P165 - Photo - unknown (CC) - 2001

The World Trade Center Towers Burning

This morning marks twenty-five years since September 11, 2001. Nobody in this room was alive. Everybody in this room lives in the country it made.

Yesterday's bet, settled

You bet on how many miles of barrier it took to seal off West Berlin. Answer: 96 — it wrapped all the way around; only 27 of those miles actually split the city.

The World Trade Center towers, aerial view, March 2001

March 2001, six months before — Wikimedia Commons.

The towers burning, seen from across the East River, September 11, 2001

The morning itself, seen from Brooklyn — Wikimedia Commons.

On the clear morning of September 11, 2001, two hijacked airliners struck the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, and the buildings burned before a stunned nation watching live. Within hours a third plane hit the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back. Nineteen hijackers linked to the terrorist network al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, killed nearly three thousand people in the deadliest attack on American soil. The towers, symbols of American economic power, collapsed entirely, transforming Lower Manhattan into a smoking ruin. The post-Cold-War decade of relative calm ended in a single morning. In response, the United States launched a 'war on terror,' invading Afghanistan within weeks and Iraq two years later, and building a vast new security and surveillance apparatus at home. The trade was specific: within six weeks Congress passed the Patriot Act, expanding the government's power to search records and monitor communications; airport security was federalized under a new agency, the TSA; a Department of Homeland Security was created; suspects were held without trial at Guantánamo Bay; and in 2013 Americans learned the NSA had been collecting their phone records in bulk. You have never boarded a plane, sent a text, or walked past a security camera in the country that existed before. Twenty-five years later, nearly all of it is still in place. It mattered because 9/11 reoriented American foreign policy, national security, and daily life for a generation, and redefined who and what Americans feared.

Make your bet

The Twin Towers looked like permanent fixtures of the skyline, as if they had always been there. Guess how many years the towers had actually stood on the morning of September 11, 2001.

Primary source - read it closely

“The most important failure was one of imagination. We do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat.”

- The 9/11 Commission Report, Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 2004, ch. 11 (public domain U.S. government report). https://9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf

Your turn - work down the ladder

1. Check the reading. According to the reading, what did the United States launch in response to the 9/11 attacks?

2. Read the Commission's line carefully. Notice it names a 'failure of imagination,' not a lack of soldiers or weapons. The Commission names a ‘failure of imagination’ — not a lack of soldiers or weapons. What would it mean for a government to fail at imagination?

3. Go deeper. The reading lists what Americans traded for safety after the attacks — and most of it never went away. Twenty-five years later, was it a good trade? Explain.

Turn it in →

Who shows up: voting and giving by age

Who shows up. Politicians count votes, and they count dollars.

Two questions about age: who votes, and who gives money to campaigns. The answers look the same, and they explain a lot about whose problems get solved.

Who votes

Share of eligible citizens who cast a ballot in the 2024 presidential election, by age.

18–24

48% 25–44

59% 45–64

68% 65+

75%

Fewer than half of 18-to-24-year-olds voted. Three out of four seniors did. In a midterm the gap is wider: in 2022 it was 26% vs. 65%.

Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, November 2024 (rounded). Seniors were the only age group whose turnout rose from 2020.

Who gives

Share of adults who say they donated to a political campaign or candidate, by age.

18–29

9% 30–49

12% 50–64

14% 65+

32%

Seniors are more than three times as likely to write a check as people under 30. And when they give, they give more: most donors under 30 give less than $100.

Pew Research Center, 2016, the most recent probability-based survey to break donation rates out by age. The FEC does not record donor ages, so exact dollars by age can't be counted; the facts below are the closest measures available.

28%

of all 2024 voters were 65 or older, the largest senior share of the electorate ever recorded. Another 33% were 45 to 64. Everyone under 45 combined: 39%.

Census Bureau, P20-590

#1

"Retired" is the single biggest source of campaign money in federal elections, ahead of Wall Street, oil and gas, pharma, and lawyers. In 2024 retirees gave Trump $43 million and Biden $22 million in itemized donations alone.

OpenSecrets, 2023–24 cycle

66

is the average age of the 500 largest individual donors the last time OpenSecrets checked. The most common age was 70. Of 491 whose age could be found, 10 were born after 1975 and none after 1985.

