American Ground Radio

You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for September 21, 2026. 

We open with the Top 3 Things You Need to Know, starting with the midterm outlook and a deep dive on dueling polls—Polymarket, The Economist, the New York Times/Siena survey, and a new Marquette Law School poll—all pointing different directions on control of the House and Senate. We debate whether apathy or overconfidence among Republican voters could tip the balance, and weigh the influence of figures like Tucker Carlson and Thomas Massie on the party's cohesion. From there we cover President Trump's announcement of a new "AI Force" and a forthcoming AI czar, his decision to bar Politico, CNN, and MSNBC from the White House press pool, and the Fifth Circuit's ruling striking down the federal ban on interstate handgun sales.

We then turn to the Secretary of the Air Force's stunning revelation that the U.S. Space Force already possesses an operational orbital weapons system, and what that could mean for satellite defense and missile tracking.

Next up is American Mamas, where Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson join us to discuss the fallout around the Lindsay Clancy juror who was doxxed after the trial, the racial undertones in the media coverage, and the broader conversation about jury tampering and accountability.

We dig deep into President Trump's remarks calling the Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt a "Democrat plot," parsing what he may have meant and where the Secret Service's conduct under the Biden administration fits in. We also break down the new U.S.-Greenland agreement, why it matters far more strategically than the Danish press is letting on, and what it means for Arctic defense and mineral access.

We touch on a First Amendment ruling against a University of California misgendering policy and what it means for free speech on campus, then land on our Bright Spot: Toys R Us announcing 120 new standalone retail stores nationwide this Christmas, and why getting kids into physical stores again matters. We close out with a look at a study on how Democratic versus Republican women view men, and a Moment of Whoa about an 84-year-old man returning a library book 130 years overdue.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776. 

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You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. Stephen is taking some well-deserved time off, so Louis is flying solo today. This is the full show for September 14, 2026.

We open on the public charge fight, as New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and other left-wing city governments sue the Trump administration over the rule reimposed in July that makes legal immigrants less likely to secure green cards if they've used welfare benefits like subsidized health care, food stamps or public housing. Mayors Zohran Mamdani and Brandon Johnson argue immigrant families shouldn't have to choose between feeding their kids and protecting their status, but we make the case that America is really having two different conversations at once: whether we should help people who are struggling, and whom we should admit as permanent residents. Those aren't the same question, and asking whether someone can support himself isn't xenophobia — it's the whole reason we have an immigration system in the first place.

Then it's the Top 3 things you need to know: oil back above $100 with Brent settling near $106 a barrel, the 10-year Treasury yield briefly touching 5% for the first time since 2023, the biggest names in AI development suddenly urging everyone to slow down while AI stocks slide, and ICE arrests hitting record levels even as deportations fail to keep pace.

From there we get into outgoing Houston Democrat Al Green, who lost his May runoff and is spending his final weeks in Congress forcing yet another dead-on-arrival impeachment resolution against President Trump over ICE and Customs and Border Protection. Even his own party is grumbling about the timing, with Axios reporting Democratic lawmakers privately calling it a distraction heading into the midterms. We argue impeachment is one of the gravest constitutional remedies Congress possesses, not a button you mash every time you lose a policy argument — and voters are far more focused on kitchen table issues like the car note, the house note and affording a first home.

We also respond to former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and her comments about black women feeling conditioned to handle everything themselves, which she traces to a post-traumatic slave mentality. Before we run that line straight back to slavery, we look at what happened in between: in 1960, nearly a century after emancipation, Census data showed two-thirds of black children living with both parents, and less than twenty years later fewer than half did. The Great Society programs of the 1960s did enormous damage to the black nuclear family, and that history belongs in the conversation.

Next, a story that's both sad and necessary — twenty rabbis from twelve states traveling to Los Angeles for a five-day intensive security course sponsored by Magen Am USA, with 37 applicants for only 20 spots. The training covers firearm safety, situational awareness, de-escalation and knowing when not to use force. The real question isn't why rabbis are learning about firearms. It's why we've reached a point in this country where they believe they have to.

Then we break down the extraordinary weekend argument over artificial intelligence in plain English. President Trump says America is winning the AI race, China desperately wants us to slow down, and the only guardrails AI needs is a strong and smart president. On the other side stand the people actually building the technology — Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk of xAI — warning that we must slow the pace of capability improvement so safety can catch up. We explain recursive self-improvement using a car that builds a better car, and why the real worry isn't a chatbot growing legs and chasing you around the kitchen but systems doing complicated work faster than humans can monitor them.

