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

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.

What the Media Missed on the Fourth

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for July 6, 2026. We open with reports from investigative journalist Laura Loomer that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — who was hospitalized on June 14th after EMS had to restart his heart at his home — has not left the hospital and may not recover. We discuss the lack of transparency from his staff, the separate story of his wife Elaine Chao traveling to Beijing to meet with the Chinese Vice President three days after her husband's cardiac emergency, and the broader question of McConnell's legacy — a man who served as Republican Senate leader longer than anyone in American history while half the national debt was added on his watch, Obamacare was never repealed, and regular order budgets were never passed.  In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, Washington D.C. held the largest fireworks display in American history over the Fourth of July weekend — more than 850,000 fireworks launched in close to an hour, massive crowds, and only four total arrests. Most local D.C. media chose to lead with air quality warnings. Then Graham Plattner, the Maine Democratic Senate nominee who has already survived scandals involving a Nazi SS tattoo, alleged spousal abuse, and sexual messages to women on a predator website, now faces a new allegation from a woman who says he entered her home drunk and forced himself on her in 2021. And Paul Pelosi — husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — has been charged with hit and run after allegedly crashing into a parked car in Napa County and driving away even as his car became inoperable from the damage. This is his second major driving incident in four years. Our American Mamas Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson recap the Spinks Sisters' 24th annual Fourth of July party — 100 people, a prayer circle, volleyball, a slip and slide, and scenes that made them want to stop and freeze the moment in their memories. They also discuss the contrast between what they saw at the party and what they saw in CNN's coverage of the historic Washington D.C. fireworks show, and reflect on World Cup tourists from around the world going viral saying they had never experienced this level of patriotism in their lives and that they were sorry for believing what their home country media told them about America. We cover a guest on Joy Reid's podcast actively rooting for the U.S. to lose in the World Cup — not because of any team loyalty, but because a U.S. victory would benefit President Trump. We also note that Arizona Senator Mark Kelly spent the Fourth of July in a Mexico jersey at a World Cup watch party — and while anyone can cheer for whoever they want, doing it on America's 250th Independence Day as a sitting U.S. senator is a choice worth commenting on. In our Digging Deep segment, a White House report on the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History finds that the museum has been ideologically captured — with its director on record saying her job is to problematize the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, to move attention away from what she calls an Anglo-centric focus on the American founding, and to use the museum's collection as a tool of social justice and activism. The report concludes the museum no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance but as a political instrument to divide and dispirit American citizens. We make the broader point that a museum which teaches only celebration is propaganda — but a museum that teaches only shame is propaganda too. And we return to a point worth making again: separating Black history into its own building while calling Black history absent from the National Museum of American History is not representation. It's segregation. We also cover Sunny Hostin of The View saying that seeing an American flag in a neighborhood makes her feel unsafe as a Black woman — and we connect it to the report that FEMA workers under the Biden administration were instructed to pass over homes flying American flags because they were likely Trump supporters. We make the case clearly: the American flag is not a symbol of white supremacy. It is the flag of the Republic. If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail — and if the only lens you have is racism, you will find racism in every American flag. For our Bright Spot, President Trump officially launched Trump Accounts — ringing a bell in the Oval Office that simultaneously opened trading on both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq for the first time in history from the White House. More than 6 million accounts have been opened for children under 18, with 1.4 million receiving a $1,000 federal pilot contribution at an annual management fee capped by law at 0.1%. Michael and Susan Dell donated more than $6 billion to the program. We call it what it is — teaching children to bet on America, building financial confidence, and giving kids a real starting point for wealth that no government program has ever offered at this scale. And we close with 32-year-old Kelsey Findler, who spent 43 days alone in the Pacific Ocean rowing from Monterey, California to Hawaii — 2,400 miles with nothing but her boat and two oars — arriving at the Hawaii Yacht Club on July 3rd to become not only the youngest woman to complete the crossing, but the fastest ever, shattering the previous record by more than 40 days. 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.

