Trump News: Trump Slams Newsom Death Row Plan

In the latest Trump news, President Donald Trump weighed in on Saturday on one of the most sweeping clemency decisions in American history, denouncing California Governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to commute every death sentence in the state. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump called the plan “a disaster for Justice in America” and said the families of murder victims were “rightfully, devastated.”

The clash is about 548 people, the men and women on death row in California, the largest condemned population of any state in the country. Newsom announced on Thursday, November 5, that he intends to commute all of their death sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Trump put the number at 563 in his post, higher than the governor’s office figure of 548, 529 men and 19 women. Whatever the precise count, the scale is without precedent: the Death Penalty Information Center has described the plan as the largest act of mass clemency in American history.

Trump News: What the President Said on Saturday

Trump’s post was blunt even by the standards of his social media feed. He wrote that Newsom was halting the death penalty for hundreds of California death row inmates, “some of the worst cold blooded murderers to have ever lived on the face of the Earth,” and said many of them “can’t believe their luck in having a Governor so incompetent and insensitive that he would not let the long and winding legal system prevail.” He closed with a hope that the decision would be reversed. “Hopefully this decision will be overturned!” he wrote, signing the post “President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

The president’s argument centred on the victims. He wrote that the family members of those who were “so viciously killed” were devastated by the governor’s decision, and he framed the commutations as a betrayal of people who had waited years, in some cases decades, for the sentences imposed by California juries to be carried out.

The post also revived a rivalry that has defined much of the second Trump presidency. Newsom, who leaves office in January after eight years as governor, has become one of the president’s most persistent critics, and Trump has returned the attention in kind.

Democratic Party News: Inside Newsom’s Commutation Plan

Newsom announced the plan in an open letter to Californians on November 5, weeks before the end of his second and final term. In the letter, he said he was acting because he believes state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values. “I take this action because I firmly believe that state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundations of our legal system, and diminishes each of us,” he wrote, according to the Associated Press. He also acknowledged the weight of the decision for the families of victims, describing it as among the most difficult choices of his career. “As Governor, I alone bear responsibility for this decision and its impact, just as I alone would bear responsibility for each execution,” he wrote.

The governor’s office has been careful to describe exactly what the commutations would and would not do. The plan applies only to people currently under a sentence of death. It would replace those sentences with life in prison without the possibility of parole. It would not pardon anyone, it would not make anyone eligible for parole, it would not wipe out court-ordered restitution, and it would not change the underlying convictions. Victims registered with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Office of Victim and Survivor Rights and Services will be notified when the commutations take effect.

Newsom’s opposition to the death penalty is long-standing. Within months of taking office in 2019, he signed an executive order imposing a moratorium on executions in California, and no one has been executed in the state since 2006. The commutation plan goes much further than the moratorium, which left the sentences themselves in place. By converting every death sentence into a life sentence, Newsom would effectively end capital punishment in California even though the death penalty remains on the books, a law voters have repeatedly chosen to keep, most recently in 2016.

US Politics: Why 382 Cases Need the California Supreme Court

For all the force of Newsom’s announcement, the governor does not have the final word on most of the cases. Under Article V, Section 8 of the California Constitution, a governor may not grant a pardon or commutation to a person twice convicted of a felony except on the recommendation of the state Supreme Court, with four of the seven justices concurring. Newsom’s own office says that condition covers 382 of the 548 cases, roughly 70 percent, because those prisoners were convicted of a felony more than once. The governor can act on his own in about 166 cases. The rest cannot be completed without the court.

Newsom has asked the justices for a blanket recommendation covering all 382 cases by the end of the year, before he leaves office in January. The court has set a timetable but has not decided. On November 9, the justices invited legal briefs, which are due on November 24, with the governor’s response due on December 4. Until the court acts, nothing has formally changed: the Habeas Corpus Resource Center, which represents condemned prisoners, has noted that the governor has not yet formally commuted any sentences and has only said that he plans to do so.

