Trump will face dozens of fired bureaucrats at joint address Tuesday

(WASHINGTON) — The head of the Federal Communications Commission said he is seeking an investigation of NBCUniversal and its parent company Comcast over the firm’s corporate diversity initiatives.

In a post on X, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said he is concerned the companies “may be promoting invidious forms of DEI that do not comply with FCC regulations & civil rights laws.”

Carr — who, since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, has been wielding his agency’s power over broadcasters to a degree that has no modern precedent — said diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies are “by their very definition, odious to a free people whose institutions are founded on a commitment to equality.”

In a Feb. 11 letter to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, posted online by Carr, the FCC chairman points to Comcast’s corporate website, which lists diversity, equity and inclusion as “a core value of our business.” Carr also cites public reports of DEI days and DEI training as part of what the letter calls “an entire ‘DEI infrastructure'” in the entertainment company.

Carr said the inclusion efforts amount to discrimination, which, he says, “cannot be squared with any reasonable interpretation of federal law” and “can only deprive Americans of their rights to fair and equal treatment under the law.”

The FCC has long held radio and television stations to a robust set of Equal Employment Opportunity rules, which Carr says he is now using as the basis for his investigation. Last year, over Carr’s objection, then-President Joe Biden’s administration FCC moved to reinstate regulations that would force broadcasters to publicly disclose data on the race, gender and ethnicity of their employees. Those rules are now being challenged in court.

In addition to the NBC-owned television stations, Carr’s letter notes a wide range of Comcast’s businesses fall under his agency’s jurisdiction, ranging from cable and internet to wireless service. Carr says that’s one reason he’s targeting Comcast first — to serve as a shot across the bow of the entire communications industry.

“I expect that every entity the FCC regulates will be complying with our civil rights laws,” Carr said in his X post.

Democratic FCC commissioner Geoffrey Starks — one of two Democrats on the panel — said he is not on board with the investigation.

“Then-Commissioner Carr blasted the prior administration for acting in a way that ‘gives the FCC a nearly limitless power to veto private sector decisions,'” Starks said in a statement. “From what I know, this enforcement action is out of our lane and out of our reach. I have asked for a briefing to understand the Enforcement Bureau’s theory of the case, the authority relied upon, and any prior precedent. This action gives me grave concern.”

In a statement provided to ABC News, a Comcast spokesperson said, “We have received an inquiry from the Federal Communications Commission and will be cooperating with the FCC to answer their questions. For decades, our company has been built on a foundation of integrity and respect for all of our employees and customers.”

Since taking office, Trump has taken aim at DEI efforts, signing an executive order to disband such programs in the federal government and cracking down on DEI initiatives in programs that receive federal funding.

Carr confirmed last week that his agency was investigating a local radio news report in San Francisco that included depictions of ICE raids in Northern California. And in what he depicted as an effort to enhance transparency in an ongoing complaint against CBS alleging “news distortion,” Carr opened the matter to public comment and directed the posting of raw outtakes from an interview Kamala Harris gave to CBS News’ “60 Minutes.”

That controversy was sparked last October by CBS’s use of two different answers by Harris to the same question from Whitaker — in a preview clip that aired on “Face the Nation” and the interview as it aired in full on “60 Minutes” that night. A right-wing group known as the Center for American Rights filed a complaint, alleging violations of the FCC’s news distortion policy, a rarely-enforced doctrine that dates to the late 1960s and was designed to prohibit hoaxes and the staging of news events.

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(WASHINGTON) — Kristi Noem, South Dakota’s firebrand Republican governor, faced questioning Friday at her confirmation hearing to be secretary of homeland security.

Noem, the daughter of a farmer and a former representative from South Dakota, is being questioned before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

In an exchange with Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, Noem said the border is not secure, but it will be soon.

“The southern border is not secure today. But in just three days, we will have a new president in this country, President Donald J Trump, and he will secure our border,” Noem said during the hearing.

She also told Hawley that, if confirmed, she will shut down the CBP One app. Some migrants have used the app in recent years in order to get screened, schedule appointments and make their case for asylum after entering the country.

