Oyez! Oyez!

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The Supreme Court began its 2026–27 term on October 5, 2026. Although the justices probably saw it as just a return to the office. They really did not get their customary three-month vacation, mainly due to the Trump administration’s endless barrage of “emergency motions” begging the conservative majority to stop a nearly unanimous string to lower court orders that Trump stop doing something he was doing that they found to be illegal, unconstitutional, or both. With his posse of six conservatives squarely in his corner, he won most of those emeergency appeals.

The central controversy is whether the Supreme Court is acting as an independent check on President Trump or helping him concentrate power in the presidency. Since his second term began in January 2025, the Court has substantially strengthened his control over government and repeatedly lifted lower-court restrictions on his policies. But it has also rejected some of his initiatives, making the record more complicated than “the Court always sides with Trump.”

We reviewed those cases several times during the last session. Let’s look today on the major cases to watch in the session which has just begun. The Supremes in this session will chime in on climate change, the Second Amendment, voting laws, and religious freedom, among others.

1. Climate Change & Corporate Liability
  • Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County
    • The Issue: The Court kicked off the term by hearing this case on opening day. It decides whether local governments can use state laws to sue oil companies for billions in infrastructure damages caused by climate change, or if federal laws (like the Clean Air Act) preclude those state-level lawsuits.
2. Second Amendment (Assault Weapon Bans)

Viramontes v. Cook County

  • The Issue: This case directly challenges an Illinois county’s ban on AR-15 rifles and high-capacity magazines. The ruling could redefine Second Amendment protections for semi-automatic firearms and impact similar restrictions enacted across 11 different states.
3. Voting Rights & Proof of Citizenship
  • Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota
    • The Issue: Set for argument in December 2026, this case considers the legality of Arizona laws requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, and whether states can cancel registrations close to election day under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
4. Religious Freedom vs. LGBTQ Nondiscrimination
  • St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy
    • The Issue: The justices will explore whether religious preschools can be barred from receiving state public funds if they refuse to admit children from LGBTQ families. This tests the boundary between the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause and state anti-discrimination policies.
5. Immigration & Executive Authority
  • The docket features highly scrutinized challenges to federal immigration policies. Key questions include whether the administration has the authority to implement third-country deportations (sending migrants to a nation they have no ties to) and whether it can mandate the detention of certain immigrants rather than releasing them while their cases are pending.

All that plus whatever Trump throws at them. It is a full docket. And it will be a busy year.

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Indigenous v Columbus v ?

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With all the issues facing humanity these days you’d think we would not be coming to blows over a holiday. Think again.

Today we fight over the meaning of a day. This day. Is it Columbus Day? Indigenous People’s Day? Or just any other day. Pick a side and prepare to do battle.

Since 1971, Columbus Day has been observed on the second Monday in October. This year, Columbus Day falls on October 12, 2026, which is today. So here we are, celebrating Christopher Columbus, who is historically credited with “discovering” America, even though indigenous people already inhabited the land. To further complicate the Columbus claim, there is strong historical and archaeological evidence that Europeans reached North America nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus.

The most widely accepted example is Leif Erikson, a Norse explorer from Greenland, who is believed to have reached Vinland (likely in present‑day Newfoundland) around 1000 CE. There have been calls to commemorate a Leif Erikson Day. They have never found much traction.

As the nursery rhyme goes, in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue thanks to funding by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, with orders to find a trade route to Asia. That is the same Ferdinand and Isabella who, in the very same year, issued the Alhambra Decree, ordering all Jews to leave their kingdoms and territories by the end of July that year, unless they converted to Christianity.

So much for lionizing Ferdinand and Isabella.

As for Columbus, his expedition aboard the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria landed not in what would eventually become the United States of America but in the Bahamas, then known as Hispaniola. His mistake helped Spain establish the first American colony in the Caribbean.

