What the Media Missed on the Fourth

If Showing ID to Vote Makes It Impossible for Democrats to Win, That's Not an Argument Against the SAVE Act

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for July 16, 2026. We open with a story that should trigger Logan Act investigations — Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch has revealed that New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani attempted to arrange a secret meeting with the Iranian government while the United States is actively engaged in military operations against Iran. We walk through the constitutional principle at stake: the United States speaks with one voice in foreign affairs, that voice belongs to the federal government, and a city mayor has no more authority to conduct foreign policy than he has to declare war. We also connect it to a pattern — from Obama's hot mic moment with Medvedev to John Kerry's shadow diplomacy during Trump's first term — of people who want the power of the presidency without the accountability of holding it. In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, the U.S. launched strikes against Iran for the sixth consecutive day — targeting air defenses, rocket and drone facilities, and ports, with reports of 35 killed and 300 wounded in Iran, and a blockade-running ship disabled after repeated warnings. Then President Trump fired a newly appointed federal prosecutor in Seattle less than an hour into his first day on the job — a position filled by federal judges after Democrat Senate obstruction left the slot unconfirmed for more than 120 days. And a former Marine and congressional candidate in Florida was arrested for posting videos to social media calling for the murder of President Trump, describing him as the Antichrist, and advising what weapons and shooting patterns should be used — the latest of more than 20 documented assassination plots against the president, by far the most in American history. We also cover the Trump administration restoring the public charge rule — requiring that applicants for lawful permanent residence demonstrate they can support themselves without depending on government assistance. We explain why this was standard immigration practice throughout most of American history, why it is the policy of virtually every developed nation on earth, and why the most compassionate thing you can say to someone who wants to become an American is that we believe you can make it here on your own. Our American Mama Teri Netterville responds to a podcast host who said she doesn't trust any mother who wants to be with her children all day — and that homeschooling is weird. Teri's answer is simple and devastating: children are not a burden. They are a reward from God, an inheritance, arrows that parents are called to form and launch into the world for impact. The proof showed up at a stoplight on the way to the studio — Psalm 127, in a bumper sticker, on a car Teri had never seen before, minutes before a segment she didn't know she'd be having. She calls it a God thing. We do too. We dig deep into Senator Elissa Slotkin's remarks at a Michigan town hall — where she explained her opposition to the SAVE Act by saying it would make it impossible for any Democrat to win any election anywhere. We play the clip. We let her words sit. And we point out that if requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote is what makes Democrats lose elections, Senator Slotkin has just told you everything you need to know about who has been voting in Democratic primaries. The SAVE Act doesn't prevent anyone who is legally entitled to vote from voting. It just makes sure people who aren't legally entitled to vote don't get to cancel out the votes of those who are. We also cover Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego and reports that he had relationships with multiple congressional staffers before his marriage — and use it to return to the core principle that power causes brain damage. The part of the brain that processes empathy is measurably suppressed in people who accumulate power and believe they deserve it. The only people largely immune to this effect are those who genuinely believe they don't deserve the power they have. Public office is a public trust — and the people underneath you in that office are not perks of the position. We also cover a White House teleprompter technician who allegedly fed Trump's speech content into prediction markets before the speeches were delivered — trading on insider access to profit from words she was trusted to keep confidential. Every position of trust comes with an obligation of restraint. Some people just haven't figured that out yet. For our Bright Spot, the New York Times ran a piece headlined Mom, Dad, I Want to Be a Welder — following young Americans in their twenties who had the grades for college, chose trade school instead, and are thriving. Trade school enrollment is up nearly 20% since 2020. Starting salaries for skilled tradespeople now beat many college-educated entry-level positions. And a 23-year-old welder from Arkansas named LaDonna Glass said it best — she felt like if she didn't go to college she would be a failure. She isn't. We close with Earl Nightingale's definition of success — the progressive realization of a worthy goal — and note that success begins the moment you commit to something worthy of your time, your talents, and your character. And we close with a 2007 photograph taken at a Barcelona charity raffle — a baby boy named Lamin Yamal posing with a young Argentine footballer named Lionel Messi. Eighteen years later, Lamin Yamal is on the Spanish World Cup team and Messi is considered the greatest of all time — and the two people in that photo are about to face each other in the World Cup final. 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.

