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Here Are Cases of Trump Rivals Who Were Subject to Investigation
Former President Donald J. Trump and his allies have suggested that his constant threats to prosecute rivals and perceived enemies if he is elected again should not be taken literally. “His vengeance is going to be by winning and making America great again, not going after his political opponents,” Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, told CNN.
But as president, Mr. Trump tried repeatedly to use the powers of the federal government to investigate or penalize those he considered foes. While a few of them had engaged in conduct that made them legitimate targets of inquiry, there was no legal basis for the investigation of many. None were ultimately put behind bars, but they had to fend off criminal investigations, civil suits brought by the Justice Department and other forms of government pressure.
The decisions to pursue Mr. Trump’s rivals cannot always be traced back to a direct, formal order from him, but they are consistent with public or private pressure he exerted. Here are some of the more prominent examples from his time in office:
James B. Comey
Former F.B.I. director
Subjected to Justice Department investigation and I.R.S. audit
What Comey did that Trump did not like
He declined to prosecute Hillary Clinton, opened an investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, refused a loyalty pledge to Mr. Trump and bucked pressure to drop an investigation into Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. He kept and later had contemporaneous memos disclosed about his private meetings with Mr. Trump that raised questions about whether he had obstructed justice, leading to the appointment of a special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
James Comey is a proven LEAKER & LIAR. Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the terrible job he did-until he was, in fact, fired. He leaked CLASSIFIED information, for which he should be prosecuted. He lied to Congress under OATH. He is a weak and…..
8:01 AM · Apr 13, 2018
What Trump wanted done
Mr. Trump publicly called Mr. Comey a traitor and pressed for him to be investigated and prosecuted for disclosing classified information and mishandling the Clinton and Russia investigations. Privately, Mr. Trump pressured the Justice Department and the attorney general to investigate and prosecute Mr. Comey, saying he would prosecute Mr. Comey himself if the attorney general refused. Mr. Trump told his White House chief of staff that he wanted to “get the I.R.S. on” Mr. Comey.
What happened
The Justice Department conducted a criminal investigation into whether Mr. Comey had leaked classified information. Federal prosecutors and a special counsel appointed by Mr. Trump’s attorney general examined whether he had mishandled the Clinton and Russia investigations. The I.R.S. conducted a highly unusual and invasive audit into Mr. Comey’s finances.
Consequences
Mr. Comey was never charged criminally, and the I.R.S. audit found he had overpaid his taxes. Mr. Comey paid tens of thousands of dollars in legal and accounting fees to deal with the investigations and audit. The I.R.S. inspector general investigated how the audit had come about but did not find evidence of political meddling.
Andrew G. McCabe
Deputy F.B.I. director
Investigated by the Justice Department, fired and subjected to I.R.S. audit
What McCabe did that Trump did not like
While Mr. McCabe was serving as Mr. Comey’s deputy at the F.B.I., his wife ran as a Democrat for a state assembly seat in Virginia and took money from a Clinton ally. After Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey, Mr. McCabe opened a two-pronged investigation into whether Mr. Trump was a counterintelligence threat and was obstructing justice. Mr. McCabe made statements to internal Justice Department and F.B.I. investigators that raised questions about whether Mr. McCabe had lied to them.
What Trump wanted done
Mr. Trump called Mr. McCabe a traitor and asked for him to be investigated and prosecuted for a range of matters, including whether he had lied to the internal F.B.I. and Justice Department investigators. Mr. Trump said he wanted to “get the I.R.S.” on Mr. McCabe and for him to be fired.
What happened
The Justice Department conducted a criminal investigation into whether Mr. McCabe had lied to the F.B.I. and Justice Department, and Mr. McCabe was investigated over whether he had leaked material to journalists. Federal prosecutors and a special counsel appointed by Mr. Trump’s attorney general examined his handling of the Clinton and Russia investigations. The I.R.S. conducted the same highly unusual and invasive audit on him that it did on Mr. Comey.
Consequences
Prosecutors went to a grand jury to seek Mr. McCabe’s indictment, but in a highly unusual move, the grand jury declined to charge him. Amid public and private pressure from Mr. Trump, his beleaguered attorney general, Jeff Sessions, fired Mr. McCabe just days before his retirement, depriving him of his pension and benefits. The Biden Justice Department essentially rescinded the firing and restored his benefits. Mr. McCabe spent over a million dollars in legal fees defending himself in the criminal investigation and tens of thousands of dollars in accounting fees for the audit. As in Mr. Comey’s case, the I.R.S. inspector general found no evidence that the audit — of a type that only a tiny sliver of Americans are selected for — had come about through political interference.
