“Vetted” Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry, Only “Regretful”

Resurfaced tweets keep happening:

For the second time in three weeks, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing intense scrutiny for the years-old social media behavior of a high-level appointee — an episode that has once again forced him to answer for his vetting processes.

Mr. Mamdani named Cea Weaver, a housing activist, to run the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants on Jan. 1, during his very first news conference on his very first day in office.

In past social media posts that have since been deleted, most of which predate 2020, she called homeownership a “weapon of white supremacy” and said that it was important to “impoverish” the white middle class. That rhetoric had played a role in raising her profile within New York housing circles, even as it seemed to hobble her 2021 bid to join the city’s powerful Planning Commission. Her calls to “elect more Communists” and “seize private property” had been well documented in The New York Post.

[. . .]

Ms. Weaver declined an interview request but issued a statement via Mr. Mamdani’s press office.

“Regretful comments from years ago do not change what has always been clear — my commitment to making housing affordable and equitable for New York’s renters,” Ms. Weaver said.

The controversy came less than a month after Mr. Mamdani accepted the resignation of a former aide to Bill de Blasio whom he had named his director of appointments, after antisemitic social media posts from her youth were resurfaced.

But this time, Mr. Mamdani was not caught off-guard.

“She was vetted,” a spokeswoman for Mr. Mamdani, Dora Pekec, said on Tuesday. “We were aware of all of these tweets.”

Asked about Ms. Weaver’s posts at an unrelated news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Mamdani responded briefly, saying he had appointed her because of the work she had done to protect tenants. Then he hopped into a waiting car.

[. . .]

Ms. Weaver’s social media activity caused her problems in 2021, when the city’s public advocate, Jumaane Williams, nominated her for the planning commission and then withdrew her application.

“It was a lot of the same stuff being talked about now,” said Kalman Yeger, a state assemblyman and a conservative Democrat who served on the City Council at the time. “Weird home-ownership-is-white-supremacy stuff, seizing private property.”

Ms. Weaver “just seemed to be a bit too far out there,” he said.

“Most of which predate 2020” just means 2018 or 2019, by the way, when this person was long past college aged. And not sure what the significance of 2020 is — it would actually be *somewhat* more understandable if the comments came *after* 2020 when many people seemed to perseverate on “white supremacy.” More “regretful” comments here, in case you don’t want to leave it to The Times or Weaver’s surrogates to summarize.

We Stand Alongside The Untoned At Every Planet Fitness Across This Great City, From Williamsburg To East New York, Fresh Meadows To Corona, Concourse To Wakefield

On dignity:

Five days into his mayoralty, Zohran Mamdani signed two executive orders targeting deceptive business practices like junk fees or making it difficult to cancel a gym membership in an effort to make the city more affordable.

“It is hard enough to live in New York City without having to worry all the time about whether you’re being ripped off,” Mr. Mamdani said on Monday at a news conference at an outdoor gym in Long Island City, Queens. “Our affordability agenda is also about an agenda of dignity, and there are few things more undignified than feeling taken advantage of by someone you are already paying.”

And hitting harder than Pearl Jam:

Samuel Levine, the commissioner of the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, said that some of the world’s largest corporations, online retailers, ticket sellers and even food delivery companies operating in the city have “padded their profits” by making it difficult to cancel subscriptions and imposing hidden fees. He warned companies that he planned to put a stop to those practices.

“Don’t wait for a subpoena,” said Mr. Levine, who served as director of the trade commission’s consumer protection bureau under Ms. Khan. “Do right by your customers today.”

You Will Own Nothing, But Dig This Quirky Bodega-Inspired Font

Alas, 32.7% of black New Yorkers engage in white supremacy, it can now be revealed:

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s newly appointed tenant advocate called to “seize private property” and blasted homeownership as a “weapon of white supremacy” in a series of pro-Communist social media posts.

Cea Weaver, Mamdani’s new director of the city Office to Protect Tenants, made the statements and urged her followers to elect more Communists in several lecturing posts on her now-deleted X account that were unearthed by internet sleuths.

“Seize private property!” she said on June 13, 2018.

She later doubled down on that in a mini-manifesto in August 2019.

“Private property including any kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy,” she said then.

Shall Post In A Conspicuous Place In His Or Her Establishment . . .

The folks in Human Resources would like you to know . . .:

Mamdani continued, “This blatant pursuit of regime change doesn’t just affect those abroad, it directly impacts New Yorkers, including tens of thousands of Venezuelans who call this city home. My focus is their safety and the safety of every New Yorker, and my administration will continue to monitor the situation and issue relevant guidance.”

We Will Replace The Frigidity Of Rugged Individualism With The Warmth Of Collectivism

The ideological space heater:

At 34, Mamdani takes office as the city’s youngest mayor in more than a century. He’s the city’s first South Asian, first African-born and first Muslim mayor.

“We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” he said.

Mamdani placed his hand on a Quran as Sanders administered the oath of office.