New York Lost a Third of Its Millionaires — and Then Hired a Socialist to Chase Away the Rest

New York Lost a Third of Its Millionaires — and Then Hired a Socialist to Chase Away the Rest

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for July 13, 2026. We open with a story New York City's leadership refuses to learn from — a new report showing the city's share of America's million-dollar earners collapsed from 12.7% in 2010 to 8.7% in 2022, dropping New York from second to fourth in the national rankings as California, Florida, and Texas all dramatically grew their millionaire populations. We explain the core economic truth the left keeps getting wrong — affordability and willingness are two entirely different questions. Wealthy residents can afford to pay more. They are simply not willing to. And unlike ordinary citizens, they have the means to act on that decision immediately. When New York voters hired Zoran Mamdani to demand even more from the people already leaving, they didn't change the math. They accelerated it. In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, Senator Lindsey Graham passed away suddenly over the weekend from an aortic dissection — a tear in the aorta that is often fatal before help can arrive. President Trump ordered flags lowered to half-staff and posted a tribute calling Graham a dear friend and a truly great man. Then South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster named Graham's sister, Darlene Graham Nord, to fill the remainder of his Senate term — with a special Republican primary scheduled for August 11th to select the party's nominee for the fall race. And the U.S. and Iran exchanged another round of fire over the weekend, with Iran firing missiles and drones at U.S. bases across the Middle East and the U.S. responding with strikes on Iranian military installations — including the first-ever use of unmanned naval drones against an Iranian port used to repair submarines. Our American Mama Teri Netterville reflects on the life of Lindsey Graham — and what she didn't know about him until he was gone. That his mother died at 53, his father sixteen months later, and that a 22-year-old Lindsey Graham adopted his 13-year-old sister so she could receive military benefits. That the same man who was Trump's fiercest critic in the first term became one of his closest allies and friends. That Democrats who disagreed with him on nearly everything counted him as a genuine friend. And that his finest hour may have been the Kavanaugh hearings — when Graham stood up among colleagues he called friends and said plainly what millions of Americans were thinking: what you are doing to this man is wrong. We also cover an 84-year-old Florida man suing Waffle House because a sign advertising their strawberry shortcake waffle caught his attention while he was walking and he tripped over a curb. We wish him a full recovery. We also note that attracting attention is the entire point of advertising, that curbs have been stationary obstacles since the invention of sidewalks, and that if noticing something relieves you of the obligation to watch where you're going, America is going to need an attorney on every corner. Some of them will have billboards. In our Digging Deep segment, CNBC released its annual ranking of the worst states to live in — and all ten are red states, every single one of which gained population from other states in 2024. Texas led the country with 72,000 net new residents. Tennessee gained 36,000. Oklahoma gained 34,000. Meanwhile, CNBC's ten best states include Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts — half of which are losing population to other states, with New Jersey alone shedding 64,000 residents in 2024. We examine CNBC's methodology — which rewards states for high minimum wages, mandatory union participation, gender ideology in law, abortion access, and no voter ID requirements — and conclude that CNBC has produced not a quality of life ranking but a Democratic National Committee platform checklist. The American people are voting with their feet, and the scoreboard is not close. We also cover ICE's latest weekend sweep — dozens of arrests including individuals convicted of murder, manslaughter, child sexual abuse, and drug trafficking — and ask the only question that matters: how is any reasonable person opposed to removing violent criminal offenders from the country? The answer, we conclude, is that the people most loudly opposed are not being reasonable. They are making an emotional leap to an accusation nobody actually made. For our Bright Spot, a new study projects that a one-gigawatt data center campus in northwest Indiana would generate $16.1 billion in regional economic output over 20 years, support nearly 15,000 construction jobs, and create $176 million in annual earnings once operational. We connect it to the Meta data center being built in northeast Louisiana — not yet complete, but already doubling teacher salaries in the surrounding community purely from tax revenue. Data centers are the railroads of the 21st century. If your community gets one, you are in tall cotton. President Trump is also planning a direct address to the American people on Thursday night about Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, and the safety of global shipping — because in an era of constant rumor and social media speculation, there is no substitute for the president going directly to the people and telling them what's what. And we close with four-year-old Roman Butzlaff, who really wanted a friend. His family had split up, his grandparents were far away, and his new neighborhood didn't have many kids. So every morning he went outside, sat in a chair in the front yard, and waved at everyone who walked by. One neighbor crossed the street to introduce himself. Then another came. Then another. Before long, Roman had turned a street full of strangers into a community — and they came to his birthday parties, his soccer games, and his preschool open house. People like connecting. At a human level, not just behind a screen. May your pursuit of happiness bring you joy. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776! See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