We also take on the NFL's 11% ratings decline for the 2026 Patriots-Seahawks opener, which drew 25 million viewers — still enormous, but the lowest kickoff audience since 2022. Was it woke fatigue, the move from Thursday to Wednesday, Nielsen's new measurement methodology, or simple overextension across Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Thanksgiving Eve, Netflix and Peacock? We side with Jon Gruden on the league's record nine international games across seven countries and four continents: if you want to grow the game, grow it here. Football belongs to Friday nights in small towns, marching bands, homecoming and fathers throwing the ball with their sons.

For our Moment of Whoa, we head to the homeless encampment under the FDR Drive near 23rd Street in Manhattan, where cleaning one block on Monday just moves the problem three blocks over by Thursday. It isn't compassionate to leave a human being sleeping beside piles of garbage.

And we close with Words of Wisdom about a restless, distracted boy whose teacher saw no point in continuing his education — so his mother taught him herself. He went on to fail thousands of times searching for a filament that would burn long enough to make electric light practical, seeing information where everyone else saw failure. His name was Thomas Alva Edison.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for September 11, 2026. 

We start the show sounding the alarm on new findings from Anthropic that a China-based actor used its Claude AI model to help draft an anti-torpedo system specification for a Chinese defense manufacturer supplying the PLA Navy, and we talk through how AI is now being used to scrape public photos and data into targeting intelligence against U.S. military personnel and installations.

We move into our Top 3: President Trump marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11 with a ceremony at the Pentagon, the deportation of an ISIS sympathizer who plotted an Election Day mass shooting at a Texas polling place, and a Maryland synagogue winning a court injunction against a county ban on firearms in houses of worship.

For American Mamas, we're joined by Teri Netterville to talk about how this year's 9/11 anniversary hit differently, and we revisit the story of Todd Beamer's final phone call aboard Flight 93. 

We Dig Deep into new numbers on Gen Z and abortion, along with research linking shared last names in marriage to lower divorce rates, and we explain why we believe President Trump's strikes on Iran couldn't wait any longer. 

Then it's Fake News Friday, where we separate real headlines from fake ones, including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani laughing on camera during the reading of 9/11 victims' names. 

We close with words of wisdom on 9/11 from George Pataki, George Bush, Sandy Dahl, and Newt Gingrich.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776. 

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You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for September 10, 2026.

We dig into President Trump’s proposed $5,000 “Trump dividend” and the bigger economic and political questions surrounding it. If the proposal became reality, what would it mean for federal spending, tariffs, the national debt, and the role of government in the economy? We debate whether sending money directly to Americans is sound economic policy—or simply another form of government spending—and ask whether the proposal creates an unexpected political dilemma for Democrats.

In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, we examine the latest legal twists surrounding Missouri’s congressional redistricting map, Democratic primary shakeups in Rhode Island, and new prison sentences in the Feeding Our Future welfare fraud case.

American Mamas Teri Netterville joins us as we look back one year after the assassination of Charlie Kirk and asks how his life should be remembered. We discuss his faith, his commitment to engaging people with whom he disagreed, and the three questions he reportedly kept at the center of his daily life: How can I help someone today? How can I add value to the world today? How can I honor God today?

Then, we welcome Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz discusses his decision to leave the Democratic Party and become what he calls a “reluctant Republican,” as well as his new book, Why I Quit the Dems and So Should You. He explains how his political views have evolved, why he believes the Democratic Party has moved away from his views on issues including the economy and foreign policy, and why he still describes himself as a libertarian on many issues.

With the 25th anniversary of September 11 approaching, we also reflect on what Americans remember about that day—not only the attacks and the loss of nearly 3,000 lives, but the way ordinary Americans responded. We talk about the instinct to go home and be with family, the instinct to go to work and help, and the extraordinary sense of unity that emerged in the aftermath.

Our Bright Spot features Congressman Brandon Gill and his speech at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, followed by a discussion about remembering the work, sacrifice, ingenuity, and values that helped build the United States.

We close with a moving Moment of Whoa as 2,977 drones illuminate the New York City skyline in the shape of the World Trade Center towers—one for every person killed on September 11, 2001.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for September 9, 2026. 

We open with the Trump administration's proposed rule to exclude illegal aliens from the census when apportioning congressional seats. We dig into the constitutional debate over the 14th Amendment's "whole number of persons" language, work through a household-voting analogy, and ask who should actually count when it comes to political representation.

In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, we cover Iran firing on ships in the Strait of Hormuz and rising oil prices, the escalating trade war with Canada over alcohol, dairy, and auto tariffs, and the tangled fight over which congressional map Missouri will use this fall.

Our American Mamas, Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson, join us to answer a listener's question about letting kids climb trees, and we swap stories about the riskier playgrounds and looser parenting of our own childhoods.

We dig deep into why so few states mandate 9/11 education, walking through which states require it by law versus by curriculum standard, and why remembering "never forget" matters for a generation born after the attacks.

