Archive May 11, 2025

Hours after Robert Prevost became the first United States-born pontiff on May 8, social media discussions in the US speculated whether Pope Leo XIV, as he is known after the election, was a “registered Republican”.

“SCOOP: Our Turning Point Action team pulled the voting history for Pope Leo XIV,” conservative influencer Charlie Kirk wrote on social media platform X on May 8. “He’s a registered Republican who has voted in Republican primaries when not living abroad. Our data shows he’s a strong Republican, and he’s pro-life.”

Many other X posts called Prevost a “registered Republican”.

Prevost, 69, is a registered voter in Will County, Illinois, and has cast ballots there over the past 13 years. In Illinois, voters do not register by party affiliation. But they declare a party when voting in a primary, according to an April video by the Illinois State Board of Elections.

“However, you are not tied down or formally registered to this party and are free to vote for another party at a subsequent election,” the video says.

The Illinois voter registration application does not ask people to provide a party affiliation.

The Will County clerk’s office sent PolitiFact Prevost’s voter information, which lists his party affiliation as “undeclared”. It shows that he voted in the 2012, 2014 and 2016 Republican primaries. He voted absentee in the 2024 general election, with an undeclared party affiliation.

The viral screenshots Kirk and others shared on X are from L2, a paywalled database that aggregates consumer and voter data. L2’s profile of Prevost lists “Republican” in its “party” field.

🚨 🚨 🚨 New Pope is a registered REPUBLICAN! pic.twitter.com/bj8MH8H2Qs

It is unclear how L2 determines a party affiliation for people who live in states such as Illinois, where this information is not included in voter registration. L2 did not respond to PolitiFact’s request for comment.

Born in 1955, Prevost grew up in Dolton, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. He was ordained as a priest in 1982, then moved to Peru, where he lived from 1988 through 1998. In 1999, he returned to Chicago to serve as the prior provincial of the Augustinian province of “Mother of Good Counsel”, which covers the Midwest and Canada.

Prevost’s voter file lists his address to a house owned by his brother, John Prevost. We were unable to determine Robert Prevost’s address or where he was registered to vote before 2012. In 2014, he returned to Peru and served as the bishop of Chiclayo from 2015 to 2023. He then moved to Rome, where he has lived since.

US citizens who live overseas and meet certain criteria can vote absentee while abroad.

We contacted the clerk’s office in Cook County, Illinois, where Chicago is located, to ask whether Prevost has a voter file in the county. The clerk’s office directed us to submit a Freedom of Information Act request for that information; we did so, but did not receive an immediate response.

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, chair of religious studies and political science professor at Northwestern University in the Chicago suburbs, said Prevost’s voting history does not tell the public “much about his views or positions other than that in that particular primary he was inclined toward one or more of the Republican candidates”.

Our ruling

X posts said Prevost is a “registered Republican”.

Prevost is registered to vote in Illinois, where voters do not register with a party affiliation. However, they declare a party affiliation when voting in a primary. County records show Prevost voted in three Republican primaries from 2012 through 2016, the most recent records we obtained.

Still, the Illinois State Board of Elections says when voters participate in primaries, they are not formally registered to a party.

No one is registered by party affiliation in Illinois, and evidence is scant about Prevost’s voting history over his lifetime.

The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts. We rate it Mostly False.

Whether you are gift-wrapping a toy car or hanging Christmas ornaments, there is a strong chance you are handling products made in a Chinese factory.

The day after President Donald Trump spoke in an interview about his tariff policies that girls in the United States do not need to “have 30 dolls”, some political commentators discussed China’s influence over the US toy market. The US currently has a 145 percent tariff on goods from China.

“China makes 80 percent of all toys sold in this country and 90 percent of all Christmas goods sold in this country,” former New York Times columnist Charles Blow said during a May 5 appearance on CNN’s News Night with Abby Phillip. “We have a lot of leverage with China. The Christmas and the doll industry is not one of them.”

Blow told PolitiFact his source was an April 29 report in The New York Times. It said, “Factories in China produce nearly 80 percent of all toys and 90 percent of Christmas goods sold in America.”

Data shows those figures are rounded up, but not far off.

Blow’s statement is “directionally accurate but slightly overstated on toys”, said Gilberto Garcia-Vazquez, chief economist at Datawheel, which operates an online economic data platform called the Observatory of Economic Complexity.

He said out of $41bn worth of imports in toys, games and sports equipment in 2024 by the US, $30bn, or about 73 percent, was manufactured in China.

“If you include domestic production – small but non-negligible – China likely supplies closer to 72 percent of toys actually sold in the US, not 80 percent,” Garcia-Vazquez said. The Observatory of Economic Complexity uses data sources from “statistical offices, open data portals or custom union websites”.

Claire Huber, spokesperson for the US International Trade Commission (USITC), provided PolitiFact with an analysis of 2024 data that showed 78.3 percent of toy imports and 85 percent of Christmas-related imports, such as lights, trees and decorations, are manufactured in China. The toy category includes dolls, wheeled toys and scale models.

The data was compiled using the USITC’s DataWeb, which cites statistics published by the US Department of Commerce’s Census Bureau, accessed on May 9.

Garcia-Vazquez also analysed 2024 data for Christmas goods and said 90 percent of US imports in that category came from China.

He said Christmas lights are an exception because “Cambodia has recently overtaken China as the top source”.

The New York Times published an April 27 report that showed 76 percent of “toys and puzzles” and 87 percent of “Christmas decorations” come from China. Bloomberg, citing the trade organisation Toy Association, said “roughly 80 percent of toys sold in the US are made in China”.