This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years, and now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint.
It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America 250.
America's Block Party is a can't-miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Experience music performances from major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving Forth, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history. It's more than just fireworks. Learn more about this landmark celebration at America250.org. What's up y'all?
Summer's got a different tempo. Everything's a little looser, brighter. One plan turns into another. You hear something, you stay a little longer.
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Sometimes it's just about what's in your hand. that color. That chill, the new tropical butterfly refresher from Starbucks. guava and passion fruit flavors with mango pineapple flavored pearls. Yeah.
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I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we could calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting.
Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America. Do you want to find a stress free way to buy your next car? Start at CarMax and shop your way.
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Up next, another installment of our Story of Us, the Story of America series with Hillsdale College professor and author of the terrific book Land of Hope, Dr. Bill McClay. By 1901, the ragtag movement of disillusioned farmers and small business owners that William Jennings Bryan had kick-started on the prairies. had morphed into something more professional.
Something more serious. but it would be an unlikely figure who carried progressivism into the White House. A New Yorker born into wealth. who became a cowboy, a war hero, and someone who was never meant to become president in the first place. Theodore Roosevelt.
Let's get into this story. Take it away, Bill. It had been a very rough six months for the very active Roosevelt, who was not exactly a good fit for the essentially honorific position of Vice President. Even his own party wondered if he was the right man for the office. A friend of McKinley's once told the president it was a mistake to make Roosevelt his vice president.
I asked him if he realized what would happen if he should die.
Now look, that damn cowboy is pressing it. But he was more than just a mere cowboy. Uh Born in New York City to wealth, the most defining aspect of his early life. Was his near constant struggle? with his health.
Asthma, chronic headaches, terrible fevers, profound stomach pain, and very poor eyesight to boot. These struggles would come to define his character and shape the rest of his life. Because rather than let health burdens stop him, Roosevelt would instead fiercely pursue a physical regimen that would help him overcome his health problems. There was plenty of weightlifting, but also boxing and wrestling. There were gymnastics, hiking, horseback riding, swimming and rowing too.
He built up tremendous strength and he rarely missed the opportunity to display his strength to others. The physical regimen was matched by the development of his mind. Homeschooled for much of his youth, he was a prodigy of sorts. At Harvard, he would compile a book on birds and a book on the naval war of 1812, showcasing the depth and breadth of his interests. His book about the Navy was good enough to be published, and to this day, it is a real standard of research on the subject.
Was there anything people wondered that this young man couldn't do?
Well, what interested Roosevelt more than anything was politics. He began his career in New York State Assembly, where he served for several years, and then came a profound personal tragedy, the death of his wife. Roosevelt would flee to North Dakota to escape from life. only to find a new one there. On his return home, he rose quickly through local politics, becoming New York City's police commissioner.
and then rising to Assistant Secretary of the United States Navy. He would then become governor of his home state and soon thereafter Vice President of the United States. And as he rose, he would create what became his own unique philosophy of governing. Just as Roosevelt was rather aggressive in his physical life, so too was he aggressive in his political life. He saw government as an instrument to do good for the people and make their lives better.
In this regard, Roosevelt was an activist of the highest order. Roosevelt was no socialist either. He deeply distrusted the political system based on redistribution of wealth and no property ownership. He knew it was too radical for Americans. He didn't want to see himself as a political radical.
but rather as a reformer.
So what Roosevelt tried to do was to balance between those two spaces. Determined to reassert executive power and to expand it. Roosevelt was also not a man who would show much deference, let alone respect. To the Constitution. He was about to change not just the nature of the executive branch, but address as president what he considered to be a threat to the public.
Large corporations and trusts with great power. He wanted great executive power, he reasoned, to combat great concentrated industrial power. Here are some excerpts from his very first annual message to Congress. There is a widespread conviction that the great corporations known as trusts are in certain of their features and tendencies. hurtful to the general welfare of time.
This springs from no spirit of envy or uncharitableness, nor lack of pride in the great industrial achievements that have placed this country at the head of the nations. Nor upon ignorance of the fact that combination of capital in the efforts to accomplish great things is necessary. when the world's progress demands that great things be done. It is based upon sincere conviction that combination and concentration should be not prohibited. But supervised.
and within reasonable limits, controlled. And in my judgment, this conviction is right. It is no limitation upon property rights, of freedom of contract. To require that when men receive from government the privilege of doing business under corporate forms, which frees them from individual responsibility, they shall do so upon absolutely truthful representations as to the value of the property in which the capital is to be invested. Corporations engaged in interstate commerce should be regulated if they're found to exercise a license working to the public injury.
It should be as much the aim of those who seek for social betterment. to rid the business world of crimes of cunning. As to rid the entire body politic of crimes of violence. Great corporations exist only because they're created and safeguarded by our institutions. And it's therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with those institutions.
Then came Roosevelt's take on the Constitution, and it couldn't be more clear that the Constitution was obsolete in his eyes. When the Constitution was adopted, no human wisdom could foretell the sweeping changes which were to take place by the beginning of the 19th century. At that time, it was accepted as a matter of course that the several states Were the proper authorities to regulate the comparatively insignificant and strictly localized corporate bodies of the day? The conditions are now wholly different, and wholly different action is called for. There should be created a cabinet officer to be known as Secretary of Commerce and Industries.
It should be his province to deal with commerce in its broadest sense, including whatever concerns labor and all matters affecting the great business corporations and our merchant marine. What should be a comprehensive and far-reaching scheme of constructive statesmanship for the purpose of broadening our markets, securing our business interests on a safe basis, and making firm our new position while scrupulously safeguarding the rights of wage workers and capitalists, so as to secure equity between man and man in this republic.
Well. Talk about a power grab. Roosevelt's utter dismissal of the Constitution and its relevance was profound, to say the least. He argued in short. that he had the power to do anything the Constitution didn't prohibit.
He didn't see the Constitution as a charter of enumerated and very specific powers. The President was the single man who had the power to manage the day-to-day affairs of America's House. There's a Yiddish term for Roosevelt's audacity, chutzpah, and Roosevelt had it in abundance. By 1902, Roosevelt had hit his stride. He'd come up with a bold plan that he called the Square Deal.
What he hoped to convey was this: it was a new kind of president. who didn't put the interest of business and commerce over the workers or the labor force, but would instead balance these two competing interests and treat them fairly and equally. A square deal. Roosevelt got his chance to showcase his new leadership with the coal miners' strike of 1902. When the owners of the mines wouldn't negotiate and the country was on the verge of a very long and very cold winter, Roosevelt flexed his executive power muscles and threatened to send in the army.
run the mines. Roosevelt was quite blunt. To hell with the Constitution when the people want coal. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to Professor Bill McClay.
He teaches at Hillsdale College, where you can go to learn all the things that are good in life. And all the things that are beautiful in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses. I've taken most of them, and you should too. Go to hillsdale.edu.
Do a sit-down with your family. It'll be well worth your time. The Story of America series, The Story of Us. Here on Our American Stories. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans.
It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues.
Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a can't-miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Experience music performances from major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving Forth, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history.
It's more than just fireworks. Learn more about this landmark celebration at America250.org. I'm U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. We all seem to be in a rush these days, but when you're behind the wheel, please do not speed.
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