Former President Jimmy Carter honored in funeral, and President-elect Donald Trump trades barbs with California Gov. Gavin Newsom over wildfire claims.

'Character, character, character': Carter eulogized by Biden at Washington funeral ahead of Georgia hometown burial

The nation’s capital said its final goodbye to Jimmy Carter, America’s longest-lived president, on Thursday morning with a formal funeral packed with pageantry at Washington National Cathedral. 

The service to honor the nation’s 39th president who died last month at 100 years old concluded six days of events intended to celebrate the former Naval officer, engineer and peanut farmer from Plains, Ga. 

Following the funeral, Carter’s body is departing Washington — where he has lain in state in the Capitol building since Tuesday — and traveling to his hometown. There, a second service will be held in the afternoon for the former Democratic president before he is buried at the Carter Home and Garden, alongside his wife of 77 years, former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who died in 2023.  

All five living U.S. presidents — Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton along with all of their wives except for former first lady Michelle Obama — were in attendance for the service. Obama and Trump — who visited Carter’s remains in the Capitol Rotunda and said he met with members of the former president’s family at Blair House on Wednesday — were seated next to one another and were spotted chatting multiple times. 

As Trump went to his seat, he shook hands with Mike Pence in a rare interaction with his former vice president. The two men had a falling out over Pence's refusal to help Trump overturn his election defeat to Biden four years ago, and the Indiana Republican declined to endorse his old boss in 2024 after mounting a brief primary challenge.

Outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the 2024 election to Trump, also attended alongside second gentleman Doug Emhoff. Former Vice President Al Gore was also in attendance. 

Biden, who is leaving office in just over a week, delivered a eulogy in which he focused on the strength of Carter’s “character.” He recounted he and first lady Jill Biden visiting the Carters at their home Plains in 2021, sitting in their living room and sharing memories over nearly six decades of friendship. 

Biden noted he was the first sitting senator to endorse Carter's 1976 campaign. 

“It was an endorsement based on what I believe is Jimmy Carter’s enduring attribute: character, character, character,” Biden said. 

Performances at the service included John Lennon's "Imagine” by country music stars Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood — who succeeded Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter as ambassadors for Habitat for Humanity — “Amazing Grace” by Phyllis Adams and Lelia Bolden and "Eternal Father, Strong to Save," by the U.S. Marine Orchestra and Armed Forces Chorus.

Trump blames California Gov. Newsom for wildfires

As Southern California reels from multiple, uncontrolled wildfires, President-elect Donald Trump criticized Gov. Gavin Newsom for the state’s water policies, saying they contributed to the devastation.

“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday morning.

As of 1:30 p.m. Eastern, wildfires in the Pacific Palisades region of West Los Angeles and in Eaton Canyon near Pasadena had killed two people and destroyed more than 1,000 homes, businesses and other structures, according to California fire officials.

“There is no such document as the water restoration declaration — that is pure fiction," Newsom's communications director, Izzy Gardon, told Spectrum News in response to the Trump post. "The governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.”

Trump said Newsom’s water policies prioritize the protection of endangered Delta smelt fish over the people of California. Farmers in Central California have long complained about water from the northern part of the state being diverted to help protect smelt and other endangered fish, damaging their ability to grow crops.

About 98% of the wetlands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and almost half of its freshwater inflow have been lost, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. The Delta smelt native to the area are critically endangered because of water diversions, urbanization and other issues.

California is protecting the fish because it is an indicator species of the health of the San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystem, which is a crucial hub of the state’s water supply as well as a habitat for multiple species.

“I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to flow into California,” Trump wrote Tuesday. “He is the blame for this.”