"I Don't Think Any of You Are Good Enough to Be a Marine — and That's Why They Had the Longest Line"

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for July 15, 2026. We open with the biggest election integrity news in years — the House passed the SAVE Act as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, 217 to 209, with Speaker Mike Johnson delivering exactly what he promised us two weeks ago when he sat down with American Ground Radio. We explain what the SAVE Act actually does — and what it doesn't. It doesn't change who is eligible to vote. It doesn't alter the Constitution. It simply requires documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections. We point out that we verify identity to board a plane, open a bank account, and buy a beer — and that the only people who benefit from not verifying citizenship at voter registration are people who aren't citizens. We also note that Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin's claim that no Democrat will ever win again if the SAVE Act passes raises an obvious question about how many non-citizens have been voting for her party. The bill now goes to the Senate, where John Thune needs to do his job — or be voted out at the first opportunity. In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch testified before the Senate in his confirmation hearing — telling senators that his client is not the president but the American people, while more than 1,200 former DOJ employees signed a letter opposing his confirmation, which may be the best endorsement he could have received. Then the House passed a bill to make daylight saving time permanent year-round — meaning darker mornings in winter and lighter evenings, with states currently on permanent standard time allowed to stay there. And Senate Democrats boycotted a hearing on government fraud, with only one Democrat showing up before leaving after his opening statement — even as investigative journalists Nick Shirley, James O'Keefe, and Dylan Heder-Gaudette presented documented findings on billions in fraudulent benefits claims. As Nick Shirley said, no dollar says Republican or Democrat on it. We also tackle the question of whether a New Hampshire state representative can drive 102 miles per hour on her way to the legislature and claim constitutional immunity from arrest under a provision dating back to the era of kings arresting parliamentarians on their way to inconvenient votes. We acknowledge the historical purpose of the law. We reject the application of it to someone who simply didn't plan her schedule well enough. Rules for thee but not for me is not a constitutional principle — and if you don't care about the safety of the people on the road, why would you care about the safety of the people you represent? Our American Mama Teri Netterville weighs in on the Emmy nominations — and the conversation becomes a broader indictment of an awards system that has completely lost touch with what Americans are actually watching. Greg Gutfeld hosts the number one late night show in the country. Not nominated. Taylor Sheridan has produced Yellowstone, Landman, 1923, and The Madison — all massive hits with critics and audiences alike. Not nominated. Meghan Markle's show As Ever received a 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, was called the sweet spot between irrelevant and intolerable by the Times of London, and was canceled. Emmy nominated. The awards don't reflect excellence anymore. They reflect ideology. In our Digging Deep segment, U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll announced that the Army has already met its 2026 recruiting goals — with 61,500 new recruits — eight and a half months before the year ends. Compare that to 2022, when the military missed its goals by 25%, and 2023, when it missed by 10%. Nothing changed except the administration and with it the clarity of purpose. We play Simon Sinek's story about a Marine recruiter who told a high school auditorium full of teenagers that not a single one of them was good enough to be a Marine — and walked out with the longest line of any recruiter in the room. People don't want to be told service is easy. They want to be challenged to be worthy of it. Trump and Hegseth figured that out. The numbers prove it. We also cover France's assisted suicide legislation — which has passed the lower house and would allow physicians and nurses to end the lives of patients who cannot do so themselves. The Catholic Church in France has threatened excommunication for any legislator who votes for it, and Pope Francis personally asked Macron not to sign it. We make the pro-life case plainly — compassion means walking with those who suffer, not eliminating the one who is suffering. A society's worth is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable, not by how conveniently it removes them. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has now threatened to shut down all Middle Eastern oil exports if Iran cannot export its own — using energy as a weapon exactly as both Iran and Iraq did during the 1980s war. We note that this is exactly why the Iraq oil pipeline deal through Turkey matters, why the Strait of Hormuz matters, and why at some point the president may have to say what needs to be said about ground troops. For our Bright Spot, a Spanish conservation group called El Burrito Feliz — the Happy Little Donkey — has deployed 18 donkeys around Doñana National Park on Spain's Atlantic coast, an area with the same fire-prone Mediterranean climate as Southern California. Since the donkeys were introduced, there has not been a single wildfire in the park in nine years. The donkeys eat the dry scrub and tall grasses that fuel fires, reach terrain that vehicles cannot, and cost a fraction of what California spends on fire suppression after the fact. We suggest California try it. What have they got to lose? And we close with Jenny Stepien, who walked down the aisle on her wedding day wishing her father could be there. Her father Michael had passed away ten years earlier — but he was an organ donor, and his heart had saved the life of a man named Tom Thomas, who became Jenny's pen pal out of gratitude. On her wedding day, Tom was there in person for the first time — to walk her down the aisle in her father's place. At the end of the aisle, Jenny placed her hand on Tom's chest and felt her father's heart beating one more time, just before she said I do. 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.

