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Presidential contender and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will be courting a critical group of voters Monday afternoon – the fast growing community of Latinos in Central Florida, an area where the Republican last campaigned in 2002. Hundreds of thousands of Latinos, mainly Puerto Ricans, have settled in Central Florida in the years since Bush last served as governor. They include many Puerto Ricans who have fled the island’s economic woes and diminishing opportunities.

Jeb Bush told MSNBC's Jose Diaz-Balart that he was "herido," Spanish for "hurt," by Donald Trump's comments about undocumented Mexican immigrants during an interview conducted entirely in Spanish on Monday. "I was hurt hearing somebody speaking in such a vulgar fashion. This makes solving this problem much more difficult," Bush said, according to a translator. "When we have politicians like that we cannot progress." "In a political sense it was bad, and it creates an environment that is worse," he added.

Kicking off an afternoon swing through Central Florida, Jeb Bush told a group of pastors that Christian businesses should not be “compelled” to participate in gay weddings and that he supports statehood for Puerto Rico and “legal status” — but not citizenship — for millions of immigrants who are now in the U.S. illegally. On immigration reform, Bush said, “We need to have a path to legal status for the 11 million people here…What else would you do?” He added: “The idea of self-deportation or the idea of rounding people up is not an American value.” Bush said legal status...

Jeb Bush hasn't campaigned for himself in this part of Florida since 2002, but on Monday, he will return here to reconnect with former supporters and make an overt appeal to the region's fast-growing Latino population. In a first as a presidential candidate, the Republican plans to sit for a Spanish-language interview with a Telemundo news anchor. He will meet with dozens of mostly Hispanic evangelical pastors at a mega-church, visit a small business owned by a Mexican immigrant and try to introduce himself to the hundreds of thousands of people who have moved to this transient region in the...

In a rare and fiery weekend session, the Senate voted on Sunday to resurrect the federal Export-Import Bank, handing the Republican Party’s most conservative wing a major defeat and setting up a showdown this week with House leaders divided over the moribund export credit agency. The bipartisan vote — 67 to 26 — broke a filibuster and allowed supporters to attach a measure to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank to a three-year highway and infrastructure bill, which is expected to pass the Senate early this week. The agency’s authorization expired June 30, halting all new loan guarantees and other assistance to...

In a pair of losses for conservatives, the Senate voted overwhelmingly Sunday to revive the Export-Import Bank while failing to overcome a filibuster of an attempt to repeal Obamacare — with more fireworks to come. The rare Sunday votes set the stage for the Senate to send a long-term highway bill tied to the Ex-Im Bank to the House later this week, but not before facing other gambits by conservatives, including a procedural vote forced by Sen. Ted Cruz regarding the Iran deal and an effort to deploy a maneuver akin to the “nuclear option.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Republicans on Sunday criticized their colleague Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who on Friday accused McConnell of lying about a deal to revive the Expot-Import Bank. Cruz hit McConnell hard on Friday for allowing a vote on Ex-Im, which expired last month. But McConnell said there should be nothing wrong with having a vote on the issue. "I don't see a reason why they shouldn't be allowed a debate and then a vote," the Republican leader said from the Senate floor. "When there is some overwhelming bipartisan support for an idea, even if...

Billionaire businessman Donald Trump said Sunday that leaders of the Republican National Committee (RNC) are warming up to his campaign just days after he blasted the party leaders and threatening during an exclusive interview with The Hill to run as a third-party candidate. “They’ve been really nice over the last few days, they’re starting to see what’s happening,” Trump said on CNN’s “State of the Union with Jake Tapper.” “They viewed me as an outsider I guess, and now they’re starting to view me not as an outsider because I’m leading in all the polls,” Trump said, pointing to a...

Together in Fort Lauderdale: Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton to share stage for first time as presidential hopefuls. Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton will appear together next week on the same stage at the same event for the first time since both became presidential candidates. And it will happen in Fort Lauderdale. Style will be scrutinized as much as substance. Body language and rhetorical back-and-forth between Bush and Clinton could be the precursor to what many see as the likely 2016 general election campaign. Lured by the chance to sell themselves to thousands of African-American business and community leaders from...

Presidential hopeful, and former Florida governor, Jeb Bush will be campaigning in his adopted home state this week. Bush will be in central Florida on Monday. Bush will host central Florida pastors for a meet and greet in Orlando and then tour a local small business and host a town hall in Longwood. Later in the day Bush will host a meet and greet in Maitland. As Bush tours central Florida and the 2016 presidential race heats up, the former Florida governor is repeating a stand on his party's pursuit of new voters. Bush says Republicans won't win the White...