“Yes, Senator, if confirmed and I have the opportunity to be Secretary, on day one, CBP One will be shut down,” Noem said Friday. “There’s data and information in there that we will preserve so that we can ensure we know who’s coming into this country and who’s already here that we need to go find.” 

Noem first came on the national scene during the pandemic and gained notoriety when she did not shut down businesses and schools in the state — instead keeping it open and even hosting a Fourth of July fireworks show at Mt. Rushmore.

“We didn’t mandate anything,” Noem said at the Republican National Convention last July. “We never ordered a single business or church to close. I never even defined what an essential business was, because I don’t believe that the government has the authority to tell you that your business isn’t essential.”

During her last state budget address in December, Noem touted what she called progress on the state economy, education and public safety.

Noem was one of the Republican governors to send National Guardsmen to the southern border to help the Texas National Guard.

If confirmed, border security will be a main concern as Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would fall under her purview at the Department of Homeland Security.

“I have increased resources to combat the horror of human trafficking,” she said in December. “And when President Trump secures the southern border, we’ll cut off the primary pipeline for human trafficking into our country.”

In an interview on Newsmax shortly after President-elect Trump’s election victory, she said the border would be the “No.1 priority.”

“We’ve got to secure our country, and we’ve got to get the murderers and terrorists and rapists out of this country, and make America safe again. That’s really what his goal is. And I’m just so proud of him that he’s working so hard at it immediately,” she said.

A one-time potential vice-presidential prospect, Noem would oversee 22 agencies with more than 260,000 employees — on issues ranging from the border to federal disaster management to the Secret Service.

Earlier this year, she was embroiled in a series of controversies, including drawing scrutiny and a lawsuit over her social media endorsement of a dental work she received from a practice in Texas.

She was also criticized for writing in her new memoir about how she shot and killed her 14-month-old dog “Cricket” after she said it demonstrated an “aggressive personality, and she was forced to admit what she called “errors” in her book, including claiming she once met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. That description was removed from the book, according to the publisher.

Trump defended and praised her amid the controversies last year, saying she’s gone through “rough” days but that he likes her “a lot.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Jimmy Carter, the former U.S. president known as a champion of international human rights both during and after his White House tenure and who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his lifetime of dedication to that cause, has died at 100, ABC News has learned.

Carter’s death was also announced by the Carter Center on X, which posted “Our founder, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, passed away this afternoon in Plains, Georgia.”

Carter, whose wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, died on Nov. 19, 2023, at age 96, is survived by the couple’s children — John William (Jack), James Earl III (Chip) and Donnel Jeffrey (Jeff); and their daughter, Amy Lynn.

Carter had endured several health challenges in recent years. In 2019, he underwent surgery after breaking his hip in a fall. Four years earlier, Carter was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma that had spread to his brain, though just months later, he announced that he no longer needed treatment due to a new type of cancer therapy he’d been receiving.

In February of 2023, the Carter Center, the organization founded by the former president to promote human rights worldwide, announced that Carter, with “the full support of his family and his medical team,” would begin receiving hospice care at home.

“After a series of short hospital stays, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter today decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention,” the Carter Center said in a statement.

Carter attended the public memorial service for his late wife on Nov. 28, 2023, some nine months after the announcement that he’d entered hospice care. Frail and in a wheelchair, he didn’t speak at the memorial. Instead, his daughter, Amy, spoke on his behalf, reading from a letter Carter sent to Rosalynn some 75 years earlier, when he was away serving in the Navy.

“My darling, every time I have ever been away from you, I have been thrilled when I returned to discover just how wonderful you are,” the letter read, in part. “While I am away, I try to convince myself that you really are not, could not be, as sweet and beautiful as I remember. But when I see you, I fall in love with you all over again.”

Carter turned 100 years old on Oct. 1, 2024, an occasion that was celebrated with events both at the Carter Center in Atlanta, and in Carter’s Plains, Georgia hometown, though Carter himself was by that time too frail to attend them. Just 16 days later, the Carter Center announced that the former president had cast his ballot by mail in the presidential election. Carter’s grandson, Jason, previously told ABC News that his grandfather would vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

The son of a Georgia peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter first appeared on the national political scene in 1976 with a toothy grin and the simple words that would become his trademark: “My name is Jimmy Carter, and I’m running for president.”

