On a March evening in 1976, when Jimmy Carter was mingling in the living room of a political supporter in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, someone at the small campaign event asked the former Georgia governor a point-blank question: “Are you a born again Christian?”

It startled him that moment, but it was really as natural a question as any for the one-time peanut farmer from the heart of the rural South. He’d been open about his devout Baptist faith during his long-shot campaign to become president of the United States, so he simply answered, “Yes.” He just assumed, as he later explained, “that all devout Christians were born again, of the Holy Spirit.”

It was just a few days before North Carolina’s make-or-break primary, but after acknowledging he was a “born again” Christian, all political hell broke loose, as many observers noted at the time.

As the nation mourns Sunday the passing of James Earl Carter Jr., its 39th president and the longest-serving ex-president in U.S. history, there is something poignant about that moment in history almost half a century ago. At that time, the term “evangelical” was barely a blip on the radar screens of those in the media and “born again Christian” hardly registered for those steeped in the arts of making policy and garnering votes.

“When I recount the story, I often say that when Jimmy Carter declared that he was a born again Christian at this campaign event in North Carolina, he sent every journalist in New York to his or her Rolodex to find someone to tell them what in the world he was talking about,” says Randall Balmer, historian of American religion at Dartmouth College and the author of “Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter.”

The election in 1976 in many ways marked the reemergence of this subgroup of American Protestants who had consciously retreated from public life after the “modernist” controversies of the early 20th century, including the Scopes Trial and battle against the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Barth Falkenberg/The Christian Science Monitor/File

President Jimmy Carter with his wife, Rosalynn, and daughter, Amy, in 1977. The Carters were married for 77 years, the longest presidential marriage in American history. Mr. Carter had called their union “the most important thing in my life.”

Throughout his life, which spanned a century, President Carter himself would define his evangelical faith as “inextricably entwined with the political principles I have adopted.” It would infuse the decisions he made at every stage of his career as a public servant and define his life in ways both good and bad, historians say.

“As president he spoke openly of his Christian faith and all it entailed: daily prayers, abhorrence of violence, the belief that the meek shall inherit the earth, the courage to champion the underdog,” wrote the presidential historian David Brinkley in 1998. “Most of all, his faith taught him that a clear conscience was always preferable to Machiavellian expediency – a pretty healthy attitude that proved both Carter’s greatest strength and his bane.”

Governor Carter embraced what was then becoming a controversial identity. His stump speech was distinct from the other Democratic candidates, and he peppered it with appeals to “godly values,” using explicit Christian entreaties for “tenderness” and “healing” and “love.”

“At least part of the stir over Carter’s shirtsleeve religiosity is that he seems to practice what he preaches,” Newsweek magazine mused a few days after the “born again” question made headlines across the country. “Kennedy went to Mass and Richard Nixon spoke affectionately of his Quaker mother, but neither appeared to be truly religious.”

With his toothy smile and soft-spoken drawl, Governor Carter had been campaigning as a Washington outsider, too, emphasizing his simple roots as a peanut farmer from a place called Plains, the farming hamlet where he and his wife, Rosalynn, had both been born and raised. That’s just how they talked about their Christian faith in those parts.

Mr. Carter told journalists he prayed “about 25 times a day, maybe more” and ended each day reading the Bible. “It’s like breathing,” he said in describing his faith to reporters who began to ask more pointed questions. “I’ve wondered whether to talk about it at all. But I feel I have a duty to the country – and maybe to God – not to say ‘no comment.’”

Now, for the first time, Gallup began to ask voters if they were “born again.” They found that nearly 50 million Americans said they were. In October, Newsweek declared 1976 to be “The Year of the Evangelical.” Journalists and political scientists were now trying to parse the particulars of evangelical theology and how it might affect how people would vote.

“Evangelicals suddenly find themselves number one on the North American religious scene,” proclaimed the evangelical magazine Christianity Today a month before the election, noting the impact of Carter’s candidacy. “After being ignored by much of the rest of society for decades, they are now coming into prominence. ... Evangelical recovery has taken fifty years.”

But there was also a certain irony as Americans put the experiences of Vietnam and Watergate behind them and found themselves drawn to the pious optimism of Jimmy Carter and elected him president of the United States.

“America desperately needed a Jimmy Carter in 1976,” says Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “And so for him to come out of almost from nowhere to earn the nomination by sheer shoe leather in Iowa and New Hampshire, and to be the person outside of the establishment and to say, I’m not from Washington, I will never lie to you, I’m a born again Christian – what I say is that, he really did bring a close to the Watergate period.”

In just four years, however, American Evangelicals would decisively turn away from Carter – who won the votes of about half of white Evangelicals in 1976, scholars estimate – as well as his Democratic Party. Not only would born-again Christians galvanize around the candidacy of Ronald Reagan, they would also soon become the most potent and reliable political force in the Republican Party, if not the country, for decades to come.

As Dr. Balmer alludes in the epigraph of his presidential biography, a quote from the Gospel of St. John: “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.”

In July of 1979, exactly three years from the day that he accepted the Democratic nomination for president, President Carter was getting ready to give one of the most important speeches of his now increasingly unpopular presidency.

AP/File

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin embrace as U.S. President Jimmy Carter looks on during a White House announcement of a Middle East peace agreement reached at the Camp David Summit on Sept. 18, 1978.

Just a year earlier, the president had demonstrated what historians would later call one the most deft and subtle acts of shuttle diplomacy in the nation’s history, achieving a peace accord between Israel and Egypt at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland. As it turned out, this peace agreement would hold, unbroken, for the rest of his life and to this day.

