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Reporting from Sacramento — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lifelong struggle with dyslexia makes his proposal to screen little kids for developmental disorders a personal mission.

California’s new governor wasn’t diagnosed with the reading disability until he was in the fifth grade.

“I got screened late,” Newsom, 51, told me. “I bounced around to five schools in seven years because I didn’t get the support. My mom kept trying different schools, looking for support. Back then, they didn’t know what this stuff was.

“I’d fallen behind, literally behind, and when that happens you tend to act accordingly. Finally someone diagnosed it. That allowed me to get support and self-confidence.”

Whatever guidance young Newsom got obviously worked. He graduated from Santa Clara University, created a successful wine and hospitality business, was twice elected San Francisco mayor, became lieutenant governor and then California’s 40^th governor.

Anyone who watched Newsom’s recent inaugural speech on the Capitol steps saw him reading flawlessly off the teleprompter. He didn’t miss a beat even when his 2-year-old son, Dutch, leaped into his arms and stayed there.

In his $209-billion state budget proposal, Newsom asked the Legislature for roughly $100 million to fund developmental and health screenings for infants and toddlers in low-income families.

That’s a little-noticed slice of Newsom’s $1.8-billion proposed package of programs aimed at expanding early education and childcare for the poor.

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I asked the governor if the developmental screenings were inspired by his struggles with dyslexia.

“Deeply so — 100%,” he replied. “It’s very personal for me.

“If you get those screens early, you can not only change a person’s life, you can save taxpayers a lot in the process.”

That’s because certain developmental disorders can lead to serious medical ailments that often require tax dollars to treat. At worst, they can lead to criminal behavior.

“I found out [about dyslexia] when I was in the fifth grade,” Newsom says. “My mother struggled with whether to tell me about it. She didn’t want me to have an excuse. She wanted me to work hard.”

Newsom says at least one — maybe two — of his four children has dyslexia.

“It is deeply painful not just for the kids, but for the parents watching them struggle,” he says.

“Unless you get the screening, the rest of your life you struggle.” But with trained help, a child can work around the disorder, he adds, and “later in life you find other strengths.”

The biggest chunk of Newsom’s package to help kids from poor families — and their parents — is his proposal to offer all-day kindergarten. Now, 22% of school districts provide only part-day kindergarten, a costly burden on working parents who must pay for expensive childcare after school.

Newsom also wants to provide full-day pre-kindergarten for all 4-year-olds from low-income families. He’d like to eventually include 3-year-olds.

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“Most of the brain development work is done by the time you’re 4,” the governor says. “Getting 3-year-olds in [class] is the game-changer.”

OK, that’s a great idea. But why not provide pre-kindergarten classes for all kids, regardless of family income? The middle class gets shunted aside again.

There’s a reason why Social Security and Medicare — and K-12 public schools — are so popular everywhere. They’re not means tested. No one is rejected because of income.

Newsom asked the Legislature for $10 million to draw “a road map” to universal pre-kindergarten for every 3- and 4-year-old, regardless of family income. But liberal lawmakers would need to be persuaded to provide preschool for the upper middle class and wealthy.

“The consensus in the Legislature is that it’s not our goal to serve kids whose parents have the means to afford their own,” Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) told me last month.

But full-time day care is unaffordable for many middle-class parents. It costs as much or more than tuition at the University of California — $1,000 a month and up.

The governor and legislators say there isn’t enough money for universal pre-kindergarten, not even with a projected budget surplus of around $21 billion.

“And even if we had all the resources in the world,” Newsom says, “we’re not prepared to spend that appropriately. We couldn’t even lease the facilities, couldn’t train the workforce. It’s not just about access. It’s about quality access.”

Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), who chairs the budget subcommittee on education finance, says it would cost $4 billion annually to include all 4-year-olds in pre-kindergarten. He has introduced legislation to cover poor children. He estimates that would cost $1.5 billion.

“I’d like nothing more than to afford it for all kids,” McCarty says. “But we have other priorities. We can start with the families who need it the most — where we get the biggest bang for the buck.

“Upper-middle-class families will pay for it on their own. And some of the middle-class families will just miss out.”

Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Holly J. Mitchell (D-Los Angeles), who once ran one of the largest child development organizations in the country, Crystal Stairs, says, “If I had a magic wand, I absolutely would” provide early childhood education for everyone. “But we don’t even have enough money to pay for the lowest-income kids.”

Somehow they’ll find enough money for the poor kids and should — and make sure they’re screened for developmental disorders.

Famous people, including Steven Spielberg, Walt Disney, Leonardo da Vinci, Tom Cruise and Albert Einstein, have battled dyslexia.