Among his administration’s most notable achievements were the Camp David Accords, which Carter brokered between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1978, and that led to the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty the following year. Carter’s time in office also saw the first efforts toward developing a U.S. policy for energy independence.

However, the Iran hostage crisis, in which 52 Americans were held hostage in Iran for a total 444 days, beginning Nov. 4, 1979, battered Carter’s 1980 reelection campaign. He won just six states and the District of Columbia, for a total of 49 electoral votes compared to Republican challenger Ronald Reagan’s 489 electoral votes. Reagan also defeated Carter by more than eight million ballots in the popular vote.

Though political pundits of the era predicted he would be remembered as an average, one-term president, it’s often been observed that Carter’s reputation became more distinguished after he left the White House. He continued to champion international human rights and peace efforts, prompting Time magazine to declare in 1989, just eight years after the end of his presidency, that Carter “may be the best former president America has ever had.”

Carter “redefined the meaning and purpose of the modern ex-presidency,” Time wrote. “While Reagan peddles his time and talents to the highest bidder and Gerald Ford perfects his putt, Carter, like some jazzed superhero, circles the globe at 30,000 feet, seeking opportunities to Do Good.”

Carter was the third U.S. president, following Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which he received in 2002 after creating the Carter Center. Barack Obama became the fourth, in 2009. In selecting Carter for the honor, the Nobel Committee cited “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.”

Peanut farmer to politician

James Earl Carter Jr. was born in Plains, Georgia, on Oct. 1, 1924, to James Earl Carter Sr., a peanut farmer and businessman, and Lillian Gordy Carter, a registered nurse who famously became known as ‘Miss Lillian.’ Though he was the first American president born in a hospital, Carter was raised in a farmhouse without indoor plumbing or electricity.

Carter graduated from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1946 and after spending seven years as an officer — he volunteered for submarine duty and was honorably discharged in 1953 — he returned to farming. He began his political career in 1962 when he was elected to the first of two terms as a state senator in Georgia. During his tenure, he promised to read every bill that came to a vote, even taking a speed-reading class to keep up.

After an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 1966, Carter fell into a spiritual crisis, emerging as a born-again Christian. He later recalled this period as one that changed his life dramatically, saying on the campaign trail: “Since then, I’ve had an inner peace and inner conviction and assurance that transformed my life for the better.”

Armed with this renewed energy, Carter launched an aggressive gubernatorial campaign and won the office in 1970.

Carter announced his bid for the presidency in December 1974 as his term as governor of Georgia was ending. A relative unknown, Carter won early victories in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. He became more well-known as he steadily picked up delegates and beat back challenges from Rep. Morris ‘Mo’ Udall and U.S. Sen. Henry M. Jackson to secure the nomination.

The deeply religious candidate caused controversy late in his campaign when he told an interviewer from Playboy magazine, “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.” While there was considerable criticism of that line and some of the other language Carter used in the interview, then-U.S. Rep. Andrew Young, whom Carter later appointed as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Carter had “taken care of his religion problem once and for all.”

In November 1976, Carter defeated President Gerald Ford with 297 electoral votes to Ford’s 241 to become the 39th president.

Energy and economy

From the moment of his inauguration, Carter set a different tone in Washington. He avoided formality, taking the oath of office as ‘Jimmy’ instead of ‘James Earl’ Carter. He and the first lady even walked the mile-and-a-half inaugural parade route to the White House, rather than ride in a limousine.

Once in the Oval Office, Carter continued to bring a common touch to the presidency. He discontinued limousine service for presidential staff and even personally controlled the schedule of the White House tennis courts. As America weathered an energy crisis, Carter ordered his staff to turn the White House thermostats down in the winter and up in the summer, an energy-conscious practice he continued throughout his public career.

