New York City Mayor, Democrat Zohran Mamdani, and Rudy Giuliani are at odds ahead of the 25th anniversary commemoration ceremony of the September 11, 2021 terrorist attacks, which will take place on Friday. This follows the Republican official who led the city at the time of the Al Qaeda attacks belittling Mamdani for his Muslim religion and saying he should skip the ceremony.
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In an interview over the weekend with right-wing media outlet Newsmax, Giuliani said that “having lost friends there and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he comes.”
Giuliani was mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He unsuccessfully ran for president and, more recently, has been a lawyer and a staunch ally of Donald Trump.
After the 9/11 attacks, Giuliani was widely praised and considered a unifying figure for his stoic response to the attacks.
For his part, Mamdani confirmed on Monday that he would attend the main ceremony and also several 9/11 memorial events on Friday, to show solidarity with the families of the deceased and emergency services, as he did last year before taking office.
“I am proud to be the mayor of this city. I love this city. I love this country,” he said. “This week I want to focus on the families who lost their loved ones 25 years ago in the horrible September 11 terrorist attack, and also on the first responders who did everything they could,” he added.
The attacks were carried out by terrorists belonging to Al Qaeda, who crashed hijacked passenger planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001.
Two pools with waterfalls built on the foundations of the towers and a 9/11 museum located underground now mark the site that was named Ground Zero after the attacks, where every year survivors and their loved ones read the names of nearly 3,000 people who died, in a solemn ceremony attended by national and local leaders.
In the interview with Newsmax, Giuliani was asked if Mamdani should skip the ceremony. “Well, there’s no doubt he should,” he replied.
Additionally, Giuliani insulted and made baseless comparisons. He drew parallels between Mamdani’s faith and the 9/11 hijackers who acted under the extremist orders of Osama bin Laden, the jihadist militant and terrorist leader killed by U.S. forces during the Obama administration.
He commented that the terrorists brought their ideological opposition to the United States “in the name of the Muslim religion” and “did not hide it like Mamdani tries to do.” He also expressed his opinion that the mayor supports the idea that Islam should be the dominant religion.
In an interview with The New York Times, Mamdani had already spoken about how the Islamophobic reaction that arose after the 2001 attacks made anti-Muslim prejudice a daily reality for American Muslims. “It was that terrible day that, for many New Yorkers, marked the moment they were stigmatized as ‘different’,” he said last year.
Last week, Mamdani issued an executive order designating 9/11 as an official annual “Day of Remembrance and Service,” which requires the city administration to observe a minute of silence in memory of the victims and those affected by the attacks. A second order established a new task force to strengthen the city’s emergency preparedness.
The New York Times recalled that Giuliani was two blocks from the first tower when it collapsed, and his head and shoulders were covered in ash from the disaster as he joined the crowd fleeing north through Lower Manhattan.
Meanwhile, Mamdani was 9 years old and in class at his elementary school on the Upper West Side when the attacks occurred. He has spoken of the attacks as an experience that deeply marked his childhood.
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Other prominent figures, such as former New York Governor George Pataki, have expressed opposition to Mamdani’s attendance at the ceremony. A petition started by 9/11 victims’ families to prevent the mayor from attending the annual ceremony has gathered nearly 100,000 signatures, according to supporters of the initiative.
Among the personalities expected to attend Friday’s commemorations are former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, and some other former New York mayors.
The White House has said Donald Trump will not attend, but he is expected to commemorate the September 11 attack on the Pentagon, at that site near Washington D.C., a decision that has also drawn criticism.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance is expected to represent the White House in New York.
Adding to the controversy, Mamdani ordered the release of more than 170,000 documents about air quality in the so-called Ground Zero during the months following the terrorist attacks. This came after years of opacity under previous administrations.
“Almost 25 years later, more people have died from 9/11-related illnesses than those who died that very day (…) People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they could breathe toxic air without danger,” he said.
Mamdani stated that the mayor’s office has reached an agreement related to two lawsuits between the city and the NGO 9/11 Health Watch, “ending a legal battle” that has lasted years and the “restrictions that prevented New Yorkers from accessing information” about air quality after the attacks.
“As part of our commitment to government transparency that has been absent for too long, City Hall has committed to investing more than US$34 million in creating a new public portal that provides information about our city’s response to the horrendous attack,” he indicated.
The mayor explained that the documents “show that asbestos was detected in practically every place where inspectors conducted tests.”
He also stated that what has been released is the first batch and that over the next 12 months more will be made available to the public.
After the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, a cloud of toxic dust, made up of elements such as asbestos, lead, or ground glass, covered the city, causing serious long-term health problems for thousands of rescuers, residents, and workers who breathed that air in the following years.
The aforementioned NGO, which sued the city demanding transparency and access to those public documents, points out that the Department of Environmental Protection hid about 68 boxes with nearly 340,000 pages of documents, although local authorities claimed that staff discovered the records in 2025 during the installation of several new carpets at their headquarters.
The number of 9/11 survivors receiving cancer assistance has roughly tripled in the last five years, according to an analysis published this Wednesday by The Washington Post, as the impact of the disease becomes more evident.
In June 2021, 8,870 survivors received cancer treatment assistance, a figure that rose to 27,300 in 2026, the newspaper detailed. Nearly half of the 54,000 survivors enrolled in the health program receive cancer assistance, compared to 35% five years ago, it added.
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