California’s governor is the latest role model for youngsters struggling with the affliction.

george.skelton@latimes.com

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WASHINGTON — Attorneys for President Trump urged a federal judge on Friday to rule that Trump is entitled to presidential immunity from civil claims that he instigated a mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta didn’t rule from the bench after hearing arguments from Trump attorneys and lawyers for Democratic members of Congress who sued the Republican president and allies over the Jan. 6. 2021, attack.

Trump spoke to a crowd of his supporters at the “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House before the mob’s attack disrupted the joint session of Congress for certifying Democratic President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

Trump’s attorneys argue that his conduct leading up to Jan. 6 and on the day of the riot is protected by presidential immunity because he was acting in his official capacity.

“The entire point of immunity is to give the president clarity to speak in the moment as the commander-in-chief,” Trump attorney Joshua Halpern told the judge.

The lawmakers’ lawyers argue Trump can’t prove he was acting entirely in his official capacity rather than as an office-seeking private individual. And the U.S. Supreme Court has held that office-seeking conduct falls outside the scope of presidential immunity, they contend.

“President Trump has the burden of proof here,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Joseph Sellers. “We submit that he hasn’t come anywhere close to satisfying that burden.”

At the end of Friday’s hearing, Mehta said the arguments gave him “a lot to think about” and he would rule “as soon as we can.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who chaired the House Homeland Security Committee, sued Trump, his personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani and members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers extremist groups over the Jan. 6 riot. Other Democratic members of Congress later joined the litigation.

The civil claims survived Trump’s sweeping act of clemency on the first day of his second term, when he pardoned, commuted prison sentences and ordered the dismissal of all 1,500-plus criminal cases stemming from the Capitol siege. Over 100 police officers were injured while defending the Capitol from rioters.

Halpern said immunity enables the president to act “boldly and fearlessly.”

“Immunity exists to protect the president’s prerogatives,” he said.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers argue that the context and circumstances of the president’s remarks on Jan. 6 — not just the content of his words — are key to establishing whether he is immune from liability.

“You have to look at what happened leading up to January 6th,” Sellers said.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

Lawyers for US President Donald Trump say the BBC caused him overwhelming reputational and financial harm.

United States President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit seeking at least $10bn from the BBC over a documentary that edited his speech to supporters before the US Capitol riot in 2021.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Miami on Monday, seeks “damages in an amount not less than $5,000,000,000” for each of two counts against the United Kingdom broadcaster for alleged defamation and violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

Earlier in the day, Trump confirmed his plans to file the lawsuit.

“I’m suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth, literally… I guess they used AI or something,” he told reporters at the White House.

“That’s called fake news .”

President Trump: “I’m suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth, literally…I guess they used AI or something…they actually put terrible words in my mouth having to do with January 6th that I didn’t say.” pic.twitter.com/cUwXqBq3Zd

— CSPAN (@cspan) December 15, 2025

Trump has accused the UK publicly-owned broadcaster of defaming him by splicing together parts of a January 6, 2021, speech, including one section where he told supporters to march on the Capitol, and another where he said, “Fight like hell”.

The edited sections of his speech omitted words in which Trump also called for peaceful protest.

Trump’s lawsuit alleges that the BBC defamed him, and his lawyers say the documentary caused him overwhelming reputational and financial harm.

The BBC has already apologised to Trump, admitted an error of judgement and acknowledged that the edit gave the mistaken impression that he had made a direct call for violent action.

The broadcaster also said that there was no legal basis for the lawsuit, and that to overcome the US Constitution’s strong legal protections for free speech and the press, Trump will need to prove in court not only that the edit was false and defamatory, but also that the BBC knowingly misled viewers or acted recklessly.

The broadcaster could argue that the documentary was substantially true and its editing decisions did not create a false impression, legal experts said. It could also claim the programme did not damage Trump’s reputation.

Trump, in his lawsuit, said that the BBC, despite its apology, “has made no showing of actual remorse for its wrongdoing nor meaningful institutional changes to prevent future journalistic abuses”.

A spokesman for Trump’s legal team said in a statement that the BBC had “a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda”.

The BBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the lawsuit was filed on Monday.

The dispute over the edited speech, featured on the BBC’s Panorama documentary show shortly before the 2024 presidential election, prompted a public relations crisis for the broadcaster, leading to the resignations of its two most senior officials.

Other media organisations have settled with Trump, including CBS and ABC, when Trump sued them following his comeback win in the November 2024 election.

Trump has also filed lawsuits against The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and a newspaper in Iowa, all of which have denied wrongdoing.

