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First Solar’s G.O.P. playbook: Earlier this month in northwestern Ohio, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer stood inside a new manufacturing plant and gushed over the jobs that First Solar had created at its three new facilities, not to mention that all its glass and steel was made in the U.S. It was an extraordinary moment, given that President Trump has called solar power “the scam of the century”—and an even more extraordinary testament to First Solar’s savvy lobbying.

So far, the campaign has been textbook. For starters, First Solar commissioned Trump’s favorite polling firm, Fabrizio & Associates, to survey conservatives on their feelings about solar. They also hired a Republican, Jen Deci, to lead their government affairs shop; ended their contract with Democratic lobbying firm Boundary Stone; jacked up their lobbying spend to the highest level in 15 years; and switched up their messaging to better align with Trump’s agenda—domestic manufacturing, hiring American workers, planning a new plant in South Carolina, etcetera. (First Solar did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)

Ohio Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno, who was with Greer at First Solar’s Ohio facility, said the company had done all the right things. “The way to be successful with this administration is to take care of your workers, make things here in the U.S., and bring your supply chain to the U.S.,” Moreno texted me. Let’s see if Trump comes around.

Now over to Abby and the pope…

About a week after Donald Trump launched an extraordinary feud with the first U.S.-born pope—declaring Leo XIV “weak on crime” before posting an A.I.-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ—the administration’s highest-ranking Catholic attempted to deescalate. This weekend, Vice President J.D. Vance said he was grateful to the pontiff for stating, in essence, that the conflict between the White House and the Vatican was overblown. “It was looked at as if I was trying to debate, again, the president” by delivering a message of peace, said the pope, “which is not in my interest at all.”

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Vance was quick to blame a media that “constantly gins up conflict,” but it’s hard not to read the veep’s commentary as a tacit acknowledgement that he had overstepped when he previously warned the pope to “be careful when he talks,” or that his boss had gone too far. After all, it doesn’t take a genius to imagine that picking a fight with the Holy Father, six months out from the midterms, could present a problem for Republicans. Catholics make up around a fifth of the U.S. electorate—and though Trump won a majority of them in 2024, more-recent polling shows his support has been slipping. “Is there a big coalition that’s been itching for a fight with the Vatican?” asked a Democratic consultant who’s worked on races in Pennsylvania. “I don’t think that’s the case.”

Now, according to the dozen or so officeholders and operatives I spoke to, the professional political class is scrambling to assess the potential impact for key House and Senate races in heavily Catholic pockets of California, Colorado, Florida, Long Island, New Jersey, New Mexico, the upper Midwest, Pennsylvania, and Texas. “Polling on religion is rare, but based on this situation it’s now time to start looking,” said a Republican pollster. Meanwhile, Democrats are already hashing out their media plans. “It is not hard to target likely voters who are not strong [Republicans or Democrats] and who are Catholic with ads online,” said a Democratic consultant in Illinois. “I would expect to see a lot of that.”

Of course, it was probably only a matter of time until the president clashed with the newish pontiff. Trump feuded repeatedly, and often one-sidedly, with the late Pope Francis over human rights and mass deportations. But this time, Trump appears to be going further than his usual internet slap-fights, even canceling funding for Catholic charities working on refugee resettlement. And then there was the image Trump posted online depicting himself as Jesus, which antagonized not just Catholics but also evangelicals. “If he had just attacked Leo and not put that image up, we would be having a different discussion,” said Republican strategist Mike Madrid, who is studying the Latino vote this cycle.

The political impact of Trump’s attacks on the pope is most likely to be felt in two imperative Catholic blocs: Latinos and the white Irish/Italian/Polish working-class Reagan Democrats who’ve fully migrated to MAGA in recent cycles. “It’s really bad for Republicans in Catholic areas like the upper Midwest, on Long Island, on the border,” said the Illinois Democratic consultant.

Only two years ago, Democrats were hemorrhaging Hispanic Catholics to Trump, but now all indicators—polling, special election results, candidate recruitment quality, and fundraising—point to this bloc being up for grabs. “Everything [the administration is] doing is violating the sensibility of these voters, and there’s going to be a reckoning,” Madrid added.

Over the past decade, white Catholics have been trending Republican as the post-Obama coalition lost the white working class to MAGA. The pope himself, who’s from Chicago’s South Side—a White Sox fan, not a posh Cubs fan—represents exactly the kind of working-class voter that Democrats have ceded to Trump. Still, Catholics aren’t monolithic—the Public Religion Research Institute shows them nearly evenly split among Democrats, Republicans, and independents. And Trump has proven he can turn at least some followers of nearly every political foe against their idols—whether those idols are Republican senators or Tucker Carlson or Bruce Springsteen. There’s a pretty good chance that Trump can drive a wedge between Pope Leo and his flock, too.

Indeed, many Catholics learned long ago to separate their personal politics from papal dicta, customizing their own Catholicism to make room for birth control, premarital sex, and even abortion. And they’re not necessarily going to punish their local congressman because of Trump’s spat with the Holy See. A Republican former officeholder who lives in a Catholic community deep in Trump country said his neighbors are shrugging off the president’s papal antagonism. “Nobody likes what he said about the pope, but they’re used to him attacking everybody,” he said. “They’re just like, ‘We will wait until he moves on to someone else.’”

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