We also take on Texas Senate candidate James Talarico's walk-back of his past claims about gender and God, question Mitch McConnell's silence amid new scrutiny of his transparency, and find our bright spot in a New York Times story about AI displacing Kenyan essay-writers who'd been doing American college students' homework for pay.

We close with our Moment of Whoa on honesty and integrity, featuring quotes from A.R. Rahman, Warren Buffett, and Mother Teresa.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for September 8, 2026.

We open with the escalating trade standoff between the United States and Canada, working through the numbers behind Ottawa's tariffs on American goods, the political timing tied to upcoming provincial elections in Quebec and Alberta, and the case for why any "free trade" agreement ought to actually be free and reciprocal in both directions.

From there we run through our Top 3 things you need to know: the Republican Party's first-ever midterm convention getting underway in Dallas, a fresh wave of illegal voting charges spanning three states, and the Smithsonian's Lonnie Bunch III announcing his retirement after years of criticism over the institution's DEI framing of history.

Our American Mamas, Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson, join us to talk legacy, how families keep loved ones present after they're gone, and the way video, storytelling, and even social media reels have become a modern-day way of preserving memory. We also spend time on our culture's troubling habit of turning killers into celebrities while their victims fade into footnotes.

We dig deep on a new Elon Musk documentary premiering at the Venice Film Festival, the election-meddling allegations at its center, and a wilder side story involving an ex-girlfriend, a cryptic text, and "10,000 lasers in space." From there we turn to New York and Illinois, where religious orders are fighting state mandates that would force Catholic nuns to help fund abortions or participate in end-of-life conversations that conflict with their faith, and why we think that's a religious liberty problem far bigger than any one issue.

We also weigh in on the rhetoric surrounding Mamdani, Adam Schiff, and their associations, alongside Hochul's framing of division around the 9/11 anniversary, before pivoting to something a little more hopeful: Chris Rock publicly agreeing that the media pushes fake news, and what it means when someone crosses party lines to admit when the other side has a point.

Our Bright Spot this week is a personal one: American Ground Radio's ninth anniversary, grown from a single Shreveport, Louisiana station into fifty markets across the country, including morning drive in our nation's capital. We say thank you to our listeners, our supporters, and the American Mamas for making the journey with us.

And our Moment of Whoa goes to Aubrey Aldridge, a 22-year-old with Down syndrome who just became the world's first certified UPBEAT Bar fitness instructor, teaching her first class to sixty people.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for September 4, 2026. 

We open by digging into the August jobs report, weighing the surprise addition of 162,000 payroll jobs and steady 4.1% unemployment against the doom-and-gloom predictions that dominated headlines for months. We talk through the manufacturing and construction gains, wage growth versus inflation, and what it all means heading into the fall. From there we hit our Top 3 things you need to know: the jobs numbers rebound, Missouri's Supreme Court throwing the state's new congressional map into chaos just weeks before the election, and a bombshell inspector general report on former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer's conduct while in office. We also cover a GAO report revealing the Secret Service repeatedly ignored civilian drone incidents near the president going back to the Obama years, right up through Butler, Pennsylvania.

Our American Mamas, Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson, join us to tackle a listener question about whether women choosing to go childless will one day regret it, sparked by a viral post from a 36-year-old asking the internet that very thing. We follow that with a First Amendment conversation about the right to organize, even for ideas like socialism, and take a look at the growing wave of socialist conferences happening around the country.

We Dig Deep into a troubling story out of Virginia, where a pregnant mother studying for the bar was convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor after letting her five-year-old walk two blocks to a pond in their gated community. We also break down a Wall Street Journal report on Senator John Fetterman being blasted by his own party in Pennsylvania.

It's Fake News Friday, where we run through headlines on Lake America, the Montreal Canadiens, the Strait of Hormuz, Senator Blumenthal's near-miss with a train, and more, letting listeners test their own real-news-versus-fake-news instincts. We close things out with a Moment of Whoa involving a duct-taped unruly airline passenger, and a heartwarming story about a liver transplant recipient marrying the brother of her donor two decades later.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for September 3, 2026.

We open by digging into Enos Cantor Freedom's federal lawsuit against the Chicago Sky, the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, and the city of Chicago after he was escorted out of a WNBA game and banned from Wintrust Arena for wearing a shirt defining womanhood and cheering for the Indiana Fever. We walk through the video of his confrontation with Sky guard Natasha Cloud and debate whether he was singled out for his viewpoint rather than any actual rule violation, and what that means for his First Amendment claim.

