Gavin Newsom Abandoned His Dying Mother to Push His Political Career

In a March 3, 2026, episode of Anderson Cooper’s All There is with Anderson Cooper podcast titled “Gavin Newsom,” the governor of California tells the story of his mother’s death by assisted suicide. And it’s horrible.

Gavin Newsom’s account of his mother’s assisted suicide does not describe dignity. It describes abandonment, panic, violence, and grief. By his own telling, this was not a peaceful death wrapped in tenderness and moral clarity. It was a mother with advanced cancer, a son too distracted to notice her suffering...