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Washington Bends to RFK Jr.’s ‘MAHA’ Agenda on Measles, Baby Formula and French Fries
Babies are not ordinarily a fixture of closed-door White House meetings.
But when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, convened a group of women this month for a discussion on nutrition and other topics, a healthy-eating activist who calls herself “the Food Babe” was stunned to see President Trump’s press secretary with her eight-month-old on her lap.
While several female cabinet secretaries looked on, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, lamented that baby formula seems healthier in Europe than in the United States, where a recent study found that many varieties are laden with added sugars. Last week, Mr. Kennedy met with formula makers and announced a push to expand options for “safe, reliable and nutritious infant formula.”
The activist, Vani Hari, was thrilled. “It was such an amazing opportunity to see some solidification of the MAHA agenda across the different cabinets,” she said, using the initials for Mr. Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement. She called the event “a dream come true.”
The gathering of “MAHA Moms,” as Mr. Kennedy calls the corps of influencers and activists who follow him, was one of a series of choreographed events held in recent weeks by Mr. Kennedy, who occupies a highly unusual place in Washington. The scion of a famous Democratic family, his embrace of Mr. Trump, his tendency to spin wild theories out of kernels of truth and his promotion of what critics say is quack medicine have made him one of the most polarizing figures in the cabinet, even as he has developed a loyal following of his own.
Yet even some critics of Mr. Kennedy applaud his focus on obesity and healthy eating. He makes powerful industries and civil servants uncomfortable, holding forth from his newly powerful perch as head of the Department of Health and Human Services on an eclectic menu of topics — offering up alternative remedy ideas one day while blasting industrial food companies the next.
Now companies and the government must contend with what might be called the Kennedy factor. So far, there has been little public pushback.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted information about vitamin A on its website after Mr. Kennedy promoted it as a measles treatment, to the consternation of public health officials who want him to advocate forcefully for vaccination.
A fast-food chain announced it had “RFK-d” its French fries by ditching seed oil for beef tallow, a type of rendered beef fat that is similar to lard, despite cardiologists who say it poses risks to the heart.
Infant formula makers, who came under scrutiny amid a shortage in 2022, said simply that they look forward to working with Mr. Kennedy. And after Mr. Kennedy instructed food executives to rid the food supply of artificial dyes, he followed up with a video message on social media: “They understand that they have a new sheriff in town.”
Mr. Kennedy declined an interview request.
It is far too soon to know whether Mr. Kennedy will make a real impact or whether these early steps are more posturing than substance. The Trump administration is taking actions that would seem to undermine his goals, such as disbanding an expert committee studying how to spare infants from a deadly bacteria that contributed to the decision in 2022 to temporarily shut down an Abbott Nutrition infant formula plant.
Mr. Kennedy could run into resistance from Congress. His disdain for the refined oils made from certain plants — seed oils like canola, soy and corn — and the ultra-processed foods that contain them has alarmed Republicans including Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, whose farmer constituents receive subsidies from the government to grow the plants that produce the oils.
Mr. Kennedy opposes the subsidies. Mr. Grassley publicly instructed him to “leave agricultural practice regulations to the proper agencies,” including the Agriculture Department. Mr. Kennedy said he agreed.
“That’s talk; I want to see what the action is,” Marion Nestle, an emeritus professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, said of Mr. Kennedy’s ambitions to remake the food supply. “And if the only action is getting colors out of the food supply, that’s not enough.”
Public health experts still have serious concerns about Mr. Kennedy, whose skepticism of vaccines has colored his response to a Texas measles outbreak. Biomedical researchers say that if he really wanted to make America healthy, he would block Elon Musk’s Department of Governmental Efficiency from targeting the nation’s scientific enterprise by reducing jobs and cutting grants.
“I think he has to take the blame for it; he’s destroying science in America,” said Dr. Walter C. Willett, a pioneer in nutrition research at Harvard’s School of Public Health.
Yet so long as he is not talking about vaccines, Mr. Kennedy’s ideas are winning cautious support in some surprising places. Dr. Willett said he agrees with Mr. Kennedy that the National Institutes of Health should rebalance its research portfolio to spend more studying ways to prevent disease. Dr. Nestle praised him for taking on the food industry.
“When President Trump announced on Twitter that he was appointing R.F.K. Jr., he used the words industrial food complex,” she said. “I couldn’t believe that. It sounded just like me, and R.F.K. sounds just like me.”