The court’s record suggests it will not decide lightly, but it has not been hostile to Newsom’s clemency requests. Between January 2019 and October 2026, at the governor’s request, the California Supreme Court recommended 24 commutations of life-without-parole sentences, which made those prisoners eligible for parole hearings.

Newsom’s successor will inherit whatever the court decides. Xavier Becerra, who will take office as governor in January, has already said he will continue the moratorium on executions, according to the Associated Press. That means the practical question is not whether California will resume executions in the near future, but whether the death sentences themselves survive on paper or are converted, case by case, into life without parole.

The Reaction in California

The announcement drew swift criticism from prosecutors and victims’ groups. Nathan Hochman, the district attorney of Los Angeles County, said his office would continue to assess death penalty-eligible cases carefully. Bill Essayli, the Trump-appointed federal prosecutor for Southern California, described the plan as a major blow to Californians and to the families of murder victims. A victims’ rights foundation has pledged to challenge the commutations in court.

One of the most striking critics is a Democrat. Gloria Romero, a former Democratic majority leader of the California Senate, has launched a petition asking the state Supreme Court to reject every commutation that requires its approval, calling the plan a political ploy by a governor in his final weeks. Her petition had passed 1,000 signatures by Monday, November 9.

The criticism has been sharpened by the details of who is on death row. A review of the governor’s roster found that at least 33 inmates are tied to the killings of 36 law enforcement officers, with death judgments in those cases spanning more than four decades, from 1981 to 2025. For the families of those officers, and for police organisations across the state, the idea that those sentences could be set aside by executive action has been especially hard to accept.

There has also been support, including from beyond the United States. Morris Tidball-Binz, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, welcomed the decision on November 12 and urged California to go further by reviewing life sentences without parole. Supporters of the plan argue that the death penalty has been applied unevenly, that it has produced wrongful convictions, and that California’s system has been effectively broken for two decades, with no executions since 2006 and hundreds of people waiting on a row that the state has shown no ability to clear.

White House News: A Clash Over Clemency, Seven Years in the Making

Trump and Newsom have fought over the death penalty before. When Newsom imposed the moratorium in March 2019, Trump responded within hours, saying the friends and families of the “always forgotten VICTIMS” were not thrilled, “and neither am I!” The commutation plan completes the project Newsom began that day: first halting executions, then removing the sentences themselves.

The two men have also accused each other of abusing clemency. Newsom’s office issued a lengthy denunciation in June of Trump’s clemency decisions, including relief for roughly 1,500 people convicted over the January 6 attack on the Capitol, accusing the president of protecting convicted criminals and abandoning victims. Trump now levels a version of the same charge in reverse, arguing that Newsom is using executive power to spare hundreds of convicted murderers. Each man presents the other’s clemency as illegitimate and his own as a matter of principle, and the death penalty fight has become the sharpest expression of that argument.

What Happens Next

The immediate timetable belongs to the California Supreme Court. Briefs are due on November 24, the governor’s response is due on December 4, and the justices must then decide whether to recommend the 382 commutations that require their approval. Newsom’s clemency power ends when his term ends in January, so the calendar is tight.

Beyond California, the fight lands in a country where the death penalty is again in the headlines. Two executions carried out on Thursday, in Texas and Oklahoma, were the 36th and 37th in the United States this year, putting the country on track to surpass 40 executions for a second consecutive year, a pace driven largely by Florida. The death penalty has drawn renewed attention since the failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee in September. The contrast could hardly be sharper: one state moving to empty its death row entirely while others carry out executions at a pace not seen in years.

Trump’s post does not, by itself, change the legal position. Clemency for state crimes is a matter for the governor and the California Supreme Court, not for the White House, and the president has no power to commute or to block a state commutation. What his intervention does is raise the political stakes, ensuring that whatever the court decides will be fought over nationally as well as in Sacramento. If the justices recommend the commutations, Newsom will have completed the most far-reaching clemency of his career in his final weeks in office. If they refuse, hundreds of death sentences will remain in place, and the next governor will inherit a question that California has been unable to settle for twenty years.

Source: Associated Press and WJAR