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You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for April 30, 2026. 

We open with a media language lesson — because after 76 days of Democrats in the Senate shutting down the Department of Homeland Security, headlines across the country said the House finally ended the shutdown, as if Mike Johnson was the problem. We correct the record, explain exactly how budget reconciliation allowed Republicans to fund DHS, ICE, Border Patrol, the Coast Guard, Secret Service, and TSA without a single Democratic vote, and ask the question nobody in big media wanted to answer — what does it say about a political party that was willing to leave the Secret Service tip line unmonitored for 76 days, right up until someone walked into the White House Correspondents' Dinner with a shotgun?

In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, the Florida legislature passed a new redistricting map in a single day — passing the House on party lines and the Senate 21 to 17 — expected to flip four Democrat seats Republican and help Republicans hold the House this fall. Then first-time unemployment claims fell to 189,000 last week, the lowest level since 1969, and as a percentage of the workforce, an all-time record low — at a time when there are 143 million more people in the country than there were the last time numbers were this good. And Maine Governor Janet Mills dropped out of the Democrat Senate primary, leaving the party's nomination to go to political newcomer Graham Plattner — the candidate who made national news when it was revealed he has a literal Nazi tattoo on his chest that he claims he didn't know was a Nazi symbol.

Our American Mamas Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson tackle the viral TikTok trend of men introducing their AI companions to their families as boyfriends or girlfriends — and why a supportive mom validating her son's relationship with a chatbot isn't love, it's enabling. We talk about why AI companions mirror and validate rather than challenge and grow you, why that's the opposite of what a real relationship does, why kids with imaginary friends are actually developing healthier coping skills, and why joy — not just happiness — is the standard we should be holding our lives to.

We also play the clip of Democrat Congressman Seth Moulton on CNN saying Pete Hegseth is guilty of war crimes — and that Allied nations tried and executed Nazi submarine captains for doing the same thing. We call this what it is — rhetoric that gets people killed — and connect it directly to the pattern of political violence that has now produced at least four armed attempts on the president's life and 19 documented assassination plots, more than any president in American history.

In our Digging Deep segment, the Free Beacon obtained through open records the actual rubric that Portland, Oregon uses to determine who gets homeless shelter services first — and it is not need-based. It is intersectionality-based. A woman who is a domestic violence survivor with a six-year-old child who has been homeless for over a year scores lower than a non-white, non-straight, non-English-speaking applicant with fewer boxes checked. In Maryland and Minnesota, race is the single biggest factor in determining whether someone gets housing benefits — more important than whether they are actually currently homeless. We connect this to the Supreme Court's racial redistricting decision this week and ask whether in the 250th year of this nation, we have figured out what all men are created equal actually means.

We also cover the Comey indictment — specifically how Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche personally stepped in to pursue the case after Pam Bondi had shelved it. We explain why this isn't primarily about winning a conviction — it's about throwing cold water on an environment where coded threats against the president have become casual, normalized, and consequence-free.

We also cover former Senator Ben Sasse — diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer in December, sleeping 15 hours a day from chemotherapy, and spending the time he has left giving interviews about whether he loved enough, whether he did what he was called to do, and whether any of us are living as if time actually runs out.

For our Bright Spot, a Harvard Harris poll — not a right-leaning outlet — shows that 52% of Americans support U.S. military airstrikes on Iran, 54% say they were justified, 74% say the U.S. is winning, and 78% say Trump was right to agree to a temporary ceasefire. We talk about what these numbers mean for the midterm narrative that the Iran conflict is a political liability — and why you should never bet against the American people.

We also address Tucker Carlson's claim that President Trump has contempt for normal Americans and doesn't care about Baltimore or rural America — and explain why the man who just posted the lowest per-capita weekly unemployment numbers in American history doesn't need Tucker Carlson to tell him who he cares about.

And we close with 14-year-old Jude Baker — who finished chemotherapy for a rare form of bone cancer, rang the bell at the clinic, and when Make-A-Wish offered him any adventure he wanted, asked instead if he could stuff backpacks and prepare hot meals for more than 300 homeless people living near the hospital where he received treatment. He said, I wanted to help them because I was in a bad situation and they were too. May your pursuit of happiness bring you joy.

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