(The Center Square) — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is slamming reports that the Trump administration is planning to take over New York City’s memorial to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The White House on Friday confirmed reports that President Donald Trump has had “preliminary discussions” on ways to shift control of the nonprofit museum and memorial in Lower Manhattan to the federal government.
But Hochul took to social media over the weekend to criticize Trump’s plans to give the memorial national monument status, and foreshadow a potential legal fight if the White House moves to take over operation of the site.
“The @Sept11Memorial belongs to the families, survivors, and first responders who’ve carried its legacy for more than two decades,” the Democrat said in a statement on X. “Instead of politicizing this sacred site, the President should restore 9/11 health care funding and support victims’ families.”
Nearly 3,000 people were killed when terrorists crashed hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in southwest Pennsylvania during the Sept. 11 attacks. More than 2,700 of those victims died in the collapse of the trade center’s iconic twin towers.
The potential takeover of the memorial comes after a dust-up over the Trump administration’s push to revoke funding from the World Trade Center Health Program. The federally funded program provides medical monitoring and treatment to more than 100,000 survivors who were diagnosed with cancer and other ailments after working on the response to the terror attacks.
Sweeping cuts to the 911 health program by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were reversed earlier this year after top Republican and Democratic lawmakers decried the move. In February, the Trump administration restored two federal grants and rehired 16 employees who were laid off as part of cost-cutting by the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The memorial plaza, which includes two pools ringed by waterfalls, walls with the names of the dead, and an underground museum, has been run by a public charity since it first opened to the public in 2014. The board of directors overseeing the site is chaired by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a frequent Trump critic. It has raised more than
The museum’s president and CEO Beth Hillman argues the federal government doesn’t have the authority to take over the memorial and suggests the move wouldn’t make financial sense.
“At a time when the federal government is working to cut costs, assuming the full operating expenses for the site makes no sense,” Hillman said in a statement.
