Commentary Culture Investigations

Some allies of Zohran Mamdani are urging the New York City mayor to confront the social media history of his wife Rama Duwaji—which has included support for terrorism and the use of a variety of slurs—after Mamdani reduced the weight of her posts to those of “a private person.”
Five people close to the mayor, including one from his transition team, disputed Mamdani’s characterization of Duwaji, telling Politico that she is in fact a public figure.
“As the leader of New York City, he has to start addressing this,” Moms United For Black Lives NYC’s Tanesha Grant told the outlet. “It’s his responsibility. It’s not good enough to just say she’s ‘a private person’ — she’s not. He can’t let things fester like that.”
“She has a police detail and a government staff,” another Mamdani ally added, while an elected official close to Mamdani said Duwaji “would need to do an interview, better explain herself, and … do some visits and meetings with key constituencies, like Jewish museums.”
Growing angst among the mayor’s inner circle comes on the heels of a Washington Free Beacon report, which Politico cites, uncovering a series of inappropriate posts made by Duwaji. “@_AlyaF Helllll yeah, nigga,” she posted on Feb. 2, 2013. “Whyyyyyy are all these fgts folllowing [sic] meeeeeeeee,” she added on June 16 later in the same year.
The racial slur has not been received kindly by black New Yorkers.
“Black folks were left stunned and outraged after throwing their support to Mamdani and his wife,” the Root wrote.
Duwaji’s posts, which came when she was in her late teens and early 20s, also included praise for terrorists.
“If it does good for my cause, I’ll be happy to accept death,” one 2017 caption posted to Duwaji’s Tumblr account read in honor of famed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist Leila Khaled, who participated in two plane hijackings. Duwaji also reposted a 2015 tweet praising fellow PFLP terrorist Shadia Abu Ghazaleh—who participated in the bombing of an Israeli bus and led several other terror attacks—as the “first palestinian woman to fight in resistance after 1967 occupation.”
Duwaji’s old X account was deleted in the wake of the Free Beacon’s report.
The post ‘She Has a Police Detail and a Government Staff’: Mamdani Allies Urge NYC Mayor To Confront Wife’s Controversial Social Media History appeared first on .

Zohran Mamdani is struggling to distance himself from a variety of anti-Semitism scandals involving himself, his wife, and members of his staff.
Maybe this will help.
The New York City mayor is expected to attend a Passover Seder on Monday with Don Lemon, the disgraced former CNN host who was arrested earlier this year for storming a church in Minnesota, and a drag queen rabbi devoted to fighting “patriarchy.”
Lemon will chant the traditional Four Questions at the Seder—a task typically assigned to the youngest capable child—and will perform the ritual “with a special orientation based on his arrest a few weeks ago protecting freedom of expression.” Lemon, 60, was pushed out at CNN in 2023 after suggesting that former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley was “past her prime.” She was 51 at the time. Lemon has since become a vocal critic of Israel, and has denounced the Jewish state for committing “war crimes” in Gaza.
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie will appear at the Seder by video from Israel. The rabbi and human rights activist is best known as the subject of the documentary film Sabbath Queen (2024), which followed Lau-Lavie’s “epic journey” as a “drag-queen rebel” who “challenge[s] patriarchy and supremacy.” It is not known if the rabbi will appear as himself or as his drag alter ego, Hadassah Gross. Other guests will include Terrence Floyd, brother of George Floyd, and Matthew Broussard, the actor and comedian who played “Comic 2 at Stage Deli” in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

