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Undecided Voters Tell Us About Their Biggest Worries

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Undecided Voters Tell Us About Their Biggest Worries

Donald J. Trump and Kamala Harris are starkly different presidential candidates. So why are so many voters — roughly 1 in 6 — still unsure of their choice?

We asked voters who have not yet made up their minds — 830 of them across five battleground states and Ohio — to name their biggest worries with both candidates.

Here is what they said.

  • Concern about Trump

    “He’s made people comfortable with being racist and set the country back 50 years with racism.”

    Concern about Harris

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    “She’s a liar and it feels like she hasn’t done anything she said she was going to do.”

    Black woman, 50s, Arizona

  • Concern about Trump

    “Don’t like his rhetoric, how he speaks to people.”

    Concern about Harris

    “Incompetent, no experience in foreign policy or running the government; also has no opinions except on abortion.”

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    White woman, 70s, Wisconsin

  • Concern about Trump

    “Too extreme.”

    Concern about Harris

    “I don’t know much about her, but I’m unsure about how prepared she is to be president.”

    Hispanic man, 30s, Arizona

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  • Concern about Trump

    “Having the right to control my own body.”

    Concern about Harris

    “Immigration and inflation.”

    Black woman, 20s, Georgia

  • Concern about Trump

    “Arrogance.”

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    Concern about Harris

    “She’s a woman and not sure if a woman should be running.”

    White woman, 50s, Arizona

  • Concern about Trump

    “Has felonies on his record.”

    Concern about Harris

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    “Don’t know much about her policy.”

    Black man, 50s, Georgia

  • Concern about Trump

    “I don’t trust him.”

    Concern about Harris

    “I don’t trust her.”

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    Black woman, 60s, Georgia

Until President Joe Biden dropped his bid for re-election, a large share of voters were unhappy with their choices for president.

Today, the electorate as a whole is happier, but the uncommitted voters are still not, according to recent polling by The New York Times and Siena College in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin.

They trust neither former President Donald J. Trump nor Vice President Kamala Harris. They question the candidates’ honesty and ethics.

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Based on New York Times/Siena College polls of 4,132 likely voters conducted in September, including 830 undecided or not fully decided voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Respondents who said they didn’t know or who declined to say are not included.

These voters are younger than the electorate overall, less educated and have a lower income. They are much more likely than voters overall to be Black or Latino, and a little more likely to be men.

Some of these voters may just stay home, but a meaningful portion of them will probably vote. And in a close election, they could be the deciding factor.

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In trying to understand what is holding them back from committing, we asked voters to tell us in their own words about their worries. Their phrases were telling: “being a bully,” “she’s an idiot.”

In many ways, their words suggest that voters know, and perhaps have become inured to, Donald Trump’s slash-and-burn campaign style and personality.

But with Kamala Harris, who was plunged into the race only in July, their fears are wider ranging — encompassing both character and the issues, like the economy. And for some voters, the historic nature of her candidacy presents not progress but a drawback.

Voters are concerned about one thing when it comes to Trump: his character.

They said he is arrogant or erratic and talks too much. They talked about his age or criminal trials. The words boiled down to concerns about the former president’s personality and honesty.

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Even voters who said they were leaning toward Trump mentioned concerns about chaos and dysfunction.

A small but notable share were also concerned, specifically, about his ability to carry out and complete the tasks of president, mentioning his age and mental capacity.

  • Concern about Trump

    “Angered easily.”

    White man, 40s, Michigan

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  • Concern about Trump

    “Being a bully towards other nations.”

    White man, 60s, Georgia

  • Concern about Trump

    “He is erratic, not very well-spoken and lies.”

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    White man, 40s, North Carolina

  • Concern about Trump

    “Him staying off the internet.”

    White man, 30s, Arizona

  • Concern about Trump

    “Being presidential, sense of decorum, way he communicates.”

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    Man, 60s, Michigan

  • Concern about Trump

    “Does not know when to shut up.”

    White man, 20s, North Carolina

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  • Concern about Trump

    “His age.”

    White woman, 20s, Wisconsin

At the same time, even though Trump has crossed all kinds of red lines during his campaign, voters used comparatively mild language in describing their doubts about him. Words like “a bit” and “a little” crept in frequently.

  • Concern about Trump

    “Little power hungry.”

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    White woman, 30s, Arizona

  • Concern about Trump

    “His authoritative tendencies.”

    White man, 30s, North Carolina

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  • Concern about Trump

    “Probably his rhetoric, maybe, and how he presents himself. And the debate was kind of rough.”

    Woman, 40s, Michigan

  • Concern about Trump

    “Bit decisive at times. He doesn’t always say the right things.”

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    White man, 20s, Georgia

  • Concern about Trump

    “I wish he could be a little more presidential.”

    White woman, 70s, Arizona

  • Concern about Trump

    “He might become too emotional when making decisions.”

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    Nonwhite man, 30s, North Carolina

Concerns about Harris are more varied.

For Kamala Harris, voters’ anxieties were broader and more complicated. Although qualms about her personality came up less often than with Trump, trustworthiness and honesty were still big question marks for many voters.

So was her ability to handle the economy. Voters specifically mentioned costs and inflation, a persistent concern among undecided and not fully decided voters over the last few months.

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  • Concern about Harris

    “She will make the economy worse than it is.”

    Black man, 20s, Georgia

  • Concern about Harris

    “That she’s like every other politician, that she is not going to actually do anything to help us.”

    Black woman, 30s, Ohio

  • Concern about Harris

    “Bring down the price of groceries and housing.”

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    Black woman, 60s, Georgia

  • Concern about Harris

    “How she would handle the economy.”

    Hispanic woman, 20s, Georgia

  • Concern about Harris

    “Too liberal.”

    Black woman, 50s, Michigan

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  • Concern about Harris

    “Not following through.”

    White woman, 30s, Wisconsin

  • Concern about Harris

    “The people didn’t vote for her; she was appointed. That is not democracy.”

    White man, 60s, Wisconsin

  • Concern about Harris

    “Democrats take the African American vote for granted. Not sure her policies are going to benefit African Americans.”

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    Black man, 30s, North Carolina

They also questioned her abilities and wondered if she was ready for the job. Some voters described her with caustic language, which echoes Trump’s, who called her “mentally disabled” and “mentally impaired.”

Harris has not leaned into the historical nature of her candidacy — she would be the first woman of color to be president. For some of these voters, her background may be a challenge. Some voters used language that was outright sexist.

  • Concern about Harris

    “That she’s not intelligent enough to be president. I think she is an idiot.”

    White man, 70s, Arizona

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  • Concern about Harris

    “I don’t think she’s got it all together.”

    White woman, 70s, Arizona

  • Concern about Harris

    “Overall untrustworthy.”

    Black man, 40s, North Carolina

  • Concern about Harris

    “I don’t know much about her, but I’m unsure about how prepared she is to be president.”

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    Hispanic man, 30s, Arizona

  • Concern about Harris

    “She’s a woman. I’m not sure she can get the job done. People probably won’t listen to her.”

    White woman, 50s, Ohio

  • Concern about Harris

    “She’s a lady.”

    Black woman, 60s, Wisconsin

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Sources and methodology

Selected responses from New York Times/Siena College polls of 4,132 likely voters conducted in September, including 830 undecided or not fully decided voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Undecided and persuadable voters were voters in the survey who either did not pick a presidential candidate after being asked multiple questions about their vote choice or voters who ultimately did pick a candidate but said they were only “probably” but not “definitely” going to support that candidate.

Open-ended responses to the “biggest concern” question were coded into categories using a trained coder and validated with a second reviewer. The primary coder reviewed a sampling of responses and then created an initial coding schema. Categories were adjusted based on size and coherence throughout the process. Where there was disagreement between coders, proposed codes were reviewed, discussed and compared with similar examples in other surveys. To help ensure consistency, responses that exactly matched previous responses in prior surveys were automatically coded to the same category, but were still reviewed for accuracy.

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Rubio’s Absence From Iran Talks Highlights Stay-at-Home Role

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Rubio’s Absence From Iran Talks Highlights Stay-at-Home Role

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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.”

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Appeals court rules that Trump’s asylum ban at the border is illegal

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Appeals court rules that Trump’s asylum ban at the border is illegal

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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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A New Worry for Republicans: Latino Catholics Offended by Trump

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A New Worry for Republicans: Latino Catholics Offended by Trump

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.

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“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.

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“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.”

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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.”

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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.

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“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.

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“I’m afraid we need divine intervention,” the uncle replied.

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