Mamdani aide ousted over antisemitic tweets scratched out of New York magazine cover

Periodical confirms removing Catherine Almonte Da Costa from lead image of cover story on ‘brain trust’ of new NYC mayor

New York magazine altered a cover photo of the city’s incoming mayor Zohran Mamdani with his top aides to exclude Catherine Almonte Da Costa, a senior appointee who resigned after her antisemitic social media posts resurfaced, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The report came the day Mamdani was sworn in as New York’s first Muslim mayor, ushering in a new age of anti-Zionist leadership that has put many Jews in the city on edge.

On Monday, New York magazine published its new edition with a cover story titled “Now comes the hard part — Introducing Mayor Mamdani and his inner circle.”

The cover image showed Mamdani in an office chair with his aides seated or standing around him, against a white background. Aides posing in the back row covered parts of New York magazine’s title.

In the original photo, which was shot by celebrity portraitist Mark Seliger, Da Costa posed so that her head covered the “w” in the magazine’s title, the Times said.

But on the cover of New York magazine’s Monday edition, the letter was fully visible, and there was a white space where Da Costa reportedly once stood. The Times cited an unnamed New York magazine employee familiar with the decision as saying it was fortunate Da Costa posed in a place where it was easy to airbrush her out.

According to the Times, the original cover photo was snapped on December 17, the same day Mamdani announced Da Costa would serve as his director of appointments.

Da Costa resigned the next day, after the Anti-Defamation League exposed posts she wrote on X — then Twitter — in 2011 and 2012 that referred to Jews as “rich” and “money-hungry.”

New York magazine confirmed to the Times that Da Costa was removed from the cover photo, and said the move was not coordinated with Mamdani’s staff.

“The magazine’s editors decided to remove her from the image, since it was meant to represent the mayor-elect’s inner circle for the new administration,” a spokeswoman for New York magazine told the Times on Wednesday, before Mamdani was sworn in.

The Times noted that many major news organizations have strict guidelines against the publication of digitally altered images.

The caption of New York magazine’s cover image did not mention that the original photograph had been altered.

The caption described the subjects of the photograph as Mamdani’s “brain trust.”

These included government veterans, members of his political team and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, scion of a well-known Jewish family, whom Mamdani kept in place to rare praise from pro-Israel centrist groups.