More than 113,000 Americans — including thousands of family members of 9/11 victims — signed a petition begging New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to stay away from Ground Zero on the 25th anniversary of the attacks. He showed up anyway, and he's not sorry.

The petition's very existence tells you something broken about the moment: a sitting mayor of the city hit hardest by Islamic terrorism has enough baggage around terror apologism that over a hundred thousand people felt compelled to formally ask him to stay home from a memorial.

Giovanni Galante, whose 29-year-old wife Grace was murdered by al-Qaeda on September 11, launched the Change.org petition in July. He told the New York Post he never expected it to blow up the way it did. "I would have been happy with 3,000," he said. "We must never forget [the victims]." He estimated thousands of the signatures came directly from 9/11 family members.

The core grievance: Mamdani's long record of associations with figures openly hostile to the United States. The Post notes his ties to left-wing influencer Hasan Piker, who once said "America deserved" the September 11 attacks. Mamdani has historically functioned as an Islamic terror apologist, according to the family members who organized the petition. He brushed off the growing chorus and vowed to attend anyway.

"Of course we're disappointed after all the time and work we put into it, but in the end he's mayor and did what he wanted," Galante told the Post. "And I would do it again, 100 percent."

A viral clip showed Mamdani laughing with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during the somber reading of victims' names. Galante, to his credit, said the moment could be taken out of context. Event organizers at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum sat all elected officials away from family members — a protocol followed at past ceremonies — so families who wanted to confront the mayor never got the chance.

Not every critic was spoiling for a fight. Charles G. Wolf, whose 40-year-old wife Katherine was on the 97th floor of the North Tower when Flight 11 struck, had refused to shake Mamdani's hand at an April event with King Charles III. But after Mamdani stayed for the full five-hour ceremony, Wolf approached him. "I said I really appreciate the respect you showed for our loved ones and for doing what a mayor should do," Wolf recalled. "We shook hands and he said, 'Thank you for your feedback.'"

So the man who wouldn't condemn jihadists got a polite handshake for showing basic decency — staying five hours at a memorial. That's where the bar sits now.

The question isn't whether Mamdani had the legal right to attend. Of course he did — he's the mayor. The question is why 113,000 people felt they had to ask him not to, and why that didn't give him pause.