme Court hasn't had a major NEPA case in 20 years, but it's an environmentalist workhorse. And what it does is it requires federal agencies to prepare environmental impact statements. These statements go into enormous detail about the effects of proposed industry projects.
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Jim Vines
What the public interest groups here do is use litigation on NEPA on environmental impact statements to slow down and delay and sometimes kill development projects.
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Jenny Ruff
And that's what brings us to the Supreme Court today. An environmental case out of Utah.
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Nick Icker
Seven counties in the eastern part of Utah want to lay down a modest amount of railroad track. 88 miles isn't much by the standards of the vast western US Environmentalists don't so much object to the track as they do what. The track will carry crude oil from a remote mountain region to the national rail network. Once connected, the crude oil would snake through Colorado and down to refineries in Texas and Louisiana along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The project would bring prosperity to this rural area of Utah. Jobs, business and revenue. It's worth noting there are no freeways here. Trucks have to navigate dicey mountain passes. So currently it's quite dangerous to move oil over the roads. Nevertheless, some environmental groups want to stop.
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Jenny Ruff
The project using their weapon of the Environmental Impact Statement. For this particular project, the statement was 3,600 pages, including 20 appendices, seemingly weighing all the trade offs around the 88 miles of track. The statement detailed major impacts like water contamination and loss of habitation for the sage grouse and minor impacts like vehicle safety.
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Nick Icker
The Surface Transportation Board was the agency that had to write it up and it okayed the project. But one Colorado county and various environmental groups filed suit. They complained the board didn't go far enough. They say it studied only the 88 miles of track and not the negative consequences hundreds of miles away in Colorado nor thousands of miles away in the Gulf Coast.
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Jenny Ruff
Here's where it might be a little hard to follow. The environmentalists are not saying the study is defective for reaching the wrong conclusion on the environmental issues under nepa. They can't.
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Jim Vines
That's not a valid argument to make under nepa. That would be an argument you would have to make under some other environmental.
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Jenny Ruff
Statute like the Clean Water act or Clean Air Act. NEPA is purely procedural. It directs how to conduct the Environmental Impact statement. So all the board has to do is follow a proper process.
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Jim Vines
That's the thing about nepa. Let's say you could come up with an environmental impact statement. That was terrible. It said the thing is just going to like, ruin the whole surface of the earth. But the agency said, well, we think the harms from that are outweighed by the benefits from granting the permit. That's legitimate under nepa.
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Jenny Ruff
So the key here is whether proper procedure was followed, and the claim is that it wasn't.
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Jim Vines
They considered environmental issues 1 through 10, but it should have also considered 11 through 20, and they didn't consider that. So, dear court, please make them go back and reconsider 11 through 20 and make them go through those hoops as well.
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Nick Icker
At the Supreme Court, Paul Clement argued for proponents of the project. He said it would be wrong to demand a more comprehensive study. He argued the environmental impacts in Colorado and the Gulf are within the wheelhouse of other agencies and too far flung for the project at hand. The phrase he used was remote in time and space.
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Jenny Ruff
But Justice Elena Kagan wanted to know what that meant. She started with an inquiry about what's within the project's time and space. I've compressed the exchange a bit just to give a flavor of the back and forth.
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Justice Clarence Thomas
Here's this. 88 miles of line and railroads are going to cross it and wildfires are going to start as a result. Is that within time and space?
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William J.
Totally.
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Justice Clarence Thomas
And the pollution that those trains are going to cause, that's also time and space. Within the time and space, yeah.
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William J.
Within the confines of those 88 miles.
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Justice Clarence Thomas
Are you saying that anything that falls outside these 88 miles is not their problem?
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William J.
I'm saying that anything that is outside that 88 miles and is in the jurisdiction of another agency is not something that should be fatal to.
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Jenny Ruff
In your mind's eye. Imagine a compass to draw perfect circles of variable sizes. You may have used one in math class. Clement argued that the board was right to draw that 88 mile circle and limit the study to that. And quick digression here. Jim Vines and Paul Clement used to work at the same law firm back in the day. Vines says that Clement does a masterful job here. With almost every question from the justices, Clement returned to his time and space proposition.
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William J.
