Skip to main content

Trump to mark the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11 at the Pentagon, forgoing a visit to ground zero

By CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump, a native New Yorker, will forgo a visit to ground zero for the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks to instead mark the occasion with remarks at the Pentagon, two people briefed on the plans tell CNN.

Trump is not attending the ceremony that will be held at the World Trade Center in part because he wants to deliver remarks, the people familiar with his plans said. Politicians have long not been permitted to speak at the event in New York.

The president’s team had initially discussed having him travel to New York City for the anniversary of the attacks, the sources said, with early plans having Trump attend the memorial ceremony at ground zero.

However, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, which runs the event and oversees the site, has prevented politicians from speaking there since 2012, noting their commitment to remaining nonpartisan. Trump, the sources said, told his team he wanted to give a speech, which led to the change in plans.

Trump will now visit the Pentagon, the site of another terror attack on Sept. 11, next month. Vice President JD Vance will attend the ceremony at the World Trade Center, the sources said.

The New York Times first reported on Trump’s plan to skip the 9/11 ceremony in New York, noting the president’s desire to deliver remarks.

In a statement, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told CNN, “As a proud New Yorker, President Trump has spoken about his own experiences watching the horrific events of September 11, 2001,” adding that the president in his remarks this year “will remember those who were killed at the hands of evil terrorists, honor their loved ones, and pay tribute to the brave first responders who put their lives on the line to rescue their fellow Americans.”

Unlike ground zero, the president is allowed to deliver remarks at the Pentagon. He spoke there on 9/11 last year — one day after the assassination of conservative figure Charlie Kirk, whom he referenced in his speech.

Trump opened those remarks by addressing “the horror and grief so many Americans at the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk have felt,” and later announced he would be awarding Kirk, posthumously, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

He went on to state that those who perished on September 11, 2001, would never be forgotten.

“In the quarter of a century since those acts of mass murder, 9/11 family members have felt the weight of missed birthdays and empty bedrooms, journals left unfinished and dreams left unfulfilled,” Trump said. “To every member that still feels a void every day of your lives, the first lady and I unite with you in sorrow. And today, as one nation, we renew our sacred vow that we will never forget September 11th, 2001.”

Trump, who was in New York on the day of the attacks in 2001, attended the 9/11 memorial in New York City in previous years, including in 2016 as the GOP presidential nominee and again in 2024 ahead of his second election.

As sitting president during his first term, he attended and spoke at the commemorative events held at the Pentagon and the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

In 2021, the 20th anniversary of the attacks, he visited a New York Police Department precinct and a New York City Fire Department station in Manhattan.

Trump’s plans to speak in Washington this year, rather than in New York City, may also allow for a smoother trip to Ireland, which the president is slated to visit the day after 9/11.

He is scheduled to depart on Saturday, Sept. 12, for his golf course in Doonbeg, on the country’s Atlantic coast, where the Irish Open golf tournament will be held, a White House official said.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

