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Donald Trump used a 9/11 memorial event to tell a new lie about being personally rescued from the rubble by firefighters. A Republican senator running for reelection in Kansas built his fortune by suing hundreds of his own patients for medical debts. New York City has released 170,000 pages of records showing city officials knew the air around Ground Zero was toxic and told the public otherwise. And Oklahoma prisoners are being paid two dollars an hour to make political calls for a conservative super PAC.
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Nobody has ever been rescued from the Twin Towers this many years after the fact.
Trump spoke at a Tunnel to Towers Foundation event on Tuesday, held to honor the victims and first responders of September 11 on the 25th anniversary of the attacks. He used his remarks not to pay his respects, but to tell a new lie about his own heroism.
Trump told the crowd that he brought his entire construction crew to Ground Zero immediately after the September 11th attacks. He said they heard a building nearby creak, and that he told everyone around him that it was going to fall down.
Then, he said that two firefighters grabbed him under the arms and started running. He allegedly told them, “Fellas, I could run myself,” but added that they were “amazing.”
Trump has been caught lying multiple times about his involvement in 9/11, including that he sent hundreds of workers to the site, that he helped clear debris, and that he spent time with first responders. There is no evidence to support any of those stories. The detail about firefighters physically carrying him appears to be new, though he did not say when it happened.
What we do have evidence of on the actual day of the attacks, is Trump calling a local television station to brag that his building was officially the tallest in downtown Manhattan.
Sponsored Kalshi poll: When will traffic at the Strait of Hormuz return to normal?
Sen. Roger Marshall believes life begins at conception and debt collection begins at discharge.
The Kansas Republican, an obstetrician-gynecologist, sued more than 700 patients for unpaid medical bills before he entered politics. Eighty-one of those patients were taken into custody. Marshall sometimes had bank accounts garnished, and routinely charged 18 percent annual interest on outstanding balances.
Marshall sued over debts as low as $101. Many of the patients he sued were new mothers in Barton County, a rural area where many residents lived in poverty and lacked health insurance. One woman was sued for a $129 postpartum-visit bill when her baby was nine months old, and eventually had her wages garnished.
Court records show that Marshall regularly sought arrest warrants for unpaid bills. In 2007, a couple named Joe and Cristina Vasquez were arrested in front of their grandchildren over a $4,561 bill for an emergency hysterectomy that had taken place three years earlier.
Marshall has fought to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and once told reporters that some Americans simply don’t want health care. He’s now locked in a heated re-election race against Democrat Adam Hamilton, a pastor. Voters now get to decide which candidate is the actual Christian.
For nearly 25 years, New York City agencies claimed they had no relevant records related to their own investigation into Lower Manhattan’s air quality following the September 11 attacks. On Tuesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani released 170,000 pages proving they did.
The records include contamination data gathered by environmental agencies and communications between officials showing they knew the air around Ground Zero was unsafe to breathe. City leaders privately expressed concern about legal liability even as they publicly assured New Yorkers the air was safe.
One of the documents, sent to then-Deputy Mayor Robert Harding and later called the “Harding Memo,” indicated that city officials anticipated thousands of potential lawsuits from the air exposure. It then outlined legislative options to limit the city’s liability.
The release resolves two Freedom of Information Law lawsuits and binds the city to a year-long process for additional disclosures, with monthly meetings and agreed search terms for millions more documents. Mamdani had earlier earmarked $34 million for the development of a public portal where the records would be published.
There’s a reason they had to find employees who aren’t allowed to leave.
Oklahoma Watch reported that incarcerated workers in four state correctional facilities are being paid $2 an hour to make political calls through a call-center program operated by private contractor HBW Leads.
The company pays the state $10 for every inmate hour worked. The prisoners receive $2, and the remaining $8 goes to Oklahoma Correctional Industries for overhead.
Workers said the calls were not polls, but political attacks. They described reading scripts that went after Democrats and asked voters to support their opponents. Some of the scripts identified Make Liberty Win, a Virginia-based conservative super PAC, as paying for the calls.
Federal Election Commission records show Make Liberty Win paid Visible Trends nearly $600,000 this year for political calling services. HBW Leads spun off Visible Trends as a standalone political calling business, and both companies list the same Ohio address.
Make Liberty Win’s executive director said the organization was not aware prison labor was being used and had already severed ties with the vendor due to poor performance.
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** Senate Control Is Now Up for Grabs Less Than Two Months Before Election Day. **Republicans appeared to have a firm grip on the Senate heading into the midterms, but Democrats have found themselves competing in states that once seemed out of reach. Democrats need to flip four seats for a majority, and their original path ran through Alaska, Maine, North Carolina, and Ohio while defending Michigan, Georgia, and New Hampshire. Since then, that map has expanded to include Texas, where Democrat James Talarico is running against state Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Iowa, where Democrats have upped their spending. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told a South Dakota news outlet last week that he does “worry” about losing the chamber.
Erika Kirk’s Tenure as Turning Point USA Leader Has Become a Liability. Erika Kirk’s leadership of TPUSA has become a laughingstock in the year since her husband, Charlie Kirk, passed away. Kirk’s demand that women submit to male authority and her role as head of a major political organization have created tension that even the right-wing media ecosystem has struggled to take seriously. Kirk told attendees at TPUSA’s Chapter Leadership Summit this year that a wife without a husband is like a broken stained glass window, and then spent the rest of her speech outlining her plans to run the organization.
** New York City Creates First-in-the-Nation Office to Help Workers Organize Unions.** On Labor Day, Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an executive order establishing the Mayor’s Office of Worker Power, which will connect private sector workers with resources and organizations to help them organize. Veteran labor organizer Tony Perlstein, a former longshoreman and United Auto Workers organizer, will lead the office, overseen by Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su, a former acting U.S. Secretary of Labor. The executive order also requires existing city agencies, including the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection and the Taxi and Limousine Commission, to develop procedures to proactively investigate labor violations, meaning they look for violations rather than waiting for workers to file complaints.
South Carolina Aquarium Celebrates Penguin Baby Boom With Seven Chicks This Year. Ripley’s Aquarium of Myrtle Beach announced five African penguin chicks that hatched recently in the Penguin Playhouse, bringing the total for the aquarium to seven this year, which it is calling “the Lucky Seven.” Vic and Chel were the first two chicks to hatch from their shells in May. The other five, born in June and July, are yet unnamed. General manager Courtnie Barnett said the aquarium felt lucky with the first two chicks, but having five more made this an unforgettable year. The African penguin is classified as critically endangered, so the hatchlings are a significant milestone in the species’ conservation.
