Category: Daily Caller
Zohran Mamdani’s Rent-Controlled Apartment Reportedly Renting Out With 35 Percent Mark-Up After Mayor-Elect Moves Out
‘Exactly what New Yorkers are sick of’
If parental rights can be bypassed in Alabama, no state is safe
Millions of Americans fled deep-blue states like California and New York because they believed the rules were different elsewhere. They moved to places like Alabama to escape lockdowns, mandates, and ideological capture of public institutions. They believed red states meant red lines.
That belief is proving dangerously naïve.
If red states cannot enforce their own parental rights laws, then the red-state refuge is a myth.
Alabama is one of the most conservative states in the country. It has a Republican supermajority and some of the strongest parental rights laws on the books: bans on gender-transition procedures for minors, curriculum transparency requirements, legal definitions of male and female, protections for girls’ sports, and a rare requirement that parents must opt in before schools provide any mental health services, including discussions of suicide or bullying.
And yet those protections are now being quietly hollowed out — not by legislators, but by bureaucratic subversion.
The footnote loophole
The Alabama State Department of Education is undermining parental consent by inserting exceptions into the fine print of a required opt-in form distributed after a new parental consent law took effect Oct. 1.
The law itself is unambiguous. Parents must provide prior written consent before schools offer mental health services, including discussions related to suicide or bullying. But the department claims in the footnotes that mental health-related conversations may still occur “as appropriate” in other school settings — and that these interactions do not require parental permission.
The ALSDE has stated that “instruction, advisement, and occasional interventions are not subject to opt-in requirements, as these are regular duties of school counselors and other educators.”
That language does more than stretch the statute. It appears designed to bypass it entirely. When schools engage minors in discussions with clear psychological or therapeutic implications — trauma, gender identity, suicidal ideation — without parental consent, they move into legally and constitutionally questionable territory.
Same playbook, new label
Parents have seen this before. During COVID, mandates were imposed first and justified later. Dissent was sidelined. Authority flowed downward, not outward.
Now the same model is being applied to school-based mental health. Whether embedded in social-emotional learning, “student wellness,” or character education, the result is the same: psychological interventions delivered by school employees, not licensed physicians, without parental oversight.
This is not a gray area. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed parents’ fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children. When school systems create end runs around opt-in requirements — especially on matters involving suicide or gender ideology — they invite serious legal and civil rights challenges.
No state is immune
This is not an Alabama anomaly.
Illinois now mandates mental health screenings for public school students, with no opt-in. Mississippi is rolling out a statewide “youth wellness platform.” Tennessee is placing mental health clinicians in every public school through a $250 million trust fund. Ohio is expanding school-based health centers that embed mental health treatment directly on campus.
These programs erase the line between education and health care. They normalize a system in which children’s emotions are monitored, recorded, and interpreted by the state without parental consent. That is state-sponsored emotional profiling.
Who decides what helps?
This debate is not about whether children need support. It is about who decides what support looks like — and who has the authority to provide it.
Parents possess a fundamental right to make decisions about their children’s mental and physical health. The Supreme Court’s decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor reaffirmed that when schools impose ideologically loaded services or content without notice or opt-out, they burden parental rights and religious liberty.
RELATED: ‘Incredible victory’: Federal judge prohibits trans-related grooming efforts in California schools
Photo by Luis Soto/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Alabama’s counseling framework includes DEI-driven language encouraging students to “identify individual differences” and “describe and respect differences among individuals.” In practice, that language provides a vehicle for embedding gender ideology and values-based content into guidance lessons.
When that content is paired with school-based interventions, the issue is no longer education. It is ideological formation funded by taxpayers and imposed without consent.
Alabama’s warning
If this can happen in Alabama — arguably the most pro-parental-rights state in the country — then no state is safe.
Agencies should not be allowed to bury statutes in footnotes, reinterpret laws by memo, or use therapeutic language to bypass parental authority. These are not technical disagreements. They are unconstitutional and demand legal pushback.
If red states cannot enforce their own parental rights laws, then the red-state refuge is a myth.
Strong laws matter, but enforcement matters more. Parents must demand both.
America First energy policy is paying off at the pump
When it comes to gas prices, what a difference one administration can make. After peaking above $5 a gallon under President Biden, prices at the pump are now at their lowest levels in more than four years — and still falling. Today, the national average for regular gas sits at about $2.85, and a growing number of stations are dipping below $2. That’s a real Christmas gift for working families, one that makes a meaningful difference.
Falling gas prices bring immediate relief to households worried about affordability while also easing pressure across the broader economy. Compared with this time last year, Americans are saving a collective $400 million per week at the pump, according to GasBuddy.
Cheaper fuel deserves celebration, but there is more work to be done to lock in these gains and drive prices even lower.
Most people associate the One Big Beautiful Bill Act primarily with tax cuts. But it may prove to be one of the most consequential pro-energy laws passed in years. Lower gas prices do not happen by accident. They are the result of deliberate policy choices — specifically, President Trump’s reversal of the anti-energy agenda pursued by the Biden administration.
That agenda, driven by radical environmental activists, sought to force a rapid transition away from oil and gas regardless of cost. It relied on higher taxes, blocked infrastructure projects, restricted leasing, and constrained production. Taken together, those policies drove up prices and fueled inflation that hit working families hardest.
On day one, President Trump moved quickly to unwind many of those decisions, issuing nearly half a dozen energy-focused executive orders that restored certainty for producers. That early action was followed by his signature legislative achievement, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which combined broad-based tax relief with policies designed to restore American energy dominance.
The bill reduces production costs by repealing the Inflation Reduction Act’s misguided fee increase on oil and gas produced on federal lands. It cuts that fee by 25%, making domestic production more attractive and more affordable for drillers.
Just as important, the OBBBA restores predictability to federal leasing. The law mandates nearly 40 offshore oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of America, Alaska, and other regions. It also establishes quarterly onshore lease sales and biannual offshore sales, giving the private sector long-term certainty. Under President Biden, leasing all but ground to a halt, with fewer leases issued than at any point since the 1960s — crippling the pipeline of future energy projects.
The bill also repeals or tightens a range of Green New Deal-style tax credits that heavily subsidized renewables at the expense of oil and gas. Those credits masked the true costs of renewable projects and distorted electricity markets, contributing to grid instability and higher energy prices.
RELATED: 5 truths the climate cult can’t bury any more
Justin Hamel/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The bottom line is simple: The OBBBA encourages more oil and gas production at lower cost. Over the next decade, that means a steadier supply of crude ready to be refined into affordable gasoline.
Still, Congress and the administration should not take their foot off the gas. Cheaper fuel deserves celebration, but there is more work to be done to lock in these gains and drive prices even lower.
At the top of the list is permitting reform. Energy projects routinely take longer to permit than to build. Environmental reviews intended to inform decisions have morphed into open-ended processes that stretch on for years. Even approved projects can be tied up indefinitely by duplicative reviews and serial lawsuits from activist groups. The result is uncertainty that discourages investment and delays infrastructure Americans depend on every day.
America First energy dominance is working, and families are saving real money because of it. The House has already passed several pro-energy permitting reforms, but meaningful engagement with the Senate will be required to deliver a comprehensive overhaul to the president’s desk. Without permitting reform, the full benefits of the OBBBA’s energy provisions will remain unrealized.
The lesson is clear: Energy dominance follows when government gets out of the way. If permitting reform advances next year, producers will gain the certainty and speed they need to deliver reliable, affordable energy to consumers. In 2026, Congress should finish the job.
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