A day without smoke.

August 1, 2021

Sun Valley, Idaho

Love this…had no idea.

President Roosevelt’s War Cabinet on Dec. 20, 1941. FDR is wearing a mourning band for his mother, who died 104 days earlier. [Photo: Bettmann Archive via Getty Images]

Ninety years on, descendants of the FDR administration have reconstituted his Cabinet in hopes of summoning a new New Deal from President Biden, Ruby Cramer writes for Politico Magazine:

At 6 p.m., two rows of elderly faces appeared on [a Zoom] screen, staring into the camera: June Hopkins, Henry Scott Wallace, Tomlin Perkins Coggeshall and James Roosevelt Jr. If their names sound vaguely familiar it’s because their relatives — Harry Hopkins, Henry Wallace, Frances Perkins and Franklin Delano Roosevelt — formed the nucleus of one of the most famous and influential Oval Office rosters in American history.

The group, which has been meeting nearly weekly since last June, wants Biden to embrace “activist” government, Cramer writes:

  • “They want him to eliminate the filibuster. They spend hours parsing his words for echoes of the stirring language that helped defeat the Great Depression.”

Henry S. Wallace, 69, grandson of Henry A. Wallace, the second for FDR’s three VPs, said: “The New Deal would have been impossible under today’s filibuster regimen … In FDR, his first 100 days, he got 15 major pieces of legislation passed, every single one was subject to nothing more than the majority.”

[AXIOS & Politico Magazine]

 

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