☕️ 25 years later

• Markets: Stocks did not choose yesterday to make an inspiring turnaround, falling for the fourth day in a row as oil prices rose above $105 a barrel. Wholesale inflation data aligned with expectations, but that wasn’t enough to reassure investors. Chipmakers like Intel and Micron were among the stocks that slid.

Remembering

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Today is the 25th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attacks in history, which took the lives of nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001. Commemorative events are taking place across the country to honor the victims, as the nation reflects on the tragedy that transformed American society, politics, and national security.

President Trump will participate in a ceremony at the Pentagon, Vice President Vance will attend a memorial event at ground zero in NYC, and other administration officials will pay tribute to United Airlines Flight 93 victims in Shanksville, PA.

For the first time…the 9/11 Memorial & Museum at ground zero will add a moment of silence for those who succumbed to illnesses caused by toxins in the rubble from the Twin Towers, who outnumber those who died on 9/11. Earlier this week, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani released 170,000 pages of documents suggesting that city officials knew that the air around ground zero was toxic following the attacks, while telling the public it was safe to breathe.

Healing wounds

Lower Manhattan has come a long way since Robert De Niro co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival in 2001 to aid its economic recovery. The city area that suffered the greatest devastation now has about three times the population and almost the same number of workers as it did on 9/11.

The World Trade Center underwent a $20 billion reconstruction. The area now contains the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, a gleaming mall and performing arts center, updated public transit options, and several office towers housing companies like Spotify and Condé Nast.

Some post-9/11 practices are receding. This week, the TSA began allowing some non-passengers to access airport boarding gates, which was common before the 9/11 attacks transformed flight security.

As time passes…almost a third of Americans were born after 9/11, giving historical social media accounts, city initiatives, novels, and poignant eyewitness accounts a greater role in remembrance.—SK

      

World

Tour de headlines

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🏠 Mortgage rates are up, and home sales are down. August was a hot month…but not for home sales: Sales of existing homes fell 2% from July to their lowest rate since June 2025, the National Association of Realtors said yesterday. And the pressures on the housing market don’t look like they’re going away any time soon. Yesterday, the average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage rose above 7% for the first time since last May, Mortgage News Daily reported. Mortgage rates tend to track the 10-year Treasury bond yield, and those have been soaring lately amid concerns about inflation, oil prices, and government debt.

💻 Anthropic claims Moonshot and DeepSeek passed off Claude’s answers as their own. The company said in a report published yesterday that the Chinese AI firms routed thousands of user requests to its models to gain an edge in the AI race. It’s not the first time that a US company has accused the cheaper Chinese models of being built using distillation, a process in which a more powerful AI model is used to train a less powerful one. But the report shared new details and accused Moonshot AI and DeepSeek of using intermediate services to access Claude models. In case you were planning to sleep tonight: Anthropic also said in the report that it had blocked efforts to use Claude for research on creating biological weapons.

📺 Jimmy Kimmel won’t air politician interview on TV amid FCC feud. The late-night host said he wouldn’t be showing the interview he conducted with James Talarico, a Democratic Senate candidate in Texas, on his television show, but will instead release it on YouTube. That puts it outside the Federal Communications Commission’s regulatory reach, and Kimmel said the FCC had “threatened” his show and the network over “guest bookings it would seem they don’t like.” The agency didn’t immediately comment, and Kimmel didn’t specify the threats, but in January the FCC reversed its stance that talk shows did not need to abide by the equal time rule for candidates. Kimmel has previously tangled with the Trump administration over jokes, and his network, ABC, recently sued the FCC on First Amendment grounds.—AR

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spending money

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This week, President Trump promised the GOP midterm convention crowd and every American adult $5,000 if Republicans win control of both the House and Senate in November’s election.

But…lawmakers and economists from both parties quickly jumped in to flag the achievability (dubious), legality (ehhhh), and the potential economic ramifications of these “Trump Dividends”—especially since the US is already juggling $40 trillion in debt. The plan raised worries that sending checks would push up inflation as the Covid stimulus did.

