New York commemorates the September 11, 2001, attacks on Thursday, a grave and usually consensual anniversary marked this year by the fratricidal campaign pitting several Democrats against each other for mayor.

At Ground Zero, where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood, relatives of the approximately 3,000 victims of the tragedy began to participate in the long ceremony of reading the names of all the dead, as they now do on every anniversary.

At dusk, two beams of light will rise into the sky to symbolize the Twin Towers, illuminating lower Manhattan until dawn. Free concerts will be held in various public spaces, and ceremonies will be held at fire stations—39 of them have lost their lives in the past year from illnesses related to the tragedy.

Donald Trump is not scheduled to attend the ceremonies in New York but will attend a baseball game at Yankee Stadium that evening. His Vice President, J.D. Vance, canceled his visit to Ground Zero to travel to Utah to meet with the family of Charlie Kirk, the conservative influencer who was murdered on Wednesday.

Early in the morning, several New York mayoral candidates took their places among the officials present at the first celebrations, alongside Rudy Giuliani, who was running the city during the attacks, his torso encased in a corset - he was recently injured in a serious traffic accident.

The ceremony marks a brief respite from the ongoing bitter battle for the town hall.

In the latest move, at an event near the site of the attacks, former Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent, paired his main rival, Zohran Mamdani—his party's nominee—with a star radical left-wing streamer, Hasan Piker, who declared in 2019 that "the United States deserved 9/11."

- Mayor Adams in deep trouble -

Given a clear lead by the polls, elected to the New York City Council, the 33-year-old Muslim from an Indian-American family and a self-proclaimed "socialist" spent three hours in April chatting live with the influencer with 3 million followers on Twitch, exchanging doughnuts and hugs.

It doesn't matter that Hasan Piker has since retracted his 2019 statement and regretted his remarks: for the Cuomo team, this proximity is a "disgrace" and constitutes proof that "Mamdani does not deserve to be mayor," in the words of a supporter of the 67-year-old former governor who was present at his side at the event.

"Andrew Cuomo knows exactly what he's doing. He's holding a press conference to suggest that Zohran Mamdani—who is about to become New York City's first Muslim mayor—somehow supported 9/11. It's vile, it's dangerous, and it's deliberate," the young candidate's campaign responded.

So far, the attacks on Zohran Mamdani have not eroded his standing in the polls: 46% of voter intentions, compared to 24% for Andrew Cuomo and 15% for Republican Curtis Silwa, according to a recent survey by Siena University for The New York Times.

Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat facing corruption charges, is now in limbo, with less than 10 percent of the vote.

Several media outlets have reported negotiations between him and the Trump administration for a possible position in exchange for withdrawing from the race. This is something he has so far denied, but it would significantly reshuffle the deck.

On September 11, 2001, the United States was the target of four coordinated suicide attacks by 19 members of the Islamist group Al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden.

In New York, two hijacked airliners deliberately crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, causing them to collapse in less than two hours and killing thousands of people.