The annual Downtown Seder is not a traditional Seder but rather a “supplement,” according to the event’s longtime host, City Winery proprietor Michael Dorf. One Jewish magazine described it as “half postmodern religious ritual and half cabaret,” while the New York Times said the 1997 ceremony was “a cross between summer camp in the Catskills and a progressive jazz concert.” Net proceeds from the Seder will be donated to Seeds of Peace, a nonprofit that “empowers young leaders from regions of conflict … to dismantle legacies of animosity.”
Mamdani will also host a private Passover dinner for city employees.
The mayor’s participation in the Jewish festivities is likely to face heavy scrutiny after he celebrated Ramadan earlier this month with Abdullah Akl, a pro-Hamas extremist who called for the terrorist group to “strike Tel Aviv.” Mamdani also shared an iftar dinner at Gracie Mansion with Mahmoud Khalil, the anti-Semitic protest leader who told the New York Times “we couldn’t avoid” the Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel.
Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, has also faced criticism for her terrorist-adjacent social media habits. Duwaji “liked” a number of Instagram posts celebrating the Oct. 7 attack, celebrated Palestinian terrorists in her early 20s, and contributed an illustration for an essay compilation published by a radical pro-Hamas activist who has repeatedly said Israel should be “wiped off the map.” Mamdani has defended his wife by insisting that her support for terrorism was expressed in her capacity as a “private person.”
Multiple members of Mamdani’s staff have faced controversy for their anti-Semitic social media posts. His former director of appointments, Catherine Almonte Da Costa, resigned last year after journalists uncovered her old posts denouncing “Money hungry Jews.” Mamdani has also raised concerns due to his bizarre response to ISIS-inspired terrorists who threw homemade bombs at an anti-Muslim rally outside his home. He went out of his way to condemn Islamophobia before eventually noting that terrorism was also “never acceptable.” It’s not the first time Mamdani has pretended to observe a Jewish holiday with celebrities. In 2025, he released a widely mocked video of himself making latkes with actor Mandy Patinkin, star of Jock the Hero Dog and Smurfs: The Lost Village.
The post Mamdani Attending ‘Postmodern’ Passover Seder With Don Lemon and ‘Drag Queen’ Rabbi appeared first on .

Remember, you read it here first — because you won’t read it anywhere else.

If you rely on NR and look forward to its offerings, will you drop in another coin?

“Priceless,” Fox News Channel Chief Political Analyst Brit Hume declared Monday, sharing a viral video post of an interview with an apparent “No Kings Day” protester from Saturday.

In the video posted on X.com by Damani Felder on @TheDamaniFelder (a verified account with more than 313,000 followers), a purported No Kings Day protester either can’t, or won’t, answer the simplest questions about why – or what – she’s protesting.

After dodging the interviewer’s multiple requests for specifics, the protester tries, and fails, to come up with a single reason she’s protesting – then, simply dismisses the entire interview as inappropriate:

Q: “So, what brings you out today?”

A: “No Kings Day.”

Q: “And why, specifically, are you out supporting No Kings Day?”

A: “I think protest is important.”

Q: “Why are you protesting?”

A: “How much time do you have?”

Q: “A couple minutes. And, what’s the main reason you are out here protesting President Trump?”

A: “It is a lot of the decisions that are being made.”

Q: “Is there any decision, in particular, you disagree with?”

A: “Okay. So, I would start with…well, I don’t even think it’s appropriate for me to have this interview.”

 

Priceless. https://t.co/dPsl01GcXb
— Brit Hume (@brithume) March 30, 2026
 

In an earlier post, Hume shared video of No Kings Day protesters waving communist flags, from a post noting that those who are protesting “no kings” appear to support having communist dictators.

The U.S. does not seek an arms race. But in a world where its adversaries sprint ahead, unilateral restraint becomes synonymous with surrender.

If we’re going to fight, we should remember particular lessons from history.

While ABC, CBS, and NBC have shown scant interest — just three minutes and 43 seconds — on their lead morning and evening shows in covering University of Loyola Chicago student Sheridan Gorman’s brutal March 19 murder, CNN and MS NOW have been even less interested in reporting on the murder allegedly at the hands of an illegal alien from Venezuela as neither has dedicated a single on-air story to this crime.

While there hasn’t been a single news report or dedicated segment to Gorman and the case, she has been either directly or indirectly mentioned 11 times on CNN and once on MS NOW in live remarks from the White House or Capitol Hill, or statements by Republican guests. In other words, Gorman’s name has not once been uttered by a host, reporter, or even paid network contributor.

Media Research Center analysts searched CNN’s transcripts page, Nexis, and Snapstream closed captioning searches from the evening of March 19 (specifically 8:00 p.m. Eastern, the first full hour after news broke of the suspect’s identity) through March 30, looking for mentions Sheridan Gorman (including separate searches for her first name, last name, and both), Chicago, and Loyola.

