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Social Security Act of 1935

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Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act.

This Amazing Woman is the Forgotten Architect of the American Social Security System

You can thank her for your retirement benefits.
by Stephanie Buck via Timeline on June 8, 2017
Francis Townsend
partner

Creating the “Senior Citizen” Political Identity

On the movement that fought for old-age pensions during the Great Depression.
by Linda Gordon via HNN on March 19, 2025
Social security administration seal.

Social Security Is Not a Ponzi Scheme

Today’s attacks are just the latest form of backlash to the New Deal.
by Lawrence B. Glickman via Boston Review on March 11, 2025
Supreme Court justice swearing in FDR at inauguration.

When FDR Took On the Supreme Court

The standard narrative of Roosevelt's court-packing efforts casts them as a failure. But what if they were a success?
by John Fabian Witt via The Nation on June 27, 2023
A group of white veteran students in 1945, beneficiaries of the GI Bill.

The Blindness of Colorblindness

Revisiting "When Affirmative Action Was White," nearly two decades on.
by Ira Katznelson via Boston Review on February 6, 2023
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at his desk.

FDR’s Second 100 Days Were Cooler Than His First 100 Days

Let's talk about the period when Roosevelt actually created the modern welfare state.
by Jordan Weissmann via Slate on May 1, 2021
FDR with eyes crossed out with red line

Is It Time to Cancel FDR?

Today’s progressives are children of the old Republican Party, not the New Deal Democrats. Roosevelt and his followers stood for nearly everything they oppose.
by Michael Lind via Tablet on April 11, 2021
Franklin D. Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act with Frances Perkins behind him.

The Woman Who Helped a President Change America During His First 100 Days

Frances Perkins was the first female Cabinet secretary in U.S. history, paving the way for the record number of women serving in President Biden’s Cabinet.
by Ronald G. Shafer via Washington Post on March 14, 2021

The Real History of Race and the New Deal

Material benefits trumped FDR's terrible civil rights records.
by Matthew Yglesias via Slow Boring on December 11, 2020

In America's Panopticon

Sarah Igo’s "The Known Citizen" examines the linked histories of privacy and surveillance in the United States.
by Katie Fitzpatrick via The Nation on December 6, 2018

On Health Care, History is Watching. And it’s Watching Four Senators in Particular.

We should not be surprised by the attacks on Obamacare, they are, in fact, the typical response to social reform.
by E. J. Dionne Jr. via Washington Post on July 16, 2017

Why America Got a Warfare State, Not a Welfare State

How FDR invented national security, and why Democrats need to move on from it.
by Samuel Moyn via The New Republic on June 26, 2025
President Franklin Roosevelt, seated with the CCC.

A Constitutional Rule on Federal Spending

USAID grants may have cracked constitutional spending limits.
by Robert Natelson via Law & Liberty on February 20, 2025
An older man standing outside a restaurant.

Aging Out

Many of us do not go gentle into that good night.
by Anne Matthews via The American Scholar on December 5, 2024
The Executive Board of UCAPAWA in 1937.

Challenging the New Deal’s “Contemptible Neglect”

In the midst of the Great Depression, one CIO union used the new administrative state to influence legislation on behalf of people considered outcasts.
by Jarod Roll via Nonsite on September 21, 2024
People protesting with signs to secure welfare rights.

The Welfare Rights Movement Wanted Society to Value the Work of Child-Rearing

The welfare rights movement of the 1960s and ’70s resisted invasive policies. Their animating vision: that society treat every mother and child with dignity.
by Annelise Orleck, Sasha Lilley via Jacobin on August 17, 2023
Framed photograph of an African-American soldier in Union uniform with wife and two daughters, circa 1863–1865.

Means-Testing Is the Foe of Freedom

After Emancipation, Black people fought for public benefits like pensions that would make their newly won citizenship meaningful.
by Matthew E. Stanley via Jacobin on April 17, 2023
Black and white photo of Eugene Debs being released from an Atlanta federal prison on Christmas Day, 1921.

The American Socialism That Might Have Been

Despite their minority status, the Socialists had been a significant force in American politics before patriotic war hysteria brought on an era of repression.
by Adam Hochschild via The Nation on October 12, 2022
A close up picture of the beginning of the U.S. Constitution

The Constitution Was Meant to Guard Against Oligarchy

A new book aims to recover the Constitution’s pivotal role in shaping claims of justice and equality.
by Chris Lehmann via The New Republic on February 10, 2022
Vice President Harris speaks during a Maternal Health Day of Action event in the South Court Auditorium of the White House in Washington, D.C., Dec. 7.
partner

History Shows How to Fix the U.S.'s Abysmal Maternal and Infant Mortality Rates

The maternal health intervention from a century ago that worked.
by Michelle Bezark via Made By History on December 19, 2021
Picture of Joe Manchin

Joe Manchin’s Deep Corporate Ties

An underexamined aspect of Manchin’s pro-business positions in the Senate is his early membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council.
by Dan Kaufman via The New Yorker on October 26, 2021
Chemical plant worker

Where Would We Be Without the New Deal?

A new history charts the forgotten ways the social politics of the Roosevelt years transformed the United States.
by Michael Kazin via The Nation on July 26, 2021
Undocumented students in support of DACA
partner

Biden Will Allow Undocumented Students To Access Pandemic Relief

For decades, policymakers have debated who may access public education and the social safety net.
by Sarah R. Coleman via Made By History on June 1, 2021
Postcard depicting the Montefiore Hospital in Pittsburgh

The Rise of Healthcare in Steel City

On deindustrialization, the care economy, and the living legacies of the industrial workers’ movement.
by Gabriel Winant, Nick Serpe via Dissent on March 18, 2021
Protesters at a rally for a $15 minimum wage
partner

The Missing Piece of the Minimum Wage Debate

History shows that boosting the minimum wage leads to consumer spending.
by Colleen Doody via Made By History on February 25, 2021
A Japanese mother and daughter, farmworkers in California, photographed in 1937 by Dorothea Lange

Whitewashing the Great Depression

How the preeminent photographic record of the period excluded people of color from the nation’s self-image.
by Sarah Boxer via The Atlantic on November 15, 2020
Donald Trump
partner

Even After Their Fearmongering Proves Wrong, Republicans Keep at It. Here’s Why.

For close to a century, conservatives have seen all government programs as the road to socialism.
by Lawrence B. Glickman via Made By History on August 31, 2020
partner

One Parallel for the Coronavirus Crisis? The Great Depression

“The idea that the federal government would be providing emergency relief and emergency work was extraordinary,” one sociologist said. “And people liked it.”
by Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on May 20, 2020

The Nation’s First Unemployment Check — $15 — and the Love Story that Led to It

During the Great Depression, the daughter of the first Jewish Supreme Court justice and the son of a prominent Christian theologian changed America.
by Michael S. Rosenwald via Retropolis on April 18, 2020

Not So Great

Reflections on the problems with progressives’ central principle that activist government is the only mechanism able to solve a modern society’s problems.
by William Voegeli via The New Criterion on February 27, 2020
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