Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich says her organization feels "vindication" after a new Justice Department report revealed the FBI opened dozens of assessments involving parents following a controversial Biden-era directive targeting threats against school officials, including an investigation stemming from a tip that cited one mother's membership in a "right-wing mom’s group."

"My reaction and our reaction at Moms for Liberty is vindication," Descovich told Fox News Digital. "We feel… we're finally being heard."

Descovich said parents involved with her organization became fearful of speaking publicly after the Justice Department and FBI's response to heated school board battles beginning in 2021, claiming some received calls asking about their mental health and whether they had weapons in their homes.

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"Parents were afraid to show up," Descovich said. "They were afraid to lose their jobs. They were members of our organization, sometimes privately and silently standing with us, but too afraid to speak out because of what our government did in the United States of America. We need to not forget where we were in 2021 as we go into these midterm elections."

The Justice Department's Weaponization Working Group reported Monday that the FBI opened 25 "Guardian assessments" involving parents following then-Attorney General Merrick Garland's Oct. 4, 2021, memorandum addressing threats against school officials.

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The report says an FBI whistleblower disclosed that one mother was investigated following a tip that noted she was a gun owner and belonged to what was described as a "right-wing mom's group." A separate joint DOJ-Education Department release identified that organization as Moms for Liberty.

"We have known since 2021 that the DOJ and the FBI under the Biden administration were basically enemies to parents and to Moms for Liberty," Descovich said. "Our parents were getting phone calls after attending school board meetings asking if they had mental health problems, if they had weapons in their home. They were given case numbers and file numbers. And this latest report that's come out and press release from the DOJ and the DOE acknowledging that fact and declaring that, officially, parents are not domestic terrorists. It's almost ridiculous. It's absurd that that's happened in America and that has to be the headline today that we're actually returning to normalcy."

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The press release from the Department of Justice reported that personnel internally called the effort "ridiculous," raised First Amendment concerns and said it appeared political, but that emails show Attorney General Garland issued the memo, persuaded by the Biden White House officials.

The Working Group found that the memo, according to the DOJ press release, "was the product of pressure exerted by the White House and wrongly weaponized the Department of Justice against parents."

ACTING AG BLANCHE REVEALS FATE OF TRUMP'S 'ANTI-WEAPONIZATION FUND' UNDER PRESSURE FROM HOUSE LAWMAKERS

"The effect of Merrick Garland and the DOJ and the FBI under the Biden administration issuing a threat tag, that was founded on the basis of using the Patriot Act against parents in this country that were showing up at school board meetings. It sent a chill through the country," Descovich said.

She continued to say that parents "need to not forget where we were in 2021 as we go into these midterm elections."

"There needs to be accountability to a government that was out of control," Descovich added. "The first step of accountability was losing their power and their election, and we need to continue that through the midterms, because we cannot give power back to the people that weaponized the government against citizens, against ordinary parents. Beyond that, I really hope the current administration will take further steps to hold the individuals accountable that were driving these attacks against its citizens."

Fox News Digital reached out to the FBI and the White House for comment. The Department of Education deferred to their press release and letter on the matter. 

Alan Alda is sharing his surprising method of coping with Parkinson’s.

The actor, 90, best known for portraying Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce in the CBS wartime sitcom "M*A*S*H," was diagnosed with the degenerative motor disease in 2015 and publicly shared the news in 2018. 

The diagnosis came after the actor learned that his own behavior of acting out dreams could be an early Parkinson's symptom.

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"I had a symptom, which at the time was not that well-known: Acting out your dreams," he said in an Oct. 4 interview with CBS News. "I had a dream that somebody was attacking me. And I picked up a sack of potatoes and threw it at 'em. What I was really doing was throwing a pillow at Arlene, my wife."

Alda identified humor as his way of coping with the frustrations and limitations of the disease.

While he acknowledged the frustrations of the physical effects and limitations of Parkinson’s, he said "the best way to deal with anything that's a little bit of a problem is to find out what's funny about it and laugh at it."