OpenSecrets donor demographics

The question for you

Congress just spent $275 billion on a war and $113 billion on immigration enforcement, and it did not spend $35 billion a year on free public tuition. Look at the two charts. Which age group's phone calls do you think a senator returns first? Whose priorities get funded? And what would the charts have to look like for that to change?

The Iran war, measured in tuition

Scripts are off in this viewer, so the figures below are fixed at the national-average tuition and the middle cost estimate. Open the file in a normal browser to use the calculator.

The Iran war, measured in something you can picture: a year of college.

$275billion

Middle estimate: full military bill plus what households paid in higher prices and interest.

Nobody agrees on what the war costs, so this page lets you choose. Three honest numbers, lowest to highest:

What your college charges for one year $ tuition and fees, in-state public average shown; type in yours

Four years of that, one degree $47,800 what you'd pay start to finish

Degrees the war money could have paid for 5,753,000 $275 billion divided by the cost of one degree

5.75 million students could have a full four years of tuition paid, start to finish, with the money spent on the war.

3.9 million students graduated from American high schools this past spring. That's the entire class of 2026, every state, every school.

Each figure stands for 100,000 students.

The war's price tag would put every senior in the country through four years of public college, with money left over for 1.8 million more.

Or skip the picking and pay for everyone

There are 16.2 million undergraduates in American colleges right now. One year of tuition for all of them, at the price you typed above, comes to $194 billion.

17 months

is how long the war money would cover tuition for every undergraduate in the country. Each block is one month.

Sticker prices, so this overcounts a little: community college tuition is closer to $4,000 and many students already have grants. That's why the free-college programs below cost far less than this.

One day of war, at the Pentagon's $1 billion-a-day wartime rate

84,000

students get a year of tuition. Every day.

One 50-minute class period, at that same rate

2,900

students get a year of tuition. About the enrollment of a small college, while you sat here.

Or, instead of paying students one by one

7.9 years

of tuition-free public college for the whole country. How many years depends on what "free" means. Three versions below.

Three ways to make public college free, and how long $275 billion would run each one

Cover what your grants don'tthe "last-dollar" model $35 billion a year

Government pays only what's left on your tuition bill after your grants (Pell, state aid, scholarships) are used up. If Pell already covers your bill, you get nothing extra.

Who gains most: middle-income families who weren't getting aid. Low-income students see little new money and still owe rent, food, and books. This is how Tennessee Promise works; Mississippi has no statewide version.

7.9 years, 2026 to late 2033

Free tuition, and you keep your grantsthe "first-dollar" model $73 billion a year

Government pays the whole tuition bill first, before any aid is counted. A low-income student keeps their Pell Grant and can spend it on living costs.

Who gains most: everyone gets free tuition, and poor students come out further ahead because their aid isn't cancelled out. Costs about double.

3.8 years, 2026 to late 2029

Free tuition plus room, board, and booksthe "debt-free" model $92 billion a year

Government covers tuition plus the full cost of attending: housing, meals, books, transportation. Nobody has to borrow.

Who gains most: students who would otherwise drop out over living expenses, not tuition. The most expensive version by a wide margin.

3 years, 2026 to late 2028

Bars are drawn on the same scale for every estimate; a full bar is 30 years.

What Americans say they want

The same public that is paying for the war has been asked, in the same year, what it thinks about college costs. Put the answers side by side.

Are four-year colleges doing a good job keeping college affordable?

12% yes24% fair63% poor

Gallup / Lumina Foundation, June 2026. Almost no partisan gap: 14% of Democrats and 5% of Republicans say colleges are affordable.

Who should be responsible for fixing it? (share naming each among the top three)

67% the federal government33% don't name it

24% students and families76% don't name them

Gallup, same survey. Colleges themselves (76%) and state governments (73%) rank even higher. Democrats put Washington on the list at 87%, Republicans at 40%.

Make tuition free at public colleges?

63% favor36% oppose

Pew Research Center, most recent national read. 85% of Democrats, 36% of Republicans, 73% of adults under 30, 51% of those 65 and older.

Support the war in Iran?

37% support8%55% oppose

Silver Bulletin polling average, Aug 26, 2026. Newest single poll (Reuters/Ipsos, Aug 24): 31% support, the lowest of the war. No poll since the first strikes has found majority support.

Roughly two-thirds of Americans say college costs too much, put the federal government on the hook for fixing it, and would make public tuition free. Roughly one-third supports the war. The money went the other way.