Abolish the Senate? What the Democratic Socialists Really Want

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

We start with House Speaker Mike Johnson’s USA Today op-ed warning that even a narrow Democratic House majority could end up depending on the party’s socialist wing. We look at the Democratic Socialists of America’s proposals to abolish the Senate and the Electoral College and to put the presidency and the Supreme Court under Congress. Then we ask where the checks and balances would go, and what each generation has to decide to preserve and what it is willing to throw away.

In the Top 3 Things You Need to Know, the Justice Department arrests six people in Alabama, including a former Alabama basketball player, over an alleged tax fraud scheme that claimed $177 million in refunds on 9,000 bogus returns. ICE’s Lone Star Mission arrests more than 4,100 illegal aliens in Texas in just ten days, with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin crediting cooperation with local law enforcement. The FBI raids more than 20 suspected Medicaid fraud locations across Minneapolis and St. Paul, and Attorney General Keith Ellison says his office cooperated.

We also get into Iran, where Qatari mediators have arrived in Tehran for another round of talks, and we ask whether any deal can be struck without having to trust the regime.

On American Mamas, Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson take on a listener’s question: is it a bad idea to trust people with your business ideas? They share stories of ideas taken and ideas never pursued, and we pass along a pastor’s advice about “give-up goals” and “go-up goals.”

Next we cover the uproar in Alaska over a second Dan Sullivan on the ballot, which even the ladies of The View are criticizing. We also talk about what counts as a wave election and what it takes for power to change hands.

In Digging Deep, we look at how much government debt you owe, using Reason’s rankings of per capita state and local debt. New York tops the list at more than $37,000 per person, while Idaho sits near the bottom at about $6,000. We also look at which parties run the states at each end of the list and what people leaving high-debt states does to the math.

Then we turn to a youth flag football game gone wrong, where a postgame hair-pulling led to an adult allegedly putting a 15-year-old in a chokehold, and we ask where the grown-ups were. On Fake News Friday, we test our own instincts with real news, fake news and really fake news, including a fake Dan Sullivan prank claim, a zombie Mitch McConnell, resealable Cheerios bags, Talarico’s classroom numbers, My Chemical Romance’s fake cheerleader gunfight and The Goshfather. Free candy is on the line.

We close with a look at Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy’s warning that the state may need to consider withholding certification if the investigation finds wrongdoing. Our Bright Spot is the story of Marilyn Hampton, who spent 39 years as a custodian at Aubrey ISD in Texas and was surprised when the district named a new elementary school after her.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776.

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