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Roosevelt Forward
@rooseveltforward.org
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Advocacy affiliate of @rooseveltinstitute.org. We believe that new politics and policymaking—that can equalize power in our society—are possible. www.rooseveltforward.org || Subscribe to our Substack #FiresideStacks 🔥 firesidestacks.com
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rooseveltforward.org
States know the federal minimum wage is too low—that’s why 19 raised theirs.

So why do most still rely on outdated federal overtime rules?

If wages must keep up with inflation, overtime should too. Patrick Oakford in this week’s #FiresideStacks🔥

https://bit.ly/49NboIG
January 15, 2026 at 10:08 PM
rooseveltforward.org
“For a lot of powerful people [...] ‘too progressive’ is code used to undermine any economic agenda that favors working people.”

🎯 from @elizabeth-warren.bsky.social at @pressclubdc.bsky.social.

The debate we should have is not left vs. right, but how we ensure working families can afford to live.
Senator Elizabeth Warren speaking at The National Press Club on January 12th, 2026.
January 12, 2026 at 6:06 PM
rooseveltforward.org
So much of what we’re told is “personal failure” is actually public policy failure. Shame keeps people silent and that silence protects the billionaire class.

@kristencrowell.bsky.social of @fairshareamerica.bsky.social in this week's #FiresideStacks🔥

https://bit.ly/4jwQW2T
January 8, 2026 at 5:30 PM
rooseveltforward.org
@elizabethwwilkins.bsky.social on Mayor-elect @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social's appointment of Julie Su as NYC’s Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice—and what it means for delivering the #GoodLife for working New Yorkers ⬇️
“Julie Su is the rare public servant who not only cares deeply about working people, but will fight for them with the creativity and relentlessness required to make government deliver at the scale of the need. Mayor-elect Mamdani’s decision to put her in this role shows he’s serious about making sure New York City works for all New Yorkers.” — Elizabeth Wilkins, President and CEO, Roosevelt Forward
December 19, 2025 at 9:45 PM
rooseveltforward.org
79 million Americans already struggle with medical bills or medical debt. Telling them to “pay up front and deduct it later” isn’t reform—it’s denial. @mirandayaver.bsky.social takes on Sen. Hawley's new proposal in the latest #FiresideStacks🔥 : https://bit.ly/4p6sren
December 18, 2025 at 10:58 PM
rooseveltforward.org
@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social spoke with @nicholsuprising.bsky.social about the hope of living up to Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda.

This legacy drives the work to better serve everyday Americans.
www.thenation.com/article/poli...
"So it was that, while they were in the Oval Office, Mamdani steered the discussion to Roosevelt’s New Deal presidency—the legacy of which Trump has been attacking on so many fronts. 'I actually asked the president that we take a photo in front of the portrait [of FDR] and I spoke about how transformative the New Deal had been for our country and how that is the legacy of politics that I seek to draw upon in the work that I’m doing in New York City.'"
December 18, 2025 at 6:29 PM
rooseveltforward.org
Stretching a mortgage to half a century doesn’t expand opportunity—it extends vulnerability.

In this week’s #FiresideStacks🔥, Portia Allen-Kyle breaks down how a “death pledge” is not housing policy for a fair economy.

https://bit.ly/4oTzLtJ
Roosevelt Forward quote graphic reads: A 50-year mortgage is a death pledge that follows a family to the grave instead of building something they can pass on. With a 50-year mortgage, someone buying a first home at 40 would most likely die still owing at least a decade of payments without passing down the generational wealth the American Dream promises to homeowners.
December 13, 2025 at 9:07 PM
rooseveltforward.org
Roosevelt fellow Portia Allen-Kyle makes it clear: a fair housing system should expand stability and power.

A 50-year mortgage does the opposite, cementing inequality for another generation. Read more in this week’s #FiresideStacks🔥.

https://bit.ly/3Yo1S9m
Roosevelt Forward quote graphic reads: A 50-year mortgage is a death pledge that follows a family to the grave instead of building something they can pass on. With a 50-year mortgage, someone buying a first home at 40 would most likely die still owing at least a decade of payments without passing down the generational wealth the American Dream promises to homeowners.
December 11, 2025 at 9:13 PM
rooseveltforward.org
When consumer sentiment nears historic lows while markets soar, it tells us something deeper: economic power is drifting upward, away from most families.

Last week’s #FiresideStacks🔥 analysis by @mikemadowitz.bsky.social breaks it down.

https://bit.ly/4rINxSv
Roosevelt Forward quote graphic reads "Consumer sentiment in October was only exceeded by lows from the worst of the early 1980s recession, the peak of the 2022 inflation, and the months following the “Liberation Day” tariff announcement this year. Since January, consumer sentiment has plunged, giving up essentially all gains from a steady rise after the inflation peak of 2022.”
December 10, 2025 at 4:08 PM
rooseveltforward.org
The US economy should be one, but reads like three. Household costs rising, economic data trending downward, but record gains for elites.

