Mark Englert was a 30-something business consultant from Connecticut living a couple of blocks from the World Trade Center in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001. He had just returned from a jog on that blue-sky morning when the first plane hit.

He heard the explosion, but he had no idea what it was. He raced to his apartment window and all he could see on the street below were people looking up and pointing.

One of the towers was on fire, he heard. Something about an airplane.

Seventeen minutes later, a second plane streaked almost directly overhead and slammed into the other tower. Englert remembers dropping to the floor of his sixth-floor apartment and screaming, “this is crazy, this is just f— crazy!!”

Moments later he was on the roof looking straight up. “That’s when I could start to see people jump,” he said, “people who were too close to the fire.”

Mark and I have been friends for decades. The first time I heard his story was a few hours after the attack. I was a young reporter at the Hartford Courant, about 100 miles north. I had spent the day desperately dialing people I knew in Lower Manhattan. Mark was the first person who picked up.

In the 25 years since, we’ve enjoyed each other’s company dozens of times. Last month, we spent a long weekend hiking and racing 4x4s through the desert near Moab. Over meals and cocktails we discussed all of the normal stuff guys in their late 50s and early 60s talk about — family, friends, when we can possibly retire.

We did not talk about 9/11. It didn’t even cross my mind to bring it up; it hasn’t for years. Then an editor asked me to write this piece, so I called Mark on Wednesday morning. I expected a short conversation about how life moves on.

I was so, so wrong.

A glorious morning turned into a terrifying day

“God, I haven’t talked about this in such a long time,” he said, and then it all came pouring out.

It was “just chaos” in his building, people running everywhere, panicking. Everyone was terrified, nobody knew what to do.

Then he felt an ungodly rumble and the world outside suddenly turned from day to night. “I had my nose pressed to the window, you could not see a thing, it was just pitch black.”

An elderly woman, a retired cookbook editor, lived with her cat across the hall from him. He ran to her apartment. The television was on — that’s how he learned the first tower had just collapsed.

He begged her to come with him. They tied wet towels around their faces to try to keep the dust out. He grabbed her cat, she grabbed a bag full of shoes.

In a desperate race to find breathable air, he tried to hurry her down Rector Place toward the bank of the Hudson River. But she fell behind. He turned to see her standing in the middle of the sidewalk, ash falling all around her like black snow.

“What are you doing,” he shouted, losing patience. “I’m changing my shoes!” she replied.

As they neared the Holocaust Memorial in Battery Park, they bumped into a police officer who was staring back toward the towers. “All of a sudden, the look on his face,” Mark said.

The cop screamed, “RUN!” and Mark glanced back to see the second tower “pancaking to the ground” behind them.

About 100 yards farther south they rounded a corner to see a huge flotilla of fishing boats, sailboats, ferries. It would become the largest seaborne evacuation in U.S. history, rescuing an estimated 500,000 people from Lower Manhattan — more than the British rescued from the shores of Dunkirk at the start of the Second World War.

When he got to New Jersey and a working phone he called his mom to let her know he was alive. But as soon as he heard her voice he couldn’t get any words out, couldn’t make a sound.

Even describing it to me on Wednesday he went silent.

Trauma that sticks

It took the better part of a year for the dust to settle, literally, but he eventually moved back to his apartment in Battery Park City. He stayed there for 21 years. He walked past the 9/11 memorial and museum almost every day, although he never went in.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever go there,” he told me. He also has avoided books and documentaries about the attack. Even hearing it mentioned on the news — which has happened a lot in recent days — puts him on edge.

“When people ask about it, I’m just like, ‘yeah, I lived near there,’” he said, and then trailed off. It’s not that he has moved on, as I had mistakenly assumed; it’s that he can’t forget.

To this day, the sound of a low-flying jet makes him want to dive to the floor.

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A social media post from the Department of Homeland Security targeting a specific group of commercial truck drivers is drawing criticism from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and a Central Valley trucking leader, who says legitimate safety concerns are being used to target an entire community.

The post, which has since been taken down, shows the character Optimus Prime from the “Transformers” franchise facing a man and includes the phrases “America for Americans,” “Self-deport or find out,” and “Get off our roads, you don’t know how to drive, Mr. Singh.”