As governor of Hispaniola, Columbus enslaved the Taino and Arawak people and forced his Catholic faith on native people using brutal methods. His discovery also kicked off a race of exploration among European nations. These settlers brought new diseases to the Americas, which decimated native populations.

So much for lionizing Columbus.

Nonetheless, Columbus Day became a permanent national holiday in 1934 when Congress, after lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, authorized President Franklin D. Roosevelt to declare Oct. 12 as the designated date. In 1971, Columbus Day was made a federal holiday on the second Monday in October.

Indigenous American groups have pointed out Columbus’s role in the unethical treatment of their ancestors, and protested his celebration. Indigenous Peoples’ Day has been presented as a Columbus Day alternative since 1991. This observance is meant to celebrate the legacy and contributions of Native Americans. Despite President Joe Biden’s proclamation in 2021, it is not a federal holiday, although many states, such as California, formally recognize it. The debate has joined the culture wars, like so much in America these days. Last year Donald Trump announced that he would not recognize Indigenous Peoples Day alongside Columbus Day, marking a departure from the dual observance initiated by former President Joe Biden.

Mail is not delivered on Columbus Day because it is a federal holiday. Physical post office locations will be closed. The U.S. Postal Service does not operate on federal holidays.

The Federal Reserve is closed, which typically means most national banks follow suit, but some may choose to remain open. Both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq are be open for buying and selling.

Public schools are run by local and state governments, which means they are not required to automatically take federal holidays off. Private schools can make their own decision. Check in with your students’ institution to know how it handles the holiday.

Groceries, drug stores, and restaurants are open. So, if you have the day off, enjoy.

I’m not going to take sides. What, me worry?

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Genocide Libel

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I could never have imagined, three years ago, as I listened to the horrific news coming out of Israel, that I would be writing a post such as this.

For the many who seem to have forgotten, On the morning of October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists broke through the fence separating Gaza and Israel and killed roughly 1,200 people, many teenagers attending a music festival, and dragged 251 hostages back into Gaza. There they were met by cheering crowds of Gazans. It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. By the next day, Israel was already being accused of “genocide” on social media and in the streets, even though Israel’s ground operation into Gaza had not yet started.

The “Gaza Genocide” is one of the biggest lies of the 21st century. It was generated and promoted by anti-Zionist and antisemitic networks following the October 7 Massacre to prevent Israel from saving its hostages, to delegitimize the Jewish state, and to fuel global antisemitism. Three years after their murderous attack, the people of Gaza claim to be the victims.

Try watching some of the footage from Hamas GoPro videos which they shared with pride, so the world would see the barbaric genocide they committed against Israelis and non-Jews in Israel. Victims don’t take hostages and start wars. Hamas did exactly that. The videos have been vetted. They are horrific. Israel is showing an extended edit of the Hamas generated videos in a documentary titled, Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre. Excerpts and reports from people who have viewed it are on YouTube although, as of this writing, the entire video is not.

The word “genocide” means to deliberately and systematically kill or persecute a large number of people from a particular national or ethnic group, with the aim of destroying that nation. But Gaza officials themselves report a population decline of about 10% since the start of the war in 2023, mostly through displacement. More than two million remain. That’s not a genocide.

And there are nearly two million Arab Palestinian Muslims who are Israeli citizens, descendants of those Arabs who stayed when the United Nations created the Jewish state in 1947. These citizens of Israel live, work, practice their religion, raise families, hold government positions, serve in law enforcement, serve in the military, and vote in Israel. To accuse Israel of genocide is absurd.