At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Kennedy was identified as one of the top spreaders of misinformation by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which listed him as one of the “disinformation dozen.” His Instagram account was suspended in 2021, and reinstated in 2023 when he began his presidential bid.
Now, as the health department leader, Mr. Kennedy has a much bigger platform from which he can shape American attitudes and beliefs.
Some of his assertions, public health experts say, have been just plain wrong. Mr. Kennedy, for instance, told Sean Hannity of Fox News that immunity to the measles vaccine wanes over time and thus “older people are essentially unvaccinated.”
That contradicts the C.D.C. website, which says measles, mumps, rubella vaccines “usually protect people for life” against measles and rubella, but mumps immunity may decrease over time. Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, agreed, saying, “The data continue to support that measles vaccine protects the vast majority of people lifelong.”
Last week, Mr. Kennedy proposed banning cell phones in schools, an idea with bipartisan backing. But in addition to citing children’s mental health, he made another, unsubstantiated claim: that cell phones “produce electromagnetic radiation” that can cause cancer.
So far, Mr. Kennedy also appears to be largely ignoring government experts. He has not had any in-person or virtual briefings on measles from infectious disease experts at the C.D.C., according to two people familiar with the response to the Texas outbreak. Instead, he receives written reports from the agency.
An administration official said Mr. Kennedy meets daily with “career leadership” at H.H.S., the C.D.C.’s parent agency, to discuss matters including measles.
Health officials in Texas say Mr. Kennedy’s messages have been confusing. Dr. Katharine Wells, the director of public health in the city of Lubbock, said she is having trouble persuading parents to vaccinate their children because they think “vitamin A is protective, like the vaccine.”
But Kennedy allies were thrilled when the C.D.C. added a mention of vitamin A in its measles advisory on its website. Del Bigtree, Mr. Kennedy’s former communications director, lauded the move on a recent podcast. “My God,” he said, “do you see what a small step for mankind we just made?”
Mr. Kennedy is getting quiet advice from at least one person in the public health mainstream, Dr. Jeffrey D. Klausner, a professor at the University of Southern California who spent years with the C.D.C., including work on disease prevention in South Africa. Dr. Klausner, a neighbor of Mr. Kennedy’s in Los Angeles, said he is working to identify new members of the C.D.C.’s vaccine advisory committee, a panel Mr. Kennedy says is rife with conflicts of interest.
He said Mr. Kennedy has given him just one criteria: “He wants highly credentialed, unbiased people who can look at the science objectively.”
Despite his promise of “radical transparency,” Mr. Kennedy is offering Americans a highly curated version of himself. Like Mr. Trump, he speaks to the public largely through social media and Fox News.
In a sense, Mr. Kennedy is offering a new twist on Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan; he wants United States customers to be able to buy Froot Loops, the colored sugary cereal, with the same ingredients — dyes made from colored blueberries and carrots, instead of chemicals — used in Canada, and French fries to be cooked like they are in Europe.
Mr. Kennedy’s crusade against seed oils has caught the eye of executives at Steak ’n Shake, which says it will now cook its fries in Mr. Kennedy’s preferred frying agent, beef tallow — even though nutrition experts say there is no evidence that tallow, a saturated fat akin to butter, is healthier than seed oils.
“He says he’s following the science,” Dr. Willett said. “If you look at the scientific evidence, that doesn’t take you to the conclusion that beef tallow is better than seed oils.”
An Indianapolis-based restaurant chain, Steak ’n Shake announced the switch this month on social media with a picture of a ball cap in Mr. Trump’s signature MAGA red that declared, “Make Frying Oil Tallow Again.” Mr. Kennedy, who otherwise appears to be no fan of French fries, traveled to a Florida Steak ’n Shake with Mr. Hannity, of Fox, and picked away at a basket of them for the cameras.
“We’re very grateful to them for R.F.K.-ing their French fries,” he said.
Ms. Hari, the healthy-eating activist, called the Steak n’ Shake announcement “an interesting example of how we can make incremental changes to the food system to make it better than it was.” She said she intends to push Mr. Kennedy to make fast-food chains post all of their ingredients online.
Mr. Kennedy’s inner circle seems to be divided into two camps: those like Mr. Bigtree, who are drawn to him because of his stance on vaccination, and those like Ms. Hari and Calley Means, an author and health care entrepreneur, whose focus is nutrition and chronic disease. Mr. Means recently joined the White House as a special government employee to help carry out Mr. Kennedy’s agenda.