Decriminalize Prostitution, Get Eight Times More Child Trafficking — California Did the Math Wrong

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for July 10, 2026. We open with a Senate map conversation nobody on the left wants to have — Democrats need to win every single toss-up race in November to take control of the chamber, while Republicans need only one. We walk through the Cook Political Report and Sabato's Crystal Ball projections, the four toss-up races that will decide everything — Alaska, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, and North Carolina — and why Republican overconfidence is still premature even with the structural advantage. We also explain why Graham Plattner's implosion in Maine may not be the gift Republicans assumed it was, why Roy Cooper is very likely to pick up North Carolina, and why Ken Paxton is making a race in Texas far closer than it has any business being.  In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, President Trump refused to sign the bipartisan housing bill — saying he won't put pen to paper until Congress passes the SAVE Act — but the bill will become law without his signature anyway, and House Republicans plan to celebrate its passage regardless. Then Trump fired the remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission, citing the Seila Law decision as precedent and issuing a statement that the president reserves the right to remove individuals not fully aligned with the task of securing America's elections. And eight men from across the country — Ohio, Nebraska, Missouri, Washington, California, and West Virginia — have been indicted for plotting a drone and sniper attack on the UFC fight at the White House lawn, with all eight now arrested and facing life in prison. We also cover Joy Behar warning that President Trump is practically destroying democracy — and we note that the one place in America where a democratic election result was genuinely made null and void was the 2024 Democratic presidential primary, where Kamala Harris never won a single vote outside the convention floor. The Democrat Party is the party of projection. Whatever they accuse you of doing, they have already done. Our American Mamas Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson answer a listener question about Type 1 and Type 2 fun — and the conversation becomes a beautiful tribute to feral childhood. Type 1 fun is a roller coaster — thrilling in the moment, forgotten by morning. Type 2 fun is hiking in sleet, throwing rocks at alligators on the bayou, going off into the woods alone for hours while your parents had absolutely no idea where you were. The kind of fun that shapes you, scares you, and becomes the story you're still telling at 50. Teri and Kimberly worry that today's children — tracked by phones, sheltered from consequence, raised on Dateline — are growing up on Type 1 fun and missing the Type 2 experiences that built the people they became. We dig deep into California's 2022 decision to decriminalize loitering with intent to commit prostitution — signed by Governor Newsom on the grounds that 56% of those arrested were Black women, making it, in his telling, a racist law. The results, documented by City Journal and investigative journalist Abigail Schreier, are exactly what common sense predicted. Prostitution spiked immediately. Human trafficking followed. LAPD officers at the 77th Street Station rescued 123 children in 2024 — nearly eight times the number rescued in 2022, the year before the law took effect. Police now report seeing 14-year-old girls in G-strings on Los Angeles streets and having no legal authority to intervene. We make the case plainly: the left is not trying to reduce crime. It is trying to reduce the number of people arrested for crime. Those are not the same thing — and the difference is being paid for by the most vulnerable people on the streets. We also revisit a 1950 speech by Joseph McCarthy — and note that whatever his excesses, his core distinction holds up: there have always been two kinds of Democrats, the millions of loyal Americans who vote the ticket and want safe neighborhoods and stable jobs, and a small activist class that has been dragging the party toward something that looks less like democratic socialism and more like the thing McCarthy was warning about. The question in 2026 is whether that activist class is still the minority. Then it's Fake News Friday — including a California HOA fining residents for flying the American flag, activists pushing schools to teach Black English and girl math, Adam Sandler officiating Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's wedding, a BB gun attack on a mosque that turned out to be carried out by a Muslim man, Iran threatening to kill President Trump at Khomeini's funeral, a new Broadway musical called Dolly about Dolly Parton, and CNN airing a quote from a fake congressman who runs a parody account. Justin Trudeau is now a backup dancer in a Katy Perry video. Spoilet Alert: that one's real. For our Bright Spot, weekly unemployment claims came in at 215,000 — with the January through July average of 213,000 representing the lowest sustained jobless claim numbers since 1968 and 1969, when the country had a third fewer people and the Vietnam draft was pulling hundreds of thousands of men out of the civilian workforce. We call it what it is — a labor market that is outperforming history in a country that was told it couldn't. And we close with words of wisdom on patriotism — from Calvin Coolidge, Edward Abbey, Adlai Stevenson, and Charles de Gaulle. You've got to love your country enough to tell the truth about it, defend it when it's right, and fight to make it better. May your pursuit of happiness bring you joy. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776! See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