Reporting from Sacramento — In a Time Life book titled “The Indians of California,” there’s a passage that probably isn’t taught to schoolchildren studying our not-so-golden state’s checkered history.

It reads:

“One old Pomo woman looked on in horror as two whites impaled a little girl on the bayonets of their guns and tossed the body in the water. [She] saw a little boy and a mother and baby put to death in similar fashion. One man was strung up by a noose and a large fire built under him….”

That happened on what soon became known as Bloody Island at Clear Lake, 90 miles north of San Francisco.

There’s a historical marker that reads: “On this island in 1850, U.S. soldiers nearly annihilated all its inhabitants for the murder of two white men. Doubt exists of these Indians’ guilt.”

There’s no doubt two white ranchers were killed by a handful of Indians. The ranchers had enslaved, tortured and starved the Indians. They were planning to force-march the “surplus” — those unfit or unneeded for ranch labor — to Sutter’s Fort in the Sacramento Valley 100 miles away. A final straw was when the ranchers captured the chief’s young wife and forced her to live with them.

After the chief and some buddies killed the two ranchers, the U.S. Army retaliated by massacring much of the Pomo tribe. The commander wrote his general: “The number killed I confidently report at not less than 60, and doubt little that it extended to 100 and upwards.”

On Tuesday, 169 years later, California’s governor finally apologized for the likes of Bloody Island.

Technically, state government wasn’t the assassin at Clear Lake. The U.S. Cavalry was. California was still four months short of official statehood. But the carnage unquestionably reflected the prevailing California political sentiment.

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The next January, California’s first elected governor, Peter Burnett, declared in his State of the State address: “That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected.”

In the 1850s, the Legislature appropriated $1.29 million to wage militia war against California’s Native Americans. Some of that money was used to pay bounties for body parts — 25 cents per scalp, up to $5 for a whole head.

California’s indigenous population exceeded 200,000 in 1800, but plummeted to around 15,000 by 1900.

“It’s called a genocide,” Gavin Newsom said at a ceremony with Native American leaders along the Sacramento River in 103-degree heat. “That’s what it was. A genocide. No other way to describe it and that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books….

“You have to call things what they are…. We allowed vigilantes. We organized militias. We funded them. We reimbursed them and we got the federal government to make us whole. That was genocide….

“And so,” he concluded, “I’m here to say the following: I’m sorry on behalf of the state of California.”

OK, but so what? Why now? And what good does it do?

For starters, why not?

It does mean that California’s government finally acknowledges that a significant number of the state’s early elected officials and pioneer citizens were a bunch of greedy, bigoted thugs. It’s healthy to admit that.

We’ve never been reluctant to demand that Southern whites face up to their shameful history of enslaving, segregating and lynching African Americans.

“It’s definitely overdue,” Newsom senior advisor Daniel Zingale replied when I asked what prompted the governor’s apology. “It’s the kind of thing he wanted to address early on. It’s on his list of core values.”

‘This is our land’: Native Americans see Trump’s move to reduce Bears Ears monument as an assault on their culture »

Another thing it does: It makes the Democratic governor lots of wealthy friends who run tribal casinos and have vaults full of potential campaign donations when he eventually runs for president.

Actually, I figure, most California voters partially apologized in 1998 and 2000 by allowing tribes to build Vegas-style casinos on their rural reservations. There are now 64 casinos operated by 62 tribes.

No one seems to know — at least publicly — how much in winnings they pull in each year. But it’s in the many billions of dollars.

The governor’s apology apparently means a lot personally to Native American leaders.

“It’s instrumental,” says Assemblyman James Ramos (D-Highland), the first California Indian elected to the Legislature. “Sometimes local elected officials don’t really believe what happened to us. It’s just ‘our story.’ So having the leader of the state of California come out and give an apology, it’s instrumental.”

Ramos, who grew up on the San Manuel Indian Reservation, talks about the “Battle of 1866.” White militia forces swarmed into the San Bernardino Mountains to clear out the Indians. His great-great-grandfather, Ramos says, saved the last 30 tribal members and founded the San Manuel reservation in the valley.

“There’s the same story of genocide over gold and logging throughout the state,” he says. “Tribes were pretty much annihilated.”

Now California has the largest American Indian population in the country — around 723,000.

This state, of course, also has a bigoted, greedy history toward Asians. For generations, Japanese immigrants were barred from owning property. The Chinese couldn’t legally migrate here at all.

But California Indians were the only ones systematically killed with Sacramento’s financial support.

If Newsom is ever elected president, he can offer the nation’s apology for all the atrocities inflicted on Native Americans by European invaders — including at the Trail of Tears, Wounded Knee and Bloody Island.

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