Mr. Kennedy has also inspired a MAHA movement in the states. On Monday, the governor of West Virginia signed legislation banning certain food dyes from school lunches.
Last week, Mr. Means was in Arizona, along with other Kennedy allies, to speak in favor of a “Make Arizona Healthy Again” bill that would ban certain chemicals from school lunch programs and prohibit candy, soda, chips and other junk foods from being purchased with the federal nutrition dollars formerly known as “food stamps.”
Helene Leeds, who with her daughter founded Step It Up, a weight loss program, also testified, and was identified as a “MAHA Mom” by the MAHA Alliance, a group that backs Mr. Kennedy’s agenda. The moniker gave her pause.
“It’s new for me to be called that,” she said. “I mean, absolutely, I stand for health in everything that I do.” She added: “I also look at myself as a MAHA leader.”
After the MAHA Moms meeting, the White House posted video of Mr. Kennedy and some of his guests on social media stumbling over how to pronounce food ingredients like riboflavin. Mr. Kennedy posted photos with a message to the women: “You got me where I am today, and I will not let you down.”
When President Barack Obama negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran more than a decade ago, his point man was Secretary of State John Kerry. Over 20 months of talks, Mr. Kerry met with his Iranian counterpart on at least 18 different days, often several times per day.
High-level nuclear diplomacy was a natural role for the top U.S. diplomat. Secretaries of state traditionally take the lead on the country’s biggest diplomatic tasks, from arms control treaties to Israeli-Palestinian agreements.
But as President Trump prepares to send a delegation to the latest round of U.S.-Iran talks in Pakistan this weekend, his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, will remain where he often does: at home.
Mr. Rubio did not attend the last U.S. meeting with Iran earlier this month. Nor did he join several meetings held over the past year in Geneva and Doha. Mr. Rubio has also been absent from U.S. delegations abroad working to settle the war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza. Despite a long period of crisis and war in the region, he has not visited the Middle East since a brief stop in Israel last October.
In recent months, Mr. Rubio — consumed with his second role, as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser — has not traveled much at all.
During the Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken made 11 foreign trips from January 2024 to late April 2024, stopping in roughly three dozen cities, according to the State Department. So far this year, Mr. Rubio has visited six foreign cities, including a stop in Milan for the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Mr. Trump has outsourced much of his diplomacy to others, including his friend Steve Witkoff, a wealthy associate from the world of Manhattan real estate, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner have spearheaded diplomacy with Israel, Ukraine and Russia, as well as Iran, whose delegation they will meet for the second time this month in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital.
Mr. Rubio’s distance from the trenches of diplomacy reflects his dual role on Mr. Trump’s national security team. For the past year, he has served as the White House national security adviser even while leading the State Department — the first person to do so since Henry A. Kissinger in the mid-1970s.
The secretary of state runs the State Department, overseeing U.S. diplomats and embassies worldwide, as well as Washington-based policymakers. Working from the White House, the national security adviser coordinates departments and agencies, including the State Department, to develop policy advice for the president.
The twin roles reflect Mr. Rubio’s influence with Mr. Trump, and offer him a way to maintain it. For Mr. Rubio, less time abroad means more time at the side of an impulsive president prone to making critical national security decisions at any moment.
As Mr. Witkoff, Mr. Kushner and Vice President JD Vance met with Iranian officials in Pakistan earlier this month, Mr. Rubio was at Mr. Trump’s side at an Ultimate Fighting Championship event, noted Emma Ashford, an analyst of U.S. diplomacy at the nonpartisan Stimson Center in Washington. “Rubio clearly prefers to stay close to Trump,” Ms. Ashford said.
Mr. Rubio accepted the national security adviser job on an acting basis last May after Mr. Trump reassigned the job’s previous occupant, Michael Waltz. But officials say that Mr. Rubio is expected to keep it indefinitely.
That arrangement is not inherently bad, Ms. Ashford added. And she noted that previous presidents had entrusted major diplomatic tasks to people other than the secretary of state. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. delegated his C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, to handle diplomacy with Russia and cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, for instance.
But she echoed the complaints by many current and former diplomats that Mr. Rubio seems less like someone performing both jobs than a national security adviser who sometimes shows up at the State Department. “I do think it’s to the detriment of the whole department of State and to America’s ability to conduct diplomacy in general that we effectively have the secretary of state position sitting vacant,” she said.
Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman, contested such claims. “Anyone trying to paint Secretary Rubio’s close coordination with the White House and other agencies as a negative could not be more wrong,” he said. “We now have an N.S.C. and State Department that are totally in sync, a goal that has eluded past administrations for decades.”
Mr. Rubio divides his time between the State Department and the White House, often spending time at both in the same day. In an interview with Politico last June, Mr. Rubio said he visited the State Department “almost every day.”
While there, he often meets with visiting dignitaries before returning to the White House. Last week, Mr. Rubio presided over a meeting at the State Department between Lebanese and Israeli officials that set the stage for a cease-fire in Lebanon.
His twin jobs “really do overlap in many cases,” he said. “In many cases you end up being in the same meetings or in the same places; there’s just one less person in there, if you think about it,” Mr. Rubio added. “A lot of people would come to Washington, for example, for meetings, and they’d want to meet with the national security adviser and then meet with me as secretary of state. Now they can do both in one meeting.”
Asked about his travel schedule during a news conference last December, Mr. Rubio said he had less reason to travel abroad because “we have a lot of leaders constantly coming here” to visit Mr. Trump at the White House. Mr. Rubio also joins Mr. Trump’s foreign trips in his capacity as national security adviser.
Many national security veterans call the arrangement unwise, saying that both jobs are extremely demanding and incompatible with one another.
It was not easy even for Mr. Kissinger, who had firmly established himself over more than four years as national security adviser before convincing President Richard M. Nixon to let him take on an additional role as secretary of state in 1973. (In a reversal of Mr. Rubio’s approach, Mr. Kissinger was in constant motion, including a round of Middle East shuttle diplomacy that kept him on the road for 33 straight days.)
“In general, it’s a mistake to combine those roles,” said Matthew Waxman, who held senior roles at the National Security Council, State Department and the Pentagon during the George W. Bush administration.
“That said, it’s not necessarily a bad thing that a dual-hatted Rubio is so offscreen right now,” Mr. Waxman added. “Especially while so much attention is focused on high-wire diplomacy with Iran, someone needs to manage foreign policy around the rest of the world.”
President Trump speaks during an event on health care affordability in the Oval Office at the White House on Thursday in Washington.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
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Mark Schiefelbein/AP
WASHINGTON — An appeals court on Friday blocked President Trump’s executive order suspending asylum access at the southern border of the U.S., a key pillar of the Republican president’s plan to crack down on migration.
A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that immigration laws give people the right to apply for asylum at the border, and the president can’t circumvent that.
The court opinion stems from action taken by Trump on Inauguration Day 2025, when he declared that the situation at the southern border constituted an invasion of America and that he was “suspending the physical entry” of migrants and their ability to seek asylum until he decides it is over.
The panel concluded that the Immigration and Nationality Act doesn’t authorize the president to remove the plaintiffs under “procedures of his own making,” allow him to suspend plaintiffs’ right to apply for asylum or curtail procedures for adjudicating their anti-torture claims.
“The power by proclamation to temporarily suspend the entry of specified foreign individuals into the United States does not contain implicit authority to override the INA’s mandatory process to summarily remove foreign individuals,” wrote Judge J. Michelle Childs, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Joe Biden.
“We conclude that the INA’s text, structure, and history make clear that in supplying power to suspend entry by Presidential proclamation, Congress did not intend to grant the Executive the expansive removal authority it asserts,” the opinion said.
White House says asylum ban was within Trump’s powers
The administration can ask the full appeals court to reconsider the ruling or go to the Supreme Court.
The order doesn’t formally take effect until after the court considers any request to reconsider.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, speaking on Fox News, said she had not seen the ruling but called it “unsurprising,” blaming politically-motivated judges.
“They are not acting as true litigators of the law. They are looking at these cases from a political lens,” she said.
Leavitt said Trump was taking actions that are “completely within his powers as commander in chief.”
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the Department of Justice would seek further review of the decision. “We are sure we will be vindicated,” she wrote in an emailed statement.
The Department of Homeland Security said it strongly disagreed with the ruling.
“President Trump’s top priority remains the screening and vetting of all aliens seeking to come, live, or work in the United States,” DHS said in a statement.
Advocates welcome the ruling
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said that previous legal action had already paused the asylum ban, and the ruling won’t change much on the ground.
The ruling, however, represents another legal defeat for a centerpiece policy of the president.