A Melting Pot Is Not a Mixing Bowl — and Mamdani's Map Just Proved He Doesn't Know the Difference

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for July 9, 2026. We open with Mayor Zoran Mamdani's map of immigrant neighborhoods in New York City — and a glaring omission that Louis takes personally. Little Italy isn't on it. Neither are the Irish neighborhoods or the Jewish neighborhoods. What is on it? Little Palestine, Little Pakistan, Little Odessa, and 27 other enclaves — a deliberate cartography of division that tells certain communities where they belong and erases the immigrant story that built New York in the first place. We make the distinction between a melting pot — where you bring your culture and become American — and a mixing bowl, where a city planner plants a flag and tells you to stay in your lane. Put Little Italy on the map. Put the whole beautiful, messy, glorious immigration story on the map. That is New York. That is America. In our Top 3 Things You need to Know, fresh explosions hit southern Iran — but CENTCOM says the U.S. was not behind them, and Israel said the same, as Iranians buried their former Ayatollah Khomeini for the first time since his death in March, having been too afraid to hold the funeral until now. Then Graham Plattner dropped out of the Maine Senate race after a fourth woman came forward with sexual assault allegations — with the Maine Democratic Party now scrambling to name a replacement by June 27th, having defended Plattner right up until the moment the polls shifted against him. The Democrats didn't discover morality. They discovered math. And an illegal alien from Slovakia was arrested in New Jersey for registering to vote and casting a ballot in the 2022 elections — proof once again that the thing that never happens keeps happening, and that the Save America Act cannot wait. We also cover Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum threatening legal action against the United States after ICE officers shot a Mexican national who allegedly used his vehicle as a weapon against federal agents in Houston. We have a suggestion for President Sheinbaum — if she is genuinely concerned about how Mexican citizens are being treated during U.S. immigration enforcement operations, she could simply tell them to go home. Our American Mamas Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson answer the listener question of why it's so hard to find couple friends — and the answer turns out to be equal parts logistics, life seasons, and the quiet devastation of watching a couple you love fall apart. Teri and Kimberly talk about the friends they found through their children's sports, the couples who drifted away when the games ended, the dream scenario of children who marry each other's best friends' children, and the husband-centric theory of male friendship — guys don't have friends, they have wives, and their wives have friends, and those friends have husbands. We enter week four of the Mitch McConnell hospital saga — still no quotes, still no specifics, still no clarity on why he's there or what his condition actually is. We contrast this with John Fetterman, who disclosed his stroke within 48 hours of it happening and his clinical depression diagnosis the day after checking himself into Walter Reed — even though depression was far more politically embarrassing than a stroke. The public doesn't need every medical detail. It needs to know which box to put its senator in. Four weeks in, we still don't know. In our Digging Deep segment, a Real Clear Investigations report compares U.S. crime rates to Canada and Australia using victimization surveys rather than police reports — and the results demolish the international media's narrative. Overall violent crime in Canada is 295% higher than in the U.S. In Australia, assaults are 227% higher and rape is 355% higher. The reason U.S. crime statistics look worse is that Americans are far more likely to call the police when they become victims. We make the case that the anti-American crime narrative isn't about journalism — it's about political control. If Canadians and Australians found out they would be safer with guns, their governments would have a much harder time keeping them disarmed. We also note that the conspiracy theories surrounding Charlie Kirk's assassination appear to be collapsing under the weight of Tyler Robinson's own confessions — three separate admissions that he planned and carried out the murder deliberately over a period of weeks. We say what needs to be said about the people who spent the last ten months spinning elaborate alternative theories: if you ever thought Candace Owens was onto something, you need a new way to filter your news sources. For our Bright Spot, John Fetterman's transparency about his own medical crises — stroke disclosed in 48 hours, depression disclosed the day after hospitalization — stands as a model of what elected officials owe the people they serve. We don't have to agree with his politics to recognize that walking in integrity looks exactly like that. And we close with words of wisdom on honesty — from Thomas Jefferson, William Shakespeare, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Benjamin Franklin, and Billy Joel. Honesty is such a lonely word. May your pursuit of happiness bring you joy. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776! See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

