A Knicks-themed campaign stunt has turned into a legal headache for Aber Kawas, the Mamdani-backed socialist whose past 9/11 comments already made her a lightning rod.
Kawas’ Queens campaign is now facing pressure from Madison Square Garden Sports over a design that borrowed from the Knicks’ visual identity.
The sticker turned the Knicks’ familiar colors into campaign branding, swapping the team identity for the message “I voted for Aber Kawas.”
The post-season glow around the Knicks gave the campaign’s basketball-themed pitch extra visibility.
Knicks slap Mamdani-backed NY Senate candidate Aber Kawas with 'cease and desist' letter over campaign ad: 'False advertising' https://t.co/c3ZOdWFnVq pic.twitter.com/p6ruodOr1T
— New York Post Sports (@nypostsports) June 27, 2026
The New York Post obtained the warning letter, signed by Brian N. Warner, Madison Square Garden Sports’ senior vice president and head of legal.
Warner’s letter centered on whether voters could wrongly think the Knicks had some connection to Kawas’ campaign.
“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 or in some way connected with the Knicks.”
Mamdani-backed Aber Kawas just won her primary for NY State Senate
Kawas thinks 9/11 was America's fault because of White supremacy and endorses hamas, an islamic terrorist organization who kiIIed Americans
Good luck New York pic.twitter.com/sSaZHks7yN
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 24, 2026
The warning went beyond confusion over endorsement and accused the campaign of broader trademark violations.
“The Campaign’s activities in this regard constitute, among other things, trademark infringement, trademark dilution, false advertising, false association, and unfair competition,” the letter read.
Palestinian activist Aber Kawas, who just won New York State Senate District 12, is the daughter of an illegal immigrant who wants to abolish ICE and believes that 9/11 was partly America’s fault because of our “system of capitalism, racism, white supremacy, and Islamophobia.” pic.twitter.com/agzX2zSmqC
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) June 24, 2026
Kawas’ own X pitch treated the sticker like a political trophy after the Knicks’ championship run.
“Head to the polls and claim your ‘I Voted for Aber Kawas’ champion sticker,” she tweeted.
“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.”
🎓Support Defending Education’s mission to expose political agendas in America’s classrooms and restore quality education for all! 🎓 Help protect students and strengthen education nationwide ➡️➡️➡️ DONATE TODAY!!! 🇺🇸
The legal warning landed after Kawas had already drawn scrutiny for past remarks about the September 11 attacks and the expectations placed on Muslims afterward.
The 9/11 backlash centers on an old Asian American Writers’ Workshop discussion where Kawas connected the attacks to broader political grievances.
Her explanation moved from 9/11 to colonization, resources and anti-Muslim backlash.
“The system of capitalism and racism and white supremacy and Islamophobia have all been used to colonize lands, to take resources from other people, so this is a long trajectory and we’re just seeing the manifestations of that continuation with 9/11,” she said at the time.
She then turned the discussion toward who is expected to apologize for violence and who is not.
“A lot of times when people are asking us to respond about, you know, an attack when if you look back historically, a lot of us come from lands that were colonized and where wars were being waged,” she went on.
Kawas closed the thought by contrasting demands for Muslim apologies with what she saw as silence over larger historical crimes.
“The idea that we have to apologize for a terror attack that a couple people did and then there is no apology for genocides or slavery is something that I find reprehensible,” she noted.
Fox News later received Kawas’ post-primary explanation, in which she presented the remarks as a rejection of Muslim scapegoating.
“I’ve always been outspoken about the wrongful scapegoating of Muslim Americans, both before and after 9/11, and in this interview I was speaking about the harmful notion that Muslims should have to apologize for an act of violence they have nothing to do with,” she explained.
Kawas, who has described herself as a “Muslim civil rights advocate,” won District 12’s Democratic primary by a wide margin, taking about 60% against Assemblyman Steven Raga, D-Queens.
At her victory celebration, Kawas called the win a milestone for Palestinian-American representation in Albany.
“Together we have elected the first Palestinian-American woman in the state Senate,” she told the crowd.
She tied the moment to her larger political message about Gaza and working-class communities.
“And that is why we say another world is possible,” Kawas asserted. “That is a world where Gaza is free to live. That is a world where working class communities in Queens, in New York, all over the United States, all over the world have dignity in their lives.”
The Free Beacon added another layer to the controversy by highlighting old Tumblr posts about two terrorism-case defendants.
One cited post used the phrase “living martyrs… teaching us lessons in patience, sacrifice and integrity” for Fahad Hashami and similar prisoners; Hashami pleaded guilty in 2010 to conspiracy to provide military support to al-Qaida.
City and State later gave Kawas room to defend how she viewed the Hashami case, which she tied to “post-9/11 abuse of the judicial and carceral system against Muslim defendants.”
Kawas pointed to civil-rights concerns around the case in that interview. “Many civil rights organizations raised serious concerns about the fairness of his trial,” she stated.
“And as a young high school student, this was a galvanizing case for me.”
The Knicks’ warning to Kawas comes after a similar branding fight with Zohran Mamdani, whose mayoral campaign also used Knicks-style imagery and received its own cease-and-desist letter from the team last year.
The franchise publicly distanced itself from any political endorsement in that race, which Mamdani went on to win.
“The Knicks want to make it clear that we do not endorse Mr. Mamdani for Mayor…We will pursue all legal remedies to enforce our rights”
Knicks send Zohran cease & desist letter over logo pic.twitter.com/ZNCfQEYPvR
— New York Basketball (@NBA_NewYork) October 24, 2025
The logo fight came on top of a separate Dolan-Mamdani dustup over how the city handled crowds outside Madison Square Garden during the championship run.
On June 10, Knicks owner James Dolan was more cutting during a WFAN appearance about the mayor’s side claiming Knicks fandom.
“They’re sitting there trying to say, ‘Well, we’re big Knicks fans,’ but they’re not Knicks fans,” Dolan remarked.
“He’s not a Knick fan,” he shot at Mamdani.
The tension carried into the City Hall celebration, where Mamdani invoked Dolan’s longtime foil Charles Oakley.
Dolan answered with his own quip. “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.”