Families of September 11 victims are pushing to keep New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani away from the 25th anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero after a 2023 social media post drew fresh outrage.
Several victims' families have organized a Change.org petition calling on ceremony organizers to block Mamdani from participating in the commemoration this September. Giovanni Galante, who lost his wife Grace in the attacks, is leading the effort. The petition does not carry legal force, it asks organizers to "carefully consider" whether the mayor's presence fits the occasion, but the public anger behind it has drawn responses from members of Congress, Pentagon survivors, and figures across the political spectrum.
The backlash centers on a post Mamdani published on X in 2023, which resurfaced ahead of the anniversary. In it, the mayor wrote: "Nearly 3,000 New Yorkers died on 9/11; 22 years later, the death hasn't stopped. We mourn our neighbors who died that day. The hundreds of thousands who died in the wars that followed. The unknown millions injured & displaced. In their memory, we work toward a better world." Critics say the post treats the murder of nearly 3,000 Americans by terrorists as morally equivalent to the wars that followed, lumping victims and combatants, attackers and bystanders, into a single body count.
The petition's language is restrained. Its core sentence reads:
"We respectfully ask that the organizers carefully consider whether Mr. Mamdani's participation would align with the intention of the ceremony and the expectations of the families most directly affected by the tragedy."
But the restraint of the text contrasts with the raw nerve it touches. Galante buried his wife because of what happened at Ground Zero. For families like his, a mayor who frames the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil as one data point in a larger global death toll is not honoring the dead, he is diluting them.
The petition also cites Mamdani's association with Hasan Piker, an online commentator who said in 2019 that "America deserved 9/11." Mamdani interviewed Piker and, as Fox News Digital reported, initially declined to condemn the remark. He later called Piker's words "objectionable and reprehensible", but the delay left a mark. When a public official has to be pressured into condemning the claim that America deserved a mass-casualty terrorist attack, the eventual condemnation rings hollow.
The backlash spread fast on social media. Marc Thiessen, who was inside the Pentagon when the hijacked plane struck the building on September 11, 2001, posted on X:
"As someone who was in the Pentagon when the planes hit, this is absolutely disgraceful. You have no business ever setting foot at Ground Zero, much less on 9/11. If you dare show up, I hope you are greeted with such a Bronx cheer that you slink away in shame."
New York City Council member Inna Vernikov zeroed in on Mamdani's phrasing. His 2023 post said New Yorkers "died" on 9/11, a word that strips the agency from the killers and the horror from the act. Vernikov wrote:
"I guess they all just 'died' in an accident? And then you wonder why the families of 9/11 victims don't want you at the ceremony. Stay home, Mamdani."
That distinction matters. People die in car accidents and hospital beds. Nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered by terrorists who hijacked commercial airliners and flew them into buildings. Mamdani's post erased the difference.
Rep. Nancy Mace responded bluntly on X: "Americans were MURDERED by TERRORISTS in the most horrific way." Michael La Rosa, a former spokesperson for First Lady Jill Biden, saw the resurfaced post and asked simply: "Is this real?" The reaction crossed partisan lines, a rare thing in 2026.
Joey Jones, co-host of the "Big Weekend Show" and a veteran, posted: "What a coward. They were murdered and sleep well at night knowing I and thousands of my brothers did our part to even the f, -g score."
Fox News contributor and former NYPD officer Paul Mauro directed his response at Mamdani's broader worldview, writing on X: "Don't show up on 9/11 this year, or any year. We're not interested in your moral equivalency."
Florida Rep. Randy Fine went further, accusing Mamdani of refusing "to call out evil for what it is." Fine's post included inflammatory characterizations of the mayor that went beyond what the public record supports, but his core complaint echoed the petition's: the mayor of New York City cannot bring himself to describe September 11 as an act of murder committed by terrorists, and that disqualifies him from standing at Ground Zero to mark the anniversary.
Despite the petition and the public pressure, Mamdani has indicated he plans to attend the ceremony to honor victims, survivors, families, and first responders. Fox News Digital reached out to his office for comment and received no response.
The ceremony is expected to draw Vice President JD Vance, former President George W. Bush, and former President Joe Biden. The identity of the organizers who would decide whether to act on the petition's request is not publicly clear. Neither is the petition's signature count.
What is clear is the gap between what 9/11 families expect from their city's leader and what Mamdani has offered. His 2023 post did not name the attackers. It did not call the act terrorism. It folded the dead of September 11 into a broader geopolitical casualty figure, "hundreds of thousands" in wars, "unknown millions" displaced, as though the people who jumped from the towers and the combatants who died in Fallujah belong in the same sentence for the same reasons.
That framing is a political choice. It treats moral clarity as an obstacle rather than a duty. And it tells the families who lost husbands, wives, sons, and daughters on a clear Tuesday morning that their grief must share space with a lecture about American foreign policy.
Giovanni Galante lost his wife Grace. He is not asking for a debate about the Iraq War. He is asking the mayor of the city where she was killed to acknowledge what happened to her, plainly, without hedging, without folding her death into someone else's argument.
Mamdani has had years to get this right. The fact that a petition from grieving families is necessary at all tells you everything about how he has used that time.