In one example, he shared that when he has trouble controlling the computer mouse while composing an email, he personifies his condition as "Dr. Parkinson," moving his hand all over the screen and deleting things.

"I don't let Parkinson's define me," Alda said, joking that he sees the disease as "just a hobby."

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Rather than wishing he didn’t have the condition, the actor said he aims to accept his current reality.

"I really think reality is my friend," he said. "I don't want to wish it away. I can't wish it away. I can't hope for a better future. I gotta accept what is."

Although Alda acknowledged that everyday tasks, such as buttoning his shirt, have become difficult, he said he treats each one like a "puzzle" to solve.

"I do hate it, but the only thing that's helpful is: What haven't I tried? And pretty soon, you get the feeling, 'If I keep looking for new ways to try this, I'll get a solution.' It's a puzzle. Will I be able eventually to put my socks on? The last time I put my socks on was a tremendous moment to celebrate!"

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Dr. Chadrick Lane, a neuropsychiatrist and director of the geriatric and neuropsychiatry clinic at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, agreed that humor can be a helpful wellness tool for those navigating the Parkinson's journey.

"Humor involves cognitive reframing, this idea of looking at a circumstance through different angles — not necessarily changing the reality that one is in, but shifting the meaning and the emotional weight of the situation," Lane, who has not treated Alda, told Fox News Digital.

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When something feels frightening or distressing, such as a medical diagnosis, creating some "psychological distance" can make a "big, big change" in perspective, he added.

Connection is another important component of humor, Lane noted.

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"Humor is often shared. It brings us together," he said. "We are meant to share our lives with others. The importance of having a sense of belonging and humor can be a glue in that way, bringing us closer with others so that one does not go on the journey alone."

Lane shared that he has witnessed the power of humor and connection in his own practice as he cares for people living with Parkinson's disease.

"One of the wonderful things that I've seen in those settings is that, just like Mr. Alda, people crack a joke, [it] brings them a smile."

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The neuropsychiatrist also noted that Alda’s acceptance of his condition is "enormously empowering."

"It's the idea of saying to oneself, what are the choices that I can make in the moment?" Lane told Fox News Digital. "Rarely do we ever have control over our entire day and certainly not our entire life, but we often do have control over what we choose in the moment."

"Our sense of agency is an important part of our emotional well-being."

Red Oak, Texas — Inside a sprawling Texas data center campus, blinking tower lights and rows of neatly organized cables power the technology Americans use every day. Keeping it all running, however, takes an army of electricians, mechanics, technicians and construction workers — and the industry says it needs more of them.

"Unfortunately, there was a war on blue-collar jobs a while back and everybody had to get a four-year degree. I’m so glad that’s over with," Compass Datacenters CEO Chris Crosby told Fox News Digital while giving a glimpse behind the scenes of the infrastructure that powers the digital world.

"I am tired of the elitism that this doesn't create jobs," Crosby said, arguing that blue-collar careers deserve to be taken seriously. He pointed to the workers at Compass’s Red Oak campus and the construction crews who built it.

"You tell that to the 900 people who work here on this campus and you tell that to the thousands of construction workers who have worked here for five years plus," he said.

A SOUTHERN STATE JUST TOOK THE TOP SPOT IN ONE OF THE WORLD’S FASTEST-GROWING INDUSTRIES

Compass began developing its Red Oak campus, about 20 miles south of Dallas, in 2019.

The site now includes 10 data center buildings totaling about 2.6 million square feet, a Schneider Electric manufacturing facility and a technical college training program. Crosby said more than 600 people work full time at the campus, with roughly 300 more at Schneider Electric.

The construction also requires a range of skilled tradespeople, Crosby said.

"When we look at that type of opportunity, the amount of electricians, the amount of mechanical contractors, the number of builders, the carpenters, the welders, the concrete folk, it’s awesome. We can’t get enough people into this career."