American Citizenship Is Not for Sale — But a Texas Hospital Didn't Get the Memo

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for July 7, 2026. We open with a story out of Germany that hits uncomfortably close to home — the German defense minister is publicly discussing whether a conservative party that finishes first in national polling should be denied access to classified information if it wins power. We explain why this isn't just a European problem: it's exactly what James Clapper attempted with Donald Trump in 2016, what the FBI did to the Tea Party under Obama, and what the DOJ did to pro-life Catholics under Biden. When a government starts treating political opponents as security threats, the next steps — denied clearances, restricted briefings, platform pressure, donor investigations — become easier every time. Germany is showing us where that road ends. We'd prefer not to follow. In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, President Trump declared the ceasefire over after Iran attacked three oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz — launching a second night of U.S. strikes on Iranian air defenses, fast boats, and missile launchers, and saying of negotiations, they're liars, they're cheats, they're sick people. Then Kentucky's Democratic Governor Andy Beshear formally demanded transparency from Senator Mitch McConnell's office about his medical condition — noting that while several Republican colleagues claim to have spoken with him at length, not one of them has quoted a single word he actually said. And a 51-year-old Australian citizen living in Franklinton, Louisiana was arrested and charged by the DOJ for registering to vote by falsely claiming American citizenship and casting ballots in both 2022 and 2024 — which is exactly why the Save America Act exists and exactly why the Senate needs to pass it. Our American Mamas Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson get into the financial realities facing young families today — the near impossibility of one parent staying home, the role grandparents and extended family play in filling the gap, and why the bonds forged through that kind of mutual help are often the strongest ones families have. Teri shares how she told her daughter-in-law directly that private school for the grandchildren is something she and her husband are prepared to help with — because that's what family does when it can. We dig into the Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling — and the Texas hospital advertising birth packages in Mexico for $4,000 natural or $5,500 for a C-section, with the implied promise that the baby goes home as an American citizen. Governor Greg Abbott has ordered an immediate investigation of Mission Regional Medical Center. We also cover Chinese birth tourism to American Samoa — where more Chinese babies are now born than American babies — with those children raised under the Communist Party before returning to the United States as adult citizens with full legal access. We make the case that the 14th Amendment's original meaning of subject to the jurisdiction thereof meant complete political allegiance — not one foot on American soil — and that Congress must act before birth tourism becomes the dominant business model along our southern border. We then cover Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Plattner — who still hasn't dropped out as of broadcast but faces a Monday deadline — and the stunning reversal from a Democratic Party that was fully behind him while he was ahead in the polls and is now trying to deny him any role in choosing his replacement. We note that the only Democrat who called Plattner out while he was still leading was John Fetterman — who this week demanded that every Democrat who championed Plattner publicly apologize to the voters of Maine. A party willing to undo its own nomination process when the polls turn is a party that has made clear the democratic process is a means to an end, not a principle. For our Bright Spot, firearms manufacturer CMMG has announced it will only sell to state and local government agencies the same configurations it is allowed to sell to that state's citizens. If a state bans AR-15 style rifles for civilians, CMMG will not sell AR-15 style rifles to that state's law enforcement. Their statement says it plainly — we do not have two classes of citizenry in this country. We are all subject to the Constitution. A government that doesn't trust its citizens cannot be trusted by its citizens. We call it exactly what it is — a principled stand worth celebrating and worth other manufacturers following. And we close with Jordan Rosenberg, who married Max Creamer this summer after knowing him for about ten years. At the wedding reception, Jordan's parents played a home video of four-year-old Jordan describing her future wedding — naming the friends who would be there, all of whom were present as adults. And when asked who her husband would be, four-year-old Jordan said the name Max. She spoke it into existence. May your pursuit of happiness bring you joy. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776! See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