But now with a 25% approval rating, the lowest since Harry Truman, President Carter had planned to deliver a major address on the nation’s energy crisis on the Fourth of July. He canceled it at the last minute, however, and retreated to Camp David for 10 days – fueling speculation that the president was ill.

The energy crisis was punctuated by an oil embargo from mostly Middle Eastern countries angered at U.S. support for Israel. There were gas shortages, filling newscasts with images of Americans waiting in lines stretching down the block to fill their tank. Inflation stood at 13%, and sky-high interest rates and unemployment were bogging down the economy. At the same time, NASA’s Skylab space station was about to crash out of its orbit, and no one quite knew where it would land.

So, in front of a national television audience, President Carter delivered an address titled, “A Crisis in Confidence,” in which he characterized the nation as mostly “confronted with a moral and a spiritual crisis.”

“In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption,” he said. “Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”

Two days after delivering this speech, President Carter fired four of his Cabinet secretaries and demanded the resignations of dozens of government officials. This purge, immediately following a national address that would become known, infamously, as the “malaise” speech, gave the impression of an administration that was unsure, unsteady, and in fact falling apart.

In some ways, his sense of conscience and spiritual rectitude could have indeed become a bane within his presidential decision making, historians say. “He was a bit of a contrarian, and he is just a very stubborn man,” says Dr. Balmer. “There’s no question about his sense of moral rectitude, which a lot of people find insufferable. His attitude was: I’m going to do the right thing, damn the torpedoes, sort of thing. That didn’t help him either.”

And then, just a few months later, a group of Iranian militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage for what would span 444 days and dominate the last year of Mr. Carter’s presidency. It was yet another crisis, and his effort to rescue the hostages with a daring commando mission in the desert ended in disaster after a helicopter crashed into a transport aircraft, killing eight U.S. service members.

President Carter’s inability to rescue the hostages in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran remains one of the most lasting blights on his presidential legacy, but historians also note there were significant accomplishments.

He was one of the most consequential U.S. presidents in terms of environmental policy, passing numerous new laws to clean up and protect the environment. He also instituted lasting policies to diversify the nation’s energy sources.

“He also implemented an official affirmative action policy for judicial appointments at the federal level when a lot of people didn’t think in those terms,” says Dr. Perry at the Miller Center.

When Mr. Carter took office, only eight women and 31 people of color had ever been appointed a federal judge. In his four years as president, Mr. Carter successfully nominated 40 women, including eight women of color, and a total of 57 non-white justices.

“As part of that, he named Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the D.C. Circuit, which was her jumping off point, her proving ground to end up on the Supreme Court,” Dr. Perry says. “That in itself is quite a legacy.”

President Carter also brought a certain moral vision to U.S. foreign policy, a sustained focus that led to mixed results, many historians say.

“I think one accomplishment was to introduce and to insist on the centrality of human rights in American foreign policy, doing away with the kind of reflexive dualism of the Cold War era,” says Dr. Balmer. “One example is that, one of the first things he did was to press for the revision and ratification of the new Panama Canal treaty.”

“A lot of people told him, including his wife, Rosalynn, wait till your second term,” he says. “But he was just determined, ‘No, this is the right thing to do, and I’m going to do it’. He recognized that if the United States is going to have any meaningful relationship with Latin America ... we needed to get out of the colonial business there.”

“He expended a great deal of political capital early in his administration, and he just didn’t get it back in many ways,” Dr. Balmer says.

Madeline Drexler/AP/File

President Jimmy Carter shakes hands with Ronald Reagan after debating in the Cleveland Music Hall on Oct. 28, 1980. President Reagan would go on to defeat Mr. Carter in a landslide, and Mr. Carter would go on to the most distinguished post-presidential career in U.S. history.

After losing his bid for a second term to Republican Ronald Reagan, Mr. and Mrs. Carter returned to their long-time home in Plains, Georgia, the small ranch house on Woodland Drive they purchased in 1961. The Carters would live there for the rest of their lives. The two were married for 77 years – the longest presidential marriage in history – before Rosalynn Carter’s death in November 2023.

“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” Mr. Carter said in a statement after her passing. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

Beyond her powerful role as an adviser, during his presidency she emerged on the national stage as an advocate for mental health and for equal rights for women.

The 1980 election was a crushing defeat, and it was not lost on Mr. Carter that Evangelicals and born-again Christians had voted overwhelmingly for the former governor of California. “When I asked him about it, he acknowledged that he took the evangelical vote for granted going into the 1980 campaign,” says Dr. Balmer. “He was blindsided by their support for Reagan.”

Having left office at 56, Mr. Carter began to see his post-presidency as his second term. “He said that had he won a second term, it’s likely that he would not have been so energetic and ambitious as he was in activities after he left the White House,” Dr. Balmer says.

After decades of appraisals of Mr. Carter’s presidency, there has been something of a general consensus about his place: President Carter was a middling, one-term U.S. president buffeted by a “malaise” of problems at home and abroad.

But he would go on to become the most accomplished former officeholder in U.S. history by far, historians say.

“I always think that’s the supreme irony of the Carter presidency,” says Dr. Perry. “He got the nomination and won the election because he was not a Washington insider, and that’s exactly what we needed as a country at the time. The pendulum swung as far as it could from Richard Nixon and Watergate. And yet, he wasn’t the best person, perhaps, to govern and be president of the United States at that time.

“But then that ties together his post presidency,” she continues. “Because then he goes back to his essence of morality and good deeds and his born-again Christian faith, which he then carried throughout the world.”

