Leaders Gather in New York to Commemorate 9/11 Attacks

On Wednesday, the leaders of both American political parties paused in the middle of a presidential election campaign in order to honor the fallen from the September 11 attacks, the deadliest foreign strike on U.S. soil in the nation's history. 

Former President Donald Trump, Senator JD Vance and Vice President Kamala Harris joined President Joe Biden at the World Trade Center memorial for a commemorative ceremony, and they set aside partisan politics for the day in favor of a show of unity. They did not give speeches, and allowed survivors and family members of the fallen to take the stage instead. 

"On Sept. 11, my brother disappeared, but this place has become my altar," one relative of an attack victim said at the ceremony. "If I come here and I speak his name out loud, and you hear his name, he will never, never disappear."

The ceremony's organizers held six moments of silence for each of the tragic events of that fateful day: the strikes on the two towers, the moments the towers collapsed, the time of the strike on the Pentagon, and the crash of Flight 93. 

After the conclusion of the New York ceremony, all four leaders flew out to the memorial for Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and Biden and Harris made one further stop to visit the site of the attack on the Pentagon.

"Never forget each of the 2,977 precious lives stolen from us when terrorists attacked our nation," President Biden wrote in a statement. "Never forget their families who still bear the grief from that searing September morning. Never forget the heroic citizens and survivors who rushed to help their fellow Americans."

Remembering the Manhattan Boatlift 

When attackers hit the Twin Towers on the morning of September 11, 2001, survivors streamed out into the streets. By midmorning, both towers had collapsed, enveloping Lower Manhattan in toxic dust. This cloud effectively trapped hundreds of thousands of people in Lower Manhattan, cut off from the rest of the island and waiting for some form of rescue. 

Under the leadership of Lt. Mike Day (USCG), local Coast Guard units organized an ad-hoc force of more than 100 good samaritan boats and five Coast Guard cutters to carry survivors across the harbor to safety. Over the course of about 10 hours, 800 mariners rescued roughly 500,000 people from the waterfront - making it the largest waterborne evacuation of all time. On the 10th anniversary of the attacks, actor Tom Hanks narrated a documentary of the boatlift effort based on interviews with the participants, and it remains a valuable record of their heroic efforts on that fateful day.