You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for September 11, 2026. We open in New Orleans, where NOPD, the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, State Police, the National Guard, and the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office all say they've gathered intelligence pointing to another illegal street takeover this weekend — the kind where stunt drivers, promoters, and spectators flood an intersection, block traffic, and spin five-thousand-pound cars through smoke while crowds stand six feet away with their phones out. After a takeover event back in June, law enforcement says they're not looking the other way this time, and Louisiana's new reckless operation law, effective August 1st, now allows qualifying vehicles to be seized for forfeiture. We talk about why this isn't the same as hanging out in a parking lot back in the eighties, how a street takeover puts one group's pursuit of happiness ahead of everybody else's right to travel, and what happens when kids grow up without anyone in their lives telling them there are consequences. In the Top 3 things you need to know, LSU walks away without sanctions after the SEC's video conference meeting, following the league's suit over the school's effort to put former NFL players on its roster and the dropped proposal to remove LSU from the conference. The first cannabis dispensary opens on Bourbon Street — three stories, 1,600 square feet of retail, telehealth consultations for medical cards, and neighbors already complaining about the smell. And Azimuth Renewables holds an option on more than a thousand acres north of Moss Bluff for a proposed data center, though the land is zoned agricultural and State Rep Brett Gaiman says the community will be firmly opposed. Then we get into childcare, where a new survey finds more than 600 early childhood education providers are watching their costs outrun their revenue, absorbing the difference rather than passing it to families, with three-fourths unsure they can stay open another six months. We dig into insurance costs, the accumulated consequences of decades of policy decisions, whether excessive regulation is part of the squeeze — including the daycare that could hand out packaged cookies but needed a food prep license to peel a banana — and why the answer isn't government paying for childcare but government getting out of the way. Digging Deep takes us to the LIV golf deal, where Louisiana put taxpayer money behind a tournament that isn't happening and a league now in bankruptcy, plus millions more toward renovations at Bayou Oaks at City Park. We make the conservative case plainly: government has no business funding sporting events, the economic impact projections almost never pan out, and Republicans in this state will lose voters if they don't relearn that lesson. On the 25th anniversary of September 11th, we look at newly declassified presidential daily briefings stretching from December 1998 through the morning of the attacks, including the August 6, 2001 briefing delivered to President Bush in Crawford. We go back and forth hard on this one — how much of it was actionable, what confidence levels were attached, whether seven or eight mentions across roughly 900 days should have triggered action on airport security and flight schools, and whether we're all just playing Monday morning quarterback 25 years later. We also mark Nashville's airport being renamed in honor of Dolly Parton and talk about a woman who managed to bring people together across every line in America by simply being herself. Then we play a game on state unemployment rates, where the national number holds near 4.3% but the top ten tells a story: Oregon and Connecticut lead at 5.2%, and not one red state makes the list, while the Dakotas sit at the bottom. And we close with AOC crediting divine intervention for Utah's redrawn congressional maps — and ask whether she'd apply that same theology to Texas, to Maryland, and to two Trump elections. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776.
