A prime official in Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s incoming administration resigned abruptly Thursday after a sequence of anti-Jewish tweets had been uncovered, simply sooner or later after her appointment was introduced.
Cat Da Costa, who would have served as Mamdani’s head of appointments within the mayor’s workplace, resigned hours after the social media posts had been unearthed. She would have been tasked with screening prime hires for his administration.
“I spoke with the Mayor-elect this afternoon, apologized, and expressed my deep regret for my past statements,” Da Costa stated in a press release.
In tweets from 2011 and 2012, per screenshots shared by the Anti-Defamation League, Da Costa, who’s now 33, complained about “money hungry Jews” and wrote that “Far Rockaway train is the Jew train.”
Da Costa, who’s married to a Jewish man, apologized for the hateful missives.
“These statements are not indicative of who I am. As the mother of Jewish children, I feel a profound sense of sadness and remorse at the harm these words have caused,” she stated. “As this has become a distraction from the work at hand, I have offered my resignation.”
Whereas her resignation introduced the chapter to a swift conclusion, the De Costa state of affairs raises questions in regards to the Mamdani transition group’s vetting of job candidates. Da Costa’s appointment Wednesday got here after a month-long pause in appointments from Mamdani.
Cat Da Costa speaks to the press on the Brooklyn Public Library Greenpoint Department in Brooklyn, Wednesday, December 17, 2025. (Shawn Inglima/ New York Day by day Information)
Dora Pekec, a spokesperson for the transition, stated the transition had no information of the previous tweets, although they had been publicly obtainable till the account was apparently deleted Thursday afternoon.
“Catherine expressed her deep remorse over her past statements and tendered her resignation, and I accepted,” Mamdani stated.
Only a day earlier, in saying her appointment Wednesday, Mamdani referred to as Da Costa “a true expert in talent acquisition, making sure excellence is at the core of city government operations.” She beforehand additionally labored in Mayor de Blasio’s administration.
The difficulty additionally touches on a problematic challenge for Mamdani. The professional-Palestine mayor-elect’s stance on Israel, comparable to boycotting the nation or the controversial phrase “globalize the intifada,” have sparked criticism that Mamdani’s positions promote anti-semitism. The ADL has launched a Mamdani “anti-semitism tracker.”
Da Costa’s husband got here to his spouse’s protection on Thursday afternoon.
“I don’t come back to this awful place much these days but as the Jew who married Cat, I can guarantee she has grown so much since some dumb tweets when she was 19,” Ricky Da Costa, who works as a deputy comptroller, wrote.
“Her remorse, like everything else about her, is deeply genuine & she works so hard for a NYC where everyone is safe.”
With Chris Sommerfeldt
