REV. AL SHARPTON MEETS WITH GOVERNOR GAVIN NEWSOM 

Meeting Comes as Trump Administration Continues Systematic Dismantling of Equity Protections, Affirmative Action, and Voting Rights Legislation Won During the Civil Rights Movement 

NEW YORK, NY (February 24, 2026) — Rev. Al Sharpton, Founder and President of the National Action Network (NAN), today released the following statement following his meeting with California Governor Gavin Newsom. 

“I had an hour-long, pre-scheduled meeting at NAN’s corporate office with California Governor Gavin Newsom while he was in New York for a book event. We discussed pressing national issues, and I put him on the phone with the family of Rev. Jesse Jackson so he could offer his personal condolences. 

The so-called controversy being driven by Fox News over the Governor speaking honestly about living with dyslexia, including the challenges it posed with reading and standardized tests, is political theater, plain and simple. Those who were in the room have made clear his comments were about his own lived experience and were not offensive. 

What is striking is the selective outrage. Many of the same voices expressing sudden moral concern today had little to say when Donald Trump used racist rhetoric and demeaning language about entire countries, or when grotesque imagery targeting Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes circulated freely in the political bloodstream on his social media. 

To distort a man’s testimony about growing up with pain and a learning disability into an attack is not accountability, it’s cynical misdirection. It would be laughable if it weren’t so revealing.”