Hope for bipartisanship flared briefly in May, when conservative Ted Cruz responded to a tweet from progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez regarding corporate lobbying by former members of Congress. “Here’s something I don’t say often: on this point, I AGREE with @AOC,” Cruz tweeted. The “clean bill” AOC then proposed is reportedly in the works—Cruz told Politico their staffers have been meeting to discuss legislation—but since then, few issues have arisen to unite the pair. This week, however, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Cruz and Ocasio-Cortez, were drawn together by another matter: the NBA’s response to China, after Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey tweeted a call to “stand with Hong Kong.” The a letter to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver on Wednesday, lawmakers presented a consensus: that the NBA should grow a spine.

Acknowledging the NBA’s “lucrative and longstanding market in China,” the lawmakers chided league officials for “bending over backwards to express ‘sensitivity’ only to one side.” “NBA players have a rich history of speaking out on sensitive topics of social justice and human rights inside the United States, and the NBA takes pride in defending their right to do so,” the lawmakers wrote. “Yet while it is easy to defend freedom of speech when it costs you nothing, equivocating when profits are at stake is a betrayal of fundamental American values.” They added, “You have more power to take a stand than most of the Chinese government’s targets and should have the courage and integrity to use it.”

The scolding came after the NBA, which benefits from an image as the most progressive of the four major American sports leagues, threw Morey under the bus over his tweet, saying it was “regrettable” that the GM had offended fans in mainland China, and emphasizing that “his tweet does not represent the Rockets or the NBA.” The league’s weak posture toward China, which represents a huge chunk of its market, was roundly criticized, as was the wishy-washy demurring of many of its figures, including Steve Kerr, the Golden State Warriors coach typically outspoken on social and political issues. Ben Sasse, Tom Cotton, Tom Malinowski, Mike Gallagher, Roy Wyden, Jim Banks, Ocasio-Cortez, and Cruz all slammed the NBA Wednesday both for hanging Morey out to dry and for capitulating to China as it cracks down on pro-democracy demonstrators. “Your statements come at a time when we would hope to see Americans standing up and speaking out in defense of the rights of the people of Hong Kong,” the lawmakers wrote.

Silver has since made an attempt at damage control, but his league isn’t the only American business to cave to Beijing. Silicon Valley has also bent to pressure from China, with Apple removing an app that pro-democracy demonstrators had used to monitor police activity. Chinese state media called the app “toxic software” and suggested the crowdsourced application was aiding Hong Kong “rioters,” as NPR reported Thursday. Apple said the app, HKmap.live, had “been used to target and ambush police, threaten public safety, and criminals have used it to victimize residents in areas where they know there is no law enforcement.” Google parent company Alphabet, meanwhile removed an app from the Google Play store that allowed users to role play as a Hong Kong protester; the company said the app violated its policy that prohibited developers from capitalizing on “sensitive events.”

While the companies have not said pressure from China led them to shut down the app, the decision to do so will likely “lower the two tech giants’ risk of running afoul of the Chinese government and upsetting consumers in the country,” as the Wall Street Journal noted Thursday.