As of this story’s publication, these searches spanned 186 possible hours of news programming on CNN and 151 hours on MS NOW.

The only time MS NOW viewers might have been inclined to research for Gorman’s case came Friday afternoon when it carried remarks from Speaker Mike Johnson about Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding:

In the last several days, we have recent examples of dangerous criminals in this country killing innocent Americans. We had an 18-year-old college student in Chicago, a young lady, who was shot in the back by a dangerous criminal who had been released in that sanctuary city and first, released at the border under Joe Biden. They opened the border wide for four years.

That was it. Three sentences in a press conference that, if they had known Gorman’s case would be mentioned, they might not have carried it.

Over on CNN, they too aired that Johnson press conference, along with March 25 and 30 White House press briefings in which Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned Gorman by name, a March 26 White House cabinet meeting where President Trump alluded to Gorman three times, and a March 27 when Trump cited Gorman when speaking to reporters after landing in Miami.

Thankfully, two CNN guests had the courage last week to bring up Gorman during segments about the partial government shutdown over DHS.

First, Congressman Mike Lawler (R-NY) paid tribute to Gorman last Wednesday on The Arena when host Kasie Hunt asked him about the state of funding negotiations (click “expand”):

Well, let me show you the consequences of lax immigration enforcement. A 18-year-old girl in my district, Sheridan Gorman, was brutally murdered by an illegal immigrant that was allowed to enter into the country during Joe Biden’s administration, captured at the border released. He was arrested for shoplifting in Chicago, released. And he went and brutally murdered an 18-year-old innocent girl. And Hakeem Jeffries yesterday couldn’t even be bothered to say whether or not that type of individual who is arrested for murder, who is in the country illegally, should be deported. So, this is what the Democrats are fighting back against, Kasie. They don’t want immigration enforcement. They don’t want ICE to be able to do their jobs. That individual never should have been in this country. And the reason we passed the Laken Riley Act was specifically because you have cases where people are arrested for things like shoplifting and local jurisdictions are not cooperating with immigration enforcement. And so. innocent Americans are being killed in the streets. And so, yes, there is a debate to be had on immigration enforcement. There is a debate to be had on sanctuary jurisdiction policies that the Democrats have continually supported.

The second instance was on the March 27/28 edition of CNN’s The Story Is when former Trump campaign deputy communications director Caroline Sunshine invoked Gorman on four separate occasions while debating far-left influencer and podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen about the DHS shutdown.

When Cohen brought up the deaths of far-left Minneapolis protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Sunshine said she was “glad you bring up killing people on the streets” as a segue to asking: “So, what would you say to the family of Sheridan Gorman who was killed last week by an illegal immigrant who entered our country in 2023 and had a detainer out and an arrest warrant that wasn’t fulfilled?”

“What would you say to her family as to why it’s okay to not fund ICE? Whose job it would be to make sure that, one, he was never here, and two, we’ve gotten rid of him? What would you say to her family,” she added.

Cohen wouldn’t engage, only to say he’s “sad for anybody who passes away or who is tragically killed,” but pivoted back to ICE “slaughtering people in the streets.”

The second time came when Cohen claimed President Trump has “leverag[ing] Americans’ pain” at airports to ensure passage of the SAVE America Act that Sunshine again jumped in (click “expand”):

SUNSHINE: But on the fact of leveraging pain, let’s talk about the pain again of Sheridan Gorman, who just last week in our country. I just want everybody to picture this. She is an 18-year-old woman who is out watching the Northern Lights with her friends, taking selfies, thinking about what she is going to post on social media, and instantly a bullet rings out, hits her head. She is killed instantly by an illegal immigrant who should have never been here in the first place. Again, came in 2023. ICE’s whole job is to get people like that out of our country. It is not morally defensible to defend a nation that allows criminals like that to stay in our country. That’s not morally —

COHEN: But — but ICE is funded.

Notice how, on both occasions, host Elex Michaelson didn’t engage on Sunshine’s argument about the need to fund immigration enforcement.

That said, Michaelson briefly asked Cohen — who had just dismissed Gorman’s murder as “fear porn” — to address one tangential point Sunshine raised: “But don’t you agree that ICE is itself important, and the idea of taking out criminal illegal aliens that have convicted of other crimes is a good thing?”