If the effect's already remote in time or space, and in the. If it's remote in time and space and it's in another agency's jurisdiction, I think is the right test. What I'm trying to do with remote in time and space is to get it outside of the realm of the project itself. You can't be reversed as the agency for something that is remote in time and space, plus in another agency's bailiwick.
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Nick Icker
The other side does have the language of the law in their favor. The regulations under the statute require that the environmental study take into account what is in the language of those regulations reasonably foreseeable. William J. Argued for the environmental groups and relied on that terminology to defend their position that the compass circle needs to be way bigger.
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Justice Elena Kagan
Reasonable foreseeability is the test that Congress that has been in NEPA since the beginning and that Congress has recently reaffirmed.
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Nick Icker
But if Clement was running into trouble making the circle too small, Jay ran into the problem of making it too big. Here is Justice Clarence Thomas. Would you just spend articulate what you think the close connection is with the Gulf coast communities.
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Justice Elena Kagan
So the whole raison d'etre of this project is to transport one commodity and one commodity only. But I do think it's a little bit misleading for Mr. Clement to suggest this is an 88 mile railroad, as if the train just went went back and forth for 88 miles. It's a connection to the national rail network.
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Jenny Ruff
Let's go back to the legal term foreseeable. It's foreseeable that a project will have impacts beyond 88 miles. But a word like that is easily conflated. It can come to be understood as conceivable, much more inclusive. For example, a rail project in Utah could conceivably increase refinery work in Texas, and that could conceivably give asthma to someone in Port Arthur. Where does it end?
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Nick Icker
But the key to this case might be something that came up earlier. The new tracks aren't the real concern. The cargo is crude oil and the environmental consequences of refining it. But as we've discussed, the board can't veto the project simply because it doesn't like the environmental harms of oil refining. And the public citizen groups can't stop it for that reason either. The NEPA statute doesn't allow it.
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Jenny Ruff
Justice Elena Kagan asked Jay about that problem.
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Justice Clarence Thomas
Do you think that the agency could turn down the project on that basis?
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Justice Elena Kagan
So I think that is the assumption on which the D.C. circuit decided the case. But that's not a NEPA question, obviously.
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Justice Clarence Thomas
I mean, it seems related to a NEPA question because if the agency can't mitigate the harm and it can't turn down the entire project, one wonders what all this fuss and bother is about.
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Jenny Ruff
Fuss and bother. Environmental lawyer Jim Vines suspects that's what this case is actually about. NEPA is the most litigated environmental statute and there's general agreement that it's abused by people who oppose development. A typical environmental impact statement could take two to five years to write.
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Jim Vines
And there have been instances when it's taken 15 to get through the EIS process along with the subsequent litigation. So, you know, investors who are investing money, that's a real obstacle to them. And then the longer you can make that fuss and bother go on procedurally, the more you are likely to kill the project because the investors will back out.
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Jenny Ruff
Clement reminded the justices that a group of investors are a party to this case too.
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William J.
So to be clear, I mean, you know, I'm here on the behalf of seven counties that want this project to move forward and an investment group that, you know, got streamlined approval for this track in 2021. My clients have to invest money and they need predictability and a little more assurance that they're not going to get hungry up for years and years based on litigation in the D.C. vine says.
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Jenny Ruff
Justice Kagan's comment, one wonders what all this fuss and bother is about is insightful. Regardless of her reason for bringing it.
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Jim Vines
Up, Justice Kagan has put her I can't tell whether she's being ironic about that or whether she's admitting the strategy for that point of view. She's basically putting into plain language their ulterior motive.
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Nick Icker
Now it's worth mentioning the courts are supposed to give agencies deference to their process and reforms are in the works to set a 150 page limit on environmental impact statements.
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Jenny Ruff
It's also worth mentioning Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Niedler argued for the government who also supports the project and Justice Neil Gorsuch had to recuse. So we'll see what sort of constraint the court sets here. The circle needs to be drawn somewhere, perhaps a circle larger than just the 88 miles, but one that puts down harder limits to prevent these never ending environmental impact statements. And that's this week's legal docket.
- [19:29]
Jim Vines
Additional support comes from Commuter Bible, the Work week audio Bible in four annual plans available via podcast app and commuterbible.org.
- [19:41]
Nick Icker
And from Dort University.