Reemerging in public life in 1982, Mr. and Mrs. Carter founded The Carter Center in partnership with Emory University in Atlanta. They aimed to champion causes important to them during their time in the White House, including human rights and democracy, public health, and helping to resolve conflicts around the globe.

The center has been successful, helping to develop village-based health care centers in Africa. It has also assisted in monitoring elections across the world. One if it’s most remarkable achievements, however, is leading a coalition that would virtually eradicate the Guinea worm.

There were 3.5 million cases of the parasite in the mid-1980s, when The Carter Center began its efforts. ”I’d like for the last Guinea worm to die before I do,” Mr. Carter said at a press conference in 2015. In 2023, there were 13 known cases. In 2024, and as of this publishing, there have been seven Guinea worm cases reported around the globe.

With one of his lasting legacies being the Camp David peace accords, Mr. Carter continued to serve as a kind of freelance ambassador and roving peacemaker. He helped the Miskito Indians in Nicaragua return to their homes after long conflicts with the Sandinista government. He traveled to Ethiopia to help mediate a conflict with Eritrea. And he continued to assist the State Department in sensitive negotiations with dictators such as Kim Il Sung of North Korea and Muammar Qaddafi of Libya.

As a public figure, the former president also championed Habitat for Humanity International, often holding a hammer and wearing a hardhat as he helped build homes for people in need. In 2002, Mr. Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

For nearly 40 years, too, Mr. Carter would take his turn to teach Sunday School at his longtime congregation, Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, and he would continue to invoke “a religious faith based on kindness toward each other” and rooted in a commitment to peace.

“I have a commitment to worship the Prince of Peace, not the prince of preemptive war,” Mr. Carter said at a Monitor Breakfast in 2005, criticizing the decision to invade Iraq. “I believe Christ taught us to give special attention to the plight of the poor.”

Asked about his place in history, he later told the gathering, “I can’t deny that I am a better ex-president than I was a president. I would like to be remembered as someone who promoted peace and human rights.”

Editor's note: This story, which was originally published on Dec. 19, was updated to correct the number of Guinea worm cases reported in 2024. There have been seven.

Over the years, many an American president – and presidential wannabe – has graced the Monitor’s breakfast table, but almost none as frequently as Jimmy Carter. 

Former President Carter, who died Dec. 29 at age 100, appeared at our breakfast nine times: first as the newly inaugurated governor of Georgia, early in 1971; four more times before the 1976 election; once as president of the United States; and three times as a former president.

In hindsight, his most memorable appearance may have been the morning of Dec. 12, 1974, when he handed the assembled reporters a scoop: He was running for president. But his disclosure was so low key, Governor Carter so unassuming, that it generated little buzz. The Monitor’s story on that breakfast ran on Page 3. 

“We didn’t rush to the phones,” Godfrey “Budge” Sperling wrote in a 1997 column reminiscing about politicians suggesting or outright announcing their presidential campaigns at his famous newsmaker breakfasts. “A few of the reporters, in a post-breakfast conversation, said they thought Carter’s prospects were nil. One sage uttered this pronouncement: ‘Carter isn’t forceful enough to become president.’ Others agreed.”

That evening, Governor Carter made it official, announcing for the 1976 presidential race in a speech at the National Press Club. The rest is history.

By December of 1974, Mr. Carter was already well familiar to Mr. Sperling and by extension, readers of the Monitor. Mr. Sperling and his wife, Betty, had gotten to know Mr. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, at governors’ conferences. 

That friendship continued into the Carter presidency, says former Monitor editor David Cook, who hosted Monitor Breakfasts from 2001 to 2018. 

“Thus it was that the Sperlings had dinner with the President and First Lady in the White House Residence Quarters in July 1979,” Mr. Cook says in an email. 

That kind of socializing between reporters and presidents is much less common these days. But back then, Mr. Sperling used his gregarious nature to great effect in securing breakfast guests. And he was bipartisan in his outreach. The Sperlings were also friendly with Mr. Carter’s predecessor, Republican President Gerald Ford, and his wife, Betty.

For the record, former President Ford appeared at Monitor Breakfasts 10 times: once during his presidency, five times before, and four times after.

Mr. Ford and Mr. Carter both found the Monitor Breakfast to be a good fit – an opportunity to interact with reporters respectfully, on the record, and discuss policy and politics over bacon and eggs. But even if, early on, the Georgia governor came across as lacking forcefulness to hard-bitten Washington reporters, his outsider status ended up appealing to voters weary from the Watergate scandal and its aftermath. 

Mr. Carter’s intelligence and wide smile were also assets. In a 2002 column, Mr. Sperling reminisced about his first Carter breakfast.

“I must admit I liked Jimmy Carter from the moment I first met him – when he popped up as a guest at a Monitor breakfast back in 1971,” Mr. Sperling wrote. “Los Angeles Times newsman Jack Nelson had suggested that we invite this Georgia governor to meet with us. At that point I had heard little about Carter. ‘We should keep our eye on him,’ Mr. Nelson said, because someday Carter was going to run for president.”

Coverage of Mr. Carter’s many Monitor Breakfasts reveals a man ready to shake things up, in his own way. At the 1974 gathering, when he publicly revealed his presidential aspirations, he said he would ask for the power to use wage and price controls to address the struggling economy – “but I would use it circumspectly,” he added.  

Mr. Carter, a devout Baptist, also promised to issue a code of ethics “that will guide my campaign and administration.” On energy, he said he’d ask Americans to reduce consumption. 

