Politics
Newsom leaves the Vatican with pope's praise for refusing to impose the death penalty
In an opulent hall in the Apostolic Palace framed in marble and adorned with Renaissance murals, Gov. Gavin Newsom waited in a line of governors, mayors and scientists for an opportunity to greet Pope Francis.
The queue wasn’t the ideal setup envisioned by the governor’s advisors. Newsom traveled more than 6,000 miles from California to the Vatican to give a speech before — and hopefully talk with — the pope about climate change.
Pope Francis, however, had other topics on his mind besides the warming planet.
“I was struck by how he immediately brought up the issue of the death penalty and how proud he was of the work we’re doing in California,” Newsom said afterward. “I was struck by that because I wasn’t anticipating that, especially in the context of this convening.”
The talk was brief and informal. But the politically astute head of the Roman Catholic Church still took advantage of the moment to support one of Newsom’s most controversial actions as governor.
Through executive order two months after his inauguration, Newsom issued a temporary moratorium on the death penalty and ordered the dismantling of the state’s execution chambers at San Quentin State Prison. Families of murder victims criticized the decision, and legal scholars called it an abuse of power.
Newsom’s refusal to impose the death penalty could hurt him politically if he runs for president.
As a Catholic, however, the governor’s decree is in line with the church and the pope’s teachings.
In an interview with The Times after he left the Vatican, Newsom said he has yet to propose a statewide ballot measure to abolish the death penalty because he doesn’t have confidence that it would pass. California voters rejected measures to ban executions in 2012 and 2016.
Newsom said recent polls conducted by his political advisors show soft support for a ban.
“We constantly put it in our surveys that I do,” Newsom said in an interview with The Times. “It’s in the margin. But I’m thinking a lot about this beyond that because we’re reimagining death row. I’m thinking about when I’m leaving; I mean, I’ve been pretty honest about that. I’m trying to figure out what more can I do in this space.”
There were more than 730 inmates on death row when Newsom took office. Death row at San Quentin was the largest of any prison in the Western Hemisphere. Under his plan to reform the prison to emphasize rehabilitation, Newsom said California is just weeks from emptying death row entirely.
The governor said he was outspoken about his opposition to capital punishment when he campaigned in 2018. He endorsed the 2012 and 2016 ballot measures to abolish the death penalty.
“I campaigned very openly as lieutenant governor, as governor. I went out of my way to say, ‘If you elect me, this is what I’m going to do,’” Newsom said. “And also I have the legal authority. So I wasn’t challenging that.”
Currently, 21 of the 50 states impose the death penalty. The remaining 29 either have no death penalty or paused executions due to executive action — including California, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Newsom’s moratorium might not play well with voters in some swing states in a potential presidential campaign, adding to perceptions that leftist California and the Democratic governor are soft on crime and misaligned with the rest of the nation. The governor has repeatedly dismissed speculation that he’s eyeing the White House, and he has actively campaigned for President Biden’s reelection.
Kevin Eckery, a political consultant who has worked with the Catholic Church in California, said the death penalty isn’t going to be a deciding factor in an election.
“Nationally, the death penalty has been carried out so infrequently for the last 50 years that I don’t see people voting based on your position on [the] death penalty,” Eckery said. “They are going to vote on pocketbook issues. They are going to vote on other things, but not that issue.”
The Catholic Church has long said the death penalty could be justified only in rare situations. Francis updated church doctrine in 2018 to say “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”
Newsom lunched in an arched courtyard covered in jasmine at the American Academy in Rome after he, in a speech at the Vatican, accused former President Trump of “open corruption” by soliciting campaign donations from oil executives.
Sitting in a weathered wood chair under the shade of a tree, the governor explained how his Catholic background and the inequities in the criminal justice system influenced his refusal to sign off on executions as governor.
His paternal grandparents were devout Catholics, and his late father, William Newsom, who served as a state appellate court justice, went to church every day growing up, he said.
Later in life, Newsom’s father considered himself “a Catholic of the distance,” the governor said, and “kind of pushed away” because of the politics of the church.
Newsom said Jesuit teachings at Santa Clara University, where he attended college, spoke a language he appreciated “of faith and works.” His own religious beliefs, he said, have always been exercised “around a civic frame.”