INSIDE THE NEIGHBORHOOD LIVING ON THE EDGE OF AMERICA’S TECH FRONTIER

The demand also reaches beyond construction sites to factories producing data center components. Compass and its partners, Crosby said, have created more than 7,000 permanent factory jobs nationwide.

To help meet the industry’s demand for workers, Compass partnered with Texas State Technical College to build a $12.6 million training facility at its Red Oak campus. The company created its MEI Pathways program—short for Mechanical, Electrical and IT Pathways—to prepare people for those careers.

"The big challenge is how do I get the first step?" Crosby said. "That’s what MEI Pathways is designed to do."

The program is open to anyone interested in the field and does not require prior qualifications, Crosby said. It is designed to train workers for the broader industry, not just for Compass.

Crosby said building that workforce will be increasingly important as data centers expand and argued that the facilities can bring jobs and tax revenue to the communities where they are built.

"Data centers are where the economic engine is going to be going forward," he said. "You’re talking about massive amounts of jobs, economic activity and tax revenue growth."

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, a democratic socialist, has run into major roadblocks while trying to enact her agenda in the city as she grapples with public safety concerns and homelessness.

Wilson campaigned on adding 1,000 homeless shelter units in each year of her term, despite concerns from some advisors about the feasibility of the goal, according to The Wall Street Journal. However, her administration's current plan calls for adding nearly 1,000 shelter beds by the end of 2027, the Journal reported.

The mayor told The Seattle Times in September that her original goal was a way to get people talking about the crisis.

The city's business community donated $3 million toward the homelessness effort. Joe Nguyen, president and CEO of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, said the money wasn't used as City Hall ran into bureaucratic roadblocks. "Welcome to government," he told the Journal in response to the challenges.

SEATTLE MAYOR SAYS SOBRIETY WON'T BE REQUIRED AT NEW HOMELESS SHELTER

Wilson surprised her supporters with a proposed budget released in September that included no new taxes and more funding for police, the Journal reported.

"I have made the difficult decision to transmit a budget without major new revenue," Wilson said in a speech in September, according to KOMO News. "Right now, we don't have good options to raise more progressive revenue that don't also come with great risks. Our economy and especially our downtown are fragile. In that context, raising additional revenue through JumpStart is not the right move."

Wilson and the Seattle Police Department faced scrutiny after a shooting at the Bite of Seattle food festival in July left three people dead, including one suspect, and led to the resignation of the police chief, who was out of town at the time of the shooting.

The Journal reported, "A communication breakdown between the mayor’s office and Seattle police kept the public in the dark about the shooting for five hours, and the official emergency alert system went unused."

The mayor's office did not immediately return Fox News Digital's request for comment.

WILL SOCIALISM SAVE SEATTLE? CITY ADVOCATES STRUGGLE TO FIND SOLUTIONS AS HOMELESS, DRUG ADDICTS FLOOD STREETS

Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert, author of "Therapy Nation," told Fox News Digital, "This is a good example of socialism's appeal colliding with the realities of governing."

"Socialism is seductive because the promises sound good: more housing, more services, greater fairness, less inequality," he said. "It’s easy to campaign on those ideas. It gets much harder when you’re actually responsible for a budget, public safety and whether the city is functioning."

"The result: Wilson is now doing some things that don’t fit so comfortably with the politics she campaigned on: more police, more cameras, spending cuts and fewer big promises," Alpert continued. "Crime has a way of forcing politicians to become practical pretty quickly."

"I don’t think this proves that every socialist idea is doomed," he added. "But it does show the gap between promising people what government should do and figuring out what government can actually do. That’s the harsh reality check that more socialists should realize: Ideology is much easier when you don’t have to govern."

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Wilson faced backlash on social media in May after a 77-year-old man was seen on video being beaten by two individuals in a crime that was captured by closed-circuit television cameras, a tool that Wilson has denounced in the past as something that makes the community feel unsafe.

