| | | | |  | | By Daniella Diaz | | Presented by |  | | | With assists from POLITICO’s Congress team
|  Your Inside Congress host reached out to the 18 members of the Republican Hispanic Conference to talk about the comedian’s comments. | AFP via Getty Images | TRUMP COMEDIAN COMMENT DAMAGE CONTROL — AND SILENCE After comedian Tony Hinchcliffe delivered hateful and racist rhetoric against minorities — and called Puerto Rico a “floating island of hot garbage” — in an opening set at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally Sunday, Latino Republicans were quick to denounce the hateful comments on social media. “There was nothing funny about this joke–it does not reflect our values,” said Congressional Hispanic Conference co-chair Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) on X. “This is not a joke. It’s completely classless & in poor taste,” Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) added. And Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) wrote : “This rhetoric does not reflect GOP values.” Other GOP lawmakers don’t want to touch the remarks at all, however. Your Inside Congress host reached out to the 18 members of the Republican Hispanic Conference to talk about the comedian’s comments. Not one lawmaker was available for a call Monday, including members who spoke out on social media. Zoom out: This election is a major test of whether Republicans can continue to win over Latino voters. Trump himself has repeatedly pointed to the inroads he has made with this specific demographic — specifically Latino men — that has historically favored Democrats. But with just eight days left until Election Day, Latino Republican lawmakers — and other GOP members representing districts with large Latino populations — are walking a tightrope. The ones who publicly addressed the comments tried to criticize the comedian but did not specifically speak out against Trump, or his decision to appear alongside Hinchcliffe. Other Republicans are instead focusing on the backlash against the comments, essentially billing it as an overreaction. One Hispanic Republican, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who’s in a tight reelection race, called the left’s anger “fake outrage” in a post on X. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) said the media is too focused on “fear-mongering” and not “the facts and the substance.” Trump’s campaign distanced itself from Hinchcliffe’s remarks in a statement. Trump himself reiterated some of his harsher rhetoric against immigrants during his speech, including his remarks to weed out “the enemy from within.” Democrats are seizing the moment: Reps. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), the Democrats’ Congressional Hispanic Caucus vice chair, and Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.), who was born in Puerto Rico, appeared alongside other New York Democrats and activists to slam the comedian’s comments in a press conference Monday afternoon. They equated the remarks with comments Trump himself has made in the past on Latino voters and reiterated their support for Vice President Kamala Harris, who was courting Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania on Sunday. “An apology is not wanted. We don't want an apology. We will cast our opinions at the polls on Nov. 5,” Espaillat said at the press conference. — Daniella Diaz, with an assist from Nicholas Wu
| | | | A message from BAE Systems: Last year, the U.S. experienced 28 natural disasters that resulted in at least $1B dollars each in damages, according to NOAA. With NOAA’s Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) program weather and environmental forecasting technologies will be enhanced, which will support meteorologists, emergency managers, and safeguard public health, ultimately strengthening the security and economic resilience of our Nation. Through extensive studies, cost-benefit analyses, and user community engagements, NOAA selected instruments for GeoXO that would drive economic and societal benefits into the 2050s. Learn more. | | | GOOD EVENING! Welcome to Inside Congress, the play-by-play guide to all things Capitol Hill, on this Monday, Oct. 28, where we can’t believe Election Day is SO CLOSE. WHERE’S JEFFRIES? House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries hit the trail over the weekend and was on-message about House Democrats’ most frequent campaign trail fodder: Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint. “We know that Project 2025 will go after hard-working public employees of the federal government. … One of the reasons why we need to elect Eugene Vindman, why we need to flip control of the House of Representatives, is we are going to stop Project 2025 dead in its tracks,” Jeffries told supporters in Dumfries, Va., referencing the Democratic candidate in the 7th District. He was there stumping for Democrats up and down the ticket, including Vindman, who’s running to succeed Rep. Abigail Spanberger. Vindman, who rose to prominence during Trump’s first impeachment, has been a fundraising juggernaut, but Republicans still see the district as a potential pickup opportunity as they try to hold onto their slim House majority. Republican candidate Derrick Anderson is locked in a tight race with Vindman in what’s become one of the most expensive congressional races in the country. The district, which went for President Joe Biden by about six points in 2020, has been a bellwether in previous cycles. Democrats are banking on their Project 2025-focused message helping to put them over the top in the exurban Washington-area district where 13.6 percent of the workforce are federal employees. It’s an issue Vindman is talking about in his ads, though Anderson and other Republicans have sought to keep Project 2025 at arm’s length. “It’s telling that only a few people showed up to watch Vindman hang out with far-left out-of-district liberals,” Anderson’s campaign said in a statement. “Sounds like they paraded out the same tired old lies they’ve been using against Derrick for a year.” — Nicholas Wu
