9/11 at 25: A Nation Remembers, and Remains Divided

Americans gathered across the country on Friday to mark the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, honoring the nearly 3,000 lives lost in solemn ceremonies from Lower Manhattan to the Pentagon to a quiet field in Pennsylvania. Yet the milestone observances also laid bare the divisions that have come to define the attacks’ legacy — over the wars they triggered, the toxic air that officials concealed, the unfinished pursuit of accountability, and the question of who belongs in the national memory.

At Ground Zero, Vice President JD Vance joined former Presidents Joe Biden, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, along with former first ladies, as family members read aloud the names of the dead and seven moments of silence marked the moments the towers fell, the Pentagon was struck, and Flight 93 went down. A memorial service was also held at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where passengers overpowered hijackers bound for Washington.

President Trump commemorated the anniversary at the Pentagon, where he linked the 2001 attacks to the ongoing U.S. war with Iran. “Today we renew the sacred oath that we first swore in their names a quarter of a century ago,” Trump said. “We will never, ever forget. That’s why we fight today.” He added: “On days like 9/11, we learn what a country is truly made of.”

A Toll That Extended Far Beyond the Day Itself

The human cost of September 11 did not end when the towers fell. At least 2,977 people died in the initial attacks, carried out by al-Qaida hijackers who flew two planes into the World Trade Center, a third into the Pentagon, and crashed a fourth near Shanksville after passengers fought back. An additional 7,000 U.S. service members died in the post-9/11 wars, according to a Brown University “Costs of War” study. Tens of thousands more fell ill from toxic debris, and U.S. health officials estimate that illnesses linked to the dust and smoke from the towers’ collapse have claimed more than three times the lives lost on the day of the attacks itself.

The Toxic Air Reckoning

One of the most painful legacies resurfaced just days before the anniversary, when New York City officials released 170,000 pages of previously withheld air quality documents through an online portal. Asbestos was found “nearly everywhere” tested near Ground Zero, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said.

“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air,” Mamdani said, announcing the release alongside comedian and 9/11 survivor advocate Jon Stewart. The records show that officials knew by October 2001 that Manhattan’s air was toxic — even as residents were told it was safe to return.

Stewart, who has spent years pressing for the documents’ disclosure, put it bluntly. “They didn’t recognize that the air everybody was breathing in downtown Manhattan was toxic until October of 2001,” he said, according to BBC News. “So to be fair to them, they only buried that information for 25 years.”

The release resolved a lawsuit brought by the advocacy group 9/11 Health Watch, which sued after officials claimed they did not have the records. City officials found 68 boxes of documents last year; more are to be shared over the coming year. For families like that of Karen Klingon, whose brother lived five minutes from Ground Zero and died at 61 of a related brain tumor, the release is a measure of both progress and delay. “There’s a lot of research, probably, that can be done about what was in the air,” she said.

Still Seeking Accountability

For many victims’ families, the anniversary is shadowed by the sense that justice has been deferred. A years-long civil lawsuit alleges that Saudi Arabia supported the al-Qaida operatives who carried out the attacks. In August 2025, federal Judge George B. Daniels rejected Saudi Arabia’s effort to dismiss the case, finding credible evidence that the kingdom’s employees had links to two hijackers. A trial had still not begun as of this week.

Terry Strada, national chair of 9/11 Families United and the widow of Tom Strada, told The Guardian that it has “taken way too long” to hold the kingdom accountable. “My husband was dismembered. We don’t know where all his body parts landed. He has never been identified,” she said. “There was a psychological cruelty that people do not realize.”

A Security Machine Under Strain

Two and a half decades after the attacks reshaped American foreign policy and civil liberties, experts warn the counterterrorism architecture built in their aftermath is eroding. Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, testified to Congress this year that the post-9/11 system is weakening “through budget cuts, personnel losses, and the diminution of terrorism as a national security priority” — recreating, he warned, the “institutional neglect” that preceded 2001.

Colin Clarke of the Soufan Center pointed to a “certain amount of fatigue” after two decades of the global war on terror, compounded by a demoralized intelligence workforce and a controversial 2026 counterterrorism strategy that critics say downplays domestic threats while stretching resources toward cartels and gangs. “You don’t have a blank cheque like after 9/11,” Clarke said.

A Unity That Proved Fleeting

Perhaps the most striking theme of the anniversary was how little the day’s unity resembles the spirit that briefly gripped the country on September 12, 2001. Former New York Gov. George Pataki, who led the state during the attacks, told NPR that the ensuing polarization is his greatest disappointment.

“We are just in so many ways unable to work politically toward finding common ground,” Pataki said. “It’s the opposite of the sense of unity — that we were all Americans — that we felt on Sept. 12.”

The Rev. Eric Olsen, a former New York National Guard chaplain who served at ground zero and later in Iraq, echoed that unease. “I love this country, but we’re more disjointed and un-unified than we’ve ever been in my lifetime,” he said. “Everybody’s afraid of everything. And now we’re back in the Middle East bombing again.”

Those fault lines surfaced even in the run-up to Friday’s ceremonies. Pataki and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, both Republicans who led New York through the attacks, suggested that the city’s current Democratic mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who is Muslim, should stay away. Gov. Kathy Hochul and other Democrats condemned the calls. Mamdani attended — and at the ceremony, he and Giuliani shook hands.

“I love this city — I love this country,” Mamdani said. “What I want this week to be a focus on is on the families whose loved ones were stolen from them.”

What Comes Next

At the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, a new exhibition, “In Their Honor: 25 Years of 9/11-Inspired Service,” pays tribute to those who devoted their lives to public service after the attacks. Museum director Elizabeth Hillman, a historian and Air Force veteran, told NPR that the attacks “changed the nation’s foreign policy, the shape of the armed forces and the ways we understood what a threat was and what constitutes being safe.”

Yet as the documents keep emerging, the Saudi case inches toward trial, and the wars the attacks set in motion continue, the 25th anniversary offered less a moment of closure than an inventory of unfinished business. A quarter-century on, Americans still agree on what happened — and remain divided over what it means.