On June 24, 1976, before his formal nomination at the Democratic National Convention in New York City, Mr. Carter sat down with 35 reporters at another Monitor Breakfast and addressed three main topics: whether he’d be willing to debate his general election opponent (probably); a sex scandal involving Democratic Rep. Wayne Hays of Ohio (Mr. Carter declined to disavow the congressman “at this time”); and his biggest challenge in defeating President Ford, if he won the GOP nomination (“the power of incumbency”). 

At the time, it wasn’t clear if Mr. Ford would be able to fend off a spirited convention challenge from former California Gov. Ronald Reagan. Mr. Ford won the nomination, handing Mr. Carter his biggest campaign weapon: Mr. Ford’s pardon of President Richard Nixon.  

But shockingly, at least by today’s standards, Mr. Carter said at his 1976 Monitor Breakfast that he would not bring up Watergate in the campaign, nor would he mention the Ford pardon of Mr. Nixon. Instead, Mr. Carter seemed to defend Mr. Ford, saying that the president had pardoned Mr. Nixon “because he thought it was the right thing to do.” 

Just a month later, however, Mr. Carter seemed to change his tune. At a news conference in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, he expressed disagreement with the pardon, saying Mr. Ford should not have done that “until after a trial had been completed” into Mr. Nixon’s alleged crimes around the Watergate scandal. The Nixon pardon is widely seen as a key factor in Mr. Carter’s defeat of Mr. Ford in 1976. 

In a 1989 column, Mr. Sperling cited Mr. Carter’s “decency” as another ingredient in his rise to the presidency.

“Remember how Carter, as a new president, strove to put an end to the ‘regal presidency’ – the kind of pomp that had grown to ridiculous proportions under Richard Nixon?” Mr. Sperling wrote. 

“Carter wore a sweater at his early TV fire-side chats with the American people. He had walked hand-in-hand with Rosalynn back from the inaugural. Jimmy was always saying, through his actions: ‘Just because I’m president, I don’t think I’m any better than any other American.’

“This show of modesty played very well for a while with the public. Then – somehow – people tired of this.”

As with any presidency, Mr. Carter’s had its highs and lows. He helped broker Middle East peace with the Camp David Accords and established the departments of Energy and Education, but also faced economic woes, including long gas lines, and the Iran hostage crisis. 

The Carter presidency ended after one term. But over time, he rehabilitated his image, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his advocacy of global human rights, and helping build houses for Habitat for Humanity well into his 90s. 

In his first post-presidency Monitor Breakfast, in 1982, a “relaxed” Mr. Carter seemed to be enjoying life “free from the burden of the Oval Office,” as Mr. Sperling put it. He commented on the 1984 presidential race, arms control, and Middle East developments. 

When asked if he might get back into politics, he said, “I have no thoughts on running again.” Afterward, Mr. Sperling notes, reporters commented that the reply left “ample room” for possibly seeking the presidency again. But unlike the most recent one-term president, Mr. Carter never went there. 

At a Monitor Breakfast on April 2, 1985, Mr. Carter came to promote his latest book, “The Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East.” He criticized President Reagan, saying his Mideast policies were headed down a “dead-end street,” in part because of a failure to get involved directly in the peace process. 

Mr. Carter also admitted to mistakes in his own presidency, saying his White House “tried to do too much, too fast … particularly in foreign policy.” But he also pushed back on an episode in which he felt unfairly treated: press coverage of his so-called “malaise speech” in 1979, aimed at soothing a weary nation struggling with an energy crisis – and which famously did not include the word “malaise.” Mr. Carter called it “one of the best speeches I ever made.” 

In his final Monitor Breakfast, hosted by Mr. Cook in 2005, Mr. Carter came to promote the 20th book of his post-presidency, called “Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis.” He was harshly critical of the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq, saying: “The attitude of going to war against a relatively defenseless country in order to prevent violence in the world is a complete fallacy.”

At the same time, Mr. Carter also warned of what he called “a merger of the church and the state, of religion and politics.” And he didn’t spare his own party, saying he believed Democratic leaders were “overemphasizing the abortion issue,” and wrongly making it a “litmus test” that had hurt the party. More broadly, he lamented an “aversion” among Democratic leaders to showing “compatibility with the deeply religious people of this country.”  

Some two decades later, President Joe Biden may be the most openly religious Democratic chief executive since Mr. Carter. But there can be little doubt that the religious polarization identified by the 39th president has grown even more acute. 

Staff writer Harry Bruinius assisted with this report. 

Pajama-clad and still half-asleep, millions of Israelis have been scurrying in the middle of the night – in some cases several nights in a row – to seek safety in stairwells and bomb shelters, roused from bed by the wail of air raid sirens.

Sounding the alarm each time has been the firing of a single ballistic missile from almost 1,400 miles away by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, the last fully operational spoke in Iran’s anti-Israel and anti-U.S. “Axis of Resistance.”

Israelis had begun to feel life take a turn toward what passes for normal during wartime.

In Gaza, the fighting has been winding down, though casualties on both sides are mounting and the Israeli hostages are still being held captive. (On Monday, the Israeli army said it killed scores of militants overnight in northern Gaza.)

In Lebanon, the rocket fire from a badly depleted Hezbollah has been halted by a ceasefire. Iran’s land bridge to Hezbollah has been severed by the fall of Syria’s Assad regime.

Yet Israelis have found it only takes one Houthi missile in the dead of night to again wreak havoc and upend feelings of security. Another Houthi missile triggered sirens in the center of the country late Monday night, but was intercepted before reaching Israel, the army said.