Has there been death and destruction in Gaza since October 7? Of course. Is that tragic? Yes. But this is as willed by Hamas, the duly elected government of Gaza. This is war. Hamas knew their slaughter of Israelis on October 7 would provoke a massive response. What, if you were running Israel, would you have done? The greatest trick Hamas pulled was to build 500 km of bomb shelters, provoke a war, refuse to let Gaza civilians take shelter, and convince the world to blame Israel for their deaths.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, says, “The scale of killing in Gaza is unlike anything I’ve witnessed in my years as Secretary-General.” Really? Since he took office in 2017 120,000 have been killed in Syria, 150,000 killed in Sudan, 162,000 killed in Ethiopia, and 200,000 killed in Yemen. In Gaza, according to Hamas’s own reports, there have been about 70,000 deaths. More than half of the dead were Hamas fighters. That is what happens when you start a war. But different standards apply to Israel at the UN.

In sum, 3% of Gaza’s population, mostly male combatants, have died in a war they started. That is not genocide. 96% of Jews in Poland were murdered by the Nazis. That is a genocide.

If Israel wanted to kill every single Palestinian, it could have. It is a nuclear power. Why did it distribute polio vaccines to the children of Gaza? Why did it allow any food in at all? (The food is frequently stolen by Hamas fighters). Why does Israel continue to supply water and electric power to Gaza? Why did Israel drop leaflets in different neighborhoods, repeatedly saying please get out of this neighborhood because Hamas solders are operating there and we are going to attack?

Of course, Israel’s actions can be questioned. Israel will consider these issues itself when it votes for its legislature at the end of this month. But to call its actions in Gaza a genocide is a libel. It runs along with the claim that Israel is intentionally starving Palestinians (the famine libel, disproven by the UN’s own reports) or deliberately murdering Palestinian children (the child-killer libel, from a UN document with no evidence or source). I will not forget politicians or others in the public square who equivocate, justify, or excuse Hamas.

The genocide charge fails from its sheer implausibility, combined with the moral offense of accusing Jews of the very crime that had been inflicted upon them in the Holocaust, as well as a still-resilient Western cultural memory and a robust liberal consensus. It must not become established as fact now.

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Trump’s Obsession

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Mental health practitioners, of which I am not, tell me it’s called Megalomania: An obsession with the exercise of power, especially in the domination of others. Plastering a country with one’s face is a direct manifestation of grandiosity, an inflated belief in one’s supreme importance, omnipotence, and unique historical destiny.

Reporters who have spent decades reporting on the activities of Donald Trump, of which I am, know it has been one of his most visible traits throughout his career. New York is replete with examples of the Trump name on projects from one end of the city to the other. Most of these, and I inspected most of them in my Manhattan apartment hunting days, are mediocre at best and overpriced without exception.

Trump has also plastered his name on a wide variety of companies selling everything from steaks to vodka. He put his brand on a casino, an airline, and a university, among others. In my role as a reporter, I joined him at many a ribbon cutting for these various ventures. I also attended, while he was conspicuously absent, many of the bankruptcies of these projects.

The president’s obsession with the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is in keeping with his desire to remake the nation’s capital, the White House, the parks, the wide boulevards and open spaces, to his own gilded, ostentatious, self-serving taste.

While it hasn’t drawn nearly as much attention as the destruction of much of the White House, the US Institute of Peace, wreck of the reflecting pool, and the plans for a triumphal arch, I find the picture above to be the most frightening of all.

The banner shows Trump, he of the woeful countenance, scowling down on everyone who enters the building generally known as “Main Justice.” That’s the Washington headquarters of the US Department of Justice. This is the part of the national government most involved with the protection of the laws and the Constitution. The message of the banner is clear. This is Trump’s DOJ now, run by Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, now Attorney General of the United States. Similar banners have appeared at other government buildings in Washington.

When I see that picture, all I can think about is “Big Brother.” That’s a reference to the all-powerful, intrusive authority or government that constantly monitors and controls its citizens featured in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, “1984.” In the book, Big Brother is the leader, the supreme dictator of the totalitarian state of Oceania. Public posters display his face alongside the warning: “Big Brother is watching you”.

I am also told an obsession with naming things after oneself is called toponymic narcissism. In political behavior and history, this practice is also associated with building a cult of personality, where a leader uses omnipresent branding, imagery, and naming to achieve cognitive saturation and project total control over the state.

