Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, believes that fear of a rising wave of progressives is paralyzing possible bipartisan work on permitting reform that would otherwise create fertile ground for collaboration.

“That dynamic is dangerous right now because they are terrified of the extreme left. Finding a middle ground on ideological issues right now is … the prospects for success, particularly between now and election day, are not high,” Cruz said at an energy summit hosted by Club for Growth and Arnold Ventures on Thursday.

“Schumer is truly terrified right now,” he added, referring to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Cruz’s political assessment underscores what progressive momentum in the 2026 midterms means for more establishment figures in the Democratic Party — and especially the ones already in Congress — and the policy areas that legislators may still want to address before the November midterm elections.

CRUZ SAYS MAMDANI, AOC, PLATNER SHOW DEMOCRATS’ LEFTWARD SHIFT: ‘THAT’S WHERE THE ENERGY IS’

“They’re in the middle of a revolution,” Cruz said. “Their problem is that they’re very driven by their interest groups. They’re captured by their activists.”

His remarks came as he delivered an address at an energy affordability summit hosted by the Club for Growth, a free-market group that advocates for limited government. In particular, the event centered on permitting reform, an area where Democrats and Republicans have found some overlap.

Although differences remain about just how far to scale back regulations or how far to push legislative changes, lawmakers at the event stressed that bipartisan work on cutting back red tape could meaningfully expand American access to energy projects domestically.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright noted how regulatory bodies had prevented the expansion of nuclear energy — a source of power that is uniting Republicans and Democrats as a new frontier in a space apart from fossil fuels.

“We have built three new nuclear reactors in like the last 40 years. It went quickly from: we didn’t even know about the technology, to 20% of U.S. electric generation from nuclear reactors,” Wright said.

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“We created the Nuclear Regulatory Commission… in the name of safety, no malintent. But since that creation, we’ve built almost no reactors in the United States since. If it’s so uncertain and so long to permit something, it’s just not worth investing in. That’s awful! Nuclear is just an awesome energy technology.”

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio., stressed that many of the discussions around reform have come down to a matter of practical details.

“There’s a lot of conversations going on not about who’s going to fight with whom or who is going to take credit for it, but rather what is the mechanics of getting it done,” Moreno said at the Club for Growth event.

“When it comes to permitting reform, if we can actually pull this off, Scott, what does it mean? It means lower energy prices for all Americans, us taking better care of our environment, being good stewards for the next generation. Those are worthy goals that should unite all of us, and I’m hopeful that we can get that done,” Moreno said, speaking to conservative political commentator Scott Jennings, a moderator at the event.

Despite a sense of optimism among several speakers — and even from Cruz himself — Cruz warned listeners that progressives already have a very real presence inside the Capitol that casts a shadow on permitting reform and other areas.

“It is not the case that every Senate Democrat is a Marxist or Islamist. What is the case is that every Senate Democrat is terrified of the Marxists and Islamists. Because that’s where the energy is in their party, that’s where the power is, that’s where the money is; it’s where the young people are. I think Mamdani is the single most powerful Democrat in the country,” Cruz said, referring to the socialist mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani.

Since Mamdani, a self-proclaimed socialist, came to power earlier this year, a series of progressive candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have won key primary races and even toppled veteran incumbents.

A few notable races include New York’s socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier and her victory over incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., the veteran chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Along those lines, Melat Kiros, another socialist in Colorado, unseated 30-year incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo.

SCHUMER DODGES QUESTION ON WHETHER DSA BELONGS IN DEMOCRATIC PARTY

With pressures like that, Cruz argued that it’s difficult to find legislators who are willing to separate themselves from progressives.

He believes there isn’t leadership to push back against that progressive momentum.

“Look, Schumer is known for a lot of things but acts of principle and courage are not among them,” Cruz said.

EXCLUSIVE: DHS General Counsel James Percival is turning a complaint from 128 former judges back on its signers, calling on the Florida Bar to scrutinize those among them who are Bar members after it declined to investigate him.

The Bar said it does not investigate or prosecute sitting officers appointed under the U.S. Constitution while they are in office, a position Percival argued the complainants should have known before challenging his “Worst of the Worst Judges” series.