- [19:43]
Jim Vines
Service opportunities at Dort give students a.
- [19:46]
Nick Icker
Chance to gain practical wisdom for lives.
- [19:49]
Jim Vines
Of service until all is made new.
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Jenny Ruff
Next up on the World and everything in it, the Monday Money Beat.
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Nick Icker
Time now to talk business, markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bonson. David heads up the wealth management firm the Bonson Group, and he is here now. David, good morning to you.
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David Bonson
Well, good morning Nick. Good to be with you.
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Nick Icker
Well, Last Monday of 2024, David, so let's do an economic year in the former president, now president elect. He won a campaign in part on criticism of the economic stewardship of President Biden. And Kamala Harris was trying to run from that record. But 2024 at least was a pretty decent economy as measured by the traditional measures. And as we talked about each week here on the World and everything in it, walk us through your year in.
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David Bonson
Review, David Well, I think that the various economic stories that we actually talked about here on World and Everything in it throughout the year are the sort of major categories one thinks about evaluating the economy for the year. The jobs market holding in there when there were different points in time that people wondered if maybe unemployment was about to kick higher or the impact of two years of Fed tightening was going to weaken the labor market and really seeing wages grow, including at the bottom deciles of wage earners, and seeing weekly unemployment claims never really get that much higher. The unemployment rate staying right around 4%, which has traditionally been considered full employment, that's probably the strongest story in the economy for the year. There are definitely signs that there are various weakening components. And we've talked about manufacturing. For all the talk of the investment that's been made. We think about things like the CHIPS act, that badly named inflation reduction Act. You know, one can believe, as I do, that there were tremendous problems with some of these legislative acts that were passed in the Biden administration. But even if you don't believe it should have been done, or you believe that it was wrongly done the way it happened, you still generally would expect that there's going to be some impact from these things. And I think there was, but not nearly at the level that many had predicted. So will there be some sort of economic improvement in manufacturing, in industrial production, in capital expenditures that drive some sort of enhanced productivity? I think right now the economy is largely relying on enhanced productivity from just the greater technological efficiencies that are happening, and that's the way I prefer it. I don't really believe the government needs to be driving more productivity. I think they need to get out of the way of improved productivity. But regardless, the economy had a pretty good year, but there's signs of weakness. And that's still all me answering your question in the context of this one year, not addressing the underlying structural issues that are much more important longer term, which is the fact that in a year of economic expansion and peacetime, we're still growing our deficits by $1 to $2 trillion a year. That's the fundamental issue. And that needs to be said about 2024 as well. It was absolutely extravagant government spending.
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Nick Icker
Well, David, how about 2024 in the markets?
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David Bonson
Well, look, I mean, obviously it was a huge year for markets and you're looking at pretty impressive performance from a number of sectors besides technology. Now, we already know that technology had another very good year and that those large names at the top in terms of market capitalization, the Nvidias and Apples and Facebook and so forth, have continued to ride higher. But it was not a year where technology carried the whole market. The financial sector had a very good year. The utilities sector had a very good year. And so there was a little bit more broadening out from a sector standpoint. And yet it was still very top heavy in terms of the companies that had big years. Most risk assets did well in 2024. And then where there were lagging performance, it was in safe assets. Things like treasury bonds once again, didn't have a great year. So we enter 2025 in a very different environment.
- [24:38]
Nick Icker
Speaking of which, last year, David, I know you're researching for your annual white paper looking at the year ahead, but do give us a little preview of what you expect we'll be following in 2025.