@mikemadowitz.bsky.social explains this divide and why the “vibes” are good for some & bad for many. FiresideStacks🔥

https://bit.ly/4a55eW6
Roosevelt Forward quote graphic reads "First, the vibes are bad (just ask anyone coming out of a grocery store). Second, the real economy—prices, jobs, and consumer and business spending, among other factors—is worse than it was a year ago, but holding up OK (4.4 percent unemployment, GDP growth over 2 percent, and inflation around 3 percent is hardly the stuff of recession). Third, a small number of people and companies are doing extremely well.”
December 8, 2025 at 8:54 PM
rooseveltforward.org
The US economy is “OK” on paper, painful in reality, and exuberant for a tiny elite.

This week, @mikemadowitz.bsky.social shows that understanding the divide is essential to building an economy that works for everyone. #FiresideStacks🔥

https://bit.ly/4iO6RcT
Roosevelt Forward quote graphic reads "Overall, the data are on a more even keel than either the awful vibes most Americans are feeling from an affordability crisis or the anxiously warm vibes of investors. We’re not living through the economic boom tech investors see everywhere, nor the near-term dystopia consumers are feeling. The economy is weaker than last year and likely to continue to soften a bit more over the first part of next year, but the good news is at least for now things are not as bad in the data as in the headlines. The bad news is…that’s the good news."
December 4, 2025 at 10:19 PM
rooseveltforward.org
When families can’t afford care but billionaires grow richer, the system isn’t working.

In #FiresideStacks🔥, @lbilik.bsky.social highlights how voters nationwide are pushing for a different path—one rooted in collective care.

https://www.firesidestacks.com/p/care-over-concentrated-wealth
Roosevelt Forward quote graphic reads "Americans know that it’s not that we lack the resources to deliver economic security. It’s that lawmakers appear to lack the will to collect those resources."
November 25, 2025 at 6:17 PM
rooseveltforward.org
People want a government that helps everyone build a stable life.

This week, @lbilik.bsky.social discusses the nationwide momentum behind taxing concentrated wealth to fund care—the new mainstream for progressive policy. #FiresideStacks🔥

https://bit.ly/4i7SgIU
Roosevelt Forward quote graphic reads "Time and again, the American people have told almost anyone who will listen that they are deeply concerned about the fact that households in the top 10 percent hold over two-thirds of the country’s wealth, while many families can’t afford childcare or eldercare, children go hungry, and so many live in tenuous precarity because we lack a true social safety net."
November 21, 2025 at 9:19 PM
rooseveltforward.org
NY hopes to invest in childcare as an economic engine, while CO proves people will raise taxes to feed kids.

In #FiresideStacks🔥, @lbilik.bsky.social explores the momentum behind taxing concentrated wealth to fund economic stability for all.

www.firesidestacks.com/p/care-over-...
Roosevelt Forward quote graphic reads "People have made clear that they don’t want to live in a country where children go to bed hungry or parents can’t make ends meet because they lack childcare, while the richest among us keep getting richer."
November 20, 2025 at 4:42 PM
rooseveltforward.org
Wealth inequality continues to widen while the tax code favors the top 0.1%.

In this week’s #FiresideStacks🔥, Jacob Spitz discusses why it’s time to stop letting billionaire threats shape public policy.

https://bit.ly/4hZo2YE
Roosevelt Forward quote graphic reads "The myth of millionaire mobility has done its job: It’s made policymakers nervous and kept billionaires comfortable. The evidence tells a simpler story—most of them stay put."
November 13, 2025 at 8:40 PM
rooseveltforward.org
When the government can’t act decisively, democracy is at risk.

In #FiresideStacks🔥, Hannah Garden-Monheit shares insights from former Biden-Harris senior officials on how we can build a more responsive government that works for everyone.

https://bit.ly/3Xh9biB
November 10, 2025 at 5:53 PM
rooseveltforward.org
“If the government can’t deliver quickly and visibly for ordinary people, its legitimacy erodes.”

In our inaugural #FiresideStacks🔥 video interview, Hannah Garden-Monheit offers a clear-eyed blueprint for rebuilding public capacity.

https://bit.ly/3Xh9biB
November 7, 2025 at 8:55 PM
rooseveltforward.org
When students speak, history tells us to listen. They often hold the line on justice while institutions maintain the status quo.

