Pope Leo XIV not registered as a Republican in Illinois

The new pope, Robert Prevost, or Pope Leo XIV, is the first one chosen from the U.S. Many social media posts claim the Roman Catholic leader, born in Chicago, is also a registered Republican.

“SCOOP: Our Turning Point Action team pulled the voting history for Pope Leo XIV,” one user wrote. “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.”

Not quite, according to PolitiFact. They rate this claim “mostly false.”

Prevost, who grew up in Dolton, has been a registered voter in Will County. He was ordained as a priest in 1992 and lived in Peru from 1988 to 1998 before returning to Chicago.

Illinois voters are not required to provide a party affiliation. The Will County clerk’s office provided PolitiFact with Prevost’s voter information, in which his party was listed as “undeclared.” However, the state asks voters to declare a party when voting in a primary. According to those records, Prevost voted in at least three Republican primaries.

The Illinois State Board of Elections has said choosing a party during a primary does not mean the voter is registered with that party, according to a video issued by the group in April. Voters are free to vote for a different party in other elections.

Prevost’s voting history doesn’t 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,” said Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, chair of religious studies and political science professor at Northwestern University.

Gas not under $2 per gallon at pump

President Donald Trump recently said gas prices were way down.

“Gasoline just broke $1.98 a Gallon, lowest in years, groceries (and eggs!) down, energy down, mortgage rates down, employment strong, and much more good news, as Billions of Dollars pour in from Tariffs,” Trump wrote May 2 on social media.

This is false, according to FactCheck.org. No states have gas prices under $2.

But FactCheck.org said the president was likely referring to the trading price for a gallon of RBOB, or reformulated blendstock for oxygenate blending. RBOB is an unfinished gasoline product intended for blending with oxygenates to produce finished reformulated gasoline, according to the Energy Information Administration. It’s traded as a commodity and recently sold on the New York Mercantile Exchange for as low as $1.96 per gallon.

RBOB is sold at a wholesale price and doesn’t include costs of manufacturing, distribution or state and federal taxes. It’s not the price at the pump.

“It does not come anywhere near explaining what consumers are paying,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, told CNBC. “It would be irrelevant to the consumer to know what the price of RBOB is because they’re not paying the wholesale price of RBOB.”

Leaders not caught with drugs

A short video, posted to social media, showing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, included an odd explanation of what the European leaders were up to.

“Macron, Starmer, and Merz caught on video on their return from Kiev. A bag of white powder on the table. Macron quickly pockets it, Merz hides the spoon,” read one Facebook post.

But that wasn’t a bag of white powder on the table, according to Reuters. It was a wadded up white tissue. A close-up of a Reuters photo from the same scene shows it’s a discarded facial tissue. As the men appear to be posing for a photo, Macron notices the tissue and picks it up.

“We reject this absurd claim,” a spokesperson for the German government told Reuters, when asked about the Facebook post.

A representative for Macron’s office said, in an X post, that the false claim was being spread by France’s enemies.

“When European unity is bothersome, disinformation goes so far as to make a simple handkerchief look like a drug,” the post said.

The leaders were traveling on the train to Kyiv to meet with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

• Bob Oswald is a veteran Chicago-area journalist and former news editor of the Elgin Courier-News. Contact him at boboswald33@gmail.com.