September 11, 2026 - Never Forget: 25 Years Later, America Still Mourns 9/11

Please don’t miss today’s radio show and special podcast.  More than five hours dedicated to the events of 25 years ago today. 

I will never forget where I was on September 11, 2001. If you're of a certain age, neither will you. For a quarter century I've called it the December 7th of our lives, and I meant it as a measure of scale. This year I hear it as a warning.

Pearl Harbor was also the day that would live in infamy, and it did, for a while. By its 25th anniversary, 1966, the country had moved on to Vietnam. That's what time does. What worries me is how much faster it's happening to us.

Consider the world of 2001. The internet was something you dialed into. The iPhone was six years away. No Facebook, no YouTube, no feed. We watched the same shows and talked about them the next morning at the office, because that's where we went. We were in the same room. That, not some superior virtue, is why the country came together on reflex. If it happened today, we'd be arguing about it by dinnertime.

Then came a quarter century of Iraq, the crash, Trump, COVID, January 6th, Ukraine, October 7th, on a 24-hour cycle that lets nothing stay momentous.

The proof sits a few blocks from Ground Zero. The 9/11 Tribute Museum, founded by the families, tours given by survivors, welcomed five million visitors and gave 500,000 guided tours. Its attendance fell from 500,000 in 2011 to 150,000 in 2019 to 26,000 in 2021. It closed for good in 2022. People stopped coming.

Anyone under 25 was born after the attacks. That's a third of the country. They know 9/11 the way I knew Pearl Harbor - as a chapter, not a day - and they carry demands on their attention that the rest of us never faced at their age. Worse, if we don't restore some common experience, then God forbid there is a repeat of that morning, we will not be able to do what we did in 2001: come together. Never forget was a promise. Keeping it now means showing up.

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An AP-NORC poll marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks finds Americans' sense of unity from that day has faded, with younger adults far less likely than older ones to see the attacks as a defining moment.

Associated Press

Ceremonies at Ground Zero, the Pentagon and Shanksville will mark the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks Friday, with President Donald Trump expected to speak at the Pentagon and four former presidents attending the New York observance, which will add a seventh moment of silence.

PBS

On the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Americans from every generation — from a Marine who survived Iwo Jima to a toddler evacuated from the Pentagon daycare — recount where they were that day and how it reshaped their lives.

USA Today

Former President George W. Bush marked the 25th anniversary of 9/11 by warning that Americans risk forgetting the attacks’ lesson that events overseas can have consequences for U.S. national security and cautioning against isolationism.

CBS News

Investigative journalist Radley Balko argues that the erosion of civil liberties that began after 9/11 has given presidents sweeping powers that are now being used to target dissent and undermine democratic norms.

The New York Times

The TSA is considering scrapping the long-standing 3.4-ounce liquids limit for carry-on bags, a rule that has frustrated travelers at airport security checkpoints for nearly two decades.

Fox News

Author Gerald Posner walks through the most persistent 9/11 conspiracy theories — from jet fuel and steel to the 'dancing Israelis' and Larry Silverstein — and explains why the real unanswered questions involve Saudi officials, not an inside job.

Gerald Posner

A drone show over Lower Manhattan projected 2,977 lights — one for each victim of the Sept. 11 attacks — and briefly recreated the Twin Towers ahead of the 25th anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero.

New York Post

A former federal terrorism prosecutor argues that President Obama's wavering and Congress's fear derailed what should have been a civilian court trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 suspects, denying Americans the public reckoning they deserved.

The Washington Post

Former second-graders at Sarasota's Emma E. Booker Elementary School, where then-President George W. Bush was reading with their class when Chief of Staff Andrew Card whispered that America was under attack, reflect 25 years later on witnessing history firsthand.

ABC News