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David Bonson
Well, I would divide it up into the categories of trade, taxes and energy. And deregulation is something that's going to be a part of trade, taxes and energy. And in the case of trade, there's a risk of there being more regulation, not deregulation. And of course, there's many who voted for President Trump who want that. And so I'll leave that where it is. The process we saw through, the struggles to get a continuing resolution passed do indeed foreshadow that nothing is going to go as Easy for Trump 2.0 as many were hoping. And I think that was true before the continuing resolution challenges, but it kind of revealed it now. But Nick, the other thing that has happened that has to be talked about, that broke out over Christmas Day and into the days that followed, is a really significant divide within the camp of those who are most enthusiastic for Trump 2.0 around this issue of immigration visas related to workers in the United States, foreign workers, in particular, the Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk camp that are running his Department of Governmental Efficiency, so called, who were, you know, high profile people. And in the case of Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in world history, taking the stance of that we need more foreign workers of high skills. We want for American competitiveness to retain their talents here. And then on the other side, you have people that are more traditionally associated with online MAGA and kind of behind the scene provocateurs. President Trump is going to have a lot of opportunity to have to pick between competing factions within maga. I'm not talking about picking between left, right and moderate, which all presidents have to do and so forth. I'm talking about within his own camp. Some are arguing, and I'm not sure I disagree that this is healthy, that you want good discourse and debate and disagreement. But I think that again, this foreshadows that even with taxes, even with some of the regulatory aspects, there is not uniform agreement on how we get to some of this quote, unquote, America first agenda. So that's what I'm expecting in 2025, is that a lot of the simplicity people are hoping for is going to be revealed to be impossible and there's going to be more complexity. But see, complexity doesn't mean stuff can't get done, and complexity doesn't mean there won't be improvement. Now there is debate as to what improvement will mean. And you know, when it comes to things like tax reform, guys like myself and Larry Kudlow and Steve Moore, Steve Forbes, we have our beliefs as to what improvement means. Others have different beliefs as to what it means. President Trump has a big agenda in front of him and economics. He has to go prioritize the things he ran on. You know, presidents generally can't get elected talking about three big things and then make their big priority a fourth or fifth thing that wasn't kind of front and center in the campaign. I think it's going to be bumpy. I do now unfortunately believe it looks like the tax issues are going to get put into later in the year where I believe that would have been the biggest layup to start the year with. Achieve a point, a political victory, a policy victory, and then from that platform go do some of the other things you want to do with trade and energy. But that's what I'm expecting going in the year. And then again, I'm writing my annual paper laying out a lot of this as it applies to markets and the economy. And that's what we'll have ready for everybody into the beginning of January.
- [28:21]
Nick Icker
David Bonson is founder, managing partner and chief investment officer of the Bonson Group. David's Dividend Cafe is available to you for free@dividendcafe.com if you sign up for that. If you already have, well, then you can expect that white paper David was talking about around January 10th. That would be the second Friday of January, so be looking for that. Happy writing to you, David. And Happy New Year.
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David Bonson
Happy New Year, Nick.
- [29:07]
Nick Icker
Coming up next on THE WORLD and everything in it. As you heard just a Moment ago, America's 39th president has died. Jimmy Carter was 100. He died yesterday at his home in Plains, Georgia. His death coming a little more than 13 months after the death of his wife Rosalyn. World's Lindsay Mast has this remembrance of the former president.
- [29:31]
Lindsay Mast
James Earl Carter, Jr. Was born near the tiny South Georgia town of Plains in October 1924. His father was a businessman, his mother a nurse. The ambitious younger Carter graduated from the U.S. naval Academy in 1946 and married Rosalind Smith the same year. Carter worked on the Navy's first nuclear powered submarines. But he retired and moved home to plains in the 1950s after his father died. Carter served on the local school board and in the state Senate before he was elected Georgia's governor in 1970. His first words as governor dealt with discrimination. They took many of his supporters by surprise and set the stage for his rise to national prominence. Audio here from his gubernatorial inaugural speech.
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Paul Clement
At the end of a long campaign. I believe I know our people of this state as well as anyone could. Based on this knowledge, I say to you, quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.
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Lindsay Mast
Carter gained a national reputation for his views on race in the Deep South. Still, he was a long shot candidate in the 1976 race against then President Gerald Ford. Carter boldly professed his Christian faith on the campaign trail, but held strict views about the separation of church and state. He helped bring the term born again into the common vernacular when he used the term to refer to himself. Carter spoke of his faith during his inauguration.
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Paul Clement
And I have just taken the oath of office on the Bible my mother gave me just a few years ago. Oh. Opened to a timeless admonition from the ancient prophet Micah. He hath showed thee, O man, what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.
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Lindsay Mast
In both domestic and foreign policy, Carter prioritized human rights. He appointed record numbers of minorities to government jobs. He also established the U.S. departments of Energy and Education. A hallmark of his presidency came in 1978. He brokered a peace treaty between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
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Paul Clement
One of the agreements that President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin our signing tonight is entitled A Framework for Peace in the Middle East.
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Lindsay Mast
More than four decades on, the Camp David Accords still stand. Despite that success, domestic issues like inflation, rising fuel prices and a Recession all took a toll on Carter's political career. Audio here. During a period of gas rationing from wpix.
- [32:26]
Paul Clement
This is unreal.
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Nick Icker
Isn't this disgusting?
- [32:28]
Jenny Ruff
Why doesn't anybody contact the president?
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Lindsay Mast
Why is he letting this happen to us? His final year in office was largely dominated by the Iranian hostage crisis. After the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power, Carter allowed Iran's overthrown shah into the U.S. in November 1979, student militants took more than 50Americans hostage from the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Carter greenlit a rescue attempt in which eight American military members died. His popularity plunged. He ultimately negotiated a release, but it didn't come in time to help him retain the presidency. He lost the 1980 election. Iran freed the hostages the day he left office in 1981.
- [33:09]
Paul Clement
The new president had not been in.
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Mark Mellinger
Office an hour when the former hostages.
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Nick Icker
Became free men and women again.
- [33:14]
Lindsay Mast
The Carters moved home to Plains, Georgia. They sold the family peanut farm and began writing. Carter's body of work includes more than 30 books, including memoirs, fiction and collections of writing on his faith. Carter's beliefs did not always align with Christian orthodoxy. He did not believe the doctrine of biblical inerrancy and supported female clergy. He renounced his affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention. Twice in his later life, Carter also voiced his increased acceptance of the practice of homosexuality. But he continued to tell people about the gospel. He regularly taught Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains. Audio here from the last class he taught in 2019, shortly after he turned 95.
- [33:57]
Paul Clement
But I have confidence that there is a God, that he's all powerful, that he keeps his promises and he's promised us life after death. And also I'm a Christian and I believe in Jesus Christ having been raised from the dead. And Jesus Christ was Jesus told us that we could also be raised from the dead.
- [34:18]
Lindsay Mast
In those last years, hundreds of visitors of various religions, or sometimes no religion at all, arrived each week to attend his class and get a picture with Carter. His niece, Kim Carter Fuller.
- [34:29]
Paul Clement
He's standing up here letting you know.
- [34:32]
Jenny Ruff
How much the love of Christ has impacted the way that he lives.
- [34:38]
Justice Clarence Thomas
And it made people feel that, okay.
- [34:41]
Jenny Ruff
If the former leader of the free.
- [34:44]
Justice Clarence Thomas
World can let Christ do that for.
- [34:48]
Jenny Ruff
Him, then why I can let him.
- [34:51]
Justice Clarence Thomas
Do it for me too.
- [34:52]
Lindsay Mast
Carter also spent his post presidency years on global humanitarian efforts. In 1982, he and Rosalynn founded the Carter center in Atlanta to help resolve conflicts and work for human rights worldwide. The center's work has helped to nearly eradicate guinea worm disease. The Carters also became heavily involved with Habitat for humanity. In 1999, the Carters received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2002, Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian and diplomatic work.
- [35:22]
Paul Clement
War may sometimes be a necessary evil, but no matter how necessary, it is always evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.
- [35:41]
Lindsay Mast
Carter survived melanoma and a series of falls before entering hospice care in early 2023. His wife, Rosalynn, died last November. Carter is survived by four adult children and more than 20 grandchildren and great grandchildren. Reporting for World I'm Lindsay Mast in Plains, Georgia.
- [36:05]
Nick Icker
Tomorrow we continue our review of the year coming to a close. World's Leah Savis will analyze the biggest pro Life News of 2024. And we remember some other notables who died this year. That and more tomorrow. And remember, Monday and Tuesday. That's it. Today and tomorrow. Left to get your gift in before the end of the year. We do need it. Everything helps. Please give@wng.org yearendgift I'm hi, I'm Nick Icker.
- [36:32]
Jenny Ruff
And I'm Jenny Ruff. The world and everything in it comes to you from World Radio. World's mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates and inspires. The Bible says, let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted. His majesty is above earth and heaven. Verse 13 of Psalm 148 Go now in grace and peace.