Real leadership means delivering results. It means fighting to protect our country, support our veterans, tackle wasteful spending, and advance common-sense solutions that put jobs and growth first. That’s what John McCain provides in the U.S. Senate every day. And it’s why we’re partnering with the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry to launch a new ad and stand with McCain in 2016. Re-electing John McCain is critical to maintaining our pro-jobs majority in the U.S. Senate and building on the progress we’ve made in Congress this year.

A federal judge in California has ruled that the Obama administration’s detention of children and their mothers who were caught crossing the border illegally is a serious violation of a longstanding court settlement, and that the families should be released as quickly as possible. In a decision late Friday roundly rejecting the administration’s arguments for holding the families, Judge Dolly M. Gee of Federal District Court for the Central District of California found that two detention centers in Texas that the administration opened last summer fail to meet minimum legal requirements of the 1997 settlement for facilities housing children. -snip-...

Karl Rove, a former senior advisor to President George W. Bush, has signed a deal with Simon & Schuster. Rove plans to write a book entitled The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters. Priscilla Painton, an executive editor, negotiated the deal with Robert Barnett, a partner at the Williams & Connolly LLP law firm.

Among Hamptonites hosting Jeb Bush fund-raisers this weekend will be Emil W. Henry Jr. — a former assistant US Treasury secretary — and Bruce Mosler, chairman of global brokerage for real estate giant Cushman & Wakefield, sources tell Page Six. Bush is scheduled to hit the two events on Saturday after a breakfast hosted by Ken Lipper and Martin Shafiroff.

Donald Trump has surged to the lead in the New Hampshire GOP presidential primary and virtually erased Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s advantage in the Iowa caucuses, according to new NBC News/Marist polls released Sunday. In Iowa, Walker still tops the field with 19 percent, the poll shows — only two points ahead of Trump, who garners 17 percent. Interviews for the poll began on July 14 — the day after the Walker campaign’s launch event in Wisconsin. The only other candidate in double digits is former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, at 12 percent. Those lagging behind include a number of...

U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Saturday that she did not use a private email account to send or receive classified information while she was secretary of state, in response to a government inspector's letter this week. "I did not send nor receive anything that was classified at the time," Clinton said at a campaign stop in Iowa. The email controversy has dogged Clinton's bid for the presidency, fuelling worries that the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination has tried to sidestep transparency and record-keeping laws. At least four emails from the private email account that Clinton used while secretary...

President Barack Obama on Saturday lectured Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta about his country's gay rights record. "When you start treating people differently not because of any harm they are doing to anybody, but because they are different, that's the path whereby freedoms begin to erode," Obama said at a joint press conference with the Kenyan leader in Nairobi. "And bad things happen." Under Kenyan law, sexual activity between men is illegal and punishable with a maximum imprisonment of 14 years. Many Kenyan leaders had encouraged Obama not to discuss gay rights on his first trip to the country as President....

Despite his own opposition to reauthorizing the Export-Import bank, Sen. John Cornyn said Wednesday afternoon that Senate leadership won’t block an amendment to revive it. This sets up a potential showdown with his Texan colleague, Sen. Ted Cruz, who vowed hours earlier to do everything he could to keep Ex-Im dead and buried. The 81-year-old bank supported American exporters with guaranteed loans until Congress let its charter expire on June 30. Conservatives called Ex-Im crony capitalism at its worst and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas, led the Congressional charge to kill it. Ex-Im supporters have considered reauthorizing the bank through an...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell started a fast-track process Friday on legislation to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding in the wake of two controversial videos showing officials discussing delivery of fetal parts. The Republican leader began "Rule 14," which will let the legislation skip the committee process and be placed on the Senate calendar so it can be brought up for a floor vote. The move comes after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) slammed McConnell during a blistering floor speech earlier Friday, suggesting the Kentucky Republican wanted to dodge a vote on defunding Planned Parenthood. "There are a host of...

Scott Walker met with Donald Trump in Trump Tower for 45 minutes on Thursday. Trump told POLITICO that Wisconsin’s Republican governor requested the meeting, and that it was an “enjoyable” discussion focused on “where the country is going” and “how poorly we’re perceived throughout the world.” The businessman and TV personality added in a phone interview that he himself is “very, very seriously” considering his own run for president in 2016. He said he will make up his mind “sometime around June.” A Walker spokeswoman confirmed the meeting. Trump has met with several of the potential 2016 candidates, including a...