The New York Knicks have fired a cease and desist letter at Aber Kawas, the Democratic Socialist who just clinched the party's nomination for a Queens state Senate seat, demanding she stop using a knockoff version of the team's logo in her campaign materials. The letter, sent Friday night by Madison Square Garden Sports' senior vice president and head of legal Bryan N. Warner, accuses the Kawas campaign of trademark infringement, false advertising, and unfair competition, and threatens a lawsuit if she doesn't comply.
It's the second time the Knicks organization has had to tell a politician backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to stop ripping off its brand. Mamdani himself received the same treatment during his mayoral campaign after airing an ad during the Knicks' season opener that swapped the team name for "Zohran" in the iconic logo. He pulled the ad. Now his protégé is drawing the same legal fire.
The New York Post exclusively obtained the letter, which lays out the Knicks' case in blunt terms. Warner wrote that the campaign posted promotional materials on social media, including a doctored logo using the same orange-and-blue color scheme, the same font, and the same basketball imagery as the Knicks' trademark, but with "Kawas" replacing the team name, without any authorization from the Knicks or NBA Properties.
"Neither the Knicks nor NBA [Properties] have authorized the Campaign to use Knicks Intellectual Property in any way, including the Unauthorized Advertisements, which are likely to mislead the public into believing that the Campaign is affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by, or in some way connected with the Knicks."
The letter demands the campaign "immediately remove all promotional materials incorporating Knicks Intellectual Property" and cease any further use. A Madison Square Garden representative told reporters the letter "speaks for itself" and declined further comment.
Kawas posted the offending material on X on June 20, roughly a week after the Knicks won their first NBA championship in 53 years. Her post urged voters to head to the polls and "claim your 'I Voted for Aber Kawas' champion sticker," complete with basketball emoji and the altered logo. She invited supporters to "earn bragging rights, make your friends jealous, and let everyone know that you're part of our movement to fight for the world in the world's borough."
The timing was no accident. The Knicks' championship had electrified the city, and Kawas' campaign clearly wanted to ride the wave. But the Knicks weren't interested in lending their brand to a Democratic Socialist candidate, or to anyone who hadn't asked permission.
As Fox News reported, the episode mirrors Mamdani's own run-in with the team. During his mayoral campaign, Mamdani aired a spot during the Knicks' October season opener featuring the team's logo with his name substituted in. The Knicks sent a cease and desist, Mamdani pulled the ad, and the team stressed publicly that it was not endorsing anyone in the race.
That the same playbook, copy the logo, slap your name on it, hope the team doesn't notice, has now been tried twice by candidates in Mamdani's political orbit says something about how this faction views other people's intellectual property. Or perhaps how it views rules in general.
The trademark dispute is the headline, but Kawas' own public statements tell a broader story about the kind of candidate Mamdani is elevating. A longtime Palestinian-American activist and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, Kawas is a former intern for the Council on American-Islamic Relations who has remained affiliated with the organization through her activism for more than a decade.
In a video segment posted on X by Australian political activist Drew Pavlou, Kawas can be heard discussing 9/11 in terms that most New Yorkers, and most Americans, would find jarring. She described capitalism, racism, white supremacy, and Islamophobia as tools used "to colonize lands, to take resources from other people," calling the current moment "a long trajectory" whose "manifestations" include 9/11.
She went further, as the recent sweep of Mamdani-backed socialist candidates through New York primaries has brought renewed scrutiny to the records of his allies:
"The idea we have to apologize for like a terror attack that like a couple of people did and then there is no apology or reparations for genocides and for slavery, et cetera, is something I find reprehensible."
Describing the murder of nearly 3,000 people as something "a couple of people did" is a choice. So is calling the expectation that Americans condemn a mass-casualty terrorist attack on their own soil "reprehensible."
Kawas' written record is equally revealing. In an online journal post dated September 7, 2015, Labor Day, she wrote that she does not celebrate federal holidays, listing July 4th, Thanksgiving, Veterans Day, Columbus Day, and Labor Day as days that "are supposed to be victories for people, when they truly represent the silencing & destruction of our movements."
"Today I do not celebrate a day off, I only recommit myself to a global movement that fights against the death, displacement, and exploitation of people for capital."
A candidate who won't celebrate Veterans Day or Independence Day wants to represent New Yorkers in the state Senate. And the mayor of New York City reportedly backs her.
The Kawas cease and desist lands at a moment when Mamdani's political brand is under pressure from multiple directions. His public feud with Knicks owner James Dolan, a longtime friend of President Trump, escalated earlier this month after city-imposed security measures led to the cancellation of fan watch parties outside Madison Square Garden during the NBA Finals.
Dolan and Mamdani appeared together at the June 18 Knicks victory parade and City Hall ceremony, but the exchanges were described as awkward. Dolan publicly snubbed the mayor, telling the crowd, according to Fox News: "I don't need your vote. I don't need to quote to you what happened. If you're real Knick fans you know it already."
The broader political picture is no friendlier. Mamdani-aligned DSA candidates have been winning primaries across the city, a trend that has alarmed moderate Democrats even as party leaders in Washington have tried to downplay the results.
The candidates emerging from this movement share a worldview that treats American institutions, holidays, and history as instruments of oppression, and apparently treats other organizations' trademarks as communal property.
Kawas clinched the Democratic nomination for her Queens state Senate seat on Tuesday. Whether she complies with the Knicks' demand remains an open question. The cease and desist letter threatens legal action if she doesn't, citing trademark infringement, trademark dilution, false advertising, false association, and unfair competition as potential claims.
The legal theory is straightforward. A campaign that copies a professional sports team's logo, same font, same colors, same basketball, and uses it to promote a political candidate without permission creates exactly the kind of false association that trademark law exists to prevent. The Knicks have made clear, twice now, that they don't want their brand associated with Mamdani's political operation.
What makes this episode more than a trademark squabble is what it reveals about the political movement behind it. Mamdani and his allies have built a brand of their own, one rooted in democratic socialism, confrontational rhetoric on Israel and domestic policy, and a view of American history that treats the nation's founding principles as tools of exploitation.
Kawas' 9/11 comments, her refusal to celebrate Veterans Day or the Fourth of July, and her decade-long affiliation with CAIR paint a picture of a candidate whose convictions are well outside the mainstream, even in deep-blue New York City.
That former Biden advisors have publicly urged Democratic leaders to confront far-left primary wins suggests the party establishment sees the problem, even if it lacks the will to act. Meanwhile, Mamdani keeps endorsing candidates, and those candidates keep winning primaries. And then they keep borrowing other people's logos.
The Knicks' cease and desist may be the least of Kawas' problems if she makes it to Albany. But it captures something essential about the movement she represents: a faction that demands the world respect its grievances while showing remarkably little respect for anyone else's rights, including the right to control your own name.
When you can't even run a campaign without copying someone else's trademark, voters might reasonably wonder what else you'd help yourself to once you're in office.