Trump is now appearing in television commercials featuring his image and voice and cheering on his supposed achievements. The ads say they are paid for by the US government. This is the mark of one sick cookie.

In China, Mao Zedong‘s image became a permanent institutional fixture. His massive portrait famously overlooks Tiananmen Square on the Tiananmen Gate, and during the Cultural Revolution, his likeness was mandated across all public infrastructure, factory floors, and schools.

In Russia, Lenin’s image remains a permanent fixture in all public buildings. However, the portraits of current leaders, like President Vdlamir Putin, are relegated to standard, framed photos inside administrative offices and schools rather than dominating public building exteriors.

And perhaps most infamously, there was Adolf Hitler. Hitler’s portrait was explicitly required and heavily displayed on public and state buildings throughout Nazi Germany. While the Nazi regime did not pass a formal law forcing private citizens to hang his picture at home, state regulations mandated that government offices, schools, and state-run facilities prominently display his likeness.

The Trump administration used at least $50,000 in taxpayer dollars to create the large banners featuring the president’s face or policies, according to a new report released by Senator Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) office. Schiff calls the move illegal, saying the banners amount to “propaganda” mirroring “totalitarian dictators.” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Axios the “report would only be valuable as toilet paper” and declined to comment on the specific claims Schiff’s office made.

After thinking of Big Brother, I move on to thinking of “Fearless Leader.” That was the dictator from the fictional country Pottsylvania, and the employer of the inept spies Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale. These were all comedic characters who appeared in many television and film projects featuring Jay Ward creations Rocky and Bullwinkle.

The difference is Rocky and Bullwinkle were meant to be amusing. Trump is no laughing matter.

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They Do It Again

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With just 39 days to go before the midterm elections the conservative majority on the Supreme Court couldn’t keep its hands off the ballot box. Once more they have used its secret shadow docket to overrule two detailed lower court decisions, allowing their patron Donnie Trump to include records from the Social Security Administration (SSA) in the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database made available to state offices. This allows states to request bulk searches using full or partial SSNs and linked SSA’s master files to verify citizenship for voter registration. Critics fear that states could use the system to purge large numbers of valid voters from their rolls ahead of the midterm elections.

The decision is bad because the Court should not be getting involved in elections, which the Constitution makes clear is, absence legislative action by Congress, a matter for the states to administer. Trump has in fact been pushing Congress to take such action but has failed to get new laws enacted in spite of a majority in both the Senate and the House. Once again, the conservative Court majority just can’t resist tipping the scales in favor of their president.

On the other hand, the order in Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters is not expected to have much of an impact on this November’s election. That is because states are not required to use the federal system, as they might be is a new federal law was anacted, and there is little interest among local and state election officials for it, because it has mistakenly flagged U.S. citizens as noncitizens in past searches.

The Court majority, clearly embarrassed by criticism of its use of the emergency docket to render significant judgments without explanation has, at least, been writing short explanations in recent actions. In this case they wrote that a lower-court ruling which had blocked the administration from rolling out the system was improper because it inhibited “the federal government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections.”

The emergency ruling was unsigned and gave no vote count, but the court’s three liberal justices joined in dissent, making the 6-3 party line vote obvious. In that 12-page dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the majority’s decision created the conditions for some states to cancel the voter registrations of at least some recently naturalized citizens or to force them to provide proof of citizenship before voting.

“The harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take,” she wrote, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Federal law establishes a 90-day “quiet period” before elections, in which wide-scale changes to state voter rolls cannot be made. The provision is meant to avert last-minute chaos in elections and is expected to prevent states from kicking large numbers of voters off their rolls in the weeks leading up to the midterm. Even the majority recognized that the 90-day rule “limits the potential impact” of the court’s action. However, the majority added that states should have the ability to use the federal system to make inquiries about voters on a case-by-case basis.

