NYC Councilmember Paladino faces ethics charges over Islamophobic posts

The New York City Council’s ethics committee has charged Councilmember Vickie Paladino with violating the body’s rules for repeatedly posting Islamophobic content on social media.

The Committee on Rules, Privileges, Elections, Standards and Ethics charged the Republican lawmaker from Queens with “engaging in disorderly behavior” and violating the Council’s anti-harassment and discrimination policy, Council spokesperson Jack Lobel said after a closed-door committee vote Monday.

Paladino, 71, has five days to provide a written response, and she will be scheduled to appear before the committee in the coming weeks, Lobel said. Pending further action by the committee, the full Council could vote to censure or fine Paladino, expel her from the Council, or impose other sanctions, according to the Council’s rules. Such measures would require a two-thirds vote of the Council.

Paladino, who for years has represented a swath of Northeast Queens extending from College Point to Little Neck, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. In a post Tuesday evening on X, Paladino accused the ethics committee of responding to “political pressure” from City Council Speaker Julie Menin and pursuing an “unconstitutional scheme to violate my First Amendment rights.”

“Make no mistake, this mockery of the First Amendment will not stand," she wrote. "My legal team will respond to this egregious violation of my rights swiftly.”

The charges filed by the ethics panel mark an escalation in the body's oversight of Paladino, whose comments on social media have long been a matter of official concern. Menin told Gothamist in late February she had directed the committee to meet “as soon as possible” to conclude an ongoing investigation into Paladino's remarks on social media.

Menin’s directive followed a Feb. 17 tweet in which Paladino criticized 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 posted. “Does this administration have one single actual American in it?”

Menin condemned the remarks in a social media post of her own, stating, “This Islamophobic rhetoric is deeply offensive.” Menin added, “I condemn it in the strongest terms.” Councilmember Shekar Krishnan, a Democrat who sits on the ethics committee, said in a post that “Racism and Islamophobia have no place in City Hall.”

More recently, Paladino criticized Mamdani for praying with sanitation workers before the recent blizzard.

“This is part of Islamic conquest,” Paladino wrote in a Feb. 23 tweet. “The message is very clear — we are being replaced.”

Krishnan responded to Paladino’s Feb. 23 remarks: “Vickie's relentless Islamophobic comments are not reflective of the values of New Yorkers and create an unsafe working environment within the City Council.” He added: “There must be immediate accountability and consequences — this language, repeatedly, cannot be tolerated.”

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.”

Paladino subsequently deleted the latter post, after Menin said she asked her to do so. But Paladino followed up by publishing 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 and the Council’s progressive caucus.

Under previous Speaker Adrienne Adams, the Council voted to remove Paladino from the Committee on Mental Health, Disabilities and Addiction months after an investigation into her anti-LGBTQ 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.