She also opposed the expansion of Seattle's network of surveillance cameras while on the campaign trail and said it would make the city "more vulnerable" to President Donald Trump's "attacks on immigrants, trans people and big cities in general."

Wilson sought to halt a $3 million effort to add more cameras in January, according to the Journal. After two teenagers who attended Rainier Beach High School were shot and killed at a bus stop in Rainer Beach, the mayor moved toward expanding the project, the outlet reported.

"When you’re faced with the realities of sitting in the seat and doing the job, you have to deal with those realities," Bob Kettle, a city council member and chair of the public safety committee, told the Journal on why Wilson wasn't governing like a socialist.

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The Journal also reported that Jon Scholes, president and CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association and an advisor to the mayor, joined a group of business leaders on a trip to San Francisco to meet with members of San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie's administration. 

"They clearly have serious people doing serious work," Scholes said of the trip. "I mean, it’s not just symbolism and performance. It’s real governance and management."

Fox News' Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer "lives in fear" of the Democratic Party's far-left wing Saturday on "My View with Lara Trump," arguing the longtime New York lawmaker has increasingly deferred to progressives as Republicans and Democrats head into the final stretch before the midterm elections.

"I think he lives in fear of that every day. I really do," Thune, R-S.D., said when asked whether he thinks Schumer is concerned with being overtaken by "socialists."

"I look at the way that the leaders in the Senate now act, and he voted once to open up the government when they were in the process of shutting it down the first time, and it just got blown up by the far left. And ever since then, I mean, it's kind of whatever they want. They defer to that far-left base."

Thune made the remarks while discussing what he characterized as Democratic pushback in the Senate, arguing Republicans have been unable to advance several pieces of legislation that are traditionally supported by both parties, like military funding.

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"We have a saying in my office that if you don't get national security right, the rest is conversation. You've got to protect the country. And so funding our military, the defense authorization bill, as I mentioned earlier — the Democrats blocked us from even getting on it on the floor. Historically, that's been bipartisan," Thune said.

He also emphasized the importance of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which he said is "critical to our intelligence community."

"Those are the kinds of things that keep me up at night. I think, to me, it's always about keeping this country safe and secure. Since that problem is kind of now solved, people are like, 'OK, what have you done for me lately?' And obviously, you know, we've got more to do."

"But the trajectory that we are on as a country, when it comes to economic policy, national security, the border, all these issues, we are headed in the right direction," he added.

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The South Dakota senator outlined Republicans' legislative priorities should the GOP retain control of Congress in November, which included military funding, judicial nominations, permitting reform and more.

"If we can maintain the majorities in the House and the Senate, the sky's the limit," he said.

Thune's remarks follow several prominent victories for Democratic socialist candidates, including recent wins in high-profile primary elections across state and local levels. In New York City, Darializa Avila Chevalier, the 32-year-old community organizer backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, narrowly topped incumbent Democrat Adriano Espaillat, the 71-year-old Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair and the first Dominican American elected to the U.S. House.

Mamdani-endorsed state Assembly member Claire Valdez, who won her primary in June in New York's 7th District, emphasized in her victory speech that "we haven't just won an election. We have declared that this movement is durable — that it is growing, and that it will not stop until working people are no longer asked to just build the table, no longer just offered a seat at the table, but will run the table."

While progressive figures continue to push the party leftward, Schumer has trod carefully, seeking to keep the party unified under a "big tent" strategy. Over the summer, he dodged a question from Fox News about whether the Democratic Socialists of America's platform has a place in the Democratic Party.

"[The] bottom line is Democrats from one end of the spectrum to the other are going to be working to defeat Trump, to bring down costs, to go after his corruption and to end the chaos," Schumer replied at a leadership news conference.

The Senate minority leader did not elaborate on whether he agreed with the DSA’s call to abolish the Senate.

Fox News Digital reached out to Schumer for comment but did not immediately hear back. 

Fox News Digital's Paul Steinhauser, Adam Pack and Kelly Phares contributed to this report.