The conservatives on the Court could have left this matter alone. But that is not their style. The primary issues remain to be hammered out in the lower courts, as they should be. The real threat will be to the election for president in 2028.

Interestingly, the Court also unanimously blocked a Republican-backed congressional map in Missouri for a third time, People Not Politicians v Robert Onder, reverting the state to its 2022 map boundaries for November. With this action the Supremes rejected an appeal backed by the Republicans and the Trump administration, stating that Missouri must conduct its 2026 congressional election using the 2022 map lines following a state court determination that the newer map required voter referendum approval.

It has been a busy summer for the Court. The regular Court term doesn’t even start until October 5!

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Trump Über Alles

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Our petulant little leader has thrown another hissy fit. Donnie Trump has decided he doesn’t want any members of the news media asking questions he doesn’t want to answer, or printing stories he doesn’t like. As his latest attempt to stifle the press, he banned representatives of the cable channels CNN and MSNOW and the web site POLITICO from the White House campus, ordering the US Secret Service to confiscate their press passes. The two cable services immediately setup their cameras across the street.

WIU Professor of Broadcasting emeritus and Instagram commentator Samuel Edsall (@tvsam1) has imagined some mock dialogs which I copy here and which sum up the latest brilliantly:

Trump – “CNN, MS NOW and Politico are banned. They report FAKE NEWS.”
Media – “Name one story that was fake.”
Trump – “You said I’m threatening to demolish the Kennedy Center.”
Media – “You are.”
Trump – “Oh. Well, you guys say bad things about me.”
Media – “Because you do bad things.”
Trump – “Oh.”
Media – “And you lie all the time.”
Trump – “I never lie.”
Media – “That’s our favorite.” 

The rule of law has never meant anything to Trump, and we can expect all three news organizations to file petitions to block him as soon as the courts open for business. For the record, here are the precedents:

Sherrill v. Knight (1977): The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that once the White House sets up press facilities, it cannot exclude a credentialed journalist without a compelling reason. The court established that excluded reporters must receive explicit factual notice, a chance to respond, and a written explanation (due process).

CNN v. Trump (2018): When the Trump administration revoked CNN correspondent Jim Acosta’s press pass following a contentious news conference, CNN sued. A federal judge ordered the pass restored, ruling that the sudden revocation violated the reporter’s Fifth Amendment due process rights because the administration’s decision-making process was arbitrary and opaque.

Karem v. Trump (2020): The D.C. Circuit upheld a ruling blocking the Trump administration from suspending the press credentials of Playboy correspondent Brian Karem. The court reaffirmed that due process protections apply to White House press badges and that the government must provide fair notice before attempting discipline.

Associated Press v. Budowich (2025): After the administration restricted AP access to the Oval Office over an editorial naming dispute regarding the Gulf of Mexico, a federal court granted a preliminary injunction finding the selective exclusion amounted to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.

Press access to the White House is not the only issue Trump ranted about in the last week. Getting his name on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts remains high on his agenda. Here is another Edsall imagined dialog:

Americans – “Can you do something about inflation?”
Trump – “I want my name on the Kennedy Center.
Americans – “How about gas. Diesel is at a record high.”
Trump – “I want my name on the Kennedy Center.”
Americans – “Do you have any exit strategy on the Iran war?
Trump – “The greatest president in the world, ME, needs his name on the Kennedy Center.”
Americans – “Are you hearing anything we say?”
Trump – “I want my name on the Kennedy Center.” 

Trump is not the only person living in a fantasy world. Vice-President and chief supplicant JD Vance has taken to pursing a fascinating line of reasoning as he campaigns on behalf of Republican candidates in the upcoming midterm election. The most recent NBC News poll shows Trump’s sinking ratings threaten to drag down Republicans as voters blame him for high prices and a shaky economy. Vance doesn’t even try to defend the record. He has been reduced to pleading with voters to give the administration more time to make good its promises.

