Good morning. It's Friday. We'll meet the lonely New York congressman who has become the most prominent defender of the embattled platform TikTok. We'll also look at city contracts that are turning hotels into temporary housing for some of the migrants who have arrived on buses from the southern border. |
 | | Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times |
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On Thursday, lawmakers in Washington blasted the chief executive of the online platform TikTok. It gained attention as a platform for viral dance videos and pop songs, but recently the U.S. government has called it a national security threat. Last week the Biden administration said it wanted TikTok's Chinese ownership to sell the app or face a possible ban. |
President Biden considers TikTok a threat to national security, and that view has bipartisan support in Congress. Why has Representative Bowman become TikTok's unofficial defender? |
Basically, Bowman believes that there has been a rush to judgment in Washington simply because TikTok is owned by a Chinese company. |
The backdrop here is important. The United States and China are increasingly in competition and conflict with each other for global influence. President Biden and many lawmakers in both parties fear that Chinese authorities could force TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, to hand over data on TikTok's 150 million U.S. users, such as their approximate location or browsing history — or that Beijing could exploit TikTok to spread misinformation. That helped to explain the adversarial tone of Thursday's hearing before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. |
But Bowman says he has not seen any evidence that China is exerting undue influence over TikTok, and he opposes shutting down a popular app without better reasons. (TikTok's chief executive, Shou Chew, denied at the hearing that ByteDance is controlled by the Chinese government. He also said that TikTok was not a national security risk.) |
I also think Bowman just really likes TikTok. He started using it in 2021, has 159,000 followers and says it is a great way to communicate with young constituents and activists. Some of his videos are actually pretty funny. |
He's a progressive Democrat. Where are other left-leaning lawmakers on TikTok, like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? |
So far, only a couple of other lawmakers have been willing to join Bowman in defense of the platform, Mark Pocan of Wisconsin and Robert Garcia of California. Both are progressive Democrats like him. Some of Bowman's most outspoken allies, like Ocasio-Cortez, have been mum on this whole dispute so far. |
Bowman joined the squad, the group of left-leaning young lawmakers made famous by Ocasio-Cortez, after he won his seat in 2020. Since then, he has consistently tried to push his party leftward on climate and economic issues. |
Representative Bowman says the TikTok controversy has been warped by Washington groupthink. What does he mean by that, and what does he think Congress should do about TikTok? |
Bowman's view is that Washington is in the middle of a new Red Scare. As China tries to assert a greater role on the world stage, he thinks Republicans and even his own party are rushing to conclusions on many issues, including TikTok. |
He said he would rather see Congress slow down and spend its time coming up with a single framework to more tightly regulate how all social media companies — including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter — collect and use data. |
You write that TikTok has a large lobbying operation led by former congressional aides. What are Representative Bowman's connections to TikTok? |
Bowman told me that he does not accept corporate donations or meet with lobbyists. But his office has unquestionably been coordinating with TikTok to make the case against a ban. The company, for example, helped arrange for him to meet with dozens of influencers they had paid to come to Capitol Hill to tout the platform's benefits and then later asked Bowman to host a news conference with them just outside the Capitol. He did so gladly. |
Expect a chance of showers, persisting through the evening, with temperatures in the low 50s. At night, temps will drop to the low 40s. |
In effect until April 6 (Passover). |
 | | Anna Watts for The New York Times |
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Hotels as migrant shelters |
 | | Spencer Platt/Getty Images |
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The Row NYC hotel advertises itself as "more New York than New York," a place that combines "urban grit with grandeur." But my colleague Karen Zraick writes that it's been at the center of a humanitarian crisis for months. |
It is one of about 100 hotels and other facilities that the city has converted into temporary housing for some of the 50,000 migrants who have arrived on buses from the southern border since last spring. Mayor Eric Adams has warned that the effort may ultimately cost as much as $4 billion over the next two years and could force cuts in other city services. |
But the temporary housing has benefited hotels, which were devastated in the pandemic. Many of the hotel rooms are being paid for through a bulk contract with the Hotel Association of New York City Foundation, which signed a $237 million contract that began in September. In October, the city signed a $40 million contract to buy out the 1,300-room Row until mid-April, making it the first of several Midtown hotels that solely house migrant families. |
Margarita Buenaño, 43, from Ecuador, was among those outside the Row on a recent afternoon. She is living there with her 10-year-old son and has picked up some work as a house cleaner. Like thousands of others, they had trekked through the perilous Darién Gap, the jungle that connects Colombia and Panama, and kept going north until they reached Texas. |
"It's going to be worth it," she said. "We're fighting for our dreams." |
My mother needed basil for Sunday night dinner. I walked to the corner store, money in hand, Crocs barely on my feet. |
It was a sunny day in Brooklyn, and everyone was out. Looking to my left, I saw a woman in a feather hat with a small Pomeranian. Her hat was mundane compared to her actions. |
She reached into her purse and pulled out a large cannoli. Instead of putting it in her mouth, she reached down to the dog to give it to him. Then she pulled out one for herself. |
I walked an extra 15 blocks to get one too. |
Glad we could get together here. See you on Monday — J.B. |
| Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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