DSA Proposes Structure That Gave Us the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, and Communist China

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for July 14, 2026. We open with the Democratic Socialists of America's national co-chair going on record calling for the abolition of the United States Senate — and we explain why this isn't a fringe idea anymore. The DSA wants to replace the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court with a single legislative body allocated purely by population, rename it the People's Bureau, and hand it public ownership of the nation's largest corporations. We walk through what that actually means — that seven or eight major cities could effectively govern the entire country, that the constitutional protections for smaller states would vanish, and that the structure they're proposing is the same one that produced the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, and Communist China. We also note that 51% of the DSA's National Policy Committee openly identifies with communism, Marxism, or Marxist-Leninism — not according to conservative critics, but according to a report cited by the former Democratic chief counsel for the House Judiciary Committee. The Democratic Party needs to decide whether it is going to continue letting these people run under its banner. In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, President Trump formally notified Congress that hostilities with Iran have resumed — opening a new 60-day window under the War Powers Act after Iran repeatedly violated the ceasefire and continued attacking civilian shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Then inflation dropped from 4.2% to 3.5% last month — the largest single-month decrease in four years — driven largely by falling gas prices during the ceasefire, with core inflation down to 2.6%. And Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett testified jointly before Congress requesting increased security funding — with Barrett revealing that six weeks ago her teenage son opened the front door to find their street filled with police cars responding to a swatting attack on their home. We also weigh in on President Trump's signature appearing on the new $100 bill as part of America's 250th anniversary commemoration — and we have a genuine disagreement about it. It's a milestone that comes once in a nation's history and deserves recognition. But putting a sitting president's name on currency in circulation is outside American tradition, starts to look like the kind of thing emperors and monarchs do, and gives his critics an easy target that's hard to defend. Our American Mama Teri Netterville makes the case that moms are still better matchmakers than any dating app ever invented — and backs it up with evidence. Three couples she personally set up are now married, including her own daughter Summer and Louisiana Tech baseball captain Phillip Matulia, whom Teri identified as the right match before her daughter was even willing to consider it. She also shares the story of Andrea Swift — Taylor's mother — who heard that Travis Kelce loves his mother, said ding ding ding, and the rest is history. Terry's conclusion: we know our children. Apps know your data. There's a difference. In our Digging Deep segment, a Fort Worth police officer threatened street preachers Richard Pankoski and David Grisham with disorderly conduct citations at a Pride parade — telling them directly that if someone is offended by their talking, that constitutes a problem warranting a citation. We explain why this is not a close constitutional question. The First Amendment does not exist to protect popular speech. It exists precisely to protect the kind of speech that offends people. The Fort Worth police chief acknowledged the officers were wrong — but we push back on his framing. They weren't wrong in the manner they addressed it. They were wrong to address it at all. Religious speech enjoys the same constitutional protection as secular speech. If marchers get to publicly celebrate what scripture calls sin, preachers get to publicly call it sin. We then turn to Zoran Mamdani's New York City — where Manhattan's average one-bedroom rent has hit an all-time high of nearly $5,500 a month and Brooklyn is setting its own records, with critics calling the housing situation DEFCON 1. We connect it directly to Mamdani's rent freeze threats, which gave every landlord in the city a powerful incentive to raise rents before the freeze could take effect, and to congestion pricing, which is now making it financially attractive to live inside Manhattan rather than commute — driving up rents from the demand side. The left created this crisis with its own policies and is now running on those same policies as the solution. For our Bright Spot, President Trump and Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi announced that U.S. troops will be out of Iraq by September 30th — ending a 23-year military presence that peaked at 170,000 troops and is now down to roughly 2,000. We also cover Iraq signing new oil deals with Chevron and other American companies to build pipelines running from Iraq through Turkey to Europe — bypassing the Strait of Hormuz entirely — which would permanently reduce Iranian leverage over global energy markets. And we close with 28-year-old Rishi Sharma, who at 18 became curious about World War II, interviewed one veteran, then another, then another, until curiosity became an obsession — and he has now spent every single day of the last ten years interviewing veterans of the Greatest Generation, preserving 3,000 firsthand accounts of American history on hard drives and SD cards before those voices are gone forever. 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.

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.