The legacy and programs of FDR, who died 80 years ago today, are at risk of being dismantled

I have a thing about remembering dates, so when I see a certain date on the calendar, or one approaching, I can usually attach to it a memory or some historical significance. April 12 is one of those dates because that’s the day President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died at age 63 in Warm Springs, Georgia. That was 80 years ago today.

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And I remember it because of my great-grandmother. She gave me her yellowed scrapbook of President Franklin D. Roosevelt when I was a child, and that I think instilled my love for politics in me.

The last pages of that scrapbook were newspaper clippings she compiled about his death. I just remember reading about his passing and how the nation was torn apart. FDR was monumental, irreplaceable to many. He had borne the burden of the nation through depression and war for 12 years. He was our longest serving president during one of America’s most trying times.

Eighty years later, as we mark the anniversary of FDR’s death, we are not just remembering the man, but horrifically, we are watching his life's work be gutted in real time by the destruction of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and House Republicans.

Roosevelt didn’t just steer America through crises, he reimagined the role of government as a bulwark against despair. With the New Deal, he built the very scaffolding that still holds this country aloft. His programs included Social Security, unemployment insurance, public jobs programs, and labor protections.

Later, his vision was expanded by others through Medicare and Medicaid, legacies of a philosophy that believed government should do more than stand by while citizens suffered. His was a presidency rooted in moral clarity: that the measure of a nation was not its GDP, for example, but how it treated the vulnerable.

That clarity, that empathy, and that vision are now under siege.

Since Trump returned to the White House in January, his administration has launched an all-out assault on the programs that Roosevelt either created or inspired. With cold efficiency and political vengeance, the Trump team has worked to dismantle these lifelines, cloaking cruelty in the language of “efficiency” and “fiscal responsibility.”

Musk, the richest man in the world, is not “efficient” but rather oblivious to how the programs FDR launched and inspired help those in need. Make no mistake, Trump and Musk’s assault on these programs is not about saving money. It is about erasing a vision of America where dignity is not tied to wealth.

In a move that Roosevelt himself would have perhaps called economic treachery (FDR famously used this word.), the Trump administration is pushing through a sweeping budget that slashes over a trillion dollars from social spending programs over the next decade.

Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income Americans, stands directly in the crosshairs. While the administration insists Medicaid won’t be cut, the numbers tell a different story. To meet Trump’s proposed spending reductions, Congress is being asked to starve the very programs that Roosevelt would have defended with righteous fury.

Even Social Security, long considered the “third rail” of American politics, has not been spared. The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (ironically named DOGE) has moved to slash staffing at 41 Social Security offices, some by by 25 percent or more, even up to 58 percent, with more closures to come.

As I wrote previously, these offices are lifelines for the elderly and disabled, and cutting their staff is akin to cutting off oxygen. Roosevelt once described Social Security as a “measure of justice.” And my aunt who spent 38 years working at Social Security rightly called it the “backbone of America.” What justice is there in forcing seniors to wait months for a benefit they’ve earned through decades of work?

In fact, FDR’s grandson recognizes the threat posed to Social Security, and he’s taking steps to try to save it.

And surely FDR is turning in his grave to see Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lead the Department of Health and Human Services. This is the same guy who tried to get regulators to withdraw the approval of the polio vaccine.

FDR developed polio in 1921, and the disease left him disabled. If you want to talk about besmirching FDR’s legacy, how about trying to get rid of the polio vaccine so that more people could suffer like Roosevelt did?

What’s perhaps most chilling is not the speed of these cuts and Kennedy’s passion for ridding the world of vaccines like polio but the silence surrounding them. There is no fireside chat — Roosevelt used these to effectively communicate with the country. There is no shared national mission — Roosevelt successfully calling on Americans to band together for the good of the country.

Instead, there is a cruel parody of leadership, and that is budget documents laced with cuts so deep they’ll bleed entire communities dry, paired with press conferences that mock the very people whose lives depend on these programs. And even worse, the cutoff of communication about the cutoff of lifesaving programs.

It is hard to imagine Roosevelt responding to rising poverty by taking a chain saw to the programs designed to prevent it. It is harder still to imagine him boasting, as Trump recently said that government workers must “prove they’re worth their paycheck,” as though public service were a moral failing.

FDR believed government was a force for good, a radical notion then and apparently now. “The test of our progress,” he said, “is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

That test is being flunked, deliberately, by an administration determined to bury Roosevelt’s legacy alongside him.

What is at stake is more than a budget line. It is a vision of America that believes the social contract is sacred, that a government of, by, and for the people does not abandon its most vulnerable. Roosevelt gave us that vision when we needed it most. Now, in the shadow of his memory, we must defend it with equal resolve.

Eighty years ago, a president died in the service of an idea, that democracy works best when it works for everyone. If we let that idea die too, if we trade compassion for cruelty, stewardship for spite as Trump is doing, then we are not just betraying Roosevelt’s memory. We are betraying ourselves.

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