Former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama marked the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks Friday with a message honoring the victims of that day and the service members who died in the conflicts that followed, urging Americans to remember what the couple called “the true lesson of 9/11.”
“If you were young in 2001, or weren’t even born yet, it can be hard to imagine what 9/11 felt like,” the Obamas wrote in a statement posted to X at 6:57 a.m. on September 11, 2026. “The shock of that beautiful, cloudless morning. The heartbreak of the families whose loved ones were taken with such swiftness and cruelty. The realization that the forces of malevolence and violence were closer, and the future less certain, than we knew.”
The statement continued by describing the sense of resolve that emerged in the days after the attacks, even amid the grief. “But in the days that followed, we felt something else, too,” the Obamas wrote. “Pride in the rescue workers who had rushed to the scene, and the passengers who had stormed the cockpit. Admiration for the men and women who left behind lives of comfort to serve their country. A deep resolve that nothing would break the will of a truly United States of America.”
The Obamas closed the message by turning to remembrance and a call for national unity. “Today Michelle and I are remembering those we lost that day, and those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the wars that followed,” the statement read. “We pray for their families. And we hope Americans everywhere remember the true lesson of 9/11: that we can survive even our darkest days as long as we move forward as one nation and one people.”
If you were young in 2001, or weren’t even born yet, it can be hard to imagine what 9/11 felt like. The shock of that beautiful, cloudless morning. The heartbreak of the families whose loved ones were taken with such swiftness and cruelty. The realization that the forces of…
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) September 11, 2026
Statement Coincided With Ground Zero Appearance
The Obamas’ post came the same morning that Barack Obama joined three other living former presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Joe Biden — at the National September 11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan for the 25th anniversary commemoration ceremony. Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Jill Biden also attended alongside the former presidents.
Vice President JD Vance represented the current administration at the Ground Zero ceremony, while President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth marked the anniversary separately with a ceremony at the Pentagon. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was also present at the Manhattan memorial, along with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The Ground Zero ceremony, which has for more than a decade featured only family members reading the names of loved ones lost in the attacks rather than speeches from officials, began at 8:30 a.m. ET. A moment of silence was observed at 8:46 a.m., marking the exact time American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center in 1993 — a ritual repeated throughout the morning at each of the moments the four hijacked planes struck their targets or went down.
Organizers held a seventh moment of silence this year, in addition to the traditional six observed for each plane strike and tower collapse, to honor the thousands of people who have died from illnesses linked to toxic debris exposure at Ground Zero in the years since the attacks. More than 9,000 such deaths have been attributed to 9/11-related cancer and respiratory disease.
A Quarter-Century Since the Attacks
Friday’s anniversary marked 25 years since the September 11, 2001, attacks killed 2,977 people at the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Virginia, and aboard United Flight 93, which crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers attempted to retake control of the aircraft from hijackers — an act of resistance the Obamas referenced in their statement in describing “the passengers who had stormed the cockpit.”
The attacks, carried out by 19 hijackers affiliated with al-Qaida, remain the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil and reshaped U.S. national security policy, foreign policy, and domestic life for the subsequent quarter-century, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed.
Obama’s History of 9/11 Remembrance
Friday’s statement continued a pattern established during Obama’s presidency of using the anniversary to call for national unity. In a 2010 weekly radio address marking the ninth anniversary of the attacks, then-President Obama said, “If there is a lesson to be drawn on this anniversary, it is this: We are one nation — one people — bound not only by grief, but by a set of common ideals.” He added that “by giving back to our communities, by serving people in need, we reaffirm our ideals — in defiance of those who would do us grave harm.”
A year later, marking the 10th anniversary in 2011, Obama struck a similar note of resilience, saying in his weekly address that “the terrorists who attacked us that September morning are no match for the character of our people, the resilience of our nation or the endurance of our values.” He added that the attackers “wanted to deprive us of the unity that defines us as a people. But we will not succumb to division or suspicion.”
The theme of unity carried into Obama’s broader political rhetoric well beyond the anniversary itself. In his 2013 inaugural address, he told the country that “now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation and one people” — the same phrase that anchored Friday’s 25th-anniversary statement.
Other Officials Mark the Day
Other prominent Democrats also issued remembrances Friday. Former Vice President Kamala Harris shared her own message honoring the anniversary, joining a broad, bipartisan wave of statements from current and former officials reflecting on the attacks and their aftermath.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul, along with city and state officials, joined the Ground Zero ceremony as part of the broader commemoration, which also included remembrance events at the Firemen’s Memorial on Riverside Drive honoring the 343 FDNY members killed in the attacks, and an interfaith service scheduled for the afternoon at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church near the memorial site.
Security around the anniversary was heightened this year after federal officials flagged concerns that the 25th-anniversary milestone, combined with ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, could heighten “existing grievances against the United States and contribute to mobilization to violence” among terrorism actors, according to a bulletin cited by officials ahead of Friday’s ceremonies.
Background: The Obamas’ Long-Standing 9/11 Message
Since leaving office in 2017, Obama has continued to mark the anniversary nearly every year, typically emphasizing the same core message of national resilience and unity that has defined his public remarks on the subject since his first term. Friday’s statement, issued jointly with Michelle Obama, extended that pattern to the 25th anniversary, pairing the couple’s written remembrance with Barack Obama’s in-person appearance at the site where nearly 3,000 people died in the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.