Cruz, Sasse, and AOC join letter calling out NBA and requesting suspension of games in China

The following is an excerpt from Blaze Media’s daily Capitol Hill Brief email newsletter:

In an era when almost everything in American politics and culture is exhaustingly divisive, it appears that one of the few unifying issues is opposition to the importation of Chinese government censorship.

A bipartisan letter to the NBA commissioner about the league’s recent China controversy drew the signatures of Republican lawmakers Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and Ben Sasse as well as the far-left House firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The bipartisan letter, which was spearheaded by New Jersey House Democrat Tom Malinowski, expresses lawmakers’ concerns about the NBA’s recent apology for Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s tweet that supported pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. It also calls on the NBA to suspend its activities in China until the country ends its boycott against the league and the Houston Rockets.

“We are deeply concerned that individuals associated with the league may now engage in self-censorship that is inconsistent with American and the league’s stated values — and that this incident will only encourage further intimidation of American companies and persons by the Chinese government,” the letter reads, adding that the NBA should have anticipated such a challenge when doing business “in a country run by a repressive, single-party government.”

“Unless American businesses aggressively confront this intimidation campaign, the Chinese government will increasingly punish free speech outside China’s borders,” the letter explains. “The most common method is to threaten access to the growing Chinese domestic market for any international company or organization that criticizes, or allows its employees to criticize, Chinese government policies.”

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