Raman Dhillon, who has worked in the trucking industry for 30 years and runs the North American Punjabi Trucking Association, said the post uses “Singh,” a common Sikh surname, as a derogatory reference to Sikh truck drivers generally and not to one particular driver.

“That person who follows Sikh religion has the same middle name, Singh. So you’re calling a whole Sikh community that,” Dhillon said.

Newsom’s press office called the post “disgusting.” DHS responded by pointing to Harjinder Singh, a California-licensed commercial truck driver charged after authorities say he made an illegal U-turn on Florida’s Turnpike in August 2025, causing a crash that killed three people. Singh is an Indian national who entered the U.S. illegally in 2018.

DHS told Newsom, “YOU gave him his CDL and then he killed three people.”

Hasbro, which owns the “Transformers” franchise, said in a statement that it did not give the DHS permission to use the character of Optimus Prime.

“Optimus Prime is a beloved character who represents humility, leadership, compassion and justice. Hasbro is aware of the recent posts using his likeness. These posts were done without permission and do not represent the Transformers brand or Hasbro,” Hasbro said.

Dhillon said he supports removing unsafe drivers from the road but believes both state and federal agencies should also answer for how unqualified drivers were able to obtain licenses and work authorization.

“We are not against compliance. We are not against safety, but a safety measurement of safety should not be some last name. Should not be a community,” Dhillon said.

The controversy comes amid a broader federal crackdown on the commercial trucking industry. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration recently removed 110 CDL training providers from its registry after linking them to more than 5,000 drivers who failed English-language proficiency tests.  In July, nearly 400 investigations across 40 states found violations including unlicensed instructors, inadequate training space and missing records, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Dhillon also questioned why drivers are being criticized for limited English proficiency when California has offered portions of its CDL testing in languages other than English.

“Why is the State of California giving the CDL exam in five different languages then?” Dhillon said.

He said the focus should be on fixing the systems that allowed unqualified drivers onto the road rather than blaming a broader group.

“Who gave them a license? That’s a government. That’s a DMV. That’s state,” Dhillon said. “Who gave them a work permit? It’s the federal government.”

Dhillon said he is concerned the rhetoric could also fuel hostility toward Sikh truck drivers, saying drivers are already reporting troubling comments online and at loading docks.

CBS News Sacramento reached out to the DHS for additional comment on the matter. In a statement, a DHS spokesperson called CBS’ coverage of the backlash “nonsensical drivel” and labeled the overall response to the post “faux outrage.”

“Freedom from illegal alien crime is the right of all Americans,” the spokesperson added.

The longshot California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton pledged this week to abolish the state’s department of motor vehicles if he is elected, promising to shutter the oft-criticized department for good and set a flat $73 annual registration fee per car.

Hilton, a Trump-backed former conservative pundit running in reliably blue California, called the state’s DMV a “bloated bureaucracy”, during a Tuesday campaign event, echoing the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the federal workforce.

“The plan for buildings like this is to turn them into something that’s actually useful for California,” he said, standing in front of the DMV in West Hollywood. “We’re going to turn DMV offices into after-school clubs.”

A California DMV spokesperson declined to comment on Hilton’s remarks.

For many US motorists, updating their license at the DMV can be a herculean feat with lengthy wait times. And vehicle registration fees, which California motorists must pay annually, are steep: typically several hundred dollars a year.

However, it is unlikely the state’s DMV could be abolished. The California legislature, in which Democrats hold a supermajority in both the state assembly and senate, would need to pass Hilton’s proposed legislation.

Hilton also faces an uphill battle in the gubernatorial race. A Republican has not been elected to a statewide position in 20 years, and Hilton is trailing well behind his Democratic rival, Xavier Becerra, in recent polls.

In a news release expanding on the idea, Hilton took aim at the cost of running the state’s offices – the legislature allocated $1.46bn to the DMV for the 2025-2026 fiscal year – and the fees drivers pay for services at the DMV.

He proposed transferring some functions of the DMV online and punting routine car title and plate transactions to local county offices.

Becerra’s campaign, meanwhile, suggested his proposal would risk driver safety.

“Nothing says ‘safer roads’ like outsourcing driver safety checks to the lowest bidder,” spokesperson Jonathan Underland said in a statement.