With the snip of a gene, scientists hope to erase high cholesterol for life

By CNN
(CNN) — A one-time snip of a key gene lowered heart-clogging cholesterol by about 50% over an entire year with no adverse effects, scientists have reported.The overwhelmingly positive results were found in four people who had taken the highest dose of the experimental treatment during a pilot study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in November 2025.That study was extremely small — only 15 patients with dangerously high cholesterol that did not respond to medication. The research was designed to test the safety of five different doses of a gene-altering infusion delivered by CRISPR-Cas9, a biological scissor which cuts a targeted genetic location to modify or turn a gene on or off.“If you’d asked me 15 years ago if we could have done something like this, I would have thought you were crazy,” senior study author Dr. Steven Nissen, chief academic officer of the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, told CNN previously.An update on the study, published Friday in NEJM, appears to answer a key question: Does the intervention last?“Is something like this truly a one and done? That was always the question,” said lead study author Dr. Luke Laffin, a preventive cardiologist at Cleveland Clinic’s Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute.“This new data is essentially saying that the decreases in LDL cholesterol and triglycerides we saw at 60 days after treatment have lasted over a year,” Laffin said. “In people who took the highest dose, the reduction seems durable and safe.”Low-density lipoprotein, or LDL, is known as “bad” cholesterol. It plays a major role in heart disease — the No. 1 killer of adults in the United States and worldwide. Triglycerides are a different type of fat in the blood that is also linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.If larger clinical trials show similar results, the procedure could be a game changer for young people with severe disease, preventive cardiologist Dr. Ann Marie Navar, an associate professor of cardiology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, told CNN previously.“If you’re 20 and you have really high cholesterol, it may make a lot more sense to have a one-time treatment that doesn’t require you to have to take a pill every single day or shot every two weeks for the next 60 years,” said Navar, who was not involved in the study. “The potential for this is just enormous.”The findings are also exciting because so many patients of all ages forget to take their daily medications to control high cholesterol levels, Navar said: “In spite of having a lot of available therapies, the majority of people do not have their LDL under control.”Researchers estimate only half of people take their cholesterol meds more than 80% of the time, and between 33% to 50% discontinue their statin medication within a year after starting treatment.A lucky mutation reduces risk of heart diseaseThe idea for a gene-editing treatment came from an unusual source — a genetic mutation in the ANGPTL3, or angiopoietin-like protein 3 gene, which is responsible for regulating LDL and triglycerides.In people with this gene mutation — which experts say applies to about 1 in 250 people in the United States — one or both copies of ANGPTL3 is shut off. The result is dramatic, Laffin said: extremely low levels of LDL cholesterol and triglycerides for life without any apparent negative consequences. Having the mutation also drastically lowers or even eliminates a person’s risk for heart disease.“It’s a naturally occurring mutation that’s protective against cardiovascular disease,” said Nissen, who holds the Lewis and Patricia Dickey Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine at Cleveland Clinic. “And now that CRISPR is here, we have the ability to change other people’s genes so they too can have this protection.”In people with the natural mutation, every cell in the body has the deactivated ANGPTL3 gene. The new CRISPR-Cas9 therapy, however, focuses only on the liver — the organ responsible for synthesizing triglycerides and producing cholesterol while also removing any excess from the bloodstream.That targeting is reassuring for the long-term safety of the drug’s impact, Nissen said, making it less likely that genes in other parts of the body could also be edited.The highest dose worked bestIn the study, one group of people received a tiny dose of 0.1 milligrams per kilogram of the CRISPR-based drug, while others received 0.3, 0.6, 0.7 and 0.8 milligrams per kilogram, Laffin said.When measured at two months post-infusion, people who got the highest dose — 0.8 milligrams per kilogram — had an average 55% decrease in triglycerides and nearly 50% reduction in LDL cholesterol. At one year, the average triglyceride levels of these study participants were nearly 48% lower and cholesterol levels dropped by almost 53%.Medications available today can already lower LDL cholesterol to the levels found in the study.“In fact, some medicines are a little more potent,” Dr. Pradeep Natarajan, director of preventive cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, told CNN previously.A typical LDL level is around 100. However, cardiologists may prefer that people with existing heart disease, or those born with hard-to-control cholesterol, lower their LDL cholesterol levels to 40 or 50. That’s very hard to do through diet and lifestyle, said Natarajan, who was not involved in the study.Side effects of the initial treatment were minimal, mostly irritation at infusion sites, according to the study. One person suffered a spinal disk herniation, and another had an increase in enzymes that could signal liver damage, but those levels resolved within two weeks.However, one person died six months after the infusion. “He had extensive, advanced cardiovascular disease, and he got the tiniest 0.1 dose, a dose that doesn’t do anything,” Nissen said.“We don’t think that his death has any implications to the study at all,” Nissen said. “In addition, the FDA has recommended these people be followed after the trials are all over for 15 years to see if there are long-term adverse effects. That will be done.”There was also a 20% reduction in HDL or high-density lipoprotein, known as “good cholesterol,” at both two months and one year after treatment.A new clinical trial, with up to 40 people receiving the highest dose of treatment, is underway in the US and Australia. Those findings should further refine long-term expectations, Laffin said. Research must then move to phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trials and be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration before the procedure could be more widely available — a process that can often take years.“One of the amazing results of the study has been the public response asking if they can be involved with these clinical trials,” Laffin said. “People were calling the American Heart Association, calling us at Cleveland Clinic — there’s a lot of enthusiasm. We didn’t know patients would be willing to undergo genetic treatment, but clearly, they are.”The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
Read Next Story

Related Stories

Latest News
Republican governor asks his AG to look into ‘aggressive’ behavior by Trump admin’s election monitors
4 minutes ago

Republican governor asks his AG to look into ‘aggressive’ behavior by Trump admin’s election monitors

Una jueza evalúa si conceder la libertad bajo fianza a Andrew y Tristan Tate. Aquí están los puntos clave

Cnn L19jb21wb25lbnRzL2ltYWdlL2luc3RhbmNlcy9jbXRjem91NWUwMDAwM2I2cnl1MW9ncDNj L19jb21wb25lbnRzL2FydGljbGUvaW5zdGFuY2VzL2NtdGN5bWd1NDAwMjAyOHA3N3B1YmNxN2E=

Trump says he’ll make it easier for ranchers to process their own food after blowback over his beef policies

Por qué vivir aguas abajo de un glaciar se ha convertido en un riesgo mortal

Cnn L19jb21wb25lbnRzL2ltYWdlL2luc3RhbmNlcy9jbXRjeTFiaGMwMDAwM2I2cnliNTNnNDZs L19jb21wb25lbnRzL2FydGljbGUvaW5zdGFuY2VzL2NtdGNyN2QzODAwMHkyN3A4YzJnZGQ0dms=

Serbia says convicted war criminal Mladić to be buried with ‘highest honors’