Edsall again:

JD Vance – “Give us another chance. Give us another couple of years to continue to work on all the amazing things we’ve been doing for the past two years.”
America – “You promised no new wars.”
Vance – “Its an excursion.”
America – “He said on day 1 he would end inflation.”
Vance – “Affordability is a hoax.”
America – “He promised to cut our energy bill by 50%.”
Vance – “He did?”
America – “And interest rates.”
Vance – “He said that?”
America – “And end the Ukraine war.”
Vance – “Never mind.” 

Fiction? Fact? Speculation? These days, what’s the difference?

Update 9-21

As predicted, the three news organizations filed a lawsuit against Trump and others demanding their press access to the White House be restored. They have asked for an emergency temporary restraining order. I have uploaded their complaint here.

The case has been assigned to Judge Timothy Kelley. He handled the 2018 lawsuit CNN v. Trump noted above. He has scheduled a hearing for Sept 23.

One of the blocked networks, CNN, was scheduled to be the “pool” covering Trump today and feeding video to all the pool members. With CNN access denied, the pool decided not to cover Trump today as he travels to New York for a speech tomorrow at the United Nations.

Bryan Boughton, the Washington bureau chief at Fox News and the acting chair of the television pool consortium, wrote in a note to pool members on Monday that the decision to halt TV pool coverage “follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties.” In the note, which was obtained by The New York Times, Boughton wrote that pool coverage of non-presidential events would continue as normal. “We will provide updates as this situation develops,” he wrote.

The New York Times live blog

The five networks that have suspended their pool coverage of President Trump — ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC — just issued a joint statement: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”

Michael Grunbaum, Media Reporter, The New York Times

For the first time in my 30 years of covering the White House, the president will not have a network TV camera covering his everyday official actions and travels.

Peter Baker, Chief White House Reporter, The New York Times

Update 9-24

All three media outlets that President Donald Trump banned from the White House were allowed back in Sept. 24 after US District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee. ruled that the revocation of their credentials probably violated the Constitution.

Judge Kelly had ordered the administration to respond by 12:30 p.m. ET. CNN, MS NOW and Politico announced that their reporters were let back in just after noon, though many of them were initially denied access in the morning. Micah Stopperich, director of White House press operations, submitted a statement to the court that the press credentials were restored Thursday morning and available for retrieval before 10 a.m.

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9-11 at 25

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Empty holes. Water flows into them like fountains into a bottomless pit. Names of the dead engraved in the stone ringing the perimeter. It is quiet, almost serene.

This is where the twin towers stood. Until the morning of September 11, 2001.

It is not quiet at the moment. As I watch the scene on television, the plaza is packed. The grieving are reading the names of the 2,977 people who died that day at the hands of 19 terrorists who commandeered two airplanes and drove them into the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. They also hijacked two other planes and drove them into the Pentagon in Washington, 184 died there, and into a field in Pennsylvania, where 40 died.

On September 11, 2001, I was the Bureau Chief for public television’s Nightly Business Report. Our newsroom and studio were on Trinity Place, two blocks south of Tower #2. I lived on Rector Place in Battery Park City, a community built on land reclaimed from the Hudson River using landfill from the excavation of the Trade Center site. A view of the south side of Tower #2 filled my bedroom window.

Today I regularly teach students who had not yet been born in 2001 or were so young 25 years ago that they have no direct memory of what was the most traumatic day of my life. One third of the people living in the United States today were not here on that day.

I have written about these events several times. I will not do so again now. The memories bring back images that produce nightmares. I talk to someone about that. I’ve also put down my thoughts as well as I will ever be able to and you can, if interested, read them here.

The US stock markets never opened for trading that day. Since market news accounted for half of the content of our broadcast, we canceled our report that night, which allowed the PBS NewsHour, based in Washington, DC, extra time to produce an expanded report. But in midafternoon, before the police ordered us to evacuate our office building, we were able to get a transmission link to DC, and we transmitted the pictures our brave camera crews had recorded of the disaster.

