Mamdani Confirms He Will Attend 9/11 25th Anniversary as Families and Giuliani Urge Him to Stay Away

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Monday he will attend Friday’s 25th-anniversary commemoration of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at Ground Zero and other memorial events that day. The confirmation came after former Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Newsmax that Mamdani’s presence “offends me” and that “there’s no question he should” skip the ceremony. Giuliani, who was mayor when al-Qaeda hijackers killed 2,977 people, said he had lost friends at the site and remains close to many families. An online petition organized by Giovanni Galante, whose wife, Grace Catherine Galante, 29, died in the North Tower, has drawn about 100,000 signatures asking the National September 11 Memorial & Museum and city officials to keep Mamdani off the program. Galante has said the objection is based on Mamdani’s public record and associations, not his Muslim faith. Former Gov. George Pataki has also said Mamdani should not attend. Several Republican senators, including Majority Leader John Thune, have said they understand the families’ position. City Council Speaker Julie Menin called the exclusion campaign “absolutely inappropriate” and said the anniversary should not be politicized.

Mamdani’s office has used the same language since July: “I will proudly honor the families, the survivors, the first responders forever impacted by that horrific terror attack by standing alongside them at this year’s 9/11 commemoration, reaffirming that we will never forget the solemn day felt by all of us who call this city home and, frankly, by all of us who call this country home.” He repeated that stance after Giuliani’s interview while attending a Brooklyn breakfast for J’ouvert and the West Indian Day Parade. He attended the 2025 ceremony as a mayoral candidate.

On Sept. 4 he signed an executive order designating Sept. 11 an annual city Day of Remembrance and Service, with a moment of silence, memorial ceremonies, and community service, plus a second order updating continuity-of-operations planning. Just the News reported that the ceremonial pen from that signing was directed to Chief Counsel Ramzi Kassem, who as a private lawyer represented Ahmed al-Darbi, an al-Qaeda operative convicted in plots against commercial ships and the brother-in-law of Pentagon hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar.

The petition and family organizers have also cited Mamdani’s reluctance on “Meet the Press” in 2025 to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada,” his interview with streamer Hasan Piker, who in 2019 said “America deserved 9/11” (Mamdani later called those remarks “objectionable and reprehensible”), a 2023 post that paired the nearly 3,000 dead on 9/11 with “hundreds of thousands who died in the wars that followed,” and writings by his father on suicide bombing as a feature of modern political violence. In February he sent a deputy to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing memorial and traveled to Washington to discuss a Queens housing project with President Trump. The 9/11 Memorial & Museum has not announced any change to the invitation list. Giuliani said he will attend Friday as well.