Cohen only said “the idea of immigration enforcement is important” because “ICE, as it stands right now, is beyond repair” and “fundamentally broken.”

Sunshine clapped back amid some Cohen stammering: “Who’s supposed to save Sheridan Gorman? It’s a good thing that we allowed her killer to stay in our country? Is it a good thing that she is dead? You want to talk about exploiting pain? Is it a good thing that she is dead? Yes or no? She would not be dead if an illegal immigrant had not been in our country.”

The last time was towards the end of their lengthy tussle, starting with Sunshine wondering: “And what about the pain of Sheridan Gorman’s family again?”

With over 300 hours of news programming since news broke about the suspect, CNN and MS NOW have had more than enough time to muster even a single news report about the suspect’s arrest or his first court hearing.

Thus, their decision to remain silent has been more than just bias, but a choice to suppress an inconvenient narrative surrounding the very agency at the center of this latest shutdown.

There can be no doubt that Iran is actively trying to externalize the pain the U.S. and Israel are inflicting on it.

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that an Illinois federal court has allowed its class action civil rights lawsuit against the City of Evanston, Illinois’ reparations program to move forward.
Judicial Watch filed the class action civil rights lawsuit in May 2024, challenging Evanston’s use of race as an eligibility requirement for its “Local Reparations Restorative Housing Program,” which makes $25,000 direct cash payments to black residents and descendants of black residents who lived in Evanston between the years 1919 and 1969 (Flinn et al. v Evanston (No. 1:24-cv-04269)).
Judicial Watch argues that the program’s race-based eligibility program violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. So far, 137 people have received reparations payments totaling $3.47 million.
U.S. District Judge John F. Kress rejected the city’s attempt to dismiss the case, finding that the plaintiffs have sufficient standing to pursue their constitutional claims and that requiring the plaintiffs, who are white, to first file for a program they were ineligible for due to their race was a futile gesture.
Judicial Watch argued to the court:
[T]he program’s use of a race-based eligibility requirement is presumptively unconstitutional, and remedying societal discrimination is not a compelling government interest. Nor has remedying discrimination from as many as 105 years ago or remedying intergenerational discrimination ever been recognized as a compelling government interest. Among the program’s other fatal flaws is that it uses race as a proxy for discrimination without requiring proof of discrimination.
“Evanston’s reparations program provides $25,000 cash payments to blacks only,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The Constitution forbids race-based government programs like this. We welcome the court’s decision to allow this historic lawsuit to move forward against this woke, racist program.”
Judicial Watch is being assisted in the lawsuit by Christine Svenson of Chalmers, Adams, Backer & Kaufman, LLC. 
In January 2025, the City of San Francisco, in a 7-3 vote by the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco, authorized a settlement agreement in a taxpayer lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch, agreeing to discontinue its discriminatory guaranteed-income program funded by taxpayer money in favor of transgender individuals with a preference for biological black and Latino men who identify as women. The agreement commits the city to pay $3,250 in attorney’s fees and costs and not to create a new guaranteed income program with the same eligibility criteria.
In September 2025, Judicial Watch announced it wrote letters to the Offices of Civil Rights in the Departments of Education and Labor requesting they investigate the collective bargaining agreement between the Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. The letters point out that the contract violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 
The City of Asheville, NC, in January 2022, settled a Judicial Watch federal civil rights lawsuit after agreeing to remove all racially discriminatory provisions in a city-funded scholarship program. Additionally, the city also agreed to remove racially discriminatory eligibility provisions in a related program that provides grants to educators. 
In December 2022, Judicial Watch announced the California Court of Appeal has upheld two injunctions against California quota requirements for corporate boards. Earlier this year, two California trial courts had found (here and here) unconstitutional state quota mandates for sex, race, ethnicity, and LGBT status. On December 1, 2022, the California Court of Appeal denied (here and here) two separate emergency requests by the California Secretary of State to lift the injunctions.
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The post Judicial Watch: Federal Court Allows Lawsuit against Reparations Program to Move Forward—Evanston, Illinois, Gives $25,000 Gov’t Payments to Blacks Only appeared first on Judicial Watch.