Percival accused the Florida Bar members who joined the complaint of potentially abusing the disciplinary process for political purposes, arguing their filing was frivolous and dubbing the tactic “Bar-fare.”

“The 128 former judges are sort of an example of a tactic the left has used for a long time,” Percival told Fox News Digital, comparing their appeal to professional authority to the 2020 controversy involving 51 former intelligence officials and Hunter Biden’s laptop.

DHS EVISCERATES MEDIA FOR ‘ABSOLUTE ABSURDITY’ OVER CONCERN ABOUT ‘WORST OF THE WORST’ ACTIVIST JUDGES LIST

Percival pointed to the Florida Bar’s previous handling of a complaint involving former Attorney General Pam Bondi, arguing that they already signaled refusal to probe sitting presidential appointees.

“[W]hat these 128 former judges did was frivolous, and they were on notice that it was frivolous because the Florida Bar is very clear about this. So, it’s ‘Bar-fare’,” he said, playing on the term “lawfare.”

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Percival said the same tactic has been used elsewhere, including the Hunter Biden laptop controversy and the way dissent over COVID-era restrictions was met with echoes of “trust the experts.”

“The left has just like often hid behind this veneer, this prestige [of expertise] and they’ve gotten people who carry weight to carry their water for them. And I really think the emperor has no clothes on this, but we have to call it out and expose it.”

When the political left does not want to publicly debate the merits of their assertion, they get figures who appear authoritative to shut down dissent, he said.

The comments came after rule-of-law groups Democracy Defenders Fund, Lawyers Defending American Democracy and 128 former federal and state judges filed a 24-page complaint accusing Percival of violating Florida’s rules governing statements about judges. The complaint alleged that Percival, a licensed Florida attorney, violated ethics rules through “public attacks on sitting judges.”

“His statements mischaracterized the judges’ rulings and assailed their character and integrity. The ethics rules exist for a reason: Baseless attacks on judges by lawyers and public officials can undermine confidence in the courts and heighten the risk of physical threats against judges,” Democracy Defenders Fund said in a statement after the Bar declined to investigate the complaint.

Former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Peggy Quince, an appointee of Democratic ex-Gov. Lawton Chiles, led the judges’ consortium.

The complaint focuses on four judges featured in Percival’s “Worst of the Worst” posts, whom he accused of actions including “open defiance of the Supreme Court,” “judicial sabotage” and “judicial micromanagement.”

SUPREME COURT WEIGHS TRUMP EFFORT TO TERMINATE TEMPORARY PROTECTIONS FOR HAITIAN, SYRIAN MIGRANTS

The cases involved disputes over Temporary Protected Status, the government’s handling of Kilmar Ábrego García and DHS use-of-force policies.

The complaint also referenced an article written by Percival condemning former President Joe Biden and a Rhode Island judge he appointed after an illegal immigrant whom DHS said had an international warrant for homicide was ordered released.

Percival said the activist judges themselves are the ones who are being a “disservice to the judiciary.”

He argued that judges know their district court rulings can delay executive action when they cannot be immediately appealed.

As for the complainants, Percival said those who are themselves members of the Florida Bar should face scrutiny over whether they abused the complaint process for political purposes.

The Bar provided Fox News Digital a copy of its response sent to the Framingham, Massachusetts, address listed for the collective complainants.

Bar Counsel Christopher Wackes wrote his group does not investigate or prosecute “sitting officers appointed under the U.S. Constitution while they are in office.” Wackes said any action could “encroach on the authority of the federal government.”

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He quipped situations like the bar complaint show he is over the proverbial target:

“[I]f people are this upset about what I’m doing, it must be having an effect that they don’t like, which really just encourages me to keep going,” he said, pressing conservatives to fight for their causes despite the knowledge the left will “try to ruin your life.”

Fox News Digital’s Kiera McDonald contributed to this report.

This post appeared first on https://www.foxnews.com

A New Jersey school district is being sued over a policy allowing students to change their name and gender identity at school without notifying their parents.

Under the School District of the Chathams’ policy, students are able to change their name in official school records, use the bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity, and the school guidance counselor decides “whether, and to what extent” parents are involved in the decision.

The school’s policy flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Mirabelli v. Bonta in March, which granted an injunction against California over state policies that keep students’ gender identities confidential from parents while the issue works its way through the lower courts, according to Christopher Ferrara, senior counsel for the Thomas More Society, who filed the lawsuit.

