Washington Following a memorial service attended by his family, Vice President Kamala Harris, members of Congress, and other authorities, former President Jimmy Carter will lie in state in the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday afternoon.
Several members of Carter’s presidential Cabinet are anticipated to attend the eulogy speeches, which will be given by Harris, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.
Republicans and Democrats who were members of Congress during the Carter administration, as well as Carter’s White House personnel, have also been asked to pay their respects by the Carter family. said a U.S. military statement.
It further reported that Governors, members of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet, Supreme Court justices, and Mayor Muriel Bowser of D.C. had been asked to attend.
At approximately 4:30 p.m. ET, Carter’s casket will be put in the Rotunda for the service and rest on the Lincoln catafalque, a platform used for such ceremonies that was initially constructed to accommodate President Abraham Lincoln’s casket. The public can observe it from approximately 7 p.m. till midnight. Lincoln’s statue is surrounded by statues of several former presidents, such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Harry Truman, and Gerald Ford, whom Carter beat in the 1976 presidential contest.
His remains will remain in state until Thursday morning, when a funeral will be held at the Washington National Cathedral in his honor.
Carter’s remains were transported from his presidential library in Atlanta to Joint Base Andrews, which is close to Washington, early Tuesday. From there, Carter and his family are riding in a motorcade to the U.S. Navy Memorial, which is located between the Capitol and the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue.
The former president’s remains will be moved from a hearse to a horse-drawn caisson for the funeral procession to the Capitol at the Navy Memorial, which Carter approved in 1980 after Congress gave its approval. According to the military announcement, the procession is meant to resemble Carter’s inauguration march on January 20, 1977, when he and his family chose to go on foot from the U.S. Capitol to the White House rather than take the presidential limousine.
“This was the first time a president walked the pavement of Pennsylvania Avenue after the inauguration ceremony,” according to the White House Historical Association, highlighting Carter’s intention to make the presidency accessible to all citizens.
According to his family, the funeral procession route on Pennsylvania and Constitution avenues to the Capitol is open to the public to commemorate and celebrate Carter’s life.
The deceased president will be carried by ceremonial pall bearers into the Rotunda upon his arrival at the Capitol, where his coffin will rest atop the Lincoln Catafalque.
George H.W. Bush was the final president to lie in state at the Capitol in 2018.
Carter, the longest-living former president, passed away on December 29 at the age of 100. Since February 2023, he had been receiving hospice care in his Plains, Georgia, home.
Biden has proclaimed Thursday a national day of mourning and is anticipated to deliver a eulogy during the ceremony at Washington National Cathedral on Thursday morning. Following the funeral, Carter will be buried in a private service and his remains flown back to Plains, Georgia, for a function at Maranatha Baptist Church, where he spent decades teaching Sunday school.
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