Rubio Visits Vatican Amid Escalating Tensions Between Trump and Pope Leo
The Morning Buzz: May 8, 2026
1. Rubio Visits Vatican Amid Escalating Tensions Between Trump and Pope Leo
Claire Giangravé at Religion News Service reports that on Thursday, amid the public rift between Pope Leo XIV and President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the Vatican. Rubio’s meeting with Vatican officials sought to highlight common ground between the Holy See and the Trump administration. Though Rubio denied it, the timing of the visit led some Vatican observers to interpret it as an effort to cool tensions after weeks of increasingly sharp exchanges between Trump and the pope. PRRI finds that since Trump’s reelection, a slight majority of white Catholics have viewed Trump favorably, holding steady at 53%, while Hispanic Catholics’ favorability towards Trump reached a high of 37% in September 2024, before receding to 25% throughout 2025 and into 2026.
2. Tennessee Republicans Pass a Map To Break Up the State’s Lone Democratic House Seat
For NPR, Benjamin Swasey writes that Tennessee Republicans approved a new congressional map aimed at eliminating the state’s last Democratic-held U.S. House seat by splitting Shelby County, home to Memphis, a majority-Black city, into three separate districts. The state is the first to pass a new congressional map after the U.S. Supreme Court last week weakened the Voting Rights Act's protections against racial discrimination in redistricting. The legislative votes came amid protests at the state capitol and a walkout by Democratic elected officials. The PRRI American Values Atlas finds that 37% of Tennessee residents identify as Republican, 24% as independent, and 18% as Democrat.
3. New York Bars ICE Agents From Wearing Masks in Broad Immigration Deal
Grace Ashford at the New York Times reports that New York lawmakers included provisions in the state budget that prohibit state and local officials from entering into formal or informal cooperation agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and law enforcement agents from wearing masks. It also bars ICE from searching New Yorkers’ sensitive locations (e.g., churches, hospitals, and schools) without a warrant signed by a judge. However, several lawmakers said the package’s failure to address informal communication between police and ICE severely limited its impact. A recent PRRI Immigration survey finds that 72% of Americans oppose allowing ICE officers to regularly conduct surveillance and arrests at sensitive locations, and 61% agree that ICE officers should not be allowed to conceal their identity with masks or unmarked vehicles when arresting people.
4. No Quarter? American Evangelicals and Political Violence
Referencing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s violent wartime rhetoric, PRRI Public Fellow Darrius Hills, Ph.D., explores the relationship between religious affiliation and views on political violence in a new Spotlight Analysis. Hills writes that while most Americans do not favor the use of violence to advance their political ends, when looking at religious affiliation, support for political violence tends to be higher among white evangelical Protestants. Additionally, according to the 2025 PRRI American Values Atlas, two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants (67%) qualify as Christian nationalism supporters, a worldview linked to higher levels of agreement that true American patriots need to take up arms to save our country. Read more.
What’s Buzzing
Learn more in the Spotlight Analysis: No Quarter? American Evangelicals and Political Violence