By: Fern Sidman

By the time most New Yorkers were still adjusting to the shock of a political upheaval that brought a 34-year-old democratic socialist into City Hall, a far more troubling drama had already begun to unfold—quietly, digitally, and with consequences that extend far beyond social media. According to a report on Friday at VIN News, the removal of official mayoral posts affirming New York City’s commitment to combating antisemitism has ignited a civil-rights firestorm, forcing the new Mamdani administration into its first serious credibility crisis.

At the heart of the controversy are two posts that were published in the waning hours of former Mayor Eric Adams’s administration. The posts—part of a thread promoting the city’s first-ever municipal report on fighting antisemitism—were suddenly deleted from the official @NYCMayor account shortly after Zohran Mamdani was sworn in. For Jewish advocacy leaders, the deletions were not merely bureaucratic housekeeping. They were symbolic, chilling, and potentially unlawful.

As VIN News reported, the National Jewish Advocacy Center (NJAC) was the first to raise the alarm publicly, accusing the new mayor of opening his tenure with what it termed a “deeply disturbing” signal to Jewish New Yorkers. In a blistering letter addressed to Mamdani, NJAC director Mark Goldfeder wrote that the deletions effectively erased the city’s most visible affirmations of Jewish safety at a time when antisemitic incidents across the five boroughs are at historic highs.

“One of your very first actions as mayor was to remove official statements affirming the safety of Jewish New Yorkers,” Goldfeder wrote, according to the VIN News report. “At a time of unprecedented antisemitic intimidation and violence, that decision is deeply disturbing and undermines public confidence.”

For many Jewish leaders, the timing could not have been more jarring. The deleted posts were part of Adams’s final push to publicize a comprehensive municipal blueprint on antisemitism—a report that had taken months to compile and was hailed as a groundbreaking acknowledgment that hatred against Jews in New York had reached crisis levels.

What elevated the matter from symbolic insult to potential legal infraction was Goldfeder’s assertion that the deletions may violate New York City’s rules governing public records. Under municipal law, official communications—particularly those issued by a mayoral account—are not private property of an administration but belong to the city itself.

Goldfeder warned that deleting such content without proper archiving could breach public-records requirements, and, as the VIN News report detailed, copies of his letter were forwarded not only to City Hall but also to the Department of Investigation and the Conflicts of Interest Board.

“The mayoralty is an institution, not a personal social-media feed,” Goldfeder wrote. “What is erased — and when — matters. The law matters. And the safety and dignity of Jewish New Yorkers most certainly matter.”

This framing has resonated powerfully within the Jewish community, which has grown weary of reassurances that feel performative rather than protective.

.@NYCMayor promised a New Era and unity today.

This isn’t new. And it isn’t unity. https://t.co/I2ixihFWb9

— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) January 2, 2026

The controversy might have remained a simmering advocacy dispute had former Mayor Eric Adams not entered the fray himself. According to the information provided in the VIN News report, Adams reposted Goldfeder’s statement on X and appended a sharply worded rebuke aimed squarely at his successor.

“@NYCMayor promised a new era and unity today,” Adams wrote. “This isn’t new. And it isn’t unity.”

For Adams—who had made antisemitism one of the central themes of his final months in office—the deletions struck a deeply personal nerve. His administration had established the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism and issued multiple executive orders reinforcing protections for Jewish New Yorkers. To see those messages vanish from the city’s digital record was, in his view, an act of institutional vandalism.

Mamdani’s office quickly sought to contain the fallout. A spokesperson told reporters, as relayed by VIN News, that the deletions were part of a routine archival process in which posts from the prior administration are removed “in chronological order.”

The administration insisted the removals were administrative rather than ideological and reiterated Mamdani’s commitment to maintaining the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, along with promises to increase funding for hate-crime prevention.

To my knowledge, neither Bloomberg, de Blasio, nor Adams scrubbed antisemitism tweets on day one.

I’ve been clear: I will be vocal in defending our Jewish brothers and sisters, just as they stood up for African Americans during the civil rights era. https://t.co/eVjD9qSrHI

— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) January 2, 2026

Yet the explanation has failed to quell the outcry. Jewish leaders argue that the optics are simply too damaging to dismiss as a clerical error—especially when the removed posts addressed precisely the community that feels most imperiled.

Every mayor is defined by the decisions made in the opening days of their tenure. For Mamdani, whose record includes controversial anti-Israel rhetoric and refusal in the past to disavow phrases widely interpreted as calls for violence, the stakes were already high.

As the VIN News report emphasized, Jewish organizations across New York have been watching the new mayor’s moves with apprehension, wary that campaign rhetoric might translate into policy indifference. The deletion of antisemitism-related posts—whether intentional or not—has only sharpened those fears.

“Your first days in office define your administration,” Goldfeder wrote in his letter. “This is not how that definition should begin.”

The broader context is impossible to ignore. According to statistics cited in the VIN News report, New York has experienced an unprecedented surge in antisemitic incidents over the past year—from assaults on visibly Jewish pedestrians to vandalism of synagogues and schools. For many in the community, municipal acknowledgment is not a matter of public relations but a psychological lifeline.

The Adams posts that were removed had celebrated the city’s new antisemitism report, described as a “roadmap for the year ahead.” Their disappearance, critics argue, communicates a starkly different message: that Jewish concerns are not a priority worth preserving in the city’s official narrative.

The deeper damage may be reputational. VIN News reported that Jewish advocacy groups now speak openly of a “trust deficit” between City Hall and the community—a deficit created not by overt hostility but by quiet erasure.

Trust in government, after all, is not built solely on policy announcements. It is built on continuity, transparency, and respect for institutional memory. When official statements disappear without explanation, especially those addressing the safety of a targeted minority, the implication is that those words were provisional all along.

The dispute has also opened a philosophical debate about the nature of public records in the digital age. A mayoral X account is not a diary; it is an archive of civic intent. Each post is a timestamped declaration of what the city stands for at a given moment.

As the VIN News report noted, removing such content retroactively reshapes the narrative of governance, allowing new administrations to curate history rather than inherit it.

For Jewish New Yorkers, this is not merely a procedural concern. It is existential. Their struggle against antisemitism has been marked by institutional amnesia—by moments when warnings were ignored, reports shelved, and commitments forgotten.

Mamdani’s administration insists that its commitment to combating antisemitism is genuine. But the early optics are grim. Even if the deletions were part of a standard archival process, City Hall’s failure to anticipate the impact of removing such sensitive content speaks volumes about its political instincts.

As VIN News has reported, Jewish organizations are now demanding not only the restoration of the deleted posts but also clear guidelines ensuring that future transitions preserve the public record intact.

The episode is a cautionary tale for a mayor who campaigned on unity and moral clarity. In politics, symbolism is substance. And when the first symbols of a new administration involve the disappearance of assurances to a vulnerable community, the wound is not easily healed.

In the end, this controversy is not about two tweets. It is about whether Jewish New Yorkers can trust that their city sees them, hears them, and remembers its promises—even after administrations change.