| | | | A message from BAE Systems:   | | | JUMPING THROUGH HOOPS FOR POST-CONGRESS JOBS Outgoing House Financial Services Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) told reporters Friday that he is assembling a "list of people I want to call in January" for a job off the Hill and added the House Ethics Committee “say we've got to wait to job interview — so I've got to wait.” And while it may be “a weird process,” as McHenry labeled it, the reality of the situation for departing lawmakers is more complicated. Some of his fellow retiring members, like Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.), have already locked in their post-Congress jobs. So what’s the deal? There are many rules for lawmakers seeking jobs after their congressional service ends, but which industries they explore and how competitive a member is trying to be with job offers are major factors in how they approach what’s next. Notification: Members must notify the Ethics panel within three business days after they begin any negotiations for future work with a private entity. Negotiations are very loosely defined. Sending a resume doesn’t count, but conversations might. Conflict of Interest: Whether real or perceived, this is a major concern for House Ethics. They suggest it may be “prudent” for members to tell any negotiating partner in writing that there will be no official favors connected to the job negotiation. Recusal: The Ethics panel says members must recuse themselves from “any matter in which there is a conflict of interest or an appearance of a conflict” with the private entity with which they are negotiating and notify Ethics. This seems rare, or rarely made public. Confidentiality and competition: With all that notifying, it may be hard to keep negotiations under wraps — or play competing offers against each other. Retiring members hoping to juggle multiple offers or get into a competitive industry may prefer to wait until they’re not beholden to House Ethics. These layers do drive different behavior. For example, if McHenry is interested in working in the financial services sector, it may be difficult and complicated to enter negotiations while he still chairs that committee. His decision to wait until January isn’t technically required by an Ethics mandate, but waiting could make things easier by eliminating the rigamarole of notifying Ethics of multiple conversations. Kilmer would have had to be comfortable notifying Ethics and moving forward to secure his new gig with The Rockefeller Foundation. Let’s be real: Not every member will follow these rules. But as we see with investigations into outgoing members, the Ethics panel has little interest in pursuing former members. In the coming weeks, the House Ethics Committee will put out a memo like this from 2022 outlining all this for lawmakers. But it’s clear that it’s already on members' minds. — Katherine Tully-McManus with inspiration from Jordain Carney and Eleanor Muller
| | | | A message from BAE Systems: The number and size of wildfires have increased over the past six decades, according to NASA. NOAA’s GeoXO Atmospheric Composition Instrument (ACX) will provide enhanced observations of wildfire behavior and more accurate predictions of downwind smoke movement. This data will give early warnings to protect crop yields from smoke taint and prepare hospitals for an influx of patients during poor air pollution events. Learn more about the estimated $400M in economic benefits that ACX will provide, according to NOAA. | | | | | | Hakeem Jeffries, #1 Yankees fan. Congrats, Mike Lawler! Love Actually with Mary Peltola QUICK LINKS A vulnerable House Republican’s delicate dance with Trump, from Jordain Carney Column: This Democrat pulled off one of the country’s biggest upsets. Can she win again in Trump country? from Mark Barabak at the Los Angeles Times. Will Rollins was written off in 2022. Now, he could help deliver a Democratic majority, from Dustin Gardiner Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown fights for survival in Trump’s Ohio from Theodoric Meyer at The Washington Post Democrats could decide Republican duel for central WA congressional seat, from Jerry Cornfield in The Washington State Standard A New York medical group fills politicians’ coffers. This House Republican is helping to promote them, from Emily Ngo TRANSITIONS Chloe Brown is now director of government relations and stakeholder engagement at Shein. She was most recently member services director and senior adviser to Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and the Regional Leadership Council. TOMORROW IN CONGRESS The House convenes at 2 p.m. in a pro forma session. The Senate convenes at 9:30 a.m. in a pro forma session. TUESDAY AROUND THE HILL Crickets.
| | FRIDAY’S ANSWER: This one stumped y’all. On November 17, 1977, six senators, each of whom had thirty years or more of Senate service, were serving concurrently. TODAY’S QUESTION: How many states currently have split Senate delegations (two senators from differing parties)? NB: This is down from a high of 27 states (!) after the 1978 midterm elections. The first person to correctly guess gets a mention in the next edition of Inside Congress. Send your answers to insidecongress@politico.com. GET INSIDE CONGRESS emailed to your phone each evening. | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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