{"id":93685,"date":"2026-01-08T14:20:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T14:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/93685\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T14:20:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T14:20:18","slug":"nyc-mayor-zohran-mamdani-defends-tenant-official-facing-backlash-for-white-supremacy-posts-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/93685\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani defends tenant official facing backlash for ‘white supremacy’ posts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a> is standing behind a newly-appointed housing official as she faces backlash for years-old social media posts, including messages that called for the seizure of private property and linked homeownership to white supremacy.<\/p>\n

Cea Weaver, a longtime tenant activist, was tapped<\/a> by the Democrat last week to serve as executive director of the Mayor\u2019s Office to Protect Tenants. The mayor has vowed to expand and empower the office to take \u201cunprecedented\u201d steps against negligent landlords.<\/p>\n

But in a sign of the high-level scrutiny on Mamdani’s administration, Weaver\u2019s since-deleted posts have sparked condemnations from officials in the U.S. Department of Justice<\/a> and the editorial board<\/a> of The Washington Post.<\/p>\n

The posts, which were circulated on social media in recent days by critics of Mamdani, included calls to treat private property as a \u201ccollective good\u201d and to \u201cimpoverish the (asterisk)white(asterisk) middle class.\u201d A tweet sent in 2017 described homeownership as \u201ca weapon of white supremacy masquerading as \u2018wealth building public policy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Eric Adams, the city\u2019s former mayor and a fellow Democrat, said the remarks showed \u201cextreme privilege and total detachment from reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked about the controversy on Wednesday, Mamdani did not address the substance of Weaver\u2019s posts but defended her record of \u201cstanding up for tenants across the city and state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weaver said in an interview with a local TV station that some of the messages were \u201cregretful\u201d and \u201cnot something I would say today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to make sure that everybody has a safe and affordable place to live, whether they rent or own, and that is something I\u2019m laser-focused on in this new role,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

The discussion comes after Mamdani last month accepted the resignation<\/a> of another official, Catherine Almonte Da Costa, after the Anti-Defamation League shared social media posts she made over a decade ago that featured antisemitic tropes.<\/p>\n

While Mamdani had said he was unaware of Da Costa’s messages, Weaver\u2019s past social media posts were known to the administration, according to a mayoral spokesperson, Dora Pekec.<\/p>\n

Weaver previously led the Housing Justice for All coalition, which was widely credited with helping to convince state lawmakers to pass a sweeping package of tenant protections<\/a> in 2019.<\/p>\n

As leader of the city’s tenant protection office, she would play a key role in achieving one of Mamdani\u2019s most polarizing campaign pledges<\/a>: identifying negligent landlords and forcing them to negotiate the sale of their properties to the city if they are unable to pay fines for violations.<\/p>\n

The \u201cpublic stewardship\u201d proposal has drawn consternation from landlord groups and skepticism from others in city government.<\/p>\n

But the early days of his administration have brought signs that the new mayor is not backing off on the idea.<\/p>\n

In a press conference immediately following his inauguration last week, Mamdani said the city would take \u201cprecedent-setting\u201d action against the owner of a Brooklyn apartment building that owed the city money and was currently in bankruptcy proceedings.<\/p>\n

He then announced Weaver\u2019s appointment, drawing loud cheers from the members of a tenants union gathered in the building’s lobby.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is going to be challenging,\u201d Weaver acknowledged. \u201cNew York is home to some of the most valuable real estate in the world. Everything about New York politics is about that fact.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is standing behind a newly-appointed housing official as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[44039,42273,44040,9,56,63,65,64,44038,4365,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-93685","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-catherine-almonte-da-costa","9":"tag-cea-weaver","10":"tag-mayors-office-to-protect-tenants","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-ny","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-nyc-headlines","15":"tag-nyc-news","16":"tag-social-media-posts","17":"tag-white-supremacy","18":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}