Who Is Funding Traveling ICE Protesters?

Tuesday, June 9, 2026

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for June 8, 2026.

We open with Border Czar Tom Holman's revelation that the protesters outside the Delaney Hall ICE detention center in Newark are not grassroots New Jersey residents — they are professional travel protesters identified by facial recognition as having shown up at ICE facilities across the country, many from Portland and Minnesota. We explain why this isn't surprising, why Nancy Pelosi herself coined the term astroturf back in 2010 to describe the exact same tactic, and why the left's first instinct is always to accuse their opponents of the strategies they're already executing. We also ask the question nobody in the media is asking — who is funding this, and why haven't the organizers been charged under the RICO Act for coordinating criminal activity across state lines?

In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, Spencer Pratt has apparently been eliminated from the Los Angeles mayor's race — after holding a clear second place on Election Day, his vote share in ballots arriving after Election Day collapsed from 28% to 19%, while Democratic socialist Nithya Raman went from third place to first, gaining 17 percentage points in post-Election Day ballots to overtake both Pratt and Karen Bass. The DOJ is in California investigating the election. Then a 200-page House Oversight Committee report accuses Minnesota Governor Tim Walz of covering up massive Medicaid fraud in his state — including ordering employees to stop investigating fraud in Somali immigrant communities to avoid appearing racist, and then turning the investigative apparatus against the whistleblowers themselves, photographing their cars, monitoring their phones and computers, and finding out where their children went to school. And a nonprofit filed a lawsuit to stop the UFC fight on the White House lawn, claiming it violates federal law and an environmental impact study wasn't conducted before the temporary stadium was built.

We discuss President Trump walking out of his interview with Kristen Welker — and our American Mama Teri Netterville says what millions of Americans were thinking when they watched it. We talk about the growing gap between what the media is willing to report on Republicans versus Democrats, how the same anchor who challenges Trump's claim that Capitol Police let protesters into the Capitol has shown that footage on her own broadcast, and why after years of being asked to sit down with people who are going to misrepresent everything he says, the president finally said enough.

We also weigh in on Steven Spielberg's new movie Disclosure Day, in which he says he believes aliens have been here, that they are here, and that his film will leave Christians questioning their faith in God. We respectfully decline. We also note that he seems considerably less eager to challenge the faith of groups that don't respond with patience.

In our Digging Deep segment, Scott Pelley went to the New York Times after being fired from CBS and complained that his new boss suggested the public thinks CBS is biased — and Pelley demanded to know what evidence exists for that claim. We provide the evidence. Gallup's 2024 poll showed only 31% of Americans had any trust in mass media — the lowest since 1972. In 2025 it dropped to 28%. An Emerson College poll from 2025 found only 18% of Americans have a great deal of trust in national news organizations. Half of Americans believe news organizations deliberately mislead them. AllSides rates CBS with the same left-leaning bias as CNN, the New York Times, NPR, and the Washington Post. All of this was available on the first page of a single search engine query. We say if Pelley couldn't find it, he should have been fired for incompetence, not just insubordination.

We cover WNBA player Breonna Turner's objection to the USA 250 anniversary patch on WNBA jerseys — because, she says, none of the players would have been free 250 years ago. We note that basketball wasn't invented until 1891, and more importantly, that America's 250th anniversary is a celebration not of perfection but of the principles in the Declaration of Independence that Martin Luther King himself called a promissory note — the promise that made her freedom possible.

For our Bright Spot, the Department of Energy announced last week that a new nuclear reactor reached zero power fueled criticality at a lab in Idaho — the first reactor in 40 years to reach criticality in the United States — a month ahead of President Trump's July 4th deadline that most experts said was impossible. We explain what zero power criticality means, why micro-reactors are a game changer for energy independence, why the U.S. Navy has operated nuclear reactors on submarines and aircraft carriers since the 1950s with zero accidents, and why the future belongs to nations with abundant, affordable, and reliable energy.

And we close with Hakeem Jeffries apparently trying to launch his own Contract with America — assembling a Democratic affordability agenda with AOC in charge of healthcare and a transgender member of Congress in charge of caregiving. We wish him luck. We also close with 1,000 avocado growers in the Mexican state of Michoacán setting a world record with 15,000 pounds of guacamole. 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!

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