View this email in your browser ([link removed])

Dear Progressive Reader,

Friday marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the terror attacks on the two World Trade Center buildings in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. (a fourth plane never reached its target which was also expected to have been in the Capital city). Two different ceremonies were held in New York and Washington—the New York event attended by all living former U.S. Presidents, and the event in D.C. attended by President Donald Trump, designated war secretary Pete Hegseth and Condoleeza Rice, former national security advisor and later Secretary of State under George W. Bush. (Rice also briefly had a ship named after her ([link removed]) by Chevron—a goal that Trump also hopes to achieve ([link removed]) , and outdo ([link removed]) .)

The lessons of September 11 that seem to have been lost, or drowned out in this year’s commemorations, are the lessons of unity and compassion. In response to the terror attacks, almost the entire world lined up behind the United States in its time of tragedy. It was, in fact, the first and only ([link removed]) time that Article 5 ([link removed]) of the NATO charter was ever invoked—to support ([link removed]) the United States when it had been attacked. And yet that spirit of common purpose and support has been totally squandered in the two-and-a-half decades that followed—from the 2003 war on Iraq ([link removed]) , to this year’s illegal ([link removed]) attacks
([link removed]) on Iran. In our own country, the growing political divisions ([link removed]) , anti-immigrant rhetoric ([link removed]) , and increased surveillance ([link removed]) of everyday Americans can all be traced back to the weeks and months that followed from the U.S. responses to the September 11 attacks.

What has also received nowhere near the attention it deserves, is the health effects on New Yorkers exposed to the toxic residue of the collapse of the two towers. This past week, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani released ([link removed]) 170,000 pages of documents that had been kept from public view, and allocated funds ([link removed]) to determine what city officials knew regarding the hazards and when they knew it. Journalist Juan González covered these issues in the New York Daily News from the very beginning, and his 2002 book Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse ([link removed]) was the first book to cover ([link removed])
these issues, and he continues to cover them today, as he told ([link removed]) Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! on Tuesday. On Friday, I hosted a program ([link removed]) on WORT-FM in Madison, Wisconsin, that looked back on some of the radio coverage I helped coordinate in 2001, and yesterday on the website of The Progressive, we published ([link removed]) a reminiscence written by Palestinian writer Nael Hijjo, of his memories of that day as a young child living in a refugee camp in Gaza.

This week also marked an unusual midterm Republican convention ([link removed]) (more like a pep rally) in Dallas, Texas, that featured two speeches by President Trump, who, although not named on any ballot in this election, wants Republican voters to believe he is indeed the candidate they are voting for when they go to the polls. In his opening speech, on the first night of the two-day event, Trump promised ([link removed]) to give every U.S. adult $5,000 if the Republicans win both the House and the Senate in November. On the second night, he went farther, urging people ([link removed]) to vote even if they are not registered and to “cheat like hell” in order to win. I was immediately reminded of the very prescient 1974 song ([link removed]) by folk musician
and organizer Si Kahn titled “Talking Politician” which includes the line, “you don’t need to know where I stand, just vote for me as many times as you can.”

Trump also told attendees ([link removed]) that if they did not vote in November, they would “go to hell”—which NPR’s Ron Elving rightly points out ([link removed]) might require an additional expansion of presidential powers. All of these exhortations, from the man who once said ([link removed]) he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes, are pretty clearly outside the norms of electoral conduct, but that has never stopped Trump. One thing that might stop him though would be a massive shift in Congressional seats, which could quickly result in impeachment hearings
([link removed]) and other oversight actions ([link removed]) by committee-controlling Democrats in the House and Senate. November 3 will be the test of that theory.

This week on our website, Tamara Davison brings news from Lebanon ([link removed]) as the current war by Israel on that country passes the sixth-month mark; Huda Skaik reports from Gaza ([link removed]) on how that region’s agriculture has been disrupted by nearly three years of war and occupation; Jacob Goodwin writes ([link removed]) for our Public Schools Advocate project on the “new federal school voucher program that is ripe for profiteering and discrimination.” Plus Marc Rosenthal and Julie Derwinski pen an op-ed ([link removed]) on the urgent need to respond to the ever-growing threats from artificial intelligence.

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher

P.S. – If you like this newsletter, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you know someone who would like to subscribe to this free weekly email, please share this link: [link removed].

P.P.S. – The NEW August/September 2026 issue is out and should be in the mail soon. If you don’t already subscribe to The Progressive in print or digital form, please consider doing so today ([link removed]) . Also, if you have a friend or relative who you feel should hear from the many voices for progressive change within our pages, please consider giving a gift subscription ([link removed]) .

P.P.P.S. – Thank you so much to everyone who has already donated to support The Progressive! We need you now more than ever. If you have not done so already, please take a moment to support hard-hitting, independent reporting on issues that matter to you. Your donation today will keep us on solid ground and will help us continue to grow in the coming years. You can use the wallet envelope in the current issue of the magazine, or click on the “Donate” button below to join your fellow progressives in sustaining The Progressive as a voice for peace, social justice, and the common good.
Donate ([link removed])

============================================================
** Twitter ([link removed])
** Facebook ([link removed])
** Website ([link removed])
Copyright © 2026 The Progressive, Inc.

P.O. Box 1021 • Madison, Wisconsin 53701 • (608) 257-4626

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can ** update your preferences ([link removed])
or ** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])