This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Tuesday, July 25th, 2023. I'm Caleb Brown.

The New Deal, that bundle of programs rolled out during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration represented

a stunning assault on the rights of millions of Americans.

And there's never been a proper reckoning of the large scale violations of constitutional rights.

Historian David Bido is author of the new book The New Deal's War on the Bill of Rights,

the untold story of FDR's concentration camps, censorship, and mass surveillance.

We spoke earlier this month in Memphis.

I guess it's worth understanding a little bit of the environment in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt

took office, you know, we're in a deep economic recession at the time for at least a couple of years and what was I guess of he'd send mixed messages he was actually attacking Hoover administration as a

spendthrift administration called for 25% budget cuts and there's actually on audio some of those speeches from

1932 it sounds like Ronald Reagan at times but then once he takes office, there's no more mixed messages and FDR is pushing a very

expansive welfare and regulatory state with perhaps an early emphasis on the regulatory state with the

Agricultural Adjustment Administration which imposed controls over crops and prices, and then the National Recovery Administration

which controlled wage controls, price controls, very coercive.

And then later, you know, as you get to 1935 or so, we start getting the welfare aspects of the

New Deal to a much greater extent such as Social Security.

But initially he's doing a lot of regulatory stuff, but also a fair amount of house subsidies for in areas such as housing and

Public Works that kind of and what was the congressional understanding if there was such a thing

of what rights were due to Americans and under what circumstances they could easily be abridged.

Well, initially there's very much a emergency mentality, which is this is our president,

we're going to give him whatever he wants, we're going to trust him.

But within a few months people start raising questions.

...