“This confirms that President Trump cannot on his own bar people from seeking asylum, that it is Congress that has mandated that asylum seekers have a right to apply for asylum and the President cannot simply invoke his authority to sustain,” said Reichlin-Melnick.
Advocates say the right to request asylum is enshrined in the country’s immigration law and say denying migrants that right puts people fleeing war or persecution in grave danger.
Lee Gelernt, attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, who argued the case, said in a statement that the appellate ruling is “essential for those fleeing danger who have been denied even a hearing to present asylum claims under the Trump administration’s unlawful and inhumane executive order.”
Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, welcomed the court decision as a victory for their clients.
“Today’s DC Circuit ruling affirms that capricious actions by the President cannot supplant the rule of law in the United States,” said Nicolas Palazzo, director of advocacy and legal Services at Las Americas.
Judge Justin Walker, a Trump nominee, wrote a partial dissent. He said the law gives immigrants protections against removal to countries where they would be persecuted, but the administration can issue broad denials of asylum applications.
Walker, however, agreed with the majority that the president cannot deport migrants to countries where they will be persecuted or strip them of mandatory procedures that protect against their removal.
Judge Cornelia Pillard, who was nominated by Democratic President Obama, also heard the case.
In the executive order, Trump argued that the Immigration and Nationality Act gives presidents the authority to suspend entry of any group that they find “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
The executive order also suspended the ability of migrants to ask for asylum.
Trump’s order was another blow to asylum access in the U.S., which was severely curtailed under the Biden administration, although under Biden some pathways for protections for a limited number of asylum seekers at the southern border continued.
Migrant advocate in Mexico expresses cautious hope
For Josue Martinez, a psychologist who works at a small migrant shelter in southern Mexico, the ruling marked a potential “light at the end of the tunnel” for many migrants who once hoped to seek asylum in the U.S. but ended up stuck in vulnerable conditions in Mexico.
“I hope there’s something more concrete, because we’ve heard this kind of news before: A district judge files an appeal, there’s a temporary hold, but it’s only temporary and then it’s over,” he said.
Meanwhile, migrants from Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela and other countries have struggled to make ends meet as they try to seek refuge in Mexico’s asylum system that’s all but collapsed under the weight of new strains and slashed international funds.
This week hundreds of migrants, mostly stranded migrants from Haiti, left the southern Mexican city of Tapachula on foot to seek better living conditions elsewhere in Mexico.
When Stuart Sepulvida arrives at St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Parish in Tucson, Ariz., for Mass, which he attends most mornings, he passes a display honoring local soldiers and encouraging parishioners to pray for their safety. Hundreds of small cards record their names: Robles, Arenas, Grajeda. A portrait of Pope Leo XIV hangs across the lobby.
Mr. Sepulvida, 81, is a Vietnam veteran whose patriotism and Catholicism are deeply intertwined. He voted for President Trump three times but has never felt more betrayed by an American president than when Mr. Trump denounced Pope Leo as “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy.”
“It was very disturbing to me to hear both of them clashing like they did,” Mr. Sepulvida said, standing outside the church one morning this week. Now, he is reconsidering whether he will vote Republican this year.
The Republican Party is struggling to hold onto the support from Hispanic voters who helped propel Mr. Trump back into the White House in 2024. Yet as many party leaders have acknowledged the urgent need to stop the backsliding among Latinos, the president has enraged many of even his strongest supporters by clashing with the pope.
On Easter Sunday, Pope Leo, the first U.S.-born pontiff, spoke of the need to “abandon every desire for conflict, domination and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars.” Within days, Mr. Trump, who has led the United States into a war with Iran, said the pope was “catering to the radical left” and posted an AI-generated image portraying himself as a Jesus figure. Mr. Trump later deleted the image, saying he thought it depicted him as a doctor.
“It just isn’t what a president should do,” Mr. Sepulvida said. “The pope speaks for his people. He is beyond politics.”
Mr. Trump won 55 percent of Catholic voters in the 2024 election, compared to 43 percent who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris, according to Pew Research Center. The most sizable gains came from Hispanic Catholics. While Joseph R. Biden Jr. won their votes by a 35-point margin in 2020, the Democratic advantage shrunk to 17 points in 2024. Now, just 18 percent of Hispanic Catholics said they support most or all of President Trump’s agenda, according to a poll from Pew released earlier this year.
If the president’s quarrel with the pope sours more Latinos on the Republican Party, it could affect midterm races across the country, including in South Florida and South Texas, where Republicans have notched important victories in predominantly Hispanic districts in recent years.