Ella Langley apparently has a very specific vision for her dream hunt.

And, surprisingly enough, it does not involve anything exotic.

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In a resurfaced clip from CMA Fest 2024, the country star was asked what her dream hunt would look like. Her answer was pretty simple.

"My dream would be a massive white tail," Langley said.

When pressed for details, she got more specific. Langley said she wanted a big, "beefy" buck and would prefer to use a rifle, likely her .30-06 or .308 — the latter being a gun she said she has used to kill plenty of deer. She also joked that while she could do it with a bow, there is "a little more guessing game than a rifle."

To recap: a big buck with a rifle. No need to overcomplicate things, right?

The old clip has resurfaced at an interesting time for Langley, who recently found herself on the receiving end of some very predictable internet outrage over hunting.

A few weeks ago, old photos of Langley posing with bucks she had harvested in Alabama started making the rounds again on social media. Critics acted as though they had uncovered some dark secret, despite the fact that Langley herself had posted the photos in the first place.

Nothing says "caught red-handed" quite like finding publicly posted photos of someone openly doing the thing they openly enjoy doing.

Another older hunting clip, recently posted by the Porch Light Unfiltered page on Sept. 21, makes Ella's passion for the sport even more obvious.

In that video, Langley was asked about her biggest hunting mistake or regret. Her answer was brutal.

"The biggest deer I ever killed, I never found," she said, calling it "one of the hardest lessons I’ve ever learned deer hunting."

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Langley explained that she shot the buck back in high school, just before she had to take the ACT. She got so excited that she moved too quickly to retrieve it instead of giving the deer enough time after the shot. She eventually realized she had jumped it, and despite searching with her dad, they never recovered the animal.

She clearly still feels awful about it.

"Oh, it haunts me," Langley said, adding that beyond losing the deer, the experience bothered her because taking an animal’s life is "a serious thing."

That part probably does more to explain Langley as a hunter than any old photo ever could. She wasn’t mourning a missed mount for the wall. She was bothered by the fact that she had taken an animal’s life and never got the chance to recover it and harvest the meat — a responsibility she clearly doesn’t take lightly.

Which makes the recent outrage over her old deer photos seem even sillier.

Langley has never exactly hidden the fact that she hunts. The resurfaced clips only reinforce that.

But she’s probably not losing sleep over people on the internet being mad about it.

After all, her hit "Choosin’ Texas" has now spent 24 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, extending its record as the longest-running chart-topper in history.

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So while haters seethe over old hunting photos looking for reasons to cancel her, Ella Langley is busy chasing giant whitetails and rewriting Billboard history.

Could be worse.

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Typically, being a top-25 team in the nation makes your home games a hot ticket, but that doesn't seem to be the case for the Houston Cougars.

In fact, not even special space-themed helmets could put butts in seats on Saturday when the UCF Knights came to town.

The 3-1 Cougars entered the week ranked No. 20 and had to face a UCF team coming off a solid win over TCU. On top of that, Houston brought out special space-themed helmets.

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Fitting, since both Houston and Orlando have major ties to the U.S. space program.

UCF has been doing this for a decade, but it's still cool.

But it was going to take more than that to get fans to fork over their hard-earned money. TDECU Stadium was so empty, a tumbleweed could have blown across one of the end zones.

Not a stellar look, but ticket sales don't add points.

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The first half was all UCF, with the Knights taking a 10-0 lead to the locker room at halftime, helped by the fact that the Cougars had several drives stall out in the red zone.

The Knights added another touchdown in the third quarter, but things changed once Houston found their running game.

QB Conner Weigman delivered three rushing touchdowns in the second half for 21 unanswered points that put the Cougars on top, and that's where they stayed to win this one 24-17.

The win brings Houston to 1-1 in conference play and keeps their hopes of contending in the Big 12 alive.

Next week, the Cougars will hit the road to take on Kansas State. If that goes well, perhaps more fans will be in the seats when Oklahoma State comes to town the following week.