New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani 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. Cea Weaver, a longtime tenant activist, was tapped by the Democrat last week to serve as executive director of the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants. The mayor has vowed to expand and empower the office to take unprecedented steps against negligent landlords. But in a sign of the high-level scrutiny on Mamdani's administration, Weaver's since-deleted posts have sparked condemnations from officials in the US Department of Justice and the editorial board of The Washington Post. The posts, which were circulated on social media in recent days by critics of Mamdani, included calls to treat private property as a collective good and to impoverish the (asterisk)white(asterisk) middle class. A tweet sent in 2017 described homeownership as