What Makes America Great: 10th Annual Fourth of July Special — America at 250 - Part 2

Welcome to Day Two of American Ground Radio's 10th Annual Fourth of July Special — What Makes America Great — with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. We're continuing our celebration of America's 250th birthday with some of the most compelling voices in the country. We open with Kirk Cameron, who escaped California for Tennessee and is spending the Fourth leading See You at the Library events in all 50 states — reading books of virtue to children as an answer to the drag queen storytime movement that swept public libraries during COVID. Kirk shares the Alexis de Tocqueville quote that he says captures everything: I searched America's harbors and rivers and farmlands and halls of Congress for the secret to her genius and power, and it wasn't until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness that I found it. America is great because she is good. And if she ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great. He also tells us about the National Monument to the Forefathers in Plymouth, Massachusetts — hidden in a residential neighborhood, unknown to most Americans — and the documentary he made about it called Monumental. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise joins us from Louisiana — and when we ask him when he first realized this country was exceptional, he tells us about lying in a hospital bed for three and a half months after being shot on a baseball field by a man who came to kill every Republican present. He talks about receiving calls from Benjamin Netanyahu and the King of Jordan — not because he was the president, but because they understood that an assassination attempt on a member of Congress was a threat to democracy itself. And he talks about returning to the House floor to a standing ovation from both sides of the aisle — and what that moment told him about what this country still is. Navy SEAL and New York Times number one bestselling author Jack Carr — creator of The Terminal List, now in its seventh book with Red Sky Morning — talks about winning the lottery the moment you're born in this country, about taking his daughter to Normandy to sit across the table from D-Day veterans before it's too late, and about why the main difference between his generation and today's is a small device in a pocket that creates addiction with very few benefits. His prescription: read books, get outside, talk to people, and do exactly what he did in fifth grade when his parents took him to Revolutionary War battlefields. Tommy Lahren of Fox News and OutKick tells us she was in fourth grade in South Dakota on September 11th — New York City felt like another world — and it was watching the country come together in the aftermath that first showed her there was something genuinely exceptional about being an American. She says September 12th, as horrible as its predecessor was, was one of the most beautiful days in American history. She also makes the case she's dedicated her career to — free speech absolutism — arguing that if you need to cancel someone else's voice to win the argument, your argument probably isn't very good. Eric Metaxas joins us with his brand new book Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World — and delivers what may be the most historically grounded answer we've ever gotten on this show. He takes us back to Samuel Adams addressing Congress on August 1st, 1776 — the day before they signed the official copy of the Declaration — saying, we have this day restored the Sovereign. Capital S. Not King George III. The actual King. God. Metaxas explains that what the founders were doing was unprecedented in all of world history — reaching back to the Sinai covenant where the Israelites said they could govern themselves without a king — and that this is why America succeeded where the French Revolution collapsed into terror and dictatorship. His mother grew up in Nazi Germany. His father grew up in Greece. He was raised knowing this country is not normal. Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee — now running for governor — shares the lesson that stuck with her from selling books door to door for 80 hours a week on straight commission in college: the harder and smarter you work, the more successful you will be. She connects faith directly to the founding documents — the Declaration's reference to a Creator as the source of unalienable rights is not incidental, she says. It is the whole point. And for the first time in the history of this special, we welcome a former member of the British Parliament — Douglas Carswell, now president of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy — who moved from Britain to Mississippi in his late 40s and felt, in his words, like he was coming home for the first time in his life. He describes attending his first Friday Night Lights game in a small Mississippi town and watching every kid in school — athletes and non-athletes alike — playing some role in the evening, and seeing in that moment exactly what de Tocqueville saw: a society of many parts coming together to solve problems without direction from government. His answer to what makes America great — you look to each other to fix your problems. Not to government. That's why Elon Musk could only have happened here. We close by reflecting on the two days of conversations, the idea of America as a nation founded not just on laws but on self-evident truths, and the core principle that runs through every interview in this special — America doesn't promise equal outcomes. It promises equal dignity, the freedom to pursue your own dreams, and the chance for ordinary people to discover the extraordinary greatness that God placed inside them. The greatness of America comes from the greatness within you. 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.