As Israel tries to halt the increasing missile fire, it is joining a list of regional and outside powers that have failed to deter the Houthis, including Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

A banner depicting Israeli and American flags is burned as protesters, mainly Houthi supporters, rally to demonstrate support for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 20, 2024.

The resulting riddle of what to do is feeding an internal debate here: continue to hit long-range targets in Yemen or strike Iran, though it is considered to have only limited sway over the upstart Houthis, who revel in their ability to do harm both to Israel and the world.

Over the past year, Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea, including to Israel, have threatened the key trade route connecting Asia to the Middle East and Mediterranean. Some 12% of global trade flows through those waters.

The rebels say their attacks are in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. Meanwhile a complete cessation to the war in Gaza – the Houthis’ condition for holding their fire – remains elusive.

“The Houthis are feeling empowered because in the past year they have managed to hurt the Egyptian economy and the supply chain for Europe,” says Eyal Pinko, a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University and a former intelligence unit head in the Israeli navy.

“U.K. and U.S. attacks and even previous Israel attacks did not do much to make a dent,” Dr. Pinko says. “They are driven not only by Iranian weapons and money but a very deep theological belief that Jews killed Mohammed.” The Houthi motto, Dr. Pinko notes, proclaims, “Death to America, Death to Israel, Damn the Jews.”

Houthis’ “zero effort” war

On Friday, after the Israeli air force attacked Yemen for the second time in a week, military analyst Amos Harel declared that Israel “finds itself in a new war,” in which the “Houthis remain the primary threat to the center of the country, with zero effort from their point of view.”

Among the targets in Yemen hit Thursday by a force of 25 Israeli warplanes: the international airport in the capital of Sanaa, power stations, a port, and an oil terminal.

Unlike strikes against neighboring Gaza or Lebanon, such a mission, the fourth against Yemen since the war began, entails “an enormous effort” and intricate planning, Mr. Harel noted in the newspaper Haaretz. The jets require delicate midair refueling to reach their targets.

Ariel Schalit/AP

An officer from the Israeli military's home front command (right) and a police officer examine the damage after shrapnel from a Houthi missile collapsed a school building in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan, Israel, Dec. 19, 2024.

The Israeli defense establishment, meanwhile, “is trying to figure out how much the Houthis’ actions are independent and what level of encouragement they’re getting from Tehran,” he added.

The night after Israel’s strike, the Houthis responded with another missile, this time triggering sirens around Jerusalem.

According to Dr. Pinko, even assessing the Houthi arsenal, which appears to be regularly replenished by Iran, is a challenge, because until recently Israeli intelligence on the group was limited.

“The United States has made over 50 attacks on Houthi infrastructure and missile infrastructure and has not yet stopped missiles from being launched, so I don’t think the numbers are the issue,” says Professor Shaul Chorev, a retired rear admiral in the Israeli navy who heads The Institute for Maritime Policy and Strategy in Haifa.

And in a country as desperately poor as Yemen, where 80% of the country relies on international aid to get by after a 15-year civil war, it is also difficult to find economic leverage to deter the Houthis.

“There is no simple solution for the Houthis because of the nature of who they are. ... They operate according to a different calculus” from Israel’s other foes, says Jonathan Spyer, director of research at The Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think tank.

Iran option?

It’s unclear just how much leverage Iran has over the Houthis, who like Hamas are more like a client with their own ideology than an Iranian creation. Nevertheless, there are those in the Israeli establishment, including reportedly the head of the Mossad, who are pushing for an attack on economically frail Iran.

Options could include striking energy and economic targets, though there is also talk of hitting Iran’s nuclear program. In a major retaliatory strike in late October, Israel targeted Iranian air defense and missile production sites.

Osamah Abdulrahman/AP

Firefighters work at the scene of an Israeli airstrike on the Haziz power station in southern Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 19, 2024.

The thinking is that “if Israel wants to address the problem, it has to go to the address of it, which is Tehran not Sanaa, and that in the run-up to [President-elect Donald] Trump’s inauguration and a different international environment, Israel has a desire to start this conversation,” says Mr. Spyer.

“After six months of significant good strategic news for Israel, starting with a string of killings of both Hamas and Hezbollah top leadership ... there is a sense that they have Iran on the back foot. This comes with opportunities and threats,” he says.

The threat is that with their backs to the wall, Iran might work toward a nuclear weapon. But opportunity could lie in an economically stressed Iranian population angry over the billions invested in the Axis of Resistance instead of Iran’s own economy.

Professor Chorev injects a note of caution.

“I’m not sure that attacking Iran or attacking Houthi infrastructure is the center of gravity that will change the situation,” he says. He argues that like the international shipping crisis caused by the Houthis, the prospect of a nuclear Iran should be one countered by an international coalition, including regional and great powers, not by Israel alone.

In the meantime, he says, “for the population, it is about morale. When once a night central Israel has to wake up and take shelter ... this is what terror organizations like to do, to disrupt life, that is their aim. They don’t need to win in this age of asymmetric warfare.”

The angels were among the first to arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border crossing, decked out with their glittering halos and long white gowns.

By the time the sound system was set up under a beating sun in the desert foothills and the shepherds were accounted for, the procession had grown to about 150 revelers.

Nativity pageants reenacting the story of Mary and Joseph seeking shelter in Bethlehem and finding rejection, until being welcomed in a stable for the birth of Jesus, have been central to religious Christmas seasons for generations. In Mexico, the tradition is called a “posada,” when friends and neighbors go door-to-door in their communities asking if there’s room at the “inn.” They’re turned away repeatedly until arriving at their final destination, where they’re welcomed inside to piñatas, tamales, and caroling.

