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

We open with the Texas Senate race — where Democratic nominee James Tallarico released a polished campaign ad called Waking Up, featuring him driving a full-sized Dodge Ram 1500 through Texas oil fields and farm country. There's one problem: it's not his truck. Tallarico drives a Chevrolet Colorado, but its tinted windows made the interior too dark for filming, so his campaign rented the Dodge from a local company. We make the distinction between normal campaign staging and renting a persona — because the entire ad was designed to sell Tallarico as a natural extension of working Texans, and the truck was the centerpiece of that message. We also note that Republicans handed Democrats an opening by nominating Ken Paxton — damaged goods with a messy personal and political record — instead of Wesley Hunt, who would have won this race by a landslide. Texas Republicans got this one wrong.

In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, President Trump's Attorney General nominee Todd Blanch is in limbo after John Cornyn and Thom Tillis signaled they would not support him in the Senate Judiciary Committee — concerned about a proposed fund to compensate victims of political prosecution under Biden, including January 6th defendants, even after Blanch testified under oath the deal was dead. Trump is reportedly considering withdrawing the nomination until both senators leave office in January. Then the federal government demanded Colorado repay $8 million in Medicaid funds after an audit found the state had billed for services totaling more than 24 hours in a single day for the same patients — a mathematical impossibility. Colorado disagrees with the findings. And thousands of military-age North African men breached the border between Morocco and Spain at Ceuta — overwhelming local law enforcement, with at least nine people killed in the chaos. Spain's Supreme Court recently ruled that sea arrivals cannot be deported without due process hearings. Most of Spain's borders are water.

We also cover the WNBA's latest self-inflicted embarrassment — the league itself posted and then deleted a video from All-Star Weekend showing Dallas Wings guard Paige Bueckers and Atlanta Dream forward Angel Reese apparently agreeing to a $400 bet on the outcome of a game between their own teams. The WNBA's own rulebook explicitly prohibits players from wagering on league games, with penalties ranging from fines to lifetime bans. We ask the obvious question: what are the odds that Angel Reese faces the same consequences Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham would face in the same situation?

Our American Mamas Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson respond to a listener question about the growing number of rules new parents are imposing on grandparents before they can see a newborn — mandatory vaccinations, isolation periods, mask requirements, no kissing — and trace it directly to the damage Anthony Fauci did to medical credibility during COVID. A generation raised on social media sees the exception, not the rule, and draws sweeping conclusions from rare worst-case scenarios. Teri's advice: get the vaccines with 50-year safety records, do your research on the newer ones, and for the love of everything good — let grandparents kiss the babies.

We dig into a J7 report — tracking antisemitic violence in the seven countries with the largest Jewish populations outside Israel — which found that 2025 was the deadliest year for antisemitic attacks in the Western world since 1994. There were 23,000 antisemitic attacks in those seven countries last year alone, including 20 murders of Jewish people motivated by hatred of Jews — three in the United States. We trace the rise to mainstream media coverage of Israel's response to October 7th that portrayed military action against a terrorist organization as genocide — providing ideological cover for people who were already antisemitic to act. We also connect it to the intersectionality framework that positions whoever appears most oppressed as the default sympathetic party — a framework that simultaneously claims to support women, gay people, and Palestinians, without reckoning with the fact that none of those three positions are compatible with each other under Hamas governance.

For our first Bright Spot, President Trump announced that Middle East mediators — including Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey — have reached an agreement on the complete disarmament of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza, with a phased plan to rebuild Gaza, establish a new Palestinian government, and guarantee Israel's security. We call it what it is: not a ceasefire, not a pause, but a structured plan — and potentially the most significant Middle East development in a generation.

For our second Bright Spot, the island nation of Micronesia — 75,000 people spread across 607 islands in the South Pacific — used to charge $65 per megabit per second per month for internet access because the government ran the only internet provider. When the government ended its monopoly and allowed private companies in — including Starlink — the price dropped 99% to 78 cents per megabit and internet access jumped from nearly nothing to 88% of the population. All they did was end the government monopoly. We connect it directly to New York City's government grocery store plan — and suggest Mamdani study Micronesia before he opens his first store.

We also cover New York City bodegas allegedly allowing customers to use EBT food stamp cards to purchase kratom — an herbal extract not approved as food, a drug, or a dietary supplement — and potentially THC products. We call it what it is: SNAP trafficking, a federal crime that diverts money intended for nutrition into products that have nothing to do with nutrition.

We also note that families of 9/11 victims are asking organizers of the 25th anniversary Ground Zero memorial to bar Mayor Mamdani from attending — citing his political positions, his anti-Semitic endorsements, and his statement during his campaign that the worst thing about 9/11 was that his aunt feared people were looking at her suspiciously. We say that day belongs to the families and to the fallen — and that Mamdani would be a distraction from both.

And we close with 73-year-old Dave Whitlow of Richmond, Virginia — who has spent eight years volunteering twice a week at the Children's Hospital of Richmond as a professional cuddler of premature babies. On busy days he holds eight different babies, some weighing less than two pounds, giving them the human contact their developing systems need. As he places each one back into their NICU bed, he tells them the same thing: grow strong, grow smart, grow kind. May your pursuit of happiness bring you joy.

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