Twenty-five years ago, a commercial airliner hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, the first of four attacks on September 11, 2001 that killed nearly 3,000 people and set in motion a series of profoundly world-changing events.
Mourning Americans gathered across the country and at the site of the attacks for a familiar annual ritual: reading the names of the people who were killed at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, and in a field in Pennsylvania.
A ceremony at the site of the Twin Towers began with a tolling bell and a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., the moment the first plane, American Airlines Flight 11, hit the 96th floor of the skyscraper.
More moments of silence followed to recognize the moment a second plane struck the building, when the towers collapsed, when the Pentagon was hit, and when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers fought back against the plane’s hijackers.
All living former presidents — Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — attended the Manhattan ceremony, along with Vice President JD Vance.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose company Cantor Fitzgerald lost 658 of its 960 employees in the attacks, was seen wiping away tears as he visited the memorial pools that sit in the footprints of the former North and South Towers.
Mamdani and Giuliani shake hands
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani shook hands with former Mayor Rudy Giuliani as families, mourners and politicians gathered at the site of the September 11 attacks, 25 years after the devastation.
Mamdani, who was 9 years old and in his fourth grade classroom on the Upper West Side when the World Trade Center was hit, has faced an avalanche of anti-Muslim rhetoric and pleas from right-wing critics, including Giuliani, to avoid this week’s 9/11 ceremonies.
They could be seen briefly chatting and shaking hands before they each parted ways at Friday’s solemn ceremony in lower Manhattan.
The city’s first Muslim mayor has steered this week’s commemorative events to ensure focus remains on the families, victims, first responders and the city’s recovery, and his office released thousands of never-before-seen documents that appeared to reveal that Giuliani’s administration and subsequent mayors knew the dangers of the toxic aftermath despite assuring the public of lower Manhattan’s safety.
Giuliani, once seen as “America’s mayor” in the wake of the attacks, has spent the last several years in courtrooms across the country battling criminal indictments, bankruptcy and a defamation lawsuit surrounding the 2020 presidential election as he became consumed by baseless conspiracy theories.
The 82-year-old former mayor joined pleas from right-wing figures calling on Mamdani to avoid Friday’s memorial. Giuliani has said his presence “offends” him and claimed Mamdani is “disturbing the people who are the most important people at that celebration.”
“He stands in direct support of the movement that killed their children,” Giuliani said last week. “You’d have to be a fool to resist that.”
Families of victims speak out during solemn ceremony
After reading a round of names of victims, one woman whose husband was killed in the attacks delivered an urgent plea to hold Saudi Arabia accountable, marking a rare moment in a service where political speeches are banned.
Terry Strada, who is also the national chair of 9/11 Families United, drew applause from the crowd as she condemned several presidential administrations, including those in front of her, for continuing to work with the country in the years since the attacks.
“It has been one betrayal after another,” she said, calling on Donald Trump’s administration and assembled officials to “stand with survivors, stand with Americans.”
Trump and Hegseth tie 9/11 to war in Iran
Trump, however, did not attend the New York event, purportedly because he was not allowed to deliver remarks.
The president and First Lady Melania Trump joined a ceremony at the Pentagon, where five hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the nation’s defense headquarters, killing all 64 people on board and another 125 people in the building.
In his remarks, Trump told the stories of victims and recalled the “authentic spirit” of the nation in the shadow of the attacks.
“Time has not dimmed the horror of that day when our country came face to face with true evil,” he said.
“In those harrowing days after the attacks, we saw the authentic spirit of our nation,” Trump later said. “We were all New Yorkers that day. Every one of us. We were all New Yorkers. We were all family.”
The president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also repeatedly invoked the war in Iran and sought to connect the administration's monthslong campaign to the War on Terror in 9/11’s aftermath.
Hegseth condemned “Islamist terrorists” and their “dastardly and cowardly acts” in 2001 as he championed the war against “Islamic theocracy.”
“Over the past six months, we have laid waste to the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism,” Hegseth said. “Our warriors have fought an Islamic theocracy that has wished us death for nearly half a century, that cheered on 9/11, a regime that has sponsored terrorist attacks against Americans for decades, killing thousands, including our comrades in Iraq, in Afghanistan.”
He said the U.S. is “still sending terrorists where they belong, to hell, and tankers to the bottom of the ocean, where they belong.”
Moment of silence for victims of 9/11-related illness
For the first time, the ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York held a seventh moment of silence to honor people who died from illnesses related to the attacks.
This week, more than 170,000 pages of newly released records, never before shown to the public, revealed that New York City officials knew of potential dangers from exposure to Ground Zero toxins despite repeated assurances to the public that the air was safe to breathe.
Over the two decades that followed, thousands of first responders and other New Yorkers developed lung disease, neurological illnesses and cancers linked to expansive recovery efforts and their lives in the shadow of the attack, as clouds of chemicals, cement dust, asbestos and other toxic debris lingered in the air and in buildings.
According to the World Trade Center Health Program, more than 9,000 people have died from 9/11-related illnesses, including 600 firefighters — exceeding the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks themselves and the more than 300 firefighters who died in the rescue efforts.
Mourners gather in Pennsylvania
In Shanksville, mourners read the names of the 40 passengers and crew members of Flight 93, on which passengers fought back against four hijackers and forced the plane away from Washington, D.C., averting what was expected to be another devastating attack on the nation’s capital.
The flight nosedived, crashing into a nearby field, putting the small town at the center of national tragedy.
After a ringing bell, a fifth moment of silence was held in Manhattan at 10:03 a.m., marking the time of the crash.
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