Here at the U.S. southern border, this year’s posada turned into a present-day parable of charity and acceptance in a political climate where the welcome and embrace of the stranger is about to be tested.

Donald Trump takes office Jan. 20, and amid the incoming president’s promise of mass deportations and new restrictions on asylum, a cross-border humanitarian aid group used the event to shore up goodwill toward refugees and those ejected from the United States who have been labeled murderers, rapists, and drug dealers.

The Saturday before Christmas, a crowd of not only Mexican and American citizens, but also of Nicaraguans, Cubans, Jordanians, and others walked west together along the rust-colored border wall in a binational posada that sought to point out the parallels between biblical characters and the modern-day plight faced by migrants and refugees.

“We’re trying to promote an attitude of hospitality in Nogales,” says Joanna Williams, executive director of the Kino Border Initiative. Nogales is the name of the towns on both sides of the border crossing – the one in Sonora, Mexico, regularly receiving buses of deportees. “We want to make sure people understand those coming here aren’t ‘criminals.’ Because then they are not only deported from the U.S. but also excluded from society in Mexico.”

Larry Hanelin/Kino Border Initiative

Scores of participants from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border walked together singing, praying, and learning about the realities for migrants and deportees in a migration-themed traditional Christmas party, or posada, Dec. 21, 2024, in Nogales, Mexico.

“So real it hurts”

Each stop of the posada is marked by a small stand or poster set up on or near the border wall. During the 1.5-hour enactment, the crowd hears testimony from a migrant or deportee describing their experiences – robberies or months waiting to request asylum in the U.S. – and their pleas for respect and dignity for those driven to leave home.

At one stop “pilgrims” sing out: “We seek a dignified life, why do you treat us like this?” The “innkeepers” respond: “I’ll treat you how I want; I’m the one in charge here.”

Maria Eugenio Mendoza, whose teenage daughter was performing in the nativity, lives a typical Nogales existence: she works and resides in Mexico but sends her children to school daily in the U.S. She has participated in traditional Christmas posadas her entire life, but usually they are “happy.”

Listening to the migrants’ stories this year is “so real it hurts,” she says, standing in the middle of the street. Nearby, migrants among the group are invited to leave their handprint in paint on a cardboard cross attached to the border wall, razor wire visible through the fence posts. This “allows us to put ourselves in the shoes of a migrant,” says Ms. Mendoza. “We’re not so different in what we hold close and cherish and what they are seeking by migrating.”

Marta Luisa, from the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, just left home due to growing violence and threats from organized crime. Like all migrants, she only provided her first name for her safety. “I never really thought about Mary and Joseph as migrants,” she says, bouncing her toddler daughter on her hip. But now that she is seeking asylum in the U.S., “It makes me feel closer to this story,” she says. “Faith is the last thing you lose.”

Larry Hanelin/Kino Border Initiative

A mariachi band welcomes revelers at the last stop of the Kino Border Initiative’s posada, in Nogales, Mexico, this year. The organization is working to raise awareness about hospitality and the realities for migrants and deportees in the lead up to President-elect Trump’s second term in office.

A place to rest

According to the Bible, Mary and Joseph were returning to Bethlehem, for a mandatory census before Jesus’ birth. Because everyone under the Roman Empire’s rule was heading to their villages of origin for the count, inns along the way were at capacity, says Bob Solis, a Catholic deacon who came from the Phoenix area to volunteer at the posada. The couple was also very poor, and likely had few options to begin with, he adds.

“To me, migration is part of the message of Christmas. Many say, ‘No, no, it’s the arrival of Jesus,’ but both aspects are intertwined,” he says. Jesus lived much of his life as a refugee, Mr. Solis adds, his family forced to flee death threats by moving to Egypt.

The processional wends its way across town led by a pickup truck that drags an open trailer full of musicians strumming guitars and leading the crowd in song. The starts and stops of the procession block traffic on the narrow road, but nobody honks. By the time it reaches its final stop, the front gate of the Kino group’s building, pilgrims plead to be let in. “There is space for everyone,” the innkeepers finally sing to them.

For Issa, a Christian Jordanian who fled his country eight months ago, the climax of the posada mirrors the relief he feels in his own experience. When he first arrived at the U.S. border, he says he was robbed and harassed by criminals who prey on migrants before finally finding Kino.

As he walked into the organization’s dining hall for the celebration, his face lights up. Rows of tables are filled with revelers, exhausted from the hot walk through town and digging into bean, chicken, and carnitas tacos. A seven-piece Mariachi band plays “Feliz Navidad.”

He recently received an appointment to meet with U.S. immigration officers. The holiday party coincides with his goodbye.

“Everything we lacked, we found here,” he says. This space was his posada for the past six months. In the coming days, he would be knocking on the United States’ proverbial door asking for the ultimate refuge: asylum.

Steven Senne/AP/File

A Massachusetts high school principal displays vaping devices that were confiscated from students in 2018. Towns in the Bay State are enacting generational nicotine bans that would keep young people from ever being able to legally purchase products.

If you were born after 2003, you will never be old enough to buy cigarettes in Chelsea, Massachusetts. And as of Jan. 1, in at least eight other towns.

Municipalities in the Bay State are determined to create a “nicotine-free generation.” And three Massachusetts legislators recently announced they plan to file a statewide version of the bill in 2025.

