House Republicans don’t need to be so scared of New York City

So why are prominent Republicans so terrified of it?

On Monday, a social media account run by the House Judiciary Committee presented a multipart denunciation of President Biden, offered through the lens of criticizing how New York City has changed. (If you haven’t been paying close attention to the Judiciary Committee’s online presence in recent years: first, good choice, and, second, the committee has embraced the idea that gaining attention through controversy and trolling is somehow beneficial to its political efforts.) It was, in its entirety, a weird and panicky post.

Let’s take the points in this make-New-York-great-again argument one at a time.

Back in the good old days, we are told, you could fly to NYC affordably. The affordability of a flight to New York is, of course, dependent on a lot of things. Where you are flying from (Newark or Nepal?), when you are flying (on July 31 or Dec. 31?) and what counts as affordable (who’s flying, you or Elon Musk?). So let’s use Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) as our theoretical traveler and say he’s leaving one month from now.

Jordan is from Urbana, Ohio, which is about halfway between Dayton and Columbus. Over at Orbitz, you can find a round-trip flight from Columbus to New York leaving Friday, July 12, and returning Sunday, July 14, for less than $150. Members of Congress make $174,000 a year, so that seems pretty affordable.

Next, the tweet suggests that, back in the good old days, one could go to Times Square and not get robbed.

Okay, so first of all? The idea that Times Square was this safe place for tourists to bop around and goggle at the lights is a relatively modern one. In the 1970s, during one of the aforementioned rough patches in the city’s history, the idea that a tourist would roll up to Times Square with his family would have prompted a cabdriver to instead recommend Bellevue.

These days, though, it is a tourist destination — and a safe one. Sure, there is some crime in Times Square, as is the case in any place where there are a lot of people congregated. Data from the New York Police Department, though, shows that robberies in the 14th Precinct (which covers the area) are down 28 percent relative to this point last year. There have been fewer than one robberies a day so far this year in that precinct, with hundreds of thousands of people visiting Times Square daily. You’re gonna be okay, Chairman Jordan.

Once upon a time, Jordan’s committee informs us, you could head to your hotel that’s not “overrun with illegal aliens.” Good news on that front: You still can.

If we again appeal to Orbitz, we see that there are lots of hotel rooms available, including some for under $200 a night in Times Square. That’s a high price for a hotel in, say, Urbana, Ohio, but not for Manhattan. The availability, meanwhile, is not an indication that these hotels are being overrun by anyone, much less immigrants.

What the committee’s trying to elevate is that the increase in immigrants to New York City has led the city to use some hotels for temporary housing. That includes hotels in midtown Manhattan, the same part of the city where Times Square is. A conservative group estimated that, across the city, 16,000 hotel rooms are being used for immigrants — but that’s out of more than 120,000 citywide. The number of sheltered immigrants has been steady since January.

(Incidentally, the immigrants using those shelters are ones seeking asylum in the United States. While some may have entered the United States between border checkpoints, those seeking asylum are allowed to remain in the country until their asylum claims are heard by an immigration judge.)

If the idea of pointing out the number of immigrants is to suggest that tourists will encounter people from other countries during their trip to New York City, well, uh — I have bad news for anyone worried about that. A large percentage of the city’s population are immigrants, probably including people from every other country on the planet. If you are worried about hearing another language or seeing someone who wasn’t born in the United States, sure, maybe don’t drop by.

But that pales next to the final indignity awaiting tourists: that they can no longer dine at the Cheesecake Factory without spending your whole paycheck.

It is true that tourists to Times Square will not be able to dine at the Cheesecake Factory, given that the only Cheesecake Factory in New York City is out in Queens. (If Jim Jordan wants Cheesecake Factory, he can save time and money by going to the one in Polaris Center, near Columbus.) But any tourist who travels to New York City for the Cheesecake Factory is very much missing the point of traveling to New York City — or anywhere, really.

New York City does have chain restaurants, particularly in Times Square. This is capitalism: Applebee’s knows that many tourists overwhelmed by the strangeness of Times Square — which is to New York what the Lincoln Memorial is to D.C. in terms of fully representing what the city has to offer — will seek solace in something familiar. No navigating the thousands of restaurants they’ve never heard of. Just get some appetizers like the ones back in Urbana.

But don’t come to New York to go to a chain restaurant! Just do a little homework. The city’s local paper has a list of the best restaurants; check out one of those! If you are flying to New York to go to Cheesecake Factory, why not just stay at LaGuardia Airport and get chain food there? If you’re not going to explore the unique food offerings the city has to offer, why check out any of the unique sights?

The point of the social media post, of course, is to malign how the United States broadly has purportedly changed under Biden. But by picking out New York as an example and then offering false or exaggerated claims about the city, it opens up the Judiciary Committee to the explanation above showing how far off the mark its criticisms are.

Perhaps leading some readers to a conclusion very different from the one intended.