Franklin Roosevelt

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/7/2022
  

  Stephen Vladeck: Bring Back the Second Part of FDR's SCOTUS Reform Plan

  by Stephen Vladeck

  As the Supreme Court adopts a posture of governing by injunction before lower court appeals run their course, should revive FDR's proposal that cases seeking to throw out state or federal rules be heard by special panels, not single judges chosen through jurisdiction-shopping. 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  11/8/2021
  

  TNR Editor: Actually, Biden Was Elected to Be an FDR

  If Democratic moderates want their president and their party to succeed, they need to grapple with the political decisions that have destroyed public investment and transferred the nation's wealth upward to the rich, and think of the present as a crisis comparable to the Great Depression. 

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• 10/17/2021
  

  “Some of Our Superpatriots are Simply Going Crazy”: America's Response to the Fall of France

  by Michael S. Neiberg

  The fall of France in 1940 disrupted Americans' understandings of their stable and secure place in the world. One response was intense nativism and paranoia about spies and subversives that resonate with today's pandemic response.

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• SOURCE: New York Magazine
  10/10/2021
  

  Has Biden's FDR Dream Hit the Rocks?

  Joe Biden must have expected unified Republican opposition and betrayal by Democratic moderates, but probably not so quickly. 

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• 10/3/2021
  

  Ending COVID in Our Lifetimes Requires Seeing the Bonds of Shared Humanity

  by Michael Hogan

  "In the end, like those who sought to escape the plague in Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death,” we are all vulnerable and at risk if we do not look to see that our fellow human beings both at home and abroad are safeguarded as well."

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• SOURCE: Democracy
  8/31/2021
  

  Wartime Wisdom to Combat Inflation

  by David Stein

  Today, monetary policy controlled by the Federal Reserve is the only tool commonly used to control inflation, pitting controlling prices against full employment and wage growth. The history of the World War II Office of Price Administration reveals other possibilities. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/2/2021
  

  A Century Ago, FDR Was Stricken with Polio, Changing History

  "It was a transformative moment in American history, and the start of the “central event” in the life of one of the country’s greatest presidents, historian Hugh Gregory Gallagher has written."

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  7/26/2021
  

  What is Left of the New Deal?

  by Michael Kazin

  Eric Rauchway's book on the New Deal stresses that FDR believed democracy could survive only if people accepted, and government supported, their mutual dependence on one another. Preserving the New Deal political order means recognizing and celebrating its tangible achievements. 

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• 5/16/2021
  

  FDR's Indispensable Right-Hand Woman Portrayed Unfairly – Again

  by Kathryn Smith

  A new PBS series on the Norwegian Royal Family's contact with FDR at the outset of World War II takes some liberties with the facts, but is particularly unfair to Marguerite LeHand, who was Roosevelt's de facto chief of staff for years. 

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• SOURCE: KPFA
  5/10/2021
  

  Why the New Deal Still Matters Today

  Eric Rauchway of UC Davis joins Letters and Poltics on Pacifica Radio to discuss the ongoing legacy of the New Deal.   

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  5/1/2021
  

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

  by Jordan Weissmann

  The first 100 days of the New Deal could be described as disaster response. The second 100 days, according to historians William Leuchtenberg, Erich Rauchway and David Kennedy, were when the administration took steps that transformed labor relations and birthed a modern social welfare state. 

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• 5/2/2021
  

  FDR's Court Packing Plan Backfired in the South. Will Biden Repeat The Error?

  by James C. Cobb

  FDR's court packing efforts were based in a miscalculation of the president's political capital, especially with southern Democrats. It seems like Joe Biden is working to avoid similar overreach.

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• SOURCE: HuffPost
  4/28/2021
  

  Joe Biden Wants An ‘FDR-Size Presidency.’ What Does That Even Mean?

  The proposed dollar value of spending in Biden's recovery plan isn't the best measure of comparison to the New Deal. Does the plan assume the society is basically sound and in need of "bailing out" or unsound and in need of restructuring? Historian Eric Rauchway explains. 

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• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  4/28/2021
  

  The Original Sin of America’s Broken Immigration Courts

  A decision made by Franklin Roosevelt to move immigration services from jurisdiction of the Department of Labor to the Department of Justice laid the groundwork for criminalizing immigration and for abusive practices that came to light in the most recent administration. 

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• SOURCE: PBS News Hour
  4/25/2021
  

  Does a President’s First 100 Days Reveal Anything About the Next Four Years?

  Does a President's "First 100 Days" really tell anything useful about the course of a presidency? PBS News Hour compares Biden to some past Presidents. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/16/2021
  

  F.D.R. Didn’t Just Fix the Economy

  Times columnist Jamelle Bouie draws on the work of historian Eric Rauchway to argue that Franklin Roosevelt envisioned the New Deal as a renewal of core democratic principles that the government should serve the needs of the people and be accountable to them. 

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• 4/18/2021
  

  Review: "The Third Man: Churchill, Roosevelt, Mackenzie King, and the Untold Friendships that Won WWII"

  by Walter G. Moss

  Canadian Prime Minister William Mackenzie King kept a voluminous diary that is an incredible source of insight into his role as a witness (and often an influencer) to the wartime and post-World War II leadership of Roosevelt and Churchill. A new book distills the 30,000 pages of the diary. 

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• SOURCE: Oxford (OH) Observer
  4/9/2021
  

  Miami Professor Writes Book for Young Readers about Roosevelt’s Fight with Polio

  Journalism professor and FDR biographer James Tobin describes the work of making the story of Roosevelt's battle with polio and its effect on his political life accessible to young readers.

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• SOURCE: New Statesman
  4/6/2021
  

  Can Joe Biden Replicate FDR’s Success in Rebuilding the Democrats’ Coalition?

  Eric Rauchway's latest book on the FDR era shows that the New Deal was a complex undertaking, administered often through local channels, which meant it sometimes enabled democracy and sometimes suppressed it. The Biden administration can win allegiance from voters by expanding the safety net and strategic spending, but it won't be simple. 

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• 3/14/2021
  

  FDR and the Need for Truth

  by Stephen Dando-Collins

  Franklin Roosevelt took a novel approach to handling bad domestic and military news in 1943, amid stiff political opposition: showing the public the hard truth about the Pacific War.