“The Bible teaches many parts, one body,” Newsom said, mentioning a quote he often references. “One part suffers, we all suffer, and this notion of communitarianism.
“You can’t get out of Santa Clara University without the requisite studies and sort of a religious baseline: God and common thought type frames,” he said.
As a Catholic and San Francisco native, Newsom said his beliefs follow “the Spirit of St. Francis” and the idea of being good to others, but not necessarily a strict religious doctrine.
The governor said he attended the private Catholic school École Notre Dame des Victoires in San Francisco for a short time during early elementary school. He said his family often attended Glide Memorial, a nondenominational church in San Francisco. The governor said he attended church on Easter with his family.
Newsom mentioned religion at other points during his trip, telling reporters outside the hall where he spoke at the Vatican about the importance of the bridge between science and the pope’s moral authority on climate change.
“As we know from church, it’s faith and works,” Newsom said. “So, as we pray, we move our feet. It’s that action with our passion.”
Daniel Philpott, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, said it’s smart for politicians in either party to talk about faith.
“We’ve learned over the last 30 years that presidential candidates in general benefit when they can be shown to be religious, or practicing their religious faith,” Philpott said.
Newsom said he didn’t want to overplay the influence of religion on his position on the death penalty, which his father also opposed.
His father and grandfather were involved in the case of Pete Pianezzi, a friend who was wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder in the shooting and killing a gambler and busboy in Los Angeles in 1937.
Pianezzi escaped the death penalty by a single vote and served 13 years in prison. He was later exonerated.
Even if it were possible to limit inequity and wrongful convictions in the criminal justice system, Newsom said he would still be against the death penalty.
Receiving the pope’s support made Newsom reflect on the way he agonized over the decision before he issued the moratorium a few years ago, he said. The governor met with families of victims and sought guidance from others prior to his announcement.
“It just never made sense to me, the basic paradigm, that we were going to kill people to communicate to the general public that killing is wrong,” he said. “I could never understand that. I could never sanction that.”
U.S. military forces stopped and boarded a second sanctioned tanker carrying oil from Iran in the Indian Ocean, the Pentagon said on Thursday, ramping up pressure on Tehran as the Trump administration seeks to resume negotiations to end the war.
A naval boarding team roped down from hovering helicopters and fanned out on the vessel, the M/T Majestic X, according to a Pentagon statement that included a 17-second video of the operation.
The military said the boarding was part of a “global maritime enforcement to disrupt illicit networks and interdict vessels providing material support to Iran, wherever they operate.”
Earlier this week, Navy SEALS boarded another ship in the Indian Ocean, the M/T Tifani, after the Pentagon said it was carrying oil from Iran.
Navy destroyers are also shadowing several other Iranian vessels, including the Dorena and Sevin, which had left from the Iranian port of Chabahar before the U.S.-imposed blockade began on April 13, a U.S. military official said. The Navy is directing those ships to return to an Iranian port, the official said.
With the M/T Tifani and M/T Majestic X now at least temporarily in the custody of the military, a U.S. military official said it was up to the White House to decide what to do with the sanctioned vessels and their cargo. The administration previously seized several tankers carrying illicit oil from Venezuela after a U.S. commando raid there in January that seized Nicolás Maduro, the country’s president.
“International waters cannot be used as a shield by sanctioned actors,” the Pentagon said in its statement on Thursday, adding that the department would “continue to deny illicit actors and their vessels freedom of maneuver in the maritime domain.”
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hinted last week that the U.S. military would likely commence boarding operations like the ones this week. He said that U.S. military commanders elsewhere in the world, and especially in the Indo-Pacific region, would “actively pursue any Iranian-flagged vessel or any vessel attempting to provide material support to Iran.”
The U.S. Navy has turned back at least 31 ships trying to enter or exit Iranian ports since an American blockade outside the contested Strait of Hormuz began about a week ago, U.S. Central Command said late Wednesday.
Last Sunday, a Navy destroyer disabled and seized the Touska, an Iranian cargo ship, after it tried to evade the blockade. It was the first time a vessel was reported to have tried to evade the U.S.-imposed blockade on any ship entering or exiting Iranian ports since it took effect last week.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt explained why President Donald Trump does not consider Iran’s seizure of two ships in the Strait of Hormuz a violation of the ceasefire agreement.
