Jews and Catholics warn against Trump's latest loyalty test for religious voters

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Jews and Catholics warn against Trump's latest loyalty test for religious voters

2024-09-27 12:03 Last Updated At：12:31

Former President Donald Trump recently reissued his loyalty test to religious Americans, declaring that he can best protect their freedoms while preemptively blaming members of certain faiths should he lose the presidential election in November.

Jews and Catholics can vote for him and ace the test, but those who don’t, he says, “need their head examined.” If he loses, Trump added, "Jewish people would have a lot to do with the loss.”

Among the Jewish leaders appalled at Trump’s remarks was Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism — an umbrella group for more than 800 Reform synagogues in North America.

“Your words preemptively blaming Jews for your potential election loss is of a piece with millennia of antisemitic lies about Jewish power,” Jacobs said in a social media post. “It puts a target on American Jews. And it makes you an ally not to our vulnerable community but to those who wish us harm. Stop.”

Trump's speeches for years have hewed to divisive “us” versus “them” messaging, but tying those themes to specific religious Americans who oppose him is out of line and even dangerous, according to rhetoric experts, religious leaders and academics.

“Non-Jews shouldn’t express public opinions about what is or isn’t good Judaism and non-Catholics shouldn’t express public opinions about what is or isn’t good Catholicism,” said Steven Millies, a public theology professor at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

“Not only is it bad form, but it’s also an ignorant waste of oxygen.”

Asked to respond to criticism from Jewish leaders, Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt sent statements from herself and several of Trump’s Jewish supporters. The statements didn’t directly address the potential blaming of Jews for a Trump defeat; rather, they depicted Trump as a stronger supporter of Israel than President Joe Biden and Trump’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Jewish Americans and Jewish leaders around the world recognize that President Trump did more for them and the State of Israel than any President in history,” Leavitt said via email. “The bottom line is that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden cave to Far-Left extremists and terrorists while President Trump will protect Jewish Americans and put American citizens first.”

Trump’s latest provocative comments came in a span of four days. His warnings about Jewish voters were in Sept. 19 speeches to Jewish donors and the Israeli-American Council in Washington. His remarks about Catholics came on Sept. 22 in a post on Truth Social.

Matthew Boedy, who studies religious rhetoric as a professor at the University of North Georgia, said Trump has adopted spiritual warfare rhetoric, which is commonplace in certain Christian circles.

“Those who gave him that rhetoric saw Satan or evil as the enemy. Now that enemy is anyone — Jew, Christian, Muslim — who stands in his way,” Boedy said via email, calling it dangerous to democracy and religion.

“Trump always makes his religious followers — especially Christians — choose. They have to choose him over pluralism, over morality, over evangelism,” said Boedy, a Protestant.

“If God is already on your side theologically, it’s not a far leap to say he should be on your side politically. That isn’t new to American politics,” Boedy said. “Trump is only making that divide advantageous to him. He’s furthering that which was there, but he is also adding his own weight to it. Making it worse.”

David Gibson, director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Jesuit-run Fordham University, said that in past elections, “for a non-Catholic like Trump to be setting himself up as the savior of Catholics, or Jews for that matter, would have been political insanity.”

“But it’s Trump, and conservatives who would attack a Democrat for such language are cheering for the Republican nominee,” Gibson added in an email. “There are many reasons, the most obvious is that they like Trump more than they heed their own church.”

Gibson also suggested that Trump’s tough stance on immigration, which includes calls for mass deportations, is at odds with Catholic teaching.

“Catholics listening to the increasingly Nativist rhetoric on immigration from Trump and even his running mate, JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, ought to have their hearts examined if they support that,” Gibson said.

Professor Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of American political rhetoric at Texas A&M University, said typical politicians seek to connect to voters based on shared policy beliefs, not by demanding religious loyalty.

“But Trump isn’t a typical politician, and he’s very concerned about loyalty,” she said. “He divides the world up into ‘us’ versus ‘them’ and tries to use those divisions to gain power.”

“It’s especially dangerous to attempt to divide people based upon religious identity,” said Mercieca, author of ″Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump." “The kind of language Trump is using here is more like that used by an authoritarian personality cult leader."

Trump’s recent comment about blaming Jews if he loses came at an event that also featured Jewish megadonor Mariam Adelson, widow of the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. She introduced Trump as “a true friend of the Jewish people.”

Among the pro-Trump statements provided to The Associated Press by Leavitt was one from Ellie Cohanim, who served during the Trump administration as deputy special envoy for combating antisemitism.

