Hey everyone, Jody Abergan here. Welcome to This Day, a history show from Radiotopia.

Now, on Sundays from time to time, we try and do these episodes that we call Some Sunday context,

giving you a little historical perspective on the big stories of the moment. And Lord knows,

coming off the week we just had, we need some perspective. One of the big stories this past week was that we saw a number of Supreme Court rulings

that are redefining executive power and judicial power, offering support for many of the

moves that the Trump administration is taking and maybe more importantly, undermining

some of the checks on those moves from the judiciary.

Thinking about that and thinking

about some important perspective, I almost re-ran an episode here that we did on court packing,

attempts to try and reshape and expand the court in order to rebalance power. Because a lot of people,

at least a lot of progressives, think that one of the only ways to really turn things around,

given the current makeup of the Supreme Court, will be to reshape the judiciary.

So we're not going to run that here, but if you want to go listen to the episode we did on

FDR's failed attempt to pack the courts, you can go find that in the archives.

We'll post a link to it on social and in the newsletter.

But instead, for some context today, here is an episode tied to 4th of July.

It is indeed 4th of July week here in the United States.

And yes, it's a great time for barbecues and beaches and swimming.

And I will be doing all three of those later this week.

But I suppose it's as good of a time as any to also think about this country's founding principles,

founding documents, and that thorny question about what this American experiment of ours is really

all about. So here's an episode we did about an anti-slavery protest that took place on the 4th of

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