In Trump’s America, with so much breaking news for the media to cover, it might have seemed odd to observe the presence of journalists and photographers staking out the Crown Heights apartment of a new City Hall appointee — heading a small office that doesn’t even have any official staff — for days at a time in early January. The media was so desperate for a glimpse of this person, you’d think a movie star (or maybe a serial killer) had just taken up residence in the modest Brooklyn neighborhood.

They were looking, instead, for Cea Weaver.

This month, the right-wing New York Post has run at least twenty articles about old tweets by Weaver, socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani’s appointee to head the Office to Protect Tenants, an office that the new mayor revived after years of neglect under the Eric Adams administration. It seems like a curious use of media resources — until you consider the importance of real estate in New York City, and of Weaver herself in leading a movement against the city’s real estate capitalists.