From there we hit our Top 3 things you need to know: the Ninth Circuit allowing Idaho's abortion ban to take effect for now, ICE setting a new record with 51,000 detentions in August as three million illegal immigrants have left or been removed since President Trump returned to office, and a federal judge tossing the DOJ's lawsuit against California's law letting biological males compete in girls' sports.

Our American Mamas, Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson, join us to answer why 85-year-old actress Donna Mills has launched an OnlyFans page, which spins into a broader conversation about the platform, a politically outspoken creator monetizing her looks alongside her commentary, and the personal costs that can come with that kind of income.

We Dig Deep on two fronts: a Maine Supreme Court ruling that a mother cannot take her 12-year-old daughter to church without the father's consent amid the parents' custody dispute over religion, and a Columbia Journalism Review report on New York City Mayor Mamdani's office paying influencers with taxpayer money to spread city messaging on immigration and tenants' rights, which we argue crosses the line from public information into propaganda.

We also talk about North Carolina's Roy Cooper calling for healthcare over handcuffs for jailed offenders, and why we think that overlooks crime victims, before landing on a Bright Spot out of Pittsburgh, where a church is reporting a wave of young people, including hundreds of University of Pittsburgh students, coming forward for baptism. We close out with George Clooney warning about the rich and powerful while accepting a lifetime achievement award, and a father-son team in Michigan fixing cars for neighbors who can't afford repairs.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for September 2, 2026.

We open by taking on House Minority Whip Katherine Clark's claim that Americans don't care about the "socialism" label, and we push back hard, arguing that if the word were meaningless, Democrats wouldn't work so hard to distance themselves from it. We trace the line from Marx's Communist Manifesto to the Soviet Union's own self-description to Zohran Mamdani's push for government-run grocery stores in New York City, making the case that socialism and communism are one and the same, and that Americans' everyday worries about groceries, housing, and gas prices are really debates about capitalism versus government control.

In our Top 3, we cover the latest round of US strikes on Iran after Iranian forces threatened the Strait of Hormuz, the House passing a short-term spending bill that averts a government shutdown, and 80-year-old Senator Ed Markey's primary win over Congressman Seth Moulton in Massachusetts.

We also dig into a fresh YouGov poll finding that a small but growing share of Democrats believe the country focuses too much on 9/11, and we argue that number, however small, still matters because our enemies benefit whenever America grows complacent about that day.

American Mamas Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson join us to talk about how wedding registries have changed, from china and crystal to Christmas trees and rugs, and how weddings themselves have ballooned into full productions driven by social media.

From there we look at Elon Musk's prediction of a billion humanoid robots within a decade and debate whether he's forecasting the future or selling it, before Digging Deep into a new Gallup poll showing a record 89% of Americans now believe government corruption is widespread, up ten points from just last year, and we connect that spike to COVID-era spending fraud and the DOGE investigations that followed.

We get a laugh out of New York Governor Kathy Hochul quietly dropping the state's requirement that liquor license applicants disclose whether patrons will be dancing, and we hand out a Bright Spot to Speaker Mike Johnson for introducing a constitutional amendment that would lock the Supreme Court at nine justices, which leads us into a wish list of other amendments we'd like to see, from a balanced budget requirement to repealing the 16th and 17th Amendments.

We close by expressing our disgust that vandals defaced Dolly Parton's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame barely a week after her death, and we leave you with Words of Wisdom on the Constitution from Calvin Coolidge, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Abraham Lincoln, and John Adams.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for September 1, 2026. 

We open by pushing back on the "black pill" defeatism creeping into GOP circles ahead of the midterms, weighing Speaker Mike Johnson's optimism and 55-city campaign push against the Cook Political Report's toss-up numbers, and why the redistricting fights of the last two years mean history alone won't decide who holds the House in 2026.

From there we run through the Top 3 things you need to know: nine more pharmaceutical companies signing onto Trump's most-favored-nation drug pricing plan, ICE's Operation Rotten Apple sweep that netted 2,100 arrests of criminal illegal aliens in New York City, and Florida's statewide ban on flock license-plate cameras over data privacy concerns.

We turn it over to our American Mamas, Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson, who take on a listener question about the viral clip of Ashley Judd and her conservative stepdad staying close despite being worlds apart politically, and why the media keeps pushing Americans to cut off family over disagreements instead of staying in relationship with the people they love.

Digging Deep, we cover Georgetown's newly updated 2026 National Firearm Survey, breaking down who actually owns guns in America, how often they're used defensively, and why the numbers undercut a lot of the usual narratives around AR-15s, high-capacity magazines, and who's arming themselves. We also touch on a Cedar Hill, Texas bank robbery stopped cold by an armed customer, Trump's push to rename American landmarks like the Gulf of America, and his Supreme Court appeal defending the administration's authority to remove transgender troops from military service.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.