NEW YORK CITY — In the week since he was sworn in as mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, has already managed to upset Venezuelans, Jews, and political moderates of every background. It took just three hours after his inauguration last Thursday for my phone to start ringing with objections from City Hall staffers shocked by the conduct of their new boss and his senior appointees.
These staffers, many of them Jewish, wanted to know if I had seen the posts about antisemitism that had mysteriously disappeared from the mayor’s office’s official X account, and if I knew that Mamdani had revoked hundreds of executive orders, including two key measures meant to protect Jewish New Yorkers.
Then there were the appointments. An X sleuth uncovered past social media posts from Cea Weaver, the head of the newly created Office to Protect Tenant Rights, in which she called private property a “weapon of white supremacy.” On a 2021 livestream for the Democratic Socialists of America, Weaver said that while society transitions from a system of individual to collective property rights, “families, especially white families,” would be impacted.
