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Emma Raducanu, an unseed-ed British player, won the U.S.Open in straight sets. Page 36.

A Teen Champion

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DAN BARRY We’re told, “Never Forget.” But remembering is not as easy as it sounds.LIVING WITH 9/11 Survivors who were exposed to toxic dust continue to get sick and die.GROUND ZERO RISES Michael Kimmelman on the missed, and the hidden, opportunities.

THEN THE WAR Veterans who fought in Afghanistan try to explain their mission.

A SPECIAL SECTION

Reflecting on 20 Years of Remembrance and Rebuilding

TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES

On Saturday morning, somber ceremonies were held at the three locationswhere the hijacked airplanes crashed on Sept. 11, 2001. Page 30

PETE MAROVICH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

STEFANI REYNOLDS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

LOWER MANHATTAN

NEAR SHANKSVILLE, PA.

THE PENTAGON

BOSTON — Virginia Bucking-ham remembers the momentwhen she realized that she hadbeen singled out. She had stoppedat Dunkin’ Donuts on her way intoLogan International Airport,which she oversaw as the top offi-cial at the Massachusetts Port Au-thority. As she stood in line, a manbehind her whispered to hisfriend, “That’s her.”

The week before, terrorists hadboarded two jets at Logan, hi-jacked them, and flew them intothe Twin Towers. The city’s news-papers had plunged into reportingon the airport’s security record,and into her, a political appointee.But no one had been fired yet, andthe columnists were getting antsy.

“When do the heads start to rollat Massport?” wrote Howie Carrat The Boston Herald. “It’s beenover a week now, and Ginny Buck-

ingham still isn’t a stay-at-homemom.”

Over at The Boston Globe, JoanVennochi chided the governor fordragging her feet. “Somewhere inAfghanistan,” she wrote, “Osamabin Laden is laughing at what pas-ses for leadership in Massachu-setts.”

While New York and Washing-ton were cleaning up disastersites, Boston was struggling witha horrible truth: Its airport had

served as the launching pad forthe two planes that destroyed theWorld Trade Center.

Boston was not physically dam-aged on Sept. 11. But it was dam-aged. The hijacked planes werefull of its people. I was a reporterat The Globe, and I spent part ofthat day at a hotel bar near LoganAirport, where American Airlinesflight attendants were sobbing soopenly that a bartender climbed

After 9/11, Boston Sought Someone to Fault. It Settled on Her.By ELLEN BARRY

Continued on Page 28

When Crisann Holmes’s em-ployer announced last month thatit would require all employees tobe vaccinated against Covid-19 byNov. 1, she knew she had to find away out.

She signed a petition to ask thecompany to relax its mandate. Shejoined an informal protest, skip-ping work with other dissentingemployees at the mental healthcare system where she hasworked for two years. And shetried a solution that many acrossthe country are now exploring: areligious exemption.

“My freedom and my children’sfreedom and children’s children’sfreedom are at stake,” said Ms.Holmes, who lives in Indiana. InAugust, she submitted an exemp-tion request she wrote herself, bol-stered by her own Bible study andlanguage from sources online.Some vaccines were developedusing fetal cell lines from abortedfetuses, she wrote, citing a remoteconnection to a practice she findsabhorrent. She quoted a passagefrom the New Testament: “Let uspurify ourselves from everythingthat contaminates body and spir-it.”

Major religious traditions, de-nominations and institutions areessentially unanimous in theirsupport of the vaccines againstCovid-19. But as more employersacross the country begin requir-ing Covid vaccinations for work-ers, they are butting up againstthe nation’s sizable population ofvaccine holdouts who nonethelesssee their resistance in religiousterms — or at least see an oppor-tunity. Vaccine-resistant workersare sharing tips online for re-questing exemptions to the re-

Shot MandatesDrive HoldoutsTo Cite Religion

By RUTH GRAHAM

Continued on Page 22

SACRAMENTO — As the cam-paign to oust him heads into its fi-nal weekend, Gov. Gavin Newsomof California is hammering homethe choice he has presented to vot-ers since the start of the recall —Donald J. Trump or him.

“We defeated Trump last year,and thank you, but we haven’t de-feated Trumpism,” the governorhas repeated for the past twoweeks in a blitz of campaign stopsand Zoom calls. From vaccine re-sistance to climate denial, he says,everything that terrified Califor-nia liberals about the last presi-dent is on the ballot. And far morethan his own personal futurehangs in the balance: “This is amatter of life and death.”

His opponents dispute that. Thegovernor, they say, is the problem,and the recall never would havecome to an election had a criticalmass of the state not resented his

Me or ‘Trump’:Newsom’s CryIn Recall Fight

By SHAWN HUBLER

Continued on Page 16

The handwritten doctor’s orderwas just eight words long, but itsolved a problem for DundeeManor, a nursing home in ruralSouth Carolina struggling to han-dle a new resident with severe de-mentia.

David Blakeney, 63, was rest-less and agitated. The home’s doc-tor wanted him on an antipsychot-ic medication called Haldol, a pow-erful sedative.

“Add Dx of schizophrenia foruse of Haldol,” read the doctor’sorder, using the medical short-hand for “diagnosis.”

But there was no evidence thatMr. Blakeney actually hadschizophrenia.