Leavitt made the statement during an interview with Fox News’ Martha McCallum on Wednesday just hours after Iran captured the Greek and Mediterranean-flagged vessels.
“Does the seizure of two ships — as we said, they were Greek and Mediterranean-owned ships with cargo on them, and the reports are that Iran basically seized them and then moved them into Iranian waters. We don’t know what’s going to happen to these crews. We’re not sure where all of this is going. Does the president view that as a violation of the ceasefire?” McCallum asked.
“No, because these were not U.S. ships. These were not Israeli ships. These were two international vessels,” Leavitt responded.
US FORCES ATTEMPTING TO BOARD SANCTIONED RUSSIAN-FLAGGED OIL TANKER IN NORTH ATLANTIC, SOURCES SAY
Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, conducts a press briefing. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“And for the American media, who are sort of blowing this out of proportion to discredit the president’s facts that he has completely obliterated Iran’s conventional Navy, these two ships were taken by speedy gunboats. Iran has gone from having the most lethal Navy in the Middle East to now acting like a bunch of pirates. They don’t have control over the strait,” she continued.
“This is piracy that we are seeing on display. And the naval blockade that the United States has imposed continues to be incredibly effective. And, to be clear, the blockade is on ships going to and from Iranian ports. And the point of this is the economic leverage that we maintain over Iran now. While there’s a ceasefire with respect to the military and kinetic strikes, Operation Economic Fury continues, and the crux of that is this naval blockade,” she added.
The Iranian made ‘Seraj’ a high-speed missile-launching assault boat on display in Tehran on August 23, 2010, as Iran kicked off mass production of two high-speed missile-launching assault boats the ‘Seraj’ (Lamp) and ‘Zolfaqar’ (named after Shiite Imam Ali’s sword) speedboats which will be manufactured at the marine industries complex of the ministry of defense. (YALDA MOAIERY/AFP via Getty Images)
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said the vessels, identified as the MSC Francesca and the Epaminondas, were operating without proper authorization and had tampered with navigation systems, accusations that could not be independently verified. The ships had earlier reported coming under fire near the strait, underscoring the increasingly volatile conditions in one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes.
US ‘LOCKED AND LOADED’ TO DESTROY IRAN’S ‘CROWN JEWEL’ ‘IF WE WANT,’ TRUMP WARNS
The Guard attacked a third ship, identified as the Euphoria, which had become “stranded” on the Iranian coast, Iranian media reported. It did not seize that vessel.
Ships and tankers in the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Musandam, Oman, April 18, 2026. (Reuters)
Both the U.S. and Iranian sides have targeted commercial and cargo vessels as part of a broader pressure campaign tied to stalled negotiations. U.S. forces have also moved to seize at least one Iranian-linked vessel in the region, with each side accusing the other of violating the terms of a fragile ceasefire.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
The Strait of Hormuz is a vital artery for global oil shipments, with roughly 20% of the world’s supply passing through it. Traffic has slowed dramatically as ships reroute or avoid the area amid gunfire, seizures and conflicting directives from both militaries.
Fox News’ Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger met privately with President Trump and administration officials Wednesday to press for federal support and yet-unpaid wildfire recovery funding as the region continues to rebuild from the 2025 fires.
“This afternoon we met with President Trump and Administration officials to advocate for families who lost everything,” Bass and Barger said in a statement. “We had a very positive discussion about FEMA and other rebuilding funds as well as the support of the President to continue joining us in pressuring the insurance companies to pay what they owe — and for the big banks to step up to ease the financial pressure on L.A. families.”
Barger said the two leaders had a “high-level discussion” with the president in the Oval Office, sharing stories about what fire survivors are experiencing day to day. She added that “we left details behind with the President,” but did not specify whether Trump made any funding or policy promises during the meeting.
“First and foremost, today’s meeting was to thank the President for his initial support of infusing federal resources to expedite debris removal, as well as his recent tweet about insurance companies, which have already proven fruitful,” she said in a statement provided to The Times.
Bass was similarly reserved about the discussions, telling reporters that “we will follow up with the details,” but signaled progress is being made on federal support.
