Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speaks about how President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency cuts are impacting Social Security on May 5, 2025. (Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
On August 14, 1935, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, the foundation of the social safety net in the United States. The Roosevelt Institute recognized that 90th anniversary yesterday with a post from FDR’s grandson Jim Roosevelt—who’s sounding the alarm about what’s at stake.
“The program my grandfather signed into law on this day in 1935 is under attack,” Roosevelt writes, “not just in rhetoric, but through deliberate acts of administrative sabotage.”
“Let’s be honest about what this is. It’s a naked attempt to rewrite the American social contract,” Roosevelt writes. “But I’m here to say: not on our watch.”
In a phenomenon Opoku-Agyeman terms “the double tax,” data reveal not only that women incur higher costs than men, but also that Black and white women lead vastly different lives, marked by dramatic gaps in job opportunities, salaries, housing costs, childcare access, and generational wealth. Her book details these findings and offers concrete solutions for how to level the playing field.
On the care economy: Roosevelt Senior Fellow Lenore Palladino spoke with Ms. Magazine about gender divisions in the workforce: “Framing care work not as something that’s about the home, but is about our economy, and the jobs that we have now, and the jobs that we’re going to have in the future, and making them quality jobs so that men will take them, is actually key.”
On AI: Roosevelt Fellow Samantha Shorey spoke to Marketplace about the pitfalls associated with replacing government workers’ roles with AI technology. She points out how AI systems that are introduced with the intention of saving time can sometimes result in more work.