Peter Strzok
Lead F.B.I. agent on Clinton and Russia investigations
Investigated by the Justice Department and fired
What Strzok did that Trump did not like
While serving as lead agent on the Clinton and Russia investigations, Mr. Strzok exchanged text messages with another F.B.I. official that were highly critical of Mr. Trump. He interviewed Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, at the White House in the early days of the Trump presidency. Mr. Flynn lied about his contacts with Russian officials, leading to Mr. Flynn’s dismissal and ultimate prosecution. Working with Mr. McCabe, Mr. Strzok opened the two-pronged investigation into whether Mr. Trump was a counterintelligence threat and was obstructing justice.
What Trump wanted done
Mr. Trump called Mr. Strzok a traitor and said he should be criminally investigated for his handling of the Russia investigation. Publicly and privately, Mr. Trump pushed to have him fired and told top aides that he wanted the I.R.S. to investigate him.
What happened
The F.B.I. fired Mr. Strzok. Federal prosecutors and a special counsel investigated his handling of the Clinton and Russia investigations. Prosecutors also examined his interview of Mr. Flynn, which ultimately led to the charges against Mr. Flynn being thrown out.
Consequences
Because of his dismissal, Mr. Strzok lost benefits and his pension. He racked up over a million dollars in legal fees dealing with a range of investigations and filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department and the F.B.I., seeking to have his job reinstated and to regain his benefits and pension.
John F. Kerry
Obama’s secretary of state
Investigated by the Justice Department
What Kerry did that Trump did not like
Mr. Kerry helped negotiate the nuclear deal with Iran while serving under President Barack Obama. After leaving office, he publicly criticized Mr. Trump for wanting to pull out of the deal, and he maintained some contacts with Iranian diplomats.
What Trump wanted done
Mr. Trump publicly and privately raised questions about whether Mr. Kerry was breaking the law by continuing to remain in contact with Iranian officials after leaving office. Mr. Trump told top aides and the attorney general that Mr. Kerry should be prosecuted.
What happened
Immediately after Mr. Trump started raising questions publicly about Mr. Kerry, Justice Department officials in Washington told prosecutors for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan that they were referring to them an investigation related to Mr. Kerry’s contacts with Iran.
A year later, after Mr. Trump again publicly attacked Mr. Kerry and raised new questions about whether he was breaking the law, a top Justice Department official in Washington called the U.S. attorney’s office in New York to find out why the office was delaying taking an investigative step to look at Mr. Kerry’s personal communications.
Consequences
The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to prosecute Mr. Kerry. But the Trump Justice Department did not give up on trying to bring charges. Attorney General William P. Barr took the case to the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland, where the top prosecutor there came to the same conclusion as the federal prosecutors in New York and declined to charge Mr. Kerry.
Hillary Clinton
2016 Presidential Campaign
Investigated by the Justice Department
What Clinton did that Trump did not like
Mr. Trump had sought to portray Mrs. Clinton as corrupt throughout the 2016 campaign. Among other issues, he focused on donations to the Clinton Foundation, her use of a private email server and her deletion of messages from it. As his own legal issues intensified after taking office, he sought to redirect attention to what he cast as her criminality.
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
So why aren’t the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations?
18:49 AM · Jul 24, 2017
What Trump wanted done
Mr. Trump publicly called for Mrs. Clinton and her campaign to be criminally prosecuted on a range of issues. Privately, he pressured Mr. Sessions to investigate and prosecute Mrs. Clinton and told the White House’s top lawyer that if Mr. Sessions refused to prosecute Mrs. Clinton he would do it himself.
What happened
Federal prosecutors and a special counsel examined nearly all the issues and conspiracy theories Mr. Trump raised about Mrs. Clinton, her campaign and the Clinton Foundation, including the Clinton campaign’s role in gathering information during the 2016 campaign about ties between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia and providing it to the F.B.I.
Consequences
A lawyer for the Clinton campaign was indicted on a charge of making false statements to the F.B.I. about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia. The lawyer was acquitted. Mrs. Clinton sat for questioning with the special counsel John Durham, answering a litany of questions about the issues and conspiracies Mr. Trump had pushed about her. She was never charged with anything.
Michael D. Cohen
Trump’s former lawyer and fixer
Pleaded guilty to federal charges in hush money case, served prison sentence, faced retaliatory effort to stop him from publishing anti-Trump book
What Cohen did that Trump did not like
Mr. Cohen turned against Mr. Trump in a federal investigation, admitting the president had directed him to make hush money payments to a porn actress in the final days of the 2016 campaign.
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Remember, Michael Cohen only became a “Rat” after the FBI did something which was absolutely unthinkable & unheard of until the Witch Hunt was illegally started. They BROKE INTO AN ATTORNEY’S OFFICE! Why didn’t they break into the DNC to get the Server, or Crooked’s office?
9:39 AM · Dec 16, 2018
What Trump wanted
After Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges connected to the hush money payments and was sentenced to prison, Mr. Trump privately discussed with aides ways of trying to stop publication of a book Mr. Cohen was writing.
