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“One of the reasons was to show that going to Puerto Rico means that you’re helping fellow Americans and you’re helping the American economy and in addition to that, the more important side than that is making sure that we came to see for ourselves what is the condition of Puerto Rico. How bad is it? And it’s bad,” Cárdenas told The Hill earlier this week.

“We started planning this a year ago and just because there’s a Trump shutdown, it doesn’t mean that the world is going to stop,” he added. “We appreciate and respect every single worker who’s being punished by Donald Trump. But at the same time there’s over 3.2 million Puerto Rican American citizens on this island that deserve for us to continue to do our job.”

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During their trip, House delegates attended informational sessions with local political leaders including Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, and Ponce Mayor María Meléndez, as well as with NGOs and other organizations.

Much of the conservative press has revolved around the opening of the musical Hamilton in Puerto Rico, which happened to coincide with the delegation’s trip. Tickets for the musical will raise funds for Flamboyan Arts Fund, a local charity. The lawmakers who went to see Hamilton paid for their tickets themselves, which were as steep as $500 each.

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Fox News host Jeanine Pirro falsely claimed that Speaker Nancy Pelosi was among the delegation, and later tweeted a retraction. But by then, Trump had tweeted a quote from a segment on Fox & Friends about the trip verbatim.