You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for July 29, 2026.
We open with Anthony Fauci's appearance before the Senate Homeland Security Committee — where he invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times over nearly four hours, refusing to answer questions about COVID-19, gain-of-function research, federal records, and his role in shaping the pandemic response. He even invoked the Fifth when asked whether a red folder was sitting in front of him. We walk through the constitutional tension at the heart of the hearing: Biden's sweeping preemptive pardon covers Fauci for any federal offense between 2014 and January 19, 2025 — and under an 1896 Supreme Court ruling, a pardoned witness can no longer claim Fifth Amendment privilege because the danger of prosecution has been removed. Fauci's lawyers are apparently betting the autopenned pardon might be invalidated. We also point out that the Fifth Amendment does not protect a witness from future perjury — meaning the only real jeopardy Fauci faced was if he lied again. His diaries, which he confirmed are his, already prove he lied to Congress about school closures and gain-of-function. Biden may have given him immunity from punishment. He may also have given Congress the power to compel the truth.
In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, Fauci's Senate testimony — 111 Fifth Amendment invocations, a contempt vote expected next week. Then the Trump administration officially banned gain-of-function research globally — expanding last year's China-specific ban to all foreign nations and the United States itself, with HHS and the State Department issuing a joint statement on biosafety standards. And the Senate confirmed Jay Clayton as the new Director of National Intelligence on a party-line 51-47 vote — in part because Clayton refused to tell Democrat senators that he believed Joe Biden won the 2020 election fairly.
We also cover President Trump's ban on importing humanoid robots manufactured in China — framing it as a national security issue rather than a tariff. We explain why this is correct: Chinese robotic firms have been pouring money into R&D, producing advanced prototypes that can lift, run, climb stairs, and mimic human gestures. Importing them would stifle American domestic robotics manufacturing and potentially introduce devices receiving overnight software updates from servers in Beijing.
Our American Mamas Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson take on the trend of celebrity children dropping their fathers' last names when they turn 18 — specifically Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's daughter, and Tom Cruise's daughter Suri. Teri makes the case that this isn't really about the name — it's about what happens when a parent loves winning more than they love their children's relationship with their other parent. She shares a story from their own extended family where a mother kept her children away from their father for 20 years based on lies — and when the truth came out as adults, the son found his father, the father died shortly after, and the son's relationship with his mother was shattered permanently. The data on children without fathers is not ambiguous. The children who are protected from the bitterness of divorce are the ones who grow up most whole.
We dig into Zoran Mamdani's pied-à-terre tax — a second-home tax he promised would affect 13,000 properties. When the city published the list of people subject to the tax, it contained more than 960,000 names and their addresses — effectively doxxing nearly a million New Yorkers, including celebrities who campaigned for Mamdani like Cynthia Nixon, plus Anna Wintour and Woody Allen. It also included people who have lived in their homes as their primary residence for 27 and 30 years respectively, now being billed $43,000 in additional annual taxes on top of their existing property taxes. One r
