Parental rights, 'book bans': 5 highlights from Gavin Newsom's podcast debut

2. Newsom defends allowing schools to withhold students' gender confusion from parents 

When Kirk told Newsom that he “signed a law where school districts can’t even tell parents if their kids are trans,” the governor pushed back, saying, “Not true.” Newsom insisted that under the law in question, teachers “can” share that information with parents, “they just can’t get fired for not doing that.” 

“The law was explicit, said you can’t be fired for not snitching on a kid, not just for being trans, for being gay,” Newsom insisted. After pushing back on the idea that “telling parents” about their children’s sexuality constitutes “snitching,” Kirk maintained that “a teacher, of course, should be fired [...] if you don’t notify a parent of what’s happening to their kid.” 

Kirk brought up a situation in which “a young girl says, ‘Hey, I want to [socially] transition,’ and the teacher accommodates and affirms it, and the parent doesn’t even know,” adding that he has “met parents like that.”

Newsom dismissed the scenario as an example of “extreme rhetoric.” 

After Kirk warned Newsom that Democrats will continue to “lose on this issue,” the governor acknowledged the unpopularity of the position, and conceded that “sometimes you lose on principle.” 

At President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress last week, he highlighted the case of January Littlejohn, a Florida parent who is suing her daughter’s school district after school officials helped the middle school-aged student to “socially transition” and use they/them pronouns without informing Littlejohn or her husband.