Almost exactly 25 years ago, both World Trade Centers were reduced to ash and rubble as debris, terror and death rippled throughout New York City. Al-Qaida terrorists flew commercial airliners into the towers. A third plane hit the Pentagon. A fourth, likely aimed at the U.S. Capitol or the White House, went down in a Pennsylvania field only after passengers valiantly fought back.
Last week—less than two weeks before that painful anniversary—New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) stood in the prayer hall of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, a black scarf over her head, and addressed a gathering of Muslim men.
She thanked “his excellency,” Kuwait’s U.N. ambassador, for making her “part of the family.” She thanked “our imam,” the one who leads Muslim worshippers in daily prayers inside a mosque. Then she toured the center’s school—though this time with her head uncovered. Video of the prayer-hall appearance spread like wildfire, and many were quick to call it pandering.
Hochul’s hijab and the Muslim mayor
Hochul, a self-proclaimed feminist, has spent the past year binding her political future to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the self-proclaimed democratic socialist who became New York’s first Muslim mayor in January. She endorsed him and steered state money and a tax on luxury second homes toward his budget. In return, Mamdani endorsed Hochul for re-election and called their partnership a “model.”
Giovanni Galante’s wife, Grace, was 29 and working on the 105th floor of the North Tower on 9/11. This summer he launched a petition asking the National September 11 Memorial & Museum to keep Mamdani out of the official 25th-anniversary ceremony. The petition doesn’t argue that a Muslim mayor is unfit because he is Muslim but that this particular mayor’s associations—and his way of talking about that horrid day—make his presence a wound rather than a tribute.
“For 9/11 families,” Galante wrote, “this is not simply a public ceremony—it is a deeply personal day of mourning. The presence of individuals whose words or associations are perceived as conflicting with the solemn purpose of the event risks detracting from that focus and causing additional pain.”
Tens of thousands signed the petition, and Galante has said thousands of those names belong to relatives of the dead. Even so, Mamdani has said he plans to attend anyway.
The associations Galante highlighted aren’t abstract. For example, in October 2025, then-candidate Mamdani posted a grinning, arm-in-arm photo from a Brooklyn mosque with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, “who has been linked to radical Islam, was named as an alleged co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and served as a character witness for the ‘Blind Sheikh,’ who was convicted in 1995 of plotting terror attacks against the United States.”
Less than two months after taking office, Mamdani skipped the February memorial for the six victims of the 1993 attack, sending a deputy instead as he spent that day in Washington pitching a housing project to President Donald Trump.
Outside of the petition, Mamdani’s own memory of Sept. 11 has also been contested. During the campaign, he stood outside a Bronx mosque and fought back tears describing an “aunt” who stopped riding the subway after the attacks because she didn’t feel safe in her hijab. The relative, he later had to clarify, was his father’s cousin.
Nonetheless, critics have argued the story Mamdani chose to share flipped the day on its head: The central injury was no longer the people who burned in the towers but a woman who felt stared at.
You are ‘not welcome’
Even before the viral video of Hochul wearing the hijab, the 600-member Port Authority Retired Police Association had sent a letter addressed to Mamdani to say he is not welcome at the upcoming 9/11 memorial ceremony.
“We do not believe you have earned the privilege to stand at Ground Zero alongside us, the families, survivors, and our fellow first responders,” association president John McDevitt wrote. “Your presence at Ground Zero on 9/11 would cause profound pain to members of the 9/11 community and risk turning a solemn day of remembrance into a political controversy.”
A separate letter was sent to Hochul, specifically condemning her decision to illuminate the One World Trade Center in January to mark the state’s first-ever Muslim American Heritage Month. “Home to the largest Muslim American population in the nation,” Hochul had put in a statement, “New York is proud to join in this month-long celebration, recognizing the values, faith and traditions of our Muslim American communities.”
“To those of us who served there,” the letter read, “your decision to utilize the WTC for this purpose was extremely tone-deaf, insensitive, and an affront to us, our families, and all those affected by this attack.”
“Your action displayed neither concern nor reverence for the fallen,” McDevitt wrote. “Because of that insensitive and tone-deaf decision, we believe you have forfeited the privilege of standing alongside us, the 9/11 families, and fellow first responders at Ground Zero on this 25th anniversary.”
Hochul’s latest nod to the 9/11 terrorist attacks came as an aside in comments she made condemning President Trump’s cuts to federal funding. And even as Mamdani visits with the specialized units that arrived at the scene 25 years ago, many continue to echo the request of McDevitt and those at the retired police association: “Stay away from the September 11 ceremonies.”