In #FiresideStacks🔥, @katie-kirchner.bsky.social argues that their activism should be the standard.

www.firesidestacks.com/p/we-c...
Roosevelt Forward quote graphic reads "As in generations past, the student left remains “the most reliably correct constituency in America.” Over and over—often at great personal sacrifice—they’ve held the line on what is moral, only to see institutions and leaders catch up. Columbia University is one example: It once worked to crush its 1968 student uprising, and now it markets that same protest as a symbol of its “activist Ivy” legacy."
October 31, 2025 at 1:04 PM
rooseveltforward.org
Young progressives aren’t “the future”—they’re the moral compass of the present.

Ignoring them isn’t just shortsighted. It’s a threat to progress.

This week’s #FiresideStacks🔥 is a wake-up call from @katie-kirchner.bsky.social.

www.firesidestacks.com/p/we-c...
Roosevelt Forward quote graphic reads "This time, instead of treating students’ moral conviction as a challenge to pragmatic politics, what if we saw it as the foundation of any civic movement capable of meeting this moment?"
October 30, 2025 at 5:38 PM
rooseveltforward.org
AI is speeding up health insurance denials, and ERISA makes them nearly impossible to fight.

In this week’s #FiresideStacks🔥, @mirandayaver.bsky.social unpacks the law that prevents 100M Americans from holding insurers accountable.

www.firesidestacks.com/p/ai-p...
Roosevelt Forward quote graphic reads “[Employee Retirement Income Security Act] not only discourages patients from suing—shielding insurers from consequences for wrongful denials—but also disproportionately harms lower-income and marginalized workers.”
October 28, 2025 at 4:01 PM
rooseveltforward.org
A majority of insured workers are on ERISA plans. That means no state oversight, no damages, and little legal recourse.

In #FiresideStacks🔥, @mirandayaver.bsky.social exposes the risks of a system working as designed to protect insurers.

www.firesidestacks.com/p/ai-p...
Roosevelt Forward quote graphic reads “With few lawsuits and no real penalty for wrongful denials, insurers face little incentive to change, especially as AI promises faster, cheaper claim reviews at the patients’ expense.”
October 26, 2025 at 4:18 PM
rooseveltforward.org
AI tools can deny insurance claims in seconds, while appeals can take months.
ERISA ensures there’s no accountability in between.

In this week’s #FiresideStacks🔥, @mirandayaver.bsky.social exposes the true cost of “efficiency” in health care.

www.firesidestacks.com/p/ai-p...
Roosevelt Forward quote graphic reads “AI-assisted claims are error-prone: In some cases, up to 90 percent of AI-related denials are reversed on appeal to the insurer— if patients can manage the onerous process to appeal, which many do not.”
October 24, 2025 at 4:06 PM
rooseveltforward.org
AI claims to make health care more efficient, but it’s making denials faster and appeals harder.

In #FiresideStacks🔥, @mirandayaver.bsky.social shows how ERISA ensures no one is held accountable when AI gets it wrong.

www.firesidestacks.com/p/ai-p...
Roosevelt Forward quote graphic reads “Insurers are hardly alone in using AI as a cheap substitute for labor-intensive procedures, but when these tools wrongly deny coverage, patients have little legal recourse. Without the ability to recover damages for pain and suffering, insurers face almost no serious penalty for error—errors that are likely to only increase given such tools’ imperfect track record. And because [Employee Retirement Income Security Act] preempts state law, even the most ambitious state reforms can’t protect most workers.”
October 23, 2025 at 1:08 PM
rooseveltforward.org
Michiganders see through it.

New polling shows that 70% of likely Michigan voters support raising taxes on billionaires to fund healthcare, schools, and public services: 2/3
taxgreed.org/wp-content/u...
Bar graph titled "Support for Raising Taxes on Billionaires," showing levels of support across Congressional Districts +49, +54, and +44. Strong support is represented in dark blue, somewhat support in blue, strongly oppose in dark red, and somewhat oppose in red. The bars are labeled with percentages for each category.
October 22, 2025 at 3:59 PM
rooseveltforward.org
With the government shutdown halting vital data collection, we’re flying blind in an uneven, fragile economy.

For #FiresideStacks🔥, @mikemadowitz.bsky.social explains the risks without public data and why we must push to restore a foundation of our economy.

bit.ly/4726aag
Roosevelt Forward quote graphic reads "This data blackout, however, should be a wake-up call. Even under stress, federal economic data remain a crucial piece of our economic foundation and one of the last objective truths in America. Building on the legacy of statistics introduced to monitor the Great Depression and war mobilization, the US has the institutional knowledge and professionalism to expand and improve its open access federal statistics."
October 19, 2025 at 7:55 PM