“Well, the court has made clear in the Mirabelli case, and the Third Circuit has a decision along the same lines, that parents have standing to challenge a policy like this, which would hide a gender transition from the parents, whether or not the child is actually transitioning,” Ferrara told Fox News Digital. “And the Supreme Court indicated that the reason parents have standing is that the parents are the objects of this policy.”

“The policy provides that this information will be hidden from them, so they have the right to object to it, whether or not their particular child or children is at that moment being transitioned. And there’s always a risk, of course, that the child under peer pressure, or the influence of teachers, or social media, will go along with this ridiculous trend and decide that his gender is not the biological one that parents believe is God-given and immutable, but some other gender.”

Ferrara noted that the policy could have major consequences for students who aren’t seeking to transition their gender because they could be forced to share locker rooms and bathrooms with members of the opposite sex.

Moms for Liberty CEO and founder Tina Descovich, whose organization is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, also alleged that students who refuse to use other students’ preferred pronouns could face disciplinary action under the school’s code of conduct.

“They have a policy in the school district that will actually punish children that don’t use the demanded new gender identity pronoun and name of another student,” Descovich told Fox News Digital. “They can do that just one time on accident, and they can be punished up to suspension just for using the wrong pronoun or the wrong name of someone that is identifying as something other than they actually are.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the School District of the Chathams for comment.

Along with Moms for America, two anonymous parents of elementary school-aged daughters are plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which was filed Aug. 24. The plaintiffs accuse the school of violating the parents’ and students’ First Amendment rights to free speech and religious liberty, as well as the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. The school district is also accused of violating parental rights that were affirmed in the Supreme Court’s ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which determined that parents can opt their children out of LGBT-centered lessons.

WASHINGTON MOTHER PULLS CHILDREN FROM SCHOOL AFTER PRIDE LESSON SHOWN IN MUSIC CLASS WITHOUT NOTICE

“The Supreme Court has ruled twice on these issues,” Descovich said. “We know that parents have to have a right to opt out of things that violate their religious beliefs.”

The lawsuit follows a June 15, 2026, school board meeting in which Ann Ciccarelli, president of the Chatham School District Board of Education, said the district was not legally bound by the Mirabelli decision and instead was required to follow the New Jersey Department of Education’s 2018 guidance on transgender students.

DAD OF THIRD-GRADE GIRL IN MASSACHUSETTS ALLEGEDLY BARGED IN ON BY TRANS STUDENT IN BATHROOM CALLS FOR ACTION

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But New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin acknowledged that Policy 5756 is not mandatory, according to NJ Spotlight News.

“The guidance violates both Maribel and it violates Mahmood and, so you know there’s a lot of crossover and confusion here, but what it comes down to is the school board. The school has a duty and responsibility to protect constitutional rights of the citizens in its community of its employees of its students of its families, and it is not doing that,” Descovich said.

Ferrara told Fox News Digital that since parents began speaking out against the policy, they have been subjected to threats and intimidation. He said that one family has had police security outside their homes.

“This is what happens when you oppose these policies,” Ferrara told Fox News Digital. “You basically are going to be subjected to a vicious public backlash by ideologues who are totally intolerant of basically the normal point of view on this issue.”

The Trump administration proposed new regulations on Thursday to revoke the tax-exempt status of private schools and colleges if ​they use race in admissions, scholarships or other school-administered programs, the latest effort by the federal government to root out diversity initiatives in education.

The rules, proposed by the Treasury Department ‌and Internal Revenue Service, aim to end what administration officials argue is discrimination against white students in favor of students of color.

“Schools rebranding race-based preferences as equitable, inclusive, or diversity-enhancing does not change their discriminatory nature,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a ​statement.

The proposal follows the Supreme Court’s 2023 Students for Fair Admissions decisions, which prohibited most race-conscious admissions policies at colleges and universities.

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Admissions, educational policies, scholarships and loans, athletics and “every other school-administered or ​school-supported program” would be covered by the Treasury’s proposal.

It would apply to any program that considers race, color, or national or ethnic origin “for any purpose,” including efforts to address past racial discrimination.

The ​Treasury estimated that the rules ​could impact as many ⁠as 18,000 schools at all education levels and 750,000 students who could be affected because they may qualify for race-based scholarships.

