You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for July 24, 2026. We open with California's mail-in ballot system — and the 150,000 ballots rejected in the June primary as invalid. Out of 8.5 million ballots returned, nearly 94,000 arrived too late and another 50,000 failed signature verification. We connect it to the Los Angeles mayor's race, where Spencer Pratt held second place in ballots received before Election Day — and then mysteriously dropped to third as post-Election Day ballots arrived and a democratic socialist surged from third to first. We explain why California's system — which mails ballots to every registered voter, accepts them up to seven days after Election Day, and allows signature corrections after the fact — is designed for maximum permissiveness rather than maximum integrity. We also note that the pressure from Trump's DOJ is producing results: states are now publicly acknowledging ballot problems they would have quietly buried before. In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, President Trump issued new tariffs on 60 countries — including Canada, Mexico, the UK, and EU members — based on a new legal justification targeting forced labor in supply chains, after the Supreme Court struck down his prior tariff authority earlier this year. Then four Somali immigrants in Minnesota pled guilty to defrauding Medicaid out of millions by using AI to fabricate patient notes for medical visits that never happened, billing the government for fictional services through a fake company called Brilliant Minds Services LLC. And the Democratic Party announced its 2028 primary schedule — placing South Carolina first because of its higher proportion of Black voters, a state Democrats haven't won in a presidential election since Jimmy Carter in 1976. We call it what it is: racial politics dressed up as party reform. We also cover the man who disguised himself as a police officer and murdered Minnesota state Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband in a politically motivated attack — sentenced this week to life in prison. We say plainly: political violence cannot be given an inch, regardless of who commits it or who the targets are. What happens in Mexico — where candidates are killed and hung from bridges — cannot be allowed to happen here. We dig deep into a congressional reform proposal with two straightforward components that somehow don't already exist. First, ban members of Congress from having sexual relationships with congressional staffers — including colleagues' staffers, not just their own. Second, require FBI background checks for all House employees within 30 days of starting work, plus a foreign influence disclosure form requiring staffers to reveal any contracts or payments from foreign governments within the past three years. We explain why both of these are urgent: active investigations currently implicate congressional staffers as potential agents of Qatar, China, and Cuba — multiple cases involving China and Cuba alone. Congressional staffers write the bills, negotiate in back rooms, and exercise enormous real power. We should know who they are and who is paying them. Our American Mamas Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson revisit the question of how to find couple friends — and arrive at the same beautiful, frustrating conclusion they always do. Couple friendship is seasonal, it's fragile, it's devastated by divorce, and it is almost impossible to manufacture. The best couple friends come through your children's sports, through shared seasons of life, and occasionally through the miraculous coincidence of your children marrying each other's best friends' children. Guys don't have friends — they have wives. And their wives have friends. And those friends have husbands. That's the whole system. We also cover LeBron James signing with the Philadelphia 76ers — and President Trump's answer when asked in the Oval Office whether LeBron or Michael Jordan is the greatest of all time. Trump said he only likes people who like him, and therefore: Michael Jordan, all the way. We agree with the conclusion if not necessarily the methodology. We also discuss John Fetterman's midterm strategy advice for Democrats — delivered in his signature style: don't be weird, don't be communist, don't be weirdo socialist, don't praise Mao, and don't do crazy stuff. We call it the most useful political advice any Democrat has given their party in years, and note that it will almost certainly be ignored. Then it's Fake News Friday — including whether Mamdani admitted he lacks authority to invade Poland, whether the EU makes more fining U.S. tech companies than taxing its own, whether right-wing extremists in the UK were arrested for planning to disrupt Muslim events, whether a Minnesota woman was convicted of saying a slur to a Somali man accused of rape who was never prosecuted, whether Ben Franklin performed electroshock experiments on slaves, whether the Smithsonian put that in a museum exhibit, whether Trump announced a third-term run, whether a New York school district hired a robot teacher, and whether the Obama Presidential Library stiffed its plumber out of nearly $4 million. Sophie Cunningham's shoes sold out in under 24 hours. We couldn't get any for prizes. For our Bright Spot, Paul Jackson was driving on I-5 near Seattle when he spotted an SUV drifting across three lanes with an unconscious driver and a terrified child in the back seat. He pulled alongside the out-of-control vehicle, wedged it against the concrete barrier, brought both cars to a stop, jumped out, put the SUV in park, and stayed with the woman and child until emergency services arrived. Quick thinking, steady hands, and the willingness to act. May your pursuit of happiness bring you joy. 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.
