Maria Eugenia Laurencio—who was 12 years old when her family left Cuba and settled in Beaumont, Texas— was a lifelong Republican. When her parents became US citizens, they registered as Republicans. “We hated Kennedy,” she told me, referring to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 that led many exiles to permanently abandon the Democratic Party.

Laurencio, a retired anesthesiologist who now lives in Miami, followed in her parents’ footsteps, happily supporting the Republican ticket, from Ronald Reagan to both George Bushes. In 2015, excited at the prospect of having the first Cuban-American president, she volunteered for Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, phone banking and canvassing for him in Miami. “He was not radical at the time,” she told me. She liked his pro-immigrant and anti-communist views, and his public dislike—back then—of Donald Trump. “I never liked him, not even when he was a TV star,” she told me about Trump. “I really couldn’t conceive that he would be president.”

But when Rubio lost the primary, Laurencio knew she had only one option if she wanted to stop Trump from winning: Vote for Hillary Clinton. When Trump won, Laurencio says she cried. Surely, she thought, the GOP would not support Trump after his first term in office, punctuated by a flurry of scandals like the impeachment hearings, the separation of thousands of families at the US-Mexico border, and his administration’s haphazard response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But when the Republican Party backed Trump once again, Laurencio had enough. She registered as a Democrat and voted for Joe Biden. Then came Trump’s denial of the results of the election, the January 6 insurrection, Biden’s presidency, and Trump’s shocking return. In 2024, she voted for Kamala Harris.

Over the years, her decision to switch parties withered ties with friends and family members. She noticed fewer invitations to dinners or other social gatherings. “We continue to be friends, but I notice the coldness,” she told me. “I felt very distraught and alone because I had lost my community.” Then a supportive neighbor showed her a letter to the editor that had appeared in the Miami Herald, written by a group called Cuban American Women Supporting Democracy. Reach out to them, the neighbor suggested.

“I didn’t leave the Republican party. The Republican party left me. It’s not the party of Reagan or George Bush.”

When she attended her first meeting in 2019, Laurencio was relieved to find a group of like-minded women. “I could express myself and not be looked at as some kind of weirdo or communist, like they all say,” she told me. “I didn’t leave the Republican party. The Republican party left me. It’s not the party of Reagan or George Bush.”

Now, she is part of Cuban American Women Supporting Democracy, a nonpartisan organization that since its official founding in 2023 has championed immigration reform, opposed the book ban in the Miami-Dade County school district, supported abortion rights, voting access, and various local and state political candidates. Their members attend protests, including at the notorious Alligator Alcatraz immigrant detention facility, as well as school board meetings. In 2024, they mailed thousands of cards to eligible voters, urging them to support Amendment 4, the failed ballot initiative to preserve the right to an abortion in Florida, which now has a six-week ban.

What started as a WhatsApp group chat among a few acquaintances during Trump’s first term has now grown into a network of about 250 members, many........

© Mother Jones