New York City commemorates the September 11, 2001, attacks on Thursday. This is usually a somber and peaceful occasion, but this year it coincides with a battle between several Democratic officials for the city's mayoralty.
At Ground Zero, where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood, relatives of the approximately 3,000 victims will participate in a lengthy ceremony, including a reading of the names of the dead, as is the case at every anniversary.
At dusk, two beams will illuminate the sky above lower Manhattan, symbolizing the twin towers, and will remain illuminated until dawn. Free concerts will be held in several public places across the city, and ceremonies will be held at the fire brigade barracks, where 39 firefighters have died in the past year from illnesses related to the tragedy.
US President Donald Trump is not scheduled to attend the ceremony, but he will attend a baseball game at Yankee Stadium on Thursday evening in New York. Vice President J.D. Vance will be present at the site of the twin towers.
It remains unclear whether the New York City mayoral candidates will meet in one place, in what could be a brief respite in the heated battle between them.
In the latest campaign event, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent, likened his main rival, Zohran Mamdani, who has received the Democratic Party's endorsement, to radical leftist influencer Jason Baker, who said in 2019 that "the United States deserved 9/11."
- Adams in a difficult position -
Mamdani, a 33-year-old Muslim from an Indian-American family and the favorite to win according to opinion polls, spent three hours in April debating live with Baker, who has three million followers on Twitch.
Although Baker has since retracted and regretted the statement he made in 2019, Cuomo's team views the closeness between the two men as "shameful" and evidence that "Mamdani does not deserve to be mayor," according to a supporter of the 67-year-old former governor who was standing next to him at the event.
The team of the young candidate, who claims to be a "socialist," responded by saying, "Andrew Cuomo knows exactly what he's doing. He's holding a press conference to insinuate that Zahran Mamdani, who is poised to become New York's first Muslim mayor, somehow supported the 9/11 attacks. This is shameful, dangerous, and deliberate."
So far, the attacks against Zahran Mamdani have not affected his poll numbers. He remains ahead with 46% of the vote, compared to 24% for Cuomo and 15% for Republican Curtis Sillois, according to a recent Siena University poll for the New York Times.
Outgoing Mayor Eric Adams finds himself in a difficult position due to corruption allegations and has only 10% of the voter support.
Several media outlets have reported discussions between Adams and the Trump administration about offering him a position in exchange for withdrawing from the race. However, Adams has so far denied any such discussions, which would significantly alter the situation.
In New York, two hijacked commercial airliners were deliberately crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, causing them to collapse in less than two hours, killing thousands of people.
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