It also got people asking how the US could pay the nearly $1.2 trillion it would cost to send everyone $5,000. Vice President JD Vance said the government would use tariff money to cover it; however:

• Import duties only brought in $300 billion from January 2025 through July 2026.
• And $166 billion of that was earmarked to refund companies after SCOTUS nixed most of Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

So, is this legal? It depends on whom you ask. Critics say it violates federal law’s prohibition on making a payment either to induce voting or to vote for or against specific candidates. Others say it’s a permissible campaign promise.

Looking ahead…for this to happen, Congress would have to approve it, and the bipartisan backlash means it’s not clear that enough lawmakers would support it.—MM

      

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A RICH TAPESTRY

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The Bayeux Tapestry—no, it’s not a Joe Burrow football jersey from his LSU days—was returned to England from France and put on display at the British Museum in London for the first time yesterday, after spending nearly 1,000 years in Normandy.

The 230-foot-long embroidered cloth depicts the Norman conquest of England in 1066. It has 58 scenes from the skirmish, and is just slightly more valuable than something similar on Etsy:

• While considered priceless, the loan is covered by a $1.1 billion insurance policy.
• It’s the most expensive exhibition in British Museum history, with transportation costs alone running $1.6 million.

The tapestry will be on display until July, but good luck getting in—it’s sold out through the end of the year. Tickets are £33 ($45) for adults and £25 ($34) for students. The museum sold 80,000 tickets in the first tranche this summer and is hoping the tapestry will attract 1 million visitors.

Critics decry damage: Maybe there was a reason to not move the centuries-old cloth. One of the tapestry’s conservators told the New York Times that her team discovered two small breaks among the threads. A French expert said that while the damage was minor, it was an “unacceptable” risk to move it to Britain at all.—DL

      

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DAVE’S SPORTS DESK

LeBron goes from DraftKings to Polymarket

Polymarket

On Fridays, the Brew’s Dave Lozo looks at a sports business story that says a lot more than just the final score of a game.

Philadelphia 76ers star LeBron James (that looks weird, right?) has partnered with Polymarket, the platform that lets you bet on sports without technically betting on sports.

That partnership has borne a commercial featuring James and a slew of other sports stars seemingly in need of a paycheck despite immense career earnings. For James, the move to Polymarket comes as his deal with DraftKings expires. And, just like his partnership with the sportsbook, the new campaign will focus primarily on football to avoid any NBA conflicts, which means brace yourself for months of these ads during NFL games.

More to come? Front Office Sports reports the NBA will likely join other sports leagues and announce its own partnership with a prediction market company next month. Meanwhile, some states have sued over whether prediction markets must follow their gambling laws (the companies claim they’re federally regulated), and the Supreme Court may be poised to rule on the topic, although that may not come until next summer.—DL

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Friday news quiz

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s Weekly News Quiz has been compared to opening your old combination lock after systematically trying all 999 other possible sequences.

It’s that satisfying. Ace the quiz.

News

What else is brewing

• Iran-backed Houthi rebels took over the port city of Mokha in Yemen, threatening an area important for shipping through the Red Sea and raising fears that Yemen could be returning to civil war.
• President Trump asked his audience in his final speech at the GOP midterm convention to raise their right hands and repeat a voting pledge he led, which said in part, “I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try to cheat like hell like they do.”
• The Supreme Court rejected a Missouri election map favoring Republicans, leaving the state poised to use its old map in the midterm elections.
• Oracle reported a nearly 30% year-over-year revenue jump for the last quarter, sending its stock up in after-hours trading.
• Elon Musk’s Boring Co. raised new funds at a $23 billion valuation.
• Ryanair’s CEO denied that a passenger was sucked out of a window.
• Princess Diana’s “revenge dress” is going up for auction.

recs

• This map shows you which US states are the happiest.
• A game that lets you be the asteroid, not the ship.
• Apple recipes for when you can’t take any more pumpkin spice.
• A book that gives a fascinating inside look at the grueling lives of pro tennis stars.**

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Play

Decipher: This edition of our code-cracking puzzle asks you to unscramble a quote from a famous movie adaptation. Play Decipher here.

Friday puzzle

Which of the following cities is the odd one out?

Amsterdam

Casablanca

Melbourne

Miami

Toronto

Answer

Melbourne. All the others end with the same two letters they start with.

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: tranche, meaning “part, slice, or portion of a larger whole.” Thanks to Marisa from Santa Fe, NM, for an entirely good suggestion. Submit another Word of the Day here.