“I think what’s important is that we certainly got the president’s support in terms of, you know, what is needed, and then the appropriate people were in the room for us to follow up. And that was Russ Vought, who is the head of the Office of Management and budget,” Bass told KNX on Wednesday.
The meeting comes on the heels of a yearlong standoff between California leaders and the Trump administration over wildfire recovery funding, disaster response and whether the federal government should have a say in local rebuilding permitting.
California leaders, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, have accused the Trump administration of withholding billions in critical wildfire aid, prompting a lawsuit over stalled recovery funds. Officials allege political bias in the delay of billions of dollars from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Newsom visited Washington in December. When he made his rounds on Capitol Hill, he met with five lawmakers, including three who serve on the Senate and House appropriations committees, to renew calls for $33.9 billion in federal aid for Los Angeles County fire recovery.
But the governor said he was denied a meeting with FEMA and would not say whether he had attempted to meet with Trump to discuss the issue.
Bass, meanwhile, appears to have found a path to the president on a subject that has been paramount for her community.
The fruitful meeting comes after Trump lobbed insults at the mayor at a news conference earlier this year, where he called her “incompetent” for how she handled last year’s wildfire recovery efforts. He alleged that under Bass’ leadership, the city’s delay in issuing local building permits will take years when it should have taken “two or three days.”
California officials, including Newsom, have urged the Trump administration to send Congress a formal request for the $33.9 billion in recovery aid needed to rebuild homes, schools, utilities and other critical infrastructure destroyed or damaged when the fires tore through neighborhoods more than 15 months ago.
What Bass and Barger’s meeting with the president ultimately produces remains to be seen.
The billions in recovery aid have not yet materialized, but the meeting could potentially give those discussions new momentum.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment about the meeting.
Earlier this month, Trump criticized insurance provider State Farm on Truth Social for its handling of the devastating Los Angeles County wildfires. He accused the insurance giant of abandoning its policyholders when tragedy struck.
“It was brought to my attention that the Insurance Companies, in particular, State Farm, have been absolutely horrible to people that have been paying them large Premiums for years, only to find that when tragedy struck, these horrendous Companies were not there to help!” Trump wrote.
But the rebuke didn’t come out of the blue. It stemmed from a controversial February visit to Los Angeles by Trump administration officials.
Trump tapped Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin in an effort to strip California state and local governments of their authority to permit the rebuilding of homes destroyed in the Eaton and Palisades fires.
Within the week, Zeldin was in Los Angeles, bashing Newsom and Los Angeles officials at a roundtable with fire victims and reporters, saying that residents were suffering from “bureaucratic, red tape delays and incompetency” and that leadership was “denying them … the ability to rebuild their lives”.
During the trip, officials heard direct complaints from local leaders and fire victims about insurers being slow, restrictive and insufficient with their claim payouts.
After these meetings, Trump directed Zeldin to investigate the insurers’ responses. State Farm, facing roughly $7 billion in fire-related claims, is also under formal investigation by California’s insurance commissioner over its handling of the crisis.
Despite tensions with the administration, Bass and Barger appeared confident that progress was being made on the insurance and funding issues.
“Our job is to fight for our communities,” their joint statement concluded. “When it comes to this recovery, our federal partners are essential, and we are grateful for the support of the President.”
-
Colorado2 minutes ago
Federal judge orders release of family of man charged in Colorado firebomb attack
-
Connecticut8 minutes agoNew Haven’s Chapel Street shift from one-way to two-way traffic brings confusion, concerns
-
Delaware14 minutes agoDelaware State football player sues DeSean Jackson, school after alleged locker room assault
-
Florida20 minutes agoFlorida Lottery Powerball, Lotto, Fantasy 5 results for April 22, 2026
-
Georgia26 minutes agoWildfires rage across Georgia and northern Florida amid severe drought
-
Hawaii32 minutes agoBench in Honokaʻa to Hilo storefront: Knickknackery Hawaii brings old-time island charm to Hilo
-
Idaho38 minutes agoIdaho ranks last in per pupil spending, again – Local News 8
-
Illinois44 minutes agoArlington Heights Bears fans cheer as ‘Megaprojects’ bill passes Illinois House