Rama Duwaji, the wife of New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, has apologised after old tweets resurfaced showing her using both the F-slur and the N-word in 2013.
The posts were first highlighted last month by right-wing outlet The Washington Free Beacon. In one tweet, Duwaji responded to another user using the N-word. In another post from June that year, she used the F-slur while complaining about people following her on Twitter.
The same outlet also criticised several of Duwaji’s Instagram posts, claiming they glorified Palestinian militants. Among the examples cited was a post featuring Leila Khaled of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who was involved in plane hijackings in 1969 and 1970.
In a statement to the online arts publication Hyperallergic, Duwaji said she felt ashamed after being confronted with the language she had used as a teenager.
“When a tabloid recently published old tweets I wrote as a teenager, I felt a lot of shame being confronted with language I used that is so harmful to others; being 15 doesn’t excuse it,” she said.
“I’ve read and seen a lot of what others have had to say in response, and I understand the hurt I caused and am truly sorry.”
Zohran Mamdani was asked separately about the controversy and described his wife as a private person who does not hold any formal position in City Hall.
“She shared some of her reflections in this interview. I won’t add much to them,” he said, according to The Independent. “What I will say, however, is that she is someone of incredible integrity.”
The controversy comes less than a year after Mamdani’s historic election win on 4 November 2025, which made him New York City’s first Muslim mayor and its youngest in more than a century.
During his campaign, Mamdani made a number of commitments aimed at supporting LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers. His platform argued that queer and trans people across the United States were facing an increasingly hostile political environment, and that New York should act as a sanctuary city for LGBTQIA+ communities.
His campaign also linked LGBTQIA+ inequality to the wider cost-of-living crisis, noting higher rates of unemployment and homelessness among queer and trans people.
Among his key promises were expanding and protecting gender-affirming care across the city, formally making New York an LGBTQIA+ sanctuary city, and creating a dedicated Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs.
On 13 March 2026, Mamdani moved to deliver on that pledge by establishing the city’s first Mayor’s Office for LGBTQIA+ Affairs and appointing the first openly trans person to lead a New York City office as its director.
While Duwaji’s apology addresses the resurfaced posts directly, the episode has nonetheless created an uncomfortable political distraction for an administration that has publicly positioned itself as strongly pro-LGBTQIA+.