Antipsychotic drugs — whichfor decades have faced criticismas “chemical straitjackets” — aredangerous for older people withdementia, nearly doubling theirchance of death from heart prob-lems, infections, falls and otherailments. But understaffed nurs-ing homes have often used thesedatives so they don’t have tohire more staff to handle resi-dents.

The risks to patients treatedwith antipsychotics are so highthat nursing homes must report tothe government how many oftheir residents are on these potentmedications. But there is an im-

portant caveat: The governmentdoesn’t publicly divulge the use ofantipsychotics given to residentswith schizophrenia or two otherconditions.

With the doctor’s new diagno-sis, Mr. Blakeney’s antipsychoticprescription disappeared fromDundee Manor’s public record.

Eight months following his ad-mission with a long list of ailments— and after round-the-clock seda-tion, devastating weight loss,pneumonia and severe bedsoresthat required one of his feet to beamputated — Mr. Blakeney wasdead.

A New York Times investiga-tion found a similar pattern ofquestionable diagnoses nation-wide. The result: The governmentand the industry are obscuringthe true rate of antipsychotic druguse on vulnerable residents.

The share of residents with aschizophrenia diagnosis hassoared 70 percent since 2012, ac-cording to an analysis of Medicaredata. That was the year the fed-eral government, concerned withthe overuse of antipsychoticdrugs, began publicly disclosingsuch prescriptions by individualnursing homes.

Today, one in nine residents hasreceived a schizophrenia diagno-sis. In the general population, thedisorder, which has strong geneticroots, afflicts roughly one in 150

False Diagnoses ConcealDrugging of Frail Seniors

1 in 5 at Nursing Homes Get Antipsychotics,Far More Than Publicly Reported

This article is by Katie Thomas,Robert Gebeloff and Jessica Silver-Greenberg.

Continued on Page 26

Jonathan F. Mitchell grew in-creasingly dismayed as he readthe Supreme Court’s decision inJune 2016 striking down majorportions of a Texas anti-abortionbill he had helped write.

Not only had the court guttedthe legislation, which Mr. Mitchellhad quietly worked on a few yearsearlier as the Texas state govern-ment’s top appeals court lawyer,but it also had called out his at-tempt to structure the law in a waythat would prevent judicial actionto block it, essentially saying: nicetry.

“We reject Texas’ invitation topave the way for legislatures toimmunize their statutes” from ageneral review of their constitu-tionality, Justice Stephen G.Breyer wrote in the majority’sopinion.

For Mr. Mitchell, a onetimeclerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, thedecision was a stinging rebuke,and he vowed that if he ever hadthe chance to help develop an-other anti-abortion law, he wouldensure it survived at the SupremeCourt.

Last month, he got his chance.With its ideological balance recastby President Donald J. Trump, thecourt refrained from blocking anew law in Texas that all but bansabortion — a potential turningpoint in the long-running fightover the procedure. And it was thedeeply religious Mr. Mitchell, arelative unknown outside of Texasin the anti-abortion movementand the conservative legal estab-lishment, who was the conceptualforce behind the legislation.

The court’s decision did not ad-dress the law’s constitutionality,and the legislation will no doubtface more substantive challenges.But already, the audacious legisla-tive structure that Mr. Mitchellhad conceived of — built arounddeputizing ordinary citizens to en-force it rather than the state — hasflummoxed lower courts and sentthe Biden administration andother supporters of abortionrights scrambling for some way tostop it.

“Jonathan could have given up,but instead it galvanized him anddirectly led to the more radicalconcepts we see” in the new Texaslaw, said Adam Mortara, a conser-vative legal activist who is one ofMr. Mitchell’s closest friends.

Mr. Mitchell represents a newiteration of the anti-abortion cam-paign. Instead of focusing onstacking the courts with anti-abortion judges, trying to changepublic opinion or pass largelysymbolic bills in state legisla-tures, Mr. Mitchell has spent thelast seven years honing a largelybelow-the-radar strategy of writ-ing laws deliberately devised tomake it much more difficult for thejudicial system — particularly theSupreme Court — to thwart them,according to interviews.

Texas LawyerQuietly Forged

Abortion Law

7 Years Spent HoningUnorthodox Strategy

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

Continued on Page 18

After vowing to respect press freedoms,the new government is already showingsigns of repression. Some journalistshave even been assaulted. PAGE 12

INTERNATIONAL 4-12

Taliban Muzzle Afghan MediaIn a tiny town on the Rio Grande, resi-dents whose roots there predate Texasitself are still fighting the Trump wall,even under a new president. PAGE 14

NATIONAL 14-32

‘The Border Crossed Us’Corporate America has pledged to fightracism. But an experiment starteddecades ago in Rochester, N.Y., showsthat promise is difficult to fulfill. PAGE 1

SUNDAY BUSINESS

A ‘Black Capitalism’ Test Case Maureen Dowd PAGE 9

SUNDAY REVIEW

With the league offering its first fullslate of games on Sunday, EmmanuelMorgan looks at the matchups (but betat your own risk). PAGE 37

SPORTS 36-39

The N.F.L. Is in Full Swing

Late Edition

VOL. CLXX . . . No. 59,179 © 2021 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2021

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Today, partly cloudy, warmer, morehumid, breezy, high 85. Tonight,partly cloudy, mild, low 72. Tomor-row, partly sunny, warm, humid,high 85. Weather map, Page 31.

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