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Who Can Achieve the American Dream? Race Matters Less Than It Used To.
Lawrence Cain Jr., a Black millennial in Cincinnati, did not have a comfortable upbringing. His family didn’t have much money. They took few vacations. But Mr. Cain did have a strong community — which he said taught him entrepreneurship and showed him he could dream big. His mom took double shifts at nursing homes. She and her father ran their own businesses. Mr. Cain worked at his grandfather’s deli starting at 11 years old.
Mr. Cain, 35, got a two-year degree in business management and first worked as a bank teller and financial adviser. In 2015, he was ready to forge his own path. He started a financial coaching business, Abundance University. Business is booming. Today, Mr. Cain identifies as solidly middle-class. He and his wife, a teacher, can support themselves, their three children and then some. They take holidays around the country. “My kids are spoiled,” he joked.
Mr. Cain in many ways reflects the trends captured by a new Harvard study. It looked at two groups: a Gen X cohort born in 1978 and a millennial cohort born in 1992. The researchers combed through decades of anonymized census and tax records to which the federal government gave them access. The data covered 57 million children, which offered the researchers a more detailed view into recent generations than previous economic studies had. Adjusting for inflation, they then measured these groups’ ability to rise to the middle and upper classes — their economic mobility.
Lawrence Cain Jr. of Cincinnati did not have an easy upbringing, but today identifies as middle-class.
Asa Featherstone, IV for The New York Times
The researchers found that Black millennials born to low-income parents had an easier time rising than the previous Black generation did. At the same time, white millennials born to poor parents had a harder time than their white Gen X counterparts. Black people still, on average, make less money than white people, and the overall income gap remains large. But it has narrowed for Black and white Americans born poor — by about 30 percent.
The community you come from has a huge effect on your economic mobility. For centuries, this meant a tremendous advantage for white Americans, even those born into low-income families. But in a surprising shift, the study suggests that advantage is not as large as it once was.
On the flip side of Mr. Cain is someone like Derek Brown, a white millennial in Cincinnati. His parents were separated, and he was raised in two worlds, one middle class and one poor. His dad worked at a General Electric factory, a steady job that provided a more middle-class life. His mom worked long hours at gas stations, Mr. Brown said, but she struggled. Sometimes, she couldn’t pay the bills, and their power was cut off at home. “It was never the dream,” he said.
Unlike Mr. Cain, Mr. Brown did not have a strong sense of community, as he bounced between his mother, his father and his grandparents. Watching his mother, he came to believe that hard work does not necessarily lead to a better life. He once hoped to become a journalist when he grew up, but he gave up that dream to pursue what he believed would be a more realistic way to pay the bills.
The Northside neighborhood in Cincinnati has crime rates that are higher than the national average.
Asa Featherstone, IV for The New York Times
About five miles south of Northside, the Over-the-Rhine district is known for its dining and culture.
Asa Featherstone, IV for The New York Times
Today, Mr. Brown, 34, feels that he is behind where his father was. He works as a hairstylist at Great Clips. He lives paycheck to paycheck. He currently has a $3,000 medical bill that his insurance didn’t cover, and he doesn’t know how he’ll pay for it. He’s always scared of the next big cost. “I have really bad financial anxiety,” he said. “I don’t even want to drive to places. What if my car breaks down?”
“It’s instilled in your head: Anything is possible if you work hard for it,” Mr. Brown added. “What no one tells you is that for some people there is a glass ceiling, and you just don’t see it until you hit it.”
As the Harvard study shows, the difference in outcomes between Mr. Cain and Mr. Brown is increasingly typical. But the racial differences weren’t the only findings. Over the decade and a half of the study, the opportunity gap between white people born rich and those born poor expanded by roughly 30 percent. One possible interpretation: “Class is becoming more important in America,” while race is becoming less so, Raj Chetty, the study’s lead author, told me.
Let’s look at how class has dictated outcomes. For white Americans in particular, changes in mobility significantly differed between those born poor and those born rich.
Imagine four white children: a rich one and a poor one born in 1978, and the same pair born in 1992.
At 27 years old, the poor white millennial would make less money on average than the poor white Gen X-er. The white Gen X child born rich, unsurprisingly, could expect to make much more.
And while poor white millennials do worse than their predecessors, rich white millennials do better.
The change has widened class divides in the United States.
The data didn’t just show that people’s lives were guided by immutable facts like class and race. It suggested that a person’s community — the availability of work, schooling, social networks and so on — plays a central role.
Imagine a thriving American community. What makes it successful? Jobs are an important factor. So are effective schools, nice parks, low crime rates and a general sense that success is achievable. In a thriving place, people not only get good jobs, but they also know that those jobs can lead to better lives, because they see and feel it all the time. “Our fates are intertwined,” said Stefanie A. DeLuca, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University who was not part of the Harvard study. “The fortunes of those around you in your community also impact what happens to you.”
On an individual level, Lawrence Cain Jr. benefited from both his mother’s jobs and his family’s support and entrepreneurship. They helped plant the idea that he could work hard and become a business owner. “If your networks are doing well, you may think that you can do well, too,” said David B. Grusky, a sociologist at Stanford who was also not part of the Harvard study.
The inverse is also true. Derek Brown said that his childhood was too chaotic for him to develop strong social roots. Across a community, bad events can cascade and cause things to fall apart. Consider a neighborhood in which crime rises. Businesses move to safer locations. The tax base shrinks, and infrastructure deteriorates along with schools. People flee, and social networks splinter. A sense of despair takes over among the people who remain.
Real-world effects
A cookout in the Northside neighborhood.
Asa Featherstone, IV for The New York Times
Why did things get worse for poor white people and their communities, but not for their Black counterparts? One explanation focuses on the availability of jobs. The researchers found that community employment levels are an important predictor of differences in economic mobility.
In the real world, the situation might have played out like this: Over the past few decades, globalization and changes in technology have caused many jobs to go from the United States to China, India and elsewhere. These shifts appear to have pushed white people out of the work force, while Black people found other jobs.
There are several explanations for the racial disparity. White workers might have had more wealth or savings to weather unemployment than their Black counterparts did, but at a cost to their upward mobility. They might also have been less willing to find another job. A steel mill that shut down could have employed not just one worker but his father and grandfather, making it a family occupation. People in that situation might feel that they lost something more than a job — and might not settle for any other work.
The places where Black workers live were generally less affected by job flight than the places where white workers live. And compared with earlier generations, Black workers today are less likely to face racial prejudice in the labor force, making it easier for them to find work. While a white worker might have a generational connection to a steel mill job, a Black worker often does not, because segregation kept his parents and grandparents out.
These trends add up to decades of lost economic progress for low-income white people and the opposite for Black Americans.
Share of children born low-income who are no longer low-income at age 27
Source: Opportunity InsightsChange in persistence of poverty
The findings do not show that Black opportunity took away from white opportunity. In fact, the study found that white mobility had deteriorated least in the places where Black mobility had improved most.
In some ways, the research might prove politically controversial. Conservatives have long argued that white working-class Americans fell behind, while liberals have emphasized helping minority groups through policies like affirmative action. The left points out that Black and brown people remain far behind their white counterparts and therefore need more help from social programs. The right believes that’s outdated thinking, if it was ever correct. The study provides fodder for both sides.
“The left and the right have very different views on race and class,” said Ralph Richard Banks, a law professor at Stanford who wasn’t involved in the research. “The value of the study is that it brings some unimpeachable evidence to bear on these questions.” He added, “There’s something in it for everyone.”
For their part, the Harvard researchers feel optimistic about one major finding: Economic mobility can change relatively quickly. It improved in Charlotte, N.C., since 2014, after an earlier study by the Harvard group drove the city to make new investments. Local leaders got nonprofits and businesses, including Bank of America, which is based there, to provide job training, education, housing and other services to poorer residents. The researchers hope the results persuade other policymakers around the country to make similar investments.
“It actually is possible for opportunity to change in a serious way, even in a relatively short time frame,” said Benjamin Goldman, one of the Harvard researchers.
These trends don’t apply evenly to every part of the country. Some places had bigger or smaller gains for Black Americans and bigger or smaller losses for white Americans, as this map shows:
Source: Opportunity Insights
Note: Maps show expected incomes at age 27 in counties with at least 250 children in each relevant group. Counties shown in gray do not have estimates due to insufficient data.Expected income at age 27 for children born poor, by county
Mr. Cain believes his story shows that hard work can make a better life possible. He saw just how much his mother, as a Black woman, needed to do to get by. He faced his own doubts and troubles, including racism and discrimination, growing up. But he always remembered what his mother and grandfather taught him — that he could achieve his version of the American dream.
“I can chase that feeling every day of doing things for me, doing things with people I love and making an impact on the community,” Mr. Cain said. “That’s success for me.”
How common are stories like Mr. Cain’s where you live? You can see how economic mobility has changed in your county through this interactive:
Expected income at age 27
Black
White
Comparing incomes for Black and white children born poor, by county
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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