The proposal would not prevent private schools from having a ​religious mission, curriculum or program. Religious schools could continue to choose students ​based on religious ⁠affiliation, according to the Treasury.

The Treasury also said the proposal would not prohibit schools from helping disadvantaged students using race-neutral criteria, including income, geography or first-generation status.

The new proposal is subject to a public comment period and would likely spark legal challenges if ⁠adopted.

The American Association of University Professors, which advocates for academic freedom and has sued the administration ​to block funding cuts in the past, said it is considering legal action against the proposal.

“This is not neutral enforcement ‌of ⁠civil-rights law. It is an affirmative attempt to turn civil-rights law against the very people it was enacted to protect,” AAUP President Todd Wolfson said in a statement. “For half a century, federal policy recognized that measures intended to dismantle entrenched racial exclusion are not equivalent to policies designed to preserve it.”

DOJ OPENS PROBE INTO HARVARD’S FINANCIAL AID FOR ALLEGED DISCRIMINATION AGAINST AMERICAN STUDENTS

The administration has sought to eliminate ⁠diversity, equity and inclusion policies ​in K-12 schools and higher education since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025.

In addition to DEI, the administration has targeted educational institutions across the nation for issues such as race-based admissions and scholarships and alleged antisemitism on campus.

Trump has singled out Harvard University in particular for federal funding cuts, investigations ​and threats to the institution’s tax-exempt status.

Reuters contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump’s top trade advisor, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, said Canada walked away from the “best deal in the world” after the nation declined to finalize a trade agreement with the U.S. nearly two weeks ago.

Greer joined “Special Report” on Thursday to detail the negotiations that preceded the contentious trade fight between the U.S. and its northern neighbor.

“We offered them the best deal. They looked at it square in the face and turned around,” he said on “Special Report.”

Greer’s comments come amid a fierce trade war between the U.S. and Canada that Trump further escalated by signing an executive order to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America.”

TRUMP’S CANADA TARIFF FIGHT REACHES CRITICAL POINT AS HOUSE GOP SUMMONS TRADE CHIEF

The trade chief said that although Trump’s trade program already gives Canada “the best deal,” U.S. officials were willing to negotiate after Canadian authorities approached the administration seeking a revised agreement.

“I told them what we could deliver. I said, ‘We could try to give you the best deal in the world on steel, aluminum, autos and help you out on lumber,’” Greer told Fox News. “These are things very sensitive for the Canadians, and we managed to move the levers of our government to give them that deal.”

FEARS OF A CANADIAN TRADE WAR ARE OVERBLOWN. SO FAR, IT’S MORE OF A SKIRMISH

After Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney reached the handshake agreement, Canadian officials returned to Ottawa. Greer said he remains unsure what transpired there that ultimately prompted Canada to renege on the deal and seek additional concessions.

“When they came back, they wanted more, they wanted more tariff relief. It wasn’t good enough to have the best deal in the world,” he told Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier. “They wanted it to be even better… These are things we couldn’t accommodate.”

DAVID MARCUS: CANADA SEES TRUMP TRADE WAR AS ‘LIFE AND DEATH’ WHILE AMERICANS BARELY NOTICE

Canada suspended trade talks on Aug. 21. U.S. trade officials blamed the breakdown on what they described as “new demands and walk backs of other commitments by Canada” that “upended the careful balance” of the negotiations.

“We were ready to do it. We gave them the best deal in the world. Did it give them everything? No. Did we have everything we wanted? No. That’s how a deal works,” Greer said.

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The trade chief said Canadian leaders appeared on television after the agreement fell apart and claimed the country had “been attacked.”

Greer pushed back on that characterization, arguing that the “vast majority” of Canadian goods enter the U.S. duty-free and noting that Canada, along with China, are the only countries to have retaliated against U.S. trade measures.

“Since even before the second Trump term, they’ve limited our ability to sell dairy into Canada, and they’re importing things from China,” he said. “They’re turning them into other goods and trying to get them duty-free across our border.”

Greer, who believes the Canadians were negotiating in good faith, said he has received some outreach from Canada but no formal negotiations since Aug. 21.

As for what comes next, Greer said the trade deal’s future now lies “in Canada’s corner.”