25 YEARS: Those who were alive and old enough at the time remember where they were and what they were doing just as they did the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Today marks 25 years since the September 11^th  terrorist attacks and the collapse of the World Trade Center’s twin towers. 

  It has become traditional to ring a bell to commemorate critical moments from that morning. Today they will ring a newly-cast bell from Italy supported in part by steel from the wreckage of the Trade Center. The bell tolls at:

• 8:46 a.m. – Flight 11 strikes the North Tower

• 9:03 a.m. – Flight 175 strikes the South Tower

• 9:37 a.m. – Flight 77 strikes the Pentagon

• 9:59 a.m. – South Tower collapses

• 10:03 a.m. – Flight 93 crashes near Shanksville, PA
• 10:28 a.m. – North Tower collapses

• 12:30 p.m. – Final toll for first responders killed in the tower collapse and people struck down by diseases caused by breathing the towers’ toxic dust.

  The attacks took the lives of 2,983 people.

“PLEDGE TO THE GREATEST”: President Trump opened his second night speech at the Republican mid-term convention in Dallas with a pledge of allegiance … to himself. He asked the crowd to vote this fall and repeat after him, “I pledge to the greatest president in the history of America,” and many of them did. He went on, “I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States… I’m going to get my friends, my family, and we are going to vote on Nov. 3, or we are going to vote before that.” 

  Openly desperate to keep control of Congress, Trump said after leading the audience in his meandering pledge, “You know what happens if you don’t vote? You go to hell.”

  It was an evening of vitriol. Speaking before the President, Vice President JD Vance said, “The Democrats are the party of hatred. They’re the party that despises America and the people who built it.”

  Speaking of hatred, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz referred to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani as “Comrade Mamdani” before going on a rant about the Democrats.  He said, “we’re witnessing a new red-green alliance, communists and Islamists coming together and sweeping over the Democrat party.” Cruz continued, “They are united because they share the same enemies; they hate Christians, they hate Jews, they hate capitalism … they hate the Constitution and they hate America.”

BUY THE VOTE: Less than two months before the mid-term elections, the Trump administration announced it will issue $500 checks to one million people in 30 states insured under the Affordable Care Act, describing the payments as rebates for “overcharges” under the Biden administration.

  This came less than 24 hours after President Trump announced in Texas that he will pay a $5,000 dividend to every adult citizen if Republicans hold control of both the House and Senate in the November elections.

  A posting on the White House website indicated the checks were aimed at Americans who it claimed were “most exposed” to higher Obamacare costs during the Biden administration. 

PROTECT THE VOTE: For the second time in a week the Supreme Court blocked Missouri from using a Republican-favoring congressional district map in the November mid-terms that could decide control of Congress.

  Amidst a spate of court actions and opinions, Missouri Republicans had said until yesterday they were to stick with a new map that had been gerrymandered to give them another seat in Congress. The state’s secretary of state said election authorities would be directed to use the 2022 map even though this year’s primaries were based on the new maps.

THE WAR ROOM: The war in the Middle East isn’t over … it’s expanded.

  Iranian backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have taken the port city of Mokha and Perim Island in the strait at the mouth of the Red Sea, posing another threat to world shipping and Saudi oil exports. About 12 percent of world shipping passes through that strait.

  Saudi Arabia responded today with air strikes on the Houthis, an Islamist group that wants to take over Yemen. 

INFINITE SCROLL: 

— The lead prosecutor in the Justice Department’s “grand conspiracy” case targeting federal officials who investigated Donald Trump has resigned.  Joseph diGenova, a Trump loyalist, had been in charge of the investigation operating on the theory that there had been a plot to deprive Trump of his civil rights masked in indictments for election meddling and possessing classified documents.

  DiGenova’s team  issued numerous grand jury subpoenas to federal law enforcement and intelligence officials who had been involved in criminal inquiries into Trump, but was ever able to indict anyone.  

THE SPIN RACK: A team of scientists in north Dakota recently discovered what is believed to be the first known tracks of an adult T-Rex dinosaur dating back 66.5 million years.

BELOW THE FOLD: We note this morning that 25 years after the 9/11 attacks the City of New York has a Muslim mayor. It is possible to move on while never forgetting.

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