The regulations have set up an ideological battle, as local officials and their constituents wrestle with how far governments should go to protect public health. Proponents see such rules as a way to save lives and eliminate a major societal ill. Detractors see a Prohibition-style overreach that undermines personal freedom and threatens small businesses.

Similar attempts to sunset tobacco are picking up steam worldwide. The United Kingdom plans to ban cigarette sales for anyone born after 2008. Earlier this year, members of South Australia’s parliament introduced a law that would do the same for those born after 2006.

It’s not yet clear if these regulations will spread elsewhere in the United States. But in Massachusetts, which has a long history of public health innovation, supporters seem optimistic.

“We’re at a level of readiness that is really the envy of most other states,” says Mark Gottlieb, a lawyer who runs Northeastern University’s Public Health Advocacy Institute. “This is a really good place to see where this policy can go.”

In 2020, Brookline, Massachusetts, became the only place in the world to enforce a nicotine-free generation bylaw. Anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 2000, will never be able to buy cigarettes there, according to the rule co-sponsored by Anthony Ishak, a pharmacist, and Katharine Silbaugh, a law professor. A group of convenience stores sued, arguing that the rule was unconstitutional and conflicted with state law.

In March, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court dismissed that lawsuit, ruling that municipalities have the authority to regulate tobacco as they see fit. Since then, 11 other places have passed bans, including Concord, Reading, Needham, and Malden.

Adult smoking rates in the U.S. have declined precipitously in the past six decades, falling from 42% in 1965 to 12% in 2022. Youth rates have hovered in the single digits since 2017.

Yet tobacco remains the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. Cigarette smoke kills some 480,000 Americans each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That accounts for nearly 20% of all U.S. deaths annually, and outstrips deaths from opioids, gun violence, suicides, and car accidents combined.

What about personal choice?

Todd Taylor, a Chelsea city councilor, says he’s glad he quit smoking 18 years ago. He encourages policies like community outreach and education to cut smoking rates. Yet he thinks nicotine-free generation bans infringe on choices that should belong to individuals – or, at a minimum, elected officials.

“These decisions should not be taken up by local boards of health,” he said at a Nov. 19 board of health hearing in Chelsea. “This belongs in the legislature.”

Kinga Borondy/Telegram & Gazette/USA Today Network/Reuters

Democratic Rep. Tommy Vitolo, of Brookline, is one of three Massachusetts legislators who plan to file a bill to ban tobacco and nicotine product sales in perpetuity to all state residents who are now too young to legally purchase products.

Local boards of health, which can be either elected or appointed, have largely led the charge in enacting generational tobacco bans.

“Whether you’re in favor or opposed, it deserves a little bit more discussion,” says Peter Brennan, executive director of the New England Convenience Store and Energy Marketers Association. “People are tired of the government – in this case, a local, unelected board of health – telling them what they can and can’t do.”

Yet proponents see banning nicotine as a boon for personal freedom. In interviews and at public hearings, they argue that addiction, not regulation, is a threat to freedom of choice.

In a 2022 survey, 53% of smokers had tried to quit in the past year. Only 9% succeeded.

“Adult choice was taken away by addiction,” says Chris Bostic, policy director at anti-tobacco group Action on Smoking and Health. “And almost all [people who smoke] became addicted as children.”

The vast majority – about 87% – of people who smoke have their first cigarette before they turn 18.

Concerns about stepping on individual freedoms in the name of the greater good is a perennial tension for public health officials. In some ways, today’s debates about nicotine recall those that roiled the country during the COVID-19 pandemic, when cities imposed lockdowns and mask mandates. Then, as now, detractors sharply criticized government intervention that supporters said was necessary to save lives.

“Many Americans have died for individual freedom. Some things may not be good for you, and other things may be worse, but it’s up to adults to have that freedom,” Stephen Helfer, co-founder of the group Cambridge Citizens for Smokers’ Rights, says at Chelsea’s hearing.

Massachusetts is also one of 24 states, along with D.C., that have legalized recreational marijuana. That approach stands in contrast with these cities’ hard line on tobacco.

Mr. Bostic says that’s comparing apples to oranges. “We can’t equate them just because the main way of using them is to light them on fire,” he says. “We can at least address the product that by far kills the most people.”

Not all Massachusetts health experts agree that generational bans are the way forward. Vaughan Rees, director of Harvard University’s Center for Global Tobacco Control, cites doubts that the rules will reach marginalized groups.

“I don’t see any evidence or reason to assume that a generational-style law is going to support or promote advantages in some of the marginalized populations that we’ve been talking about,” Dr. Rees says. He points specifically to people who use illicit drugs, who also tend to smoke tobacco at higher rates. “Imposing yet another regulatory burden on marginalized communities may not yield the effects that we hope it might.”

Mike Siegel, a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, agrees that such a law is unlikely to stop people who want to smoke. Yet he supports a ban, arguing that it may change social norms among young people.

“It’s not just ‘Don’t smoke because it’s harmful.’ It’s, ‘We have declared you to be a smoke-free generation,’” Dr. Siegel says. “That creates a tremendous disincentive – because, essentially, if you smoke, you’re rallying against your generation.”

This isn’t the first time that the Bay State has found itself at the cutting edge of tobacco control. The Commonwealth was also the first to restrict the sale of all flavored tobacco products, and to ban tobacco sales in health-care establishments. At 10.4%, Massachusetts has one of the lowest smoking rates in the country.

Additionally, Massachusetts health boards are powerful compared with those in other states, according to Mr. Gottlieb. Their regulations carry the same legal weight as those enacted by local lawmaking bodies, giving them broad regulatory discretion.