In Arizona’s Sixth Congressional District, which stretches from north of Tucson to the Mexican border, voters were still grappling with the fallout this week.
The district is roughly evenly divided among Republicans, Democrats and independent voters. Nearly a third of the district is Hispanic, and there is a significant population of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as a large Catholic community with deep history in the region. It also has one of largest numbers of military veterans of all congressional districts in the country.
“The president is looking for a lot of attention from everything,” said Maria Ramos, 60, who regularly attends weekday Mass at St. Francis. A registered independent, she usually votes for Democrats but often declines to cast a ballot if she views a candidate as too liberal. “He believes he can put God in his place. He’s meddling in countries that he’s not in control of — he wants to control the world.”
“It is not just a very serious lack of respect — it is a mortal sin,” she said, shaking her head. One word comes to her mind again and again, she said: disgust.
Like so many others in southern Arizona, Ms. Ramos has several relatives who serve in the military — a path they saw to both serve the country and as an entry into the stable middle class. Many of them, she said, voted for Mr. Trump for president.
The Tucson district is now widely seen as one of the most competitive in the country. Republican Juan Ciscomani narrowly won the district in 2022, in part by emphasizing his biography as a Mexican immigrant and a devoted father of six children. He is also an evangelical Christian, a group that has driven much of the growth among Hispanic Republican voters in recent years.
Mr. Ciscomani declined a request for an interview, but when a local radio host asked Mr. Ciscomani what he thought of Mr. Trump’s comments “as a man of faith,” the congressman declined to criticize the president but said, “You can trust that you won’t see any meme like that coming out of my account.”
JoAnna Mendoza, the Democrat challenging Mr. Ciscomani this fall, has made her 20-year career in the U.S. Navy and Marines a key aspect of her story on the campaign trail. While she rarely speaks about her religious background and no longer considers herself a practicing Catholic, she said she briefly considered becoming a nun as a teenager. She criticized Mr. Ciscomani for not condemning the president’s remarks.
“You can’t make faith a central part of your campaign and then allow this to stand,” she said in an interview.
Across Tucson, Latino Catholics, regardless of their past voting preferences, were similarly quick to condemn the president’s remarks.
When Cecilia Taisipic, 71, heard about it, she said, she winced with shame about her vote for him in 2024.
“I thought he would make the country better, but apparently it’s the opposite,” she said as she left Mass at St. Francis earlier this week. She is so fed up with politics, she said, that she is unlikely to vote at all this year. “When it comes to my faith, I don’t like anybody to challenge it. Now I don’t want to hear anything on the news. I just want to pray.”
Matilde Robinson Bours, 63, teaches a weekly Spanish Bible study class at St. Thomas the Apostle Parish, and like nearly all of the women in her class, she immigrated from Mexico decades ago. She has voted for Republicans in nearly every election since she became a citizen. Though she has never liked President Trump, she said, his comments about the pope enraged her more than anything else he has said or done in the past.
“This surpassed everything, every social and political norm — this is personal to all Catholics,” she said. “The arrogance and ego is disgusting. To think that he is God? The pope has every right and responsibility to talk about peace.”
Still, Ms. Robinson Bours said, nothing will stop her from supporting Republicans again this year. She has been delighted that her adult children have stopped supporting Democrats in recent elections.
“Almost everyone I know thinks the way I do,” she said.
Patricia Martinez, 86, who has attended the same Bible study as Ms. Robinson Bours for years, shook her head in disagreement. She said she cannot imagine voting for a Republican who supports Mr. Trump.
“This is different — this shows he is out of his mind,” said Ms. Martinez. “We have to have basic respect and teach that to people in this country.”
Patrick Robles, a 24-year-old native of Tucson, spent years alienated from the Roman Catholic Church, but returned to his faith more recently. “The craziness of the world sort of caused me to seek some sort of answers,” he said. Now, he attends Mass at the St. Augustine Cathedral in downtown Tucson, a few blocks from the office where he works as an aide to Representative Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat.
Mr. Robles said he saw Mr. Trump’s battle with the pope as both a personal affront and a political opportunity.
“The president is basically trying to draw a line between Catholics and what we perceive to be patriotism,” he said. “I believe we can be both.”
Last week, he texted one of his uncles who has supported Mr. Trump in every election asking him what he thought.
“I’m afraid we need divine intervention,” the uncle replied.
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