A recent post on New York City Councilmember Vickie Paladino’s social media account, decried as Islamophobic by her Democratic colleagues, has stirred fresh outrage over remarks tied to the Queens Republican.
Several Council members, including Speaker Julie Menin, a Democrat, criticized Paladino after a post went up on her social media account critical of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s appointment of Faiza Ali, a Muslim American woman and former Council staffer born and raised in Brooklyn, as the city’s chief immigration officer.
“New York is under foreign occupation. There's really no other way to put it,” Paladino’s account posted on social media. “Does this administration have one single actual American in it?”
Menin condemned the post in a social media post of her own, stating, “This Islamophobic rhetoric is deeply offensive,” and adding, “I condemn it in the strongest terms.” Councilmember Shekar Krishnan, another Democrat, said in a post that “Racism and Islamophobia have no place in City Hall.”
Paladino, 71, who has for four years represented a swath of northeast Queens extending from College Point to Little Neck, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Jack Lobel, a spokesperson for Menin, said the speaker would follow the coming recommendations of the Council’s ethics committee, which voted in December to begin an investigation into Paladino, spurred by anti-Muslim remarks on her social media accounts.
Menin said in a statement on Monday to Gothamist that she has directed the committee to meet as soon as possible to conclude the Paladino probe. A spokesperson for Sandra Ung, the chair of the ethics committee, declined to comment, citing confidentiality rules. The ethics panel is set to meet on Wednesday to discuss another matter.
“The City Council has a very clear policy against harassment, which includes conduct away from the workplace as well as online and on social media,” Menin said in the Monday statement. She added, "This deplorable, inflammatory conduct negatively affects Council employees and people across our city ... and we will not tolerate behavior that targets or demeans any community based on their faith, background, or immigration status — particularly from our own members.”
Paladino has previously used her social media account to call for the deportation of Mamdani, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Uganda. She has also called for the “expulsion of Muslims from Western nations.”
She later deleted the latter post, after Menin said she asked her to do so. But later, Paladino published an op-ed in the Queens Jewish Link that doubled down on her views, calling for the mass deportation of “radical Muslims and those who support them,” and creating a legal framework for denaturalization.
Those comments spurred calls to censure Paladino, including from prominent Muslim organizations, the Council’s progressive caucus, and former City Comptroller and City Councilmember Brad Lander. Fellow Republican councilmembers, including Council Minority Leader Joanne Ariola, have defended her, citing her First Amendment rights.
Paladino previously faced calls for censure over other social media posts.
In June 2022, the Council’s LGBTQIA+ Caucus called for Paladino’s censure and removal from committee assignments following social media posts in which she denounced drag queens hosting children’s story hours, accusing progressives of supporting “child grooming and sexualization.”
Under former Speaker Adrienne Adams, the Council voted to remove Paladino from the Committee on Mental Health, Disabilities, and Addiction, months after an investigation into her conduct.
At the start of the Council’s new session in January, Menin stripped Paladino of all but two of her committee assignments, citing her offensive social media posts. Paladino claimed she requested just two committee assignments because she wanted to maximize the amount of time spent in her district.
In the past, Council members have been censured before because of alleged misconduct, rather than offensive speech. But even controversial conduct has at times been insufficient for the ethics committee to recommend a reprimand.
The ethics panel reopened an investigation into Councilmember Inna Vernikov, a Republican from South Brooklyn, after she brought a gun, strapped to her belt, to an October 2023 pro-Palestinian protest, but ultimately the committee declined to recommend censuring Vernikov.
The Council’s disciplinary process flows primarily through the ethics committee, which may recommend sanctions — including censure, fines, or expulsion — that must ultimately be approved by two-thirds of the entire Council before going into effect.
The Council’s rules specifically prohibit “disorderly behavior,” which may include violations of the body’s rules, fraud, use of public property for personal matters, or violation of the speaker’s policies regarding harassment and discrimination.
The most recent councilmember to be censured was Andy King, of the Bronx, in 2019, following ethics committee findings that he harassed a female staffer, used his staff and taxpayer funds for personal matters, and retaliated against whistleblowers. King was also fined $15,000, removed from his committees, suspended for a month without pay, and later expelled.
In 2005, Queens Councilmember Allan W. Jennings Jr. was censured, fined $5,000, and stripped of his committee assignments following an ethics panel finding that he sexually harassed at least two female subordinates.
The first councilmember ever censured, according to a New York Times account, was Eugene Mastropieri, a Queens Democrat, in 1979, after the Council's ethics committee found him guilty of 14 counts of misrepresentation, conflicts of interest, and other misconduct. The committee recommended his expulsion, but the larger Council stopped short of doing so.
The next year, Mastropieri quit the Council and was convicted of helping legal clients evade $250,000 in federal income taxes.
On Saturday, Paladino’s account posted a response to a video of a group of Muslims praying in Times Square. In the video, an MC says, “You’ve seen those videos where they're like, ‘Oh my god, the Muslims are taking over New York City.’ You seen those? Let them know we are taking over New York City.”
Paladino’s account posted in response: “Nobody’s going to like where this ends up. It’s going to get ugly.”
The post has garnered more than 8,500 likes and 1,900 reposts.
This story was updated with additional information.