Then we turned on the lights, and I sat down on our set, looking well worn, and described what I had seen in an interview with the NewsHour‘s Ray Suarez. As it turned out, that interview was the last transmission we made from that lower Manhattan location. You can watch the entire NewsHour program here. My interview is at 24:30. Six months later, I filed an expended look back, and look ahead, for Nightly Business Report, which I’ve uploaded here.

The rebuilding which I talked about in that six-month story, did take a very long time. But it did succeed. Lower Manhattan is booming and there is little, save for the memorial at the actual Trade Center site, to remind one of the tragic events of that day. A single new tower, One World Trade Center, is as of this writing the tallest building in North America and the Western Hemisphere. Battery Park City is revitalized and renewed, and in great demand. My wife and I moved to New Jersey in 2002. We lived for twenty years in Montclair. We are now in Princeton.

I still reflect on the events of that day from time to time. Here are several disjointed observations.

There was an amazing sense of unity in the nation following the tragedy. The political parties came together in a unified way pledging to rebuild and reform. As the process proceeded, we lost much of that unified spirit. The use of federal funds to help New York City recover dissolved into the usual partisan battles. Why, some wondered, should the nation have to “bail out” New York City? That question ignores that fact that it was not New York City’s foreign policy that had drawn the ire of the terrorists who perpetrated the attack.

The attack itself has changed in our collective memory. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in an internal memo leaked to the media advised its reporters not to refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as “terrorist attacks” without attribution. This political correctness is absurd.

The 9-11 attack was perpetrated by the Islamic terrorist organization al-Qaeda. The ringleader, Mohamed Atta, flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower. The Central Intelligence Agency informed President George W. Bush that its Counterterrorism Center had identified the attacks as having been the work of al-Qaeda under Osama bin Laden. In 1996 bin Laden issued the first of two fatwās (Arabic: “religious opinions”) declaring a holy war on the United States. His goal was to draw the US into a large-scale war in the Muslim world that would overthrow the existing order and establish a single Islamic state.

Intelligence services from around the world, including Russia, helped the US locate bin Laden. He was in Afghanistan and believed to be in a mountainous area known as Toro Boro. Yet he managed to escape. Bin Laden was finally located in Pakistan in 2011. He was killed there by US Special Forces. Al-Qaeda released a statement publicly acknowledging bin Laden’s death and vowing revenge. They are still out there. We should not forget.

In the wake of the 9-11 attacks, the US received unprecedented support from nations around the world. NATO invoked for the first time and only time to date its Article 5, acknowledging that an attack on one was an attack on all. This is the same NATO Donald Trump consistently ridicules, threatening to leave the alliance.

When the US closed its airspace on 9-11, Canada, in what came to be known as Operation Yellow Ribbon, took in between 225 and 240 flights at 17 airports and cared for passengers. One town, Gander, on the island of Newfoundland, took in 38 planes. Gander at the time had fewer than 10,000 residents. Yet it welcomed more than 6.,500 passengers and crews from around the world. This is what friends do, even if Trump insists on treating the Canadians as an enemy today.

Domestically, it was determined that failures by many in the US intelligence community to share information crippled efforts to detect the threat which led to 9-11. With little objection, lawmakers vastly overhauled the laws, eliminating restrictions on information sharing, creating a new super intelligence bureaucracy, and a Director of National Intelligence.

It also created a new national police agency, the Department of Homeland Security, moving into one department virtually all the federal police agencies in the nation. It also provided for an expansion of federal policing efforts to create a domestic police force which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Federal Emergency Management Agence (FEMA), the US Coast Guard, and the US Secret Service.

DHS employs more than 240,000 people. Its very existence reflects a new culture of anxiety and fear in the nation on which Bin Laden waged war. I would not go so far as some and say he won that war. But while he may be dead and gone, he has had a profound impact on the United States. We are different post 9-11. We are, for good or bad, forever changed.

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