Vice President J.D. Vance was expected to attend memorial events at Ground Zero in Manhattan, where the World Trade Center’s twin towers were destroyed. This year’s gathering takes place against a backdrop of sharp political division both in New York City and nationally.
New York is in the midst of an unprecedented mayoral election campaign featuring socialist Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani, former governor Andrew Cuomo, and the sitting mayor, Eric Adams. The election is scheduled for November 4. It is unclear which of the mayoral candidates will attend the ceremony, which is always attended by the sitting mayor and community leaders.
U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked Mamdani, a Muslim and naturalized U.S. citizen, calling him a “communist lunatic,” while one Republican lawmaker has called for the frontrunner’s deportation. Despite these attacks, Mamdani holds a significant lead in recent polling from The New York Times and Siena, with a 22-point advantage.
Mamdani, a naturalized citizen born in Uganda, has spoken about the surge in Islamophobic attacks that followed 9/11, telling The Times that it was a day when many New Yorkers were “marked an ‘other’.” This sentiment is supported by a 2017 Pew Research Center analysis that found assaults against Muslims in the U.S. in 2016 had surpassed the peak reached in 2001. A 2023 report from the Council on American-Islamic Relations also recorded a significant increase in hate crime incidents against Muslims compared to the previous year.
The United States has faced a rash of political violence in recent months, with the killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk following the targeted slaying of a Democratic Minnesota lawmaker and her husband, and the firebombing of a Democratic governor’s residence. According to Reuters, the U.S. has seen over 300 cases of politically motivated violence since the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
New York City will mark a citywide moment of silence at 8:46 a.m. (5:46 p.m. PKT), the time that hijacked Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Places of worship across the city will sound their bells to mark the impact as families of the victims read the names of those killed at ground zero. The official death toll was 2,977, excluding the 19 Al-Qaeda hijackers.
