One of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's first actions after taking office on Jan. 1, 2026, was to appoint Cea Weaver, a tenant organizer and housing advocate, as director of the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants. According to an interview Weaver gave the left-leaning magazine Dissent, she had been organizing tenants in New York City since 2010 and played a role in securing the passage of the 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act, which strengthened tenant protections and increased the number of rent-stabilized apartments in New York.
On Jan. 6, two right-leaning tabloids, the Daily Mail and New York Post (archived, archived), published stories investigating Weaver's social media history, claiming she had called home ownership a form of "white supremacy" and had called for the seizure of private property.
The Daily Mail article also accused Weaver of "breathtaking hypocrisy," writing that her mother owned a $1.4 million house in Nashville, while the New York Post put the value at $1.6 million. On Jan. 7, the Daily Mail (archived) photographed Weaver crying after one of its reporters waited outside her home to confront her about the posts.
The claims about Weaver's social media posts and her mother's home spread widely online. For example, one X user wrote:
Cea Weaver is NYC Mayor Mamdani's advocate for tenants. She says private homeownership is "white supremacy," and "the people" should "seize private property," especially from whites.
This was her face when a reporter asked if that included her mother's $1.4 million mansion.
The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal published op-eds on Weaver, while U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said on X (archived) that the Justice Department would be "paying very close attention" to policies implemented in New York because "discrimination based on skin color" was illegal. In the X post's video, Dhillon added: "Just because you're white doesn't mean you have fewer rights in this country."
Snopes readers contacted us for more information about the claims. We reached out to Weaver; Celia Applegate, the woman named as Weaver's mother in the articles; and Mamdani's office for comment on the story. We will update this article if we receive replies.
Did Weaver call home ownership a form of 'white supremacy'?
Weaver's X account, where she was accused of calling home ownership "a weapon of white supremacy," was not live at the time of publication. However, an
The post, dated Aug. 21, 2019, when X was called Twitter, read: "Private property including and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as 'wealth building' public policy."
(X user @ceaweaver)
Numerous reputable news media outlets reported on Weaver's past social media posts, and she acknowledged them in an interview with television news media outlet NY1.
"Some of those things are certainly not how I would say things today and are regretful," she said, adding: "For many years, people have been locked out of the property market that has produced a lot of systemic and racial inequalities in our system, and I want to make sure that everybody has a safe and affordable place to live whether they rent or own."
The New York Times reported that the same posts, "most of which predate[d] 2020," contributed to a failed 2021 nomination aiming to put Weaver on the New York City Planning Commission.
Does Weaver's mother own $1.4M Tennessee home?
It was not possible to independently confirm whether Celia Applegate, a professor at Vanderbilt University, was Weaver's mother. However, Snopes found no instances of Weaver denying reports that Applegate was her mother.
Property records showed that a woman called Celia Applegate and her partner, David Blackbourn, owned a home in Nashville, Tennessee. (For the sake of privacy, Snopes has elected not to publish the property's address). Those records appraised the property at just under $1.5 million, in between the Daily Mail's figure of $1.4 million and the New York Post's claim of $1.6 million.
It is also worth noting that in any case Weaver is not responsible for her mother owning a home of that value.