In Brookline, Mr. Ishak sees phasing out tobacco as building on that legal history. “Historically, Massachusetts has been at the forefront of tobacco legislation,” he says. “It was firm territory to be able to try something like this.”

Mr. Ishak’s father took up smoking when he was young. His son says the habit almost killed him before he was able to leave it behind for good.

He recounts his father’s story at a Chelsea’s public hearing, held at a middle school.

The health board was convinced. The bylaw passed unanimously on Dec. 10.

“I’m paying the price”

Under most nicotine-free generation laws, those who have already turned 21 can still buy tobacco products. Ms. Silbaugh believes this is a sensitive approach to regulating nicotine while acknowledging that some 23.6 million Americans have a dependency on it.

“Most adults who use nicotine or tobacco products don’t want to be,” she says. A 2022 survey by the CDC found that 68% of people who smoke want to quit. “So the question is, how could we regulate it to be compassionate toward people who need it, but without adding to their ranks?”

In Ms. Silbaugh’s eyes, it’s also compassionate toward retailers. Rather than take products off shelves immediately, phased bans shrink retailers’ customer base over decades.

But in Brookline, at least one business is feeling the squeeze. Waseem Heriki says his father’s convenience store is doing “one-third as well as it used to.”

“I’m hoping that the law gets changed,” Mr. Heriki adds. “I’m paying the price.”

Previous tobacco control initiatives also started small. In 2005, the board of health in Needham, Massachusetts, voted to make the town the first place in the country to raise its tobacco purchasing age to 21 – a policy that became federal law over a decade later.

Yet detractors say that health boards’ reliance on expert opinions creates a blind spot to constituents’ wants. “These boards of health are very biased in favor of the proposal, and they’re biased in favor of their public health professionals that they interact with,” Mr. Brennan, of the convenience stores association, says.

Will generational bans work?

It’s too early to tell how successful these policies will be. Because they’ve never been tried before with tobacco, research is scant. Questions remain about whether they could contribute to the creation of an illicit market, as happened when Massachusetts banned flavored tobacco products.

Mr. Gottlieb acknowledges those concerns – though he maintains that this is different. “In the case of the flavors, you have strong existing demand for these products, and then they were taken away,” he says. “Here, you’re not really taking anything away from somebody where there’s a strong demand.”

It’s possible, however, that people who can’t buy tobacco in one town will simply travel to another where they can.

Supporters argue that it’s what’s local that matters. When Needham raised its buying age in 2005, smoking rates in the town fell at triple the rate of its neighbors whose age remained 18, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In Chelsea, where the smoking rate is 1.5 times the state average, young public hearing attendees seemed to revel in the idea that theirs could be the first generation for whom tobacco is not an option. Of the four who spoke, all were in favor of the ban.

“This law challenges the prevailing notion that tobacco is a rite of passage,” Bhavika Kalia says. She’s a high school student from nearby Somerville, which is also mulling a ban. “It is about taking bold action to protect the well-being of those who will lead our communities tomorrow.”

AP Photo/Kin Cheung

Britain's Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, shakes hands with supporters in London, July 5, 2024. Voters "have spoken and they are ready for change," he said, after an election that ended 14 years of rule by the Conservative Party.

More than 1.5 billion ballots were cast in elections in 73 countries in 2024. If the upshot of that global democracy "supercycle" can be captured in a single comment, it is this: “When you are in [power],” Pelonthle Ditshotlo, a voter in Botswana, told The Africa Report, “we need to know that you listen to us, you are with us.”

A year that started with concerns about whether democracy was losing ground to more repressive forms of governance has instead revealed a different mood – not for less democracy, but for democracy that is more effective and accountable. Voters tossed out more incumbents than ever before. Dictatorships fell. A new generation of leaders emerged.

The result may be a global turn toward more humility in governing. In South Africa and India, powerful political parties were forced into ruling coalitions. “What this election has made plain is that the people of South Africa expect their leaders to work together to meet their needs,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said after his ruling party, the African National Congress, lost its singular hold on power in June after 30 years.

In neighboring Botswana, President Mokgweetsi Masisi said, “We got it wrong [and] I will respectfully step aside,” after voters ended his party’s 58-year monopoly on power.

“The reality is that in a democracy, the people have the final say,” said Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s new president, in his inaugural address in June. “I will strive to prove myself as someone in whom you can trust and count on, by acting justly, showing mercy, and being humble, and by treating our people as family.”

Even in countries where democracy is a fragile aspiration, leaders have felt a need to soften their hard lines. Upon winning the presidency in Iran in June, Masoud Pezeshkian spoke from the Mausoleum of Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran. Although he was there to “renew his loyalty” to the founder of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he nonetheless promised voters, “I will listen to your voices.”

Humble governing may be a key to rebuilding broken nations. Local elections in Libya in November marked the first step in a tentative process to unite the North African country after more than a decade of divided rule and conflict. The ballot drew participation from 74% of voters. That prompted the head of the transitional presidential council, Mohammed Menfi, to acknowledge “the importance of resorting to the opinion of the Libyan people” in rebuilding democracy, The Libya Observer reported.

“By promoting a culture of listening at all levels of society, including the government, media, educational institutions, and the citizenry, we can hope to bridge political divides and move towards a more united and harmonious future,” wrote Guaiqiong Li and Rainer Ebert, Africa experts at Yunnan University and Rice University, respectively, in the Cape Argus, a South African newspaper, on Monday.

Dozens of countries will hold elections in 2025. Their voters may note the work already done in renewing democracy through humble listening.