Remembering the United Flight 93 heroes and more news from the states

Welcome back, readers. After the Labor Day holiday, we are ready to get to work bringing you news from around the country. 

Over the weekend, the Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a preliminary injunction against a U.S. Postal Service rule restricting mail-in voting.

New Hampshire residents go to the polls today in the state’s primary elections. Rhode Island voters will do the same tomorrow. We’ll have full coverage of the results.

And later in the week, we’ll be reporting on August’s Consumer Price Index.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

Missouri: Republican Attorney General Catherine Hanaway’s chief litigator accused the state Supreme Court of adopting “a legal fiction” when it ruled that putting the state’s new congressional map to a referendum means Missouri must use its previous district lines in November.

Alaska: The Trump administration has moved to exempt oil projects in federal territory from environmental reviews that have been standard for decades.

Kentucky: A special education advocate has filed a federal complaint against Warren County Public Schools on behalf of students and parents alleging the district overly refers students with disabilities to a local mental health facility.

Georgia: Medical cannabis dispensaries are now selling the flower form of the drug, but a new state law that took effect this summer has created some confusion over how it can be legally consumed.  

New Mexico: State Democratic elected officials quickly denounced a social media post by President Donald Trump that proposed, visually, changing New Mexico’s name to New America. Trump has, by executive order, renamed Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico to Lake America and the Gulf of America, respectively.

See the rest of the news of the day from all 50 states, plus our D.C. Bureau and Stateline, on News From The States.

On a rural stretch of land in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, an open meadow filled with bright wildflowers, a memorial grove of trees and a giant boulder marks the spot where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001.

States Newsroom’s Pennsylvania Capital-Star Editor-in-Chief Tim Lambert recently revisited the national memorial on this field — where he happened to own a piece of land that was part of more than three dozen acres that made up the crash site, Stateline reports.

“It’s always hard to come back here, but it’s always a chance to remember the sacrifices made by the passengers and crew of Flight 93 on that day,” Lambert said. “I think it’s important 25 years later to remember what they did and why they did it. They decided to act on a day that America was under attack.”

On that day, al-Qaida terrorists hijacked four commercial planes. They slammed two into the World Trade Center towers in New York City and another into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth — Flight 93 — crashed in an open clearing near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

The 40 passengers and crew are remembered for sacrificing their lives when they tried to wrest control of the plane from the hijackers and stop them from hitting what was believed to be their intended target: the U.S. Capitol.

The small, solitary, scrawny, pine tree grew out of an abandoned, rotting wooden train trestle tie in Whitesburg, Kentucky. 

But what it produced helped many people devastated by floods that killed 45 people as the raging waters swept through portions of Eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia and southern West Virginia in the summer of 2022, Kentucky Lantern reports. 

Many homes and parts of some communities were swept away by the deluge.

It was said to be the deadliest natural disaster to hit Eastern Kentucky in more than 80 years — and the unlikely pine tree played a role in easing the hurt.

Roy Crawford, a local engineer and musician, noticed the 4-foot-tall pine tree on a walk in late 2021.

He admired its persistence in living in a hostile environment.

So taken was Crawford that he adorned the tree with a few Christmas balls. He shared a photo of the decorated tree on Facebook with delighted friends. 

He later helped compose and produce a song honoring the tree, which continues to be performed by high school bands and the Louisville Orchestra. Proceeds from sales of the sheet music helped local disaster recovery, including replacing school music instruments lost to the flood.