Voting With Their Feet

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for July 7, 2026. We open with a story that's more than just an economic migration — it's a cultural sorting happening across America in real time. Conservatives are leaving blue states for red states chasing economic freedom, while nonprofits in Seattle are reporting they've helped more than 1,500 transgender people relocate there since the 2024 election — more than 20 times the number they helped before it. We make the distinction: conservatives making the move don't need charities to pay for it, they just do it. And we connect both migrations to the same underlying truth — people are voting with their feet, and they're moving toward communities that reflect how they want to live and away from places that make them feel legally, culturally, or politically out of place. In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, the U.S. relaunched strikes against Iran after Iran attacked three tankers in the Strait of Hormuz — with a Pentagon spokesperson telling CNN simply, this is punishment, it won't be over for a bit. Iran then had the audacity to call the reimposition of oil sanctions a violation of the ceasefire agreement — the same ceasefire they violated by setting three ships on fire. Then former Tallahassee mayor and 2018 Florida Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Gillum — who nearly beat Ron DeSantis by less than half a point — was arrested in Daphne, Alabama after being spotted driving erratically, with officers finding marijuana and methamphetamine in his vehicle. And the former mayor of Jackson, Mississippi pled guilty to bribery — this from a mayor who presided over a city that went without water for at least one full month every year of his tenure. We also address Marjorie Taylor Greene's suggestion that the multiple sexual assault allegations against Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Plattner — the man with the Nazi SS tattoo — might be a political hit job. We make the distinction between the timing of Politico's publication, which may have been orchestrated around the July 13th ballot deadline, and the underlying allegations themselves, which were there long before anyone ran a story. Not every damaging allegation is a political hit job. Sometimes people just do bad things. Our American Mamas Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson share what liberal friends actually say about 2028 when nobody's performing for a crowd. Teri's Danish-American friend in Wyoming — who can't stand Trump — says when asked who she'd want as next president, the answer wasn't AOC, wasn't Gavin Newsom, and definitely wasn't Kamala Harris. It was Marco Rubio. And she says all her liberal friends feel the same way — presidential, articulate, someone who could actually bring people together. We discuss what a Trump-Vance-Rubio sequential presidency could mean historically, and compare it to Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe's consecutive terms that effectively ended the Federalist Party. We discuss whether Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito should consider strategic retirements before President Trump leaves office to lock in conservative influence on the Supreme Court for the next four decades — and we make the case that while winning elections is the cleaner solution, two and a half years is not a long runway if something changes in November. In our Digging Deep segment, we run through a YouGov poll on flag favorability by party — and the results are genuinely stunning. For Republicans, the American flag comes in at a net positive of 97%, followed by the Betsy Ross flag, the Trump flag, the thin blue line flag, and the Israeli flag. For Democrats, the most popular flag is the Black Lives Matter flag at plus 69% — beating the American flag at plus 62%. Democrats also rate the flags of Ukraine and Mexico more favorably than the Betsy Ross flag — the very first symbol of this nation. We connect it to Sunny Hostin's claim that seeing an American flag in a neighborhood makes her feel unsafe — and to the FEMA report that Biden administration workers were instructed to skip homes flying American flags because they were likely Trump supporters. We also cover an ICE officer who shot and killed an illegal alien in Houston who allegedly used his vehicle as a weapon against federal agents during a targeted enforcement operation — and we make the only point that needs to be made: if you try to run over a law enforcement officer with a two-ton vehicle, the officer has the right to defend his life. The left will ask whether the officer should have been there in the first place. They won't ask whether the illegal alien should have been here in the first place. For our Bright Spot, a left-leaning author in a left-leaning publication — Washington Monthly — writes that despite his deep opposition to Donald Trump, he is still hopeful about America because of how far the country has come since the Bicentennial in 1976. Life expectancy is up six and a half years. Heart disease deaths are down nearly 60%. Cancer deaths are down more than a third. The air is dramatically cleaner. The Chicago River — which hospitalized his sister after she fell in during 1972 — now has people swimming in it on the Fourth of July. Car crash fatalities have been cut in half. Even the murder rate is down 50% over 50 years. We take it as a bright spot — not because we needed to be convinced, but because a leftist went looking for objective evidence and found it anyway. And we close with Andres Robles, who turned eight years old and celebrated at Disneyland — where he was greeted at the train platform on Main Street USA as the one billionth visitor to enter the park since it opened on July 17th, 1955. His family unveiled an updated sign reading population one billion and received a VIP tour. May your pursuit of happiness bring you joy. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776! See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.