Focus on foreign policy

Carter struggled with domestic policies, fighting near-record highs in inflation and unemployment. Among his few victories was the establishment of the Department of Education and the Department of Energy, the latter in response to a continued energy shortage at the time.

Yet, while his domestic policies drew criticism, Carter found widespread success in foreign affairs. His administration attracted worldwide praise for distinguishing itself with a firm commitment to international human rights. Unlike his predecessors, Carter did not hesitate to criticize repressive right-wing regimes, saying in a 1977 commencement speech at Notre Dame, “Because we know that democracy works, we can reject the arguments of those rulers who deny human rights to their people.”

The Iran Hostage Crisis and the end of an administration

The largest stain on Carter’s foreign policy record came in November 1979, when a group of Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took hostage 52 American citizens. The militants demanded the return to Iran of the deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi from the U.S., where he was seeking medical attention, to stand trial.

Carter initially responded to the crisis by cutting diplomatic ties with Iran and blocking imports from the country. But when those measures failed, in April 1980, he ordered a secret armed rescue mission. It ended in disaster when several American helicopters malfunctioned and two aircraft collided, killing eight U.S. servicemen.

The hostages were freed Jan. 20, 1980, after 444 days in captivity. Perhaps as a final insult to Carter, Iran released the hostages just minutes after President Ronald Reagan had been sworn in. The new president sent Carter to Germany to greet the hostages.

Post-presidency legacy of public service

It wasn’t until years after he left the White House that many came to appreciate Carter. The former president embarked on a new phase of his career in public service, devoting his days to peacemaking and humanitarian efforts.

“He has made the post-presidency an institution that it had never been before,” said historian and author Steve Hochman, who helped establish the Carter Center. “He has been the most successful, most influential former president in American history.”

Among the organization’s many efforts, the Carter Center helped spearhead a successful campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease, a debilitating parasitic infection spread by drinking water contaminated with the worm’s larvae. In 1986, the disease affected 3.5 million people per year in 21 African countries, but by 2017, it had been reduced by 99.99%, to just 30 cases, according to the Carter Center.

Carter told ABC News in 2015 that his goal was to eradicate the disease entirely. “I think this is going to be a great achievement for — not for me — but for the people that have been afflicted and for the entire world to see diseases like this eradicated,” Carter said.

Carter also became the highest-profile supporter of Habitat for Humanity, the nonprofit devoted to creating affordable housing. The Carters personally helped to build, renovate and repair 4,390 homes in 14 countries, according to the organization, which also called Carter and wife Rosalynn “two of the world’s most distinguished humanitarians.”

Guided by ‘deep Christian faith’

In addition to his extensive humanitarian work, Carter wrote more than two dozen books after leaving the White House, including “Keeping the Faith: Memoirs of a President” (1982), “An Hour Before Daylight: Memoirs of My Rural Boyhood” (2001), “The Personal Beliefs of Jimmy Carter” (2002), and “Faith: A Journey for All,” (2018). He also wrote poetry collections, as well as a fictional work about the Revolutionary War, titled “The Hornet’s Nest” (2003).

Carter referenced his Christian faith in the opening lines of his presidential inaugural address on Jan. 20, 1977, quoting the biblical Old Testament call “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”

Carter’s faith and seemingly limitless energy manifested themselves as he taught at his church’s Sunday school in his Plains, Georgia hometown, where congregants lined up to attend. He was also known for walking the length of every plane on which he traveled – he always flew commercial – to shake hands with every passenger.

Yet behind Carter’s easygoing Southern manner was an iron will and inexhaustible determination. Biographer Douglas Brinkley recalled the 39th president as “a kind of military man” who never seemed to get tired.

“I mean,” Brinkley noted, “the Secret Service nickname for him was ‘Dasher’ because he could move around so much.”

Jimmy Carter’s commitment to the principles that defined his life was, again, expressed in his presidential inaugural address: “Our commitment to human rights must be absolute, our laws fair, our natural beauty preserved,” Carter declared. “The powerful must not persecute the weak, and human dignity must be enhanced.”

ABC News’ Patricio Chile and Christopher Watson contributed to this report.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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