What happened
During the pandemic, Mr. Cohen, like many inmates, was allowed to serve his sentence at home. While there, he was told by Bureau of Prisons officials that in order to remain out of prison he had to sign an agreement saying that he would not publish a book while still serving his sentence.
Consequences
Mr. Cohen refused to sign the agreement and was thrown back in prison. Days later, a federal judge freed him, ruling that the decision to put him back behind bars amounted to retaliation. “It’s retaliatory because of his desire to exercise his First Amendment rights to publish a book and to discuss anything about the book or anything else he wants on social media and with others,” the judge said, adding that he had never seen the federal government try to reach such an agreement with a convict.
What news organizations did that Trump did not like
Journalists from all three organizations covered the Trump presidency and the Russia investigation aggressively and used material that Mr. Trump felt had been leaked to hurt him.
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
The Fake News Media has NEVER been more Dishonest or Corrupt than it is right now. There has never been a time like this in American History. Very exciting but also, very sad! Fake News is the absolute Enemy of the People and our Country itself!
8:24 AM · Mar 19, 2019
What Trump wanted
Mr. Trump publicly called the media the enemy of the people and repeatedly pushed aides to use the Justice Department to go after reporters who were writing damaging and embarrassing stories about him. He told the White House’s top lawyer to tell the attorney general to “arrest reporters, force them to serve time in jail, and then demand they disclose their sources,” according to a book by John R. Bolton, who served as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. The book said that the White House counsel agreed to relay Mr. Trump’s request to the attorney general.
What happened
As part of leak investigations, the Justice Department obtained phone and email records for reporters for CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Consequences
Lawyers for the media companies were forced to secretly fight the Justice Department to stop them from obtaining the records. The Biden administration subsequently banned the use of subpoenas, warrants or court orders to seize reporters’ communications records or demand their notes or testimony in an effort to uncover confidential sources in leak investigations.
John R. Bolton
Trump’s national security adviser
Faced criminal investigation and civil suit by the Justice Department seeking to block publication of book critical of Trump
What Bolton did that Trump did not like
Mr. Bolton wrote a highly unflattering book about Mr. Trump that was published during the 2020 election.
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Washed up Creepster John Bolton is a lowlife who should be in jail, money seized, for disseminating, for profit, highly Classified information. Remember what they did to the young submarine sailor, but did nothing to Crooked Hillary. I ended up pardoning him – It wasn’t fair!
6:28 AM · Jun 23, 2020
What Trump wanted
Mr. Trump sought to stop publication of the book.
What happened
The Justice Department filed suit, asking a federal judge to take the extraordinary step of halting the publication on the grounds that Mr. Bolton had failed to complete a prepublication review of the book for classified material. The department sought to use the suit to recoup Mr. Bolton’s profits. The department also opened a criminal investigation into whether Mr. Bolton had unlawfully disclosed classified information in the book, subpoenaing Mr. Bolton’s publisher.
A career government official who reviewed the book for classified information accused White House lawyers of pressuring her to ensure that contents of the book did not come out during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment and said the lawyers retaliated against her when she refused.
Consequences
A federal judge refused to halt the publication. Mr. Bolton was never charged with mishandling classified information. The Biden Justice Department dropped the suit to recoup the book’s profits. The matter cost Mr. Bolton and his publisher hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
Omarosa Manigault Newman
Trump’s White House aide
Faced civil suit by the Justice Department that led to a $61,000 fine
What she did that Trump did not like
A former contestant on “The Apprentice” who then worked in the White House communications office in 2017, Ms. Manigault Newman wrote a negative tell-all memoir about Mr. Trump while he was president. After her book came out, Mr. Trump called her “that dog” and a “crazed, crying lowlife.”
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
…Yes, I am currently suing various people for violating their confidentiality agreements. Disgusting and foul mouthed Omarosa is one. I gave her every break, despite the fact that she was despised by everyone, and she went for some cheap money from a book. Numerous others also!
8:58 AM · Aug 31, 2019
What Trump wanted done
The president wanted to sue her for breaking what he considered a confidentiality agreement.
What happened
A day after her publisher announced the book, the White House asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into a seemingly unrelated paperwork dispute involving her. Ten months after the book was published, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against her citing ethical breaches related to her failure to properly file financial disclosure forms.
Consequences
A judge ruled that she had violated ethics laws that required her to file a report disclosing certain financial and travel matters and fined her $61,585.
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff
Former adviser to Melania Trump, the first lady
Faced a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to recoup her profits from a book critical of Trump and his wife
What she did that Trump did not like
Ms. Wolkoff published an embarrassing book about Mr. Trump and his wife during the 2020 election.
What happened
A month after she published the book, the Justice Department sued her, trying to recoup her profits from it. The suit said she violated a nondisclosure agreement she had signed with the government when she worked as a volunteer to help Mrs. Trump in the early months of the presidency.
Consequences
The Biden Justice Department later dropped the suit.
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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