Jimmy Carter death – latest news: Biden and Trump lead tributes to former president for extraordinary life

He was the oldest living president and had been out of the White House for more than 35 years, but Jimmy Carter never stopped working to improve the lives of others — much of which included building homes for the needy.

Even well into his 90s, Carter put on a hard hat and volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, the nonprofit organization he often partnered with through The Carter Center.

The one-term president — who died Sunday at his home in Plains, Georgia — worked alongside 103,000 volunteers in 14 countries to build, renovate and repair 4,331 homes with Habitat for Humanity for more than 35 years. Often, Carter and his late wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter, volunteered together.

Graeme Massie and Ariana Baio have the story.

He lived on a property in Plains, Georgia — where he died Sunday at age 100 — that was worth a fraction of the average U.S. house price, he shopped at budget stores, and he did not fly privately.

The least expensive former president for the U.S. government, Carter and his wife Rosalynn — who died in 2023 — lived a surprisingly average life after his term ended in 1981.

While the Carters lived a public life, they were nothing if not generous with their money.

“We give money, we don’t take it,” the former president told The Los Angeles Times in 1989 — though his record of charitable donations speaks for itself.

Katie Hawkinson has the report:

There are a number of traditions and customs that govern the death of a US president, but the wishes of the family are also heavily considered, meaning the proceedings can be quite different from each other.

Gustaf Kilander explains.

Despite just one four-year and somewhat unorthodox term in office, Jimmy Carter brought much hope to the White House during a tenure that was marred by several major crisises.

As America’s 39th president, he emphasized human rights in his foreign policy, championed environmentalism at a time when it was not yet popular, and appointed record numbers of women and people of color during his administration, which lasted from 1977 to 1981.

The thing that sticks in my mind — even now — was the welcoming eyes and the warm smile.

He stretched out his hand to offer it in greeting and said something along the measure of: “Thanks for coming down to see us.”

Jimmy Carter — who died Sunday at his home in Plains, Georgia, at age 100 — was always known as a gentleman, a farmer from Georgia who had held the most powerful political office in the world. But it did not seem forced, it did not seem an act.

I’d flown to the offices of The Carter Center in Atlanta to interview him about his latest book, The Hornet’s Nest: A Novel of the Revolutionary War. He’d written plenty of books — he would go on to author more than 30 — but this was his first novel, one that the publisher Simon & Schuster described as “a sweeping novel of the American South and the War of Independence.”