9/11, Vaccine mandates, California recall: Your Weekend Briefing

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Here are the week’s top stories, and a look ahead.

1. The nation paused to remember the Sept. 11 attacks.

On a brilliant, cloudless late-summer morning eerily reminiscent of the one two decades before, a memorial ceremony for those who died on Sept. 11, 2001, was underway at ground zero in Manhattan. The ceremony consisted mostly of the reading of the names, recited by relatives of the dead. Bruce Springsteen, strumming an acoustic guitar, performed “I’ll See You in My Dreams.” See updates from throughout the day here.

President Biden was in attendance with the first lady, Jill Biden, as were Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Barack and Michelle Obama. Donald Trump did not attend. He visited a police station near Trump Tower, where he delivered campaign-style remarks. Biden and former President George W. Bush spoke at the United Flight 93 memorial near Shanksville, Pa.

Late Saturday, the Biden administration released a 16-page document about connections the F.B.I. examined between the hijackers and the Saudi government. The document contained no major revelations about whether the kingdom played a role in the attacks.

Abroad, the war on terror grinds on, largely in the shadows and out of the headlines. In Kabul, several hundred women held a pro-Taliban demonstration, many wearing full-length burqas, a sharp rebuke of the U.S. and its allies.

2. Agencies that required Covid-19 vaccines before President Biden’s push have seen early success.

Since the Pentagon announced last month that active-duty military personnel would be required to be vaccinated, the percentage of military personnel who have had at least one shot has risen to 83 percent from 76 percent. No service members have taken legal action against the mandate.

Working in Newsom’s favor is his coronavirus pandemic response. California — which was quick to mandate masks in schools and require health workers to be vaccinated — has seen less drastic increases of cases than many Republican-led states during the Delta surge.

4. As Democrats push a $3.5 trillion social policy and climate bill, a top lawmaker is mum on how to pay for it.

Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts is the top tax writer in the House and on the brink of leading his party in advancing a $3.5 trillion spending package that is at the core of President Biden’s economic agenda.

But he routinely brushes off questions about his support for the kind of tax increases that Biden and other party leaders have proposed — leaving some liberal Democrats worried that one of their own leaders could thwart the scope of their economic ambitions.

Businesses are divided on precisely how to respond to the emerging social policy bill. But they are united in their defense of Trump-era tax cuts.

5. Phony diagnoses are hiding high rates of drugging at nursing homes.

The risks to patients treated with antipsychotics — which understaffed nursing homes have often used as…