New York will commemorate the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on Friday with a ceremony at Ground Zero attended by four former presidents and the city’s first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani, while President Donald Trump will mark the anniversary elsewhere.
Trump is scheduled to pay his respects at the Pentagon rather than in New York, where hijacked planes destroyed the World Trade Center and where most of the 2,977 people killed that day died.
Vice President JD Vance and Trump’s four living predecessors are expected at the ceremony in lower Manhattan. Republican George W. Bush, who was president when the attacks occurred, will be joined by Democrats Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
No speeches are planned. Instead, relatives of the victims will read the names of all those killed, with a bell rung to mark key moments during the attacks.
“Memorials like this and discussions about those events are an important part of keeping it alive and understanding how we prevent tragedies like this from ever happening again,” said Robert Kafka, a Chicago man in his 60s visiting the 9/11 Memorial.
