5 paragraph essay on the progressive era

Progressive Era in United States Essay

Introduction, emergence of railroads, works cited.

Progressive Era was a period of great reforms in the United States that occurred in the early part of 20 th century. The progressives formulated reforms focused on promoting good governance and welfare of the Americans by advocating for radical changes in economic, political and social policies. Economically, the progressives advocated for the economic reforms that that regulated businesses in order to provide a level ground for a healthy competition.

Prior to Progressive Era, there were unfair business practices that promoted monopoly of some businesspersons like John Rockefeller, which prompted formulation of policies that ensured fair business practices. Due to poor employment standards, child labor, unfair business practices and rampant corruption in the government, muckraking journalists investigated these vices and exposed them for the society to perceive, and this prompted the government to make reforms (Leonard 112).

The progressives also rooted for the adoption of laissez-faire and formation of labor unions in face of high rate unemployment in order to improve the working conditions of the workers. Overall, the government formulated laws and policies, which ensured that the economic growth benefitted all citizens.

Politically, the progressive had perceived that the government was full of inefficiencies and corruption that led to various injustices against the Americans. The progressives wanted to clean up the government to be free from inefficiencies and corruption scandals that have affected delivery of quality services to the people.

According to Leonard, “four constitutional amendments were adopted during the Progressive era, which authorized an income tax, provided for the direct election of senators, extended the vote to women, and prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages” (115).

The sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth amendments promoted both political and social reforms in the United States. The seventeenth amendment empowered the people to choose their preferred leaders thus promoting democracy. Moreover, the nineteenth amendment empowered women by allowing them to vote and participate in the political arena. In addition, the introduction of the secret balloting enhanced democracy because it promoted free and fair election of senators and presidents.

Socially, due to deteriorating moral standards that occurred because of rampant abuse of drugs such as alcohol, the progressives supported the prohibition of manufacturing, sale and distribution of alcohol. The religious progressives argue that alcohol consumption destroy the moral fabric of the society and thus advocated for the society that is free of alcohol.

Therefore, the passage of the eighteenth amendment that prohibits manufacture, sale and distribution of alcohol significantly reduced consumption of alcohol in the United States. Since there was high gender inequality in the society, the progressives opened women’s colleges as an affirmative action to encourage more women to gain skills and knowledge so that they could be competitive in the employment market.

Rapid economic and demographic growth during the Progressive Era enabled the United States government to expand and regulate her transport system throughout the country in order to stimulate more economic growth. Creation of large plantations and industries during the late 19 th and early 20 st century led to the massive production of goods that necessitated expansion and regulation of the railroad system.

Realizing that the railroad system is effective, cheaper in the transportation and opening up of remote areas for investors, the United States government immensely supported construction and regulated it to offer sustainable transport, which stimulate economic growth. During the Progressive Era, the reformers struggled against conservatives who did not want regulation of the railroad system by the government for they wanted to monopolize and exploit businesspersons in the transportation of industrial goods.

Although the railway system had much significance to the industrial and financial sectors, the management did not put efficient measures that would ensure its sustainability. According to Doezena, “the drastic features of some enactments would have been avoided had railroad managers always exercised the spirit of forbearance and compromise,” (62). Thus, due to the mismanagement, the government formulated drastic polices that led to the stringent regulation of the railroad system during Progressive Era.

Under President Roosevelt, the government regulated the railroad system by ordering powerful corporations to comply with policies and enactments that promote fair competition and eliminate exploitation of businesspersons.

The government investigated railroads unfair practices and recommended in Elkins Act (1903) that no shippers should receive rebates to encourage the use of certain railway company. Moreover, the Hepburn Act (1906) gave powers to the Interstate Commerce Commission to set the rates of transportation and limit free railroad passes.

Pendleton Act (1883) is a civil service reform Act of the United States formulated to guide government officials in the recruitment and employment of the civil servants according to their own merit. Earlier before the Act was effective, the recruitment and employment of the civil servants was quite unfair, as many people had to bribe or belong to certain political parties in order to access the privilege of employment. Hence, Pendleton Act (1883) established merit system of employing civil servants that ensured fairness in the employment.

First Reconstruction Act (1867) was an Act that provided effective and efficient governance of the rebel states in line with the United States government. The Act acknowledged the presence of rebel states such as Virginia, Georgia, Carolina, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

For efficient governing of these states, the First Construction Act classified these states into five military districts in which the United States president has prerogative to assign military commander to each military district in order to provide enough security to life and property of the citizens.

Tenure of Office Act (1867) is an Act that protects people holding executive and constitutional offices against imperial powers of president. This Act limits the capacity of the president to appoint new people into the office while the tenure of the current officers has not expired.

Since presidents have powers to appoint constitutional officers, the Act guards the officers from haphazard removal in the office particularly when there is a change in regime. Therefore, the president must respect tenure of office and if necessary to make any changes, congressional approval is essential.

Interstate Commerce Act (1887) is an Act formulated to regulate transport system in the United States particularly the railroad industry. Since monopolization of the railroad system led to the exploitation of the farmers and businesspersons, the Act sought to establish policies and laws that govern transport industry. The Act resulted into the establishment of Interstate Commerce Commission that has the responsibility of ensuring that the transport system comply with the federal regulation and set fair rates of transportation.

Thomas Platt was a powerful political figure in the United States politics in 1873 to1909. He was a republican who was in the House of Representatives between 1873 and 1877 and become New York Senator in 1897 to 1909. During his political life, he exercised great power both in the House of Representatives, and in the Republican Party. Due to his overwhelming influence in the government and politics, many considered him as the father of politics.

Doezena, William. “Railroad Regulatory Leadership in the Progressive Era: Consideration and Conclusions.” Journal of American History 11.2 (1996): 61-66.

Leonard, Thomas. “American Economic Reform in the Progressive Era: Its Foundational Beliefs and their Relation to Eugenics.” History of Political Economy 41.1 (2009): 109-140.

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Bibliography

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• Who Is a Progressive in the United States?
• The Progressive Era Significance
• The Progressive Era in the United States History
• Progressivism in American History
• Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Ideas
• Absolutism in Europe
• The Progressive Era and World War I
• Progressive Ideology by President Roosevelt
• Public Administration in the Progressive Era
• “How the Other Half Lives” Book by Jacob Riis
• Abraham Lincoln Against Slavery
• Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs
• Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Comparison
• FDR Impacts on American Economy of New Deal
• Cold War Major Aspects and Events

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Course: US history   >   Unit 7

• Introduction to the age of empire
• The age of empire
• The Spanish-American War
• Imperialism
• The Progressives

The Progressive Era

• The presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
• Progressivism
• The period of US history from the 1890s to the 1920s is usually referred to as the Progressive Era , an era of intense social and political reform aimed at making progress toward a better society.
• Progressive Era reformers sought to harness the power of the federal government to eliminate unethical and unfair business practices, reduce corruption, and counteract the negative social effects of industrialization.
• During the Progressive Era, protections for workers and consumers were strengthened, and women finally achieved the right to vote.

The problems of industrialization

The ideology and politics of progressivism, the dark side of progressivism, what do you think.

• For more, see H.W. Brands, The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s (Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
• For more on the Progressive movement, see Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
• For more on Progressive ideology, see Shelton Stromquist, Reinventing “The People”: The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem, and the Origins of Modern Liberalism (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2006).
• See Walter Nugent, Progressivism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
• For more on Wilson’s racial policies, see Eric S. Yellin, Racism in the Nation’s Service: Government Workers and the Color Line in Woodrow Wilson’s America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).
• Daniel J. Tichenor, Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2002), 3-4.
• For more on eugenics in the United States, see Paul A. Lombardo, A Century of Eugenics in America: From the Indiana Experiment to the Human Genome Era (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).

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The Progressive Era

The Civil War increased the power of the federal government by forcing the Southern states to abolish slavery and paved the way for still greater increase in other matters after the war. People expected it to do more, and gave it more power so it could try. The defeat of the South, Reconstruction, and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment gave the national government growing power over the states and the people. The great and long-overdue liberating qualities of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments came, ironically, at a price to liberty: the government would need much greater power it if was going to attempt to enforce equality.

Also important to the constitutional history of the United States during this time were developments on the world stage. The ideas of German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels captured the attention of intellectuals and many others concerned with the conditions of the poor in industrialized nations.

Marx and Engels wrote “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto , 1848).

They argued that capitalism should be replaced by socialism—a term that broadly refers to government ownership of industries and collective, rather than private, ownership of property. Eventually, Marx and Engels envisioned a classless society giving “to each according to his need,” and taking “from each according to his ability.” There would no longer be any unfulfilled need, or even a need for government itself in a future communist society. The individual person, with rights at the center of the American tradition, would be replaced by socialized persons called “species beings.” Until that time the Communist party would rule a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” the working class that the party claimed to represent.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, authors of “The Communist Manifesto” (1848)

Socialism appealed to some but not many in the U.S. The Socialist Labor Party was founded in 1877, with goals of a classless society and collective ownership of industry and social services. Woodrow Wilson, while not claiming the label “Socialist,” determined that democracy and socialism were not all that different.

Writing as a leading professor in 1887, he wrote: “In a fundamental theory socialism and democracy are almost if not quite one and the same. They both rest at bottom upon the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members. Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals” (Woodrow Wilson, Socialism and Democracy , 1887).

The idea that government or “the community,” has “an absolute right to determine its own destiny and that of its members” is a progressive one. The difference between the Founders’ and progressive’s visions can be summarized this way: The Founders believed citizens could best pursue happiness if government was limited to protecting the life, liberty, and property of individuals. They believed people were naturally inclined to favor themselves, and they structured government so that people’s self-interest and individual ambition would lead outstanding officials to check one another’s attempts to exercise more power than the Constitution allows. Unlike the framers of the Constitution, progressives believed that the ultimate aim of government should be promoting the