Trump “is absolutely correct in challenging our assumptions about voting on auto-pilot and failing to comprehend that the Democrat Party, which has been hijacked by its far-left base, is no longer a home for the Jewish people,” Cohanim's statement said.

Adelson and Cohanim represent the portion of U.S. Jews that strongly supports Trump. In 2020, he received about 30% of Jewish Americans' votes compared to 70% for Biden, according to AP VoteCast.

The criticism of Trump's recent remarks came from the center as well as the left of the national Jewish community.

The American Jewish Committee — a prominent advocacy group that strives to broadly represent Jews in the U.S. and abroad — issued a sharply critical statement. It took issue with Trump’s suggestion that if 40% of the U.S. Jewish electorate voted for him, “That means 60% are voting for the enemy.”

“Setting up anyone to say ‘we lost because of the Jews’ is outrageous and dangerous,” the AJC said. “Thousands of years of history have shown that scapegoating Jews can lead to antisemitic hate and violence.”

“Some Jews will vote for President Trump and some will vote for Vice President Harris,” the AJC added. “None of us, by supporting the candidate we choose, is voting for the enemy.’”

To the left of center, a harsh denunciation of Trump came from Lauren Maunus, political director of IfNotNow — an organization of U.S. Jews that has accused the Israeli government of oppressive policies toward Palestinians and protested Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

“Trump doubled down on his longstanding pattern of scapegoating Jews,” Maunus said. “Make no mistake: This is a clear and flagrant instruction to his fanatical base of extremists to target Jews with retributive violence if he should lose.”

Some Jews found a positive twist to Trump’s remarks, as Betsy Frank of Mattituck, New York, conveyed in a letter published Sept. 23 in The New York Times.

“As a proud Jewish woman who believes in Israel’s right to defend itself but supports the United States and everything it stands for even more, I would not vote for Donald Trump for any office,” she wrote. “If he loses the election, I will gladly take the blame.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Families of 43 missing students in Mexico are still demanding justice 10 years later

2024-09-27 12:29 Last Updated At：12:31

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Families of the 43 students from a rural teacher’s college abducted 10 years ago in southern Mexico marked the painful anniversary Thursday, disillusioned after what they say was a decade of unfulfilled government promises.

Thousands marched with the families in the rain through Mexico's capital, demanding the truth about what happened and justice for the missing.

“The first time we came through here, who could have imagined that all of this time would pass and (we're) here again without answers,” said Margarito Guerrero, the father of missing student Jhosivani Guerrero de la Cruz.

Guerrero appreciated those who accompanied them, like Lourdes Silva, a homemaker, participating in her first march with her daughter, a student who has been following the families' movement for a decade.

“We need to keep pressuring,” Silva said. “We want this agony to end for the parents.”

The anniversary falls just four days before the departure of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose election in 2018 generated hope among the families.

His administration made some early advances, established a Truth Commission and declared the disappearances a “state crime.” But when the investigation stalled without the cooperation of the military, the president closed ranks with the generals.

“He gave us a lot of hope,” said Joaquina García, mother of missing student Martín Getsemany Sánchez. “But it looks like he really protects the military and that’s not fair.”

On Sept. 26, 2014, students from the Rural Normal School at Ayotzinapa went to Iguala to steal buses — a common way they obtained transportation. They were attacked by a local drug gang in cahoots with local, state and federal authorities.

Two administrations later, many details of what happened to the students and most importantly where they are remain unknown. They are among the more than 115,000 recorded missing in Mexico.

“Ten years of suffering, 10 years of pain, of not having your son isn’t easy,” García said at an event Thursday at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. “Here we’re shouting to see if the people who took our children will find it in their heart.”

Some 120 people are in custody. Mexico’s former attorney general has been charged in inventing a false narrative about what happened.

López Obrador had promised to solve the mystery. But on Wednesday, he downplayed, minimized and even pushed back against the findings of his own administration, asserting that those trying to link the military are driven by “political interests.”

The United Nations Human Rights Office lamented in a statement Thursday the “unsatisfactory results” of authorities. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which sent experts to Mexico to aid in the investigation for eight years said in a statement it was worried the investigation had stalled and denounced a “pact of silence that has impeded the identification of the perpetrators and those who cover for them.”

The families are prepared to pressure incoming President Claudia Sheinbaum as well.

“We're going to press her if she doesn't respond,” Guerrero said.

García agreed. “This fight is not over.”