Twenty-five years ago this morning, 2,977 people went to work or got on a plane or answered a call and did not come home. Here is how today is being marked. At Ground Zero the ceremony starts at 8:30 Eastern, with the first moment of silence at 8:46, the minute the first plane hit the North Tower, and silences through the morning for the second tower, the Pentagon, Flight 93, and this year, for the people who have died since of what they breathed on the pile. At the Pentagon at 9:00 they read the 184 names of those killed there and on American Airlines Flight 77, and the president speaks. The vice president is at Ground Zero, and so are Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. In Shanksville they read the forty names, ring the Bells of Remembrance and lay a wreath at the Wall of Names. Tonight the Tribute in Light, 88 xenon bulbs at 7,000 watts each, throws two beams up from where the towers stood, visible from sixty miles. Then the number: reporting this week puts those who have died since of illnesses tied to that day at more than 9,000, three times the original toll and still rising. The World Trade Center Health Program had 144,000 people enrolled at the end of June, 56,000 of them responders, and its cancer cases have gone from about 3,200 in 2015 to nearly 53,000. Never forget was not a slogan. It was an instruction. Chuck reads the day as it is being marked, as reported by ABC News, NBC News and the ceremony schedules.
Also in today's episode: the Postal Service's own Inspector General audited how primary ballots were handled at nine plants and 73 delivery units in eight states, found 99 percent delivered on time, and then found wrong dates on the hand-canceling devices at five of nine plants, at least 56 ballots wrongly postmarked and not delivered in time to count, and one machine in Cincinnati set to April 43rd, 2013, a date that does not exist; the same week, the First Circuit refused to let the new mail-ballot rules take effect before November and the Solicitor General went to the Supreme Court; the Supreme Court ended the Missouri map fight with an unsigned order, and Missouri votes on the 2022 map, a loss Chuck names as one; the president warns Iran over Pickaxe Mountain while AAA has regular at $4.28 and diesel at $5.98, up $2.27 in a year; the president pledges a $5,000 "Trump dividend" to every adult citizen if Republicans hold both chambers, and $500 Obamacare rebate checks to nearly a million people, with the honest caveat that nobody has said whether either needs Congress; the Army's $3-a-shot laser has cut cartel drone traffic over the Rio Grande Valley by about 75 percent, per CBP sources to The Hill; the president signs the law putting the Medal of Honor Monument on the National Mall; Netflix's UK account posts a "neck injury" joke on the anniversary of Charlie Kirk's death, and Chuck reads the company's denial in full; and a Detroit pastor gets two and a half minutes at a political convention and uses them to preach the name of Jesus.
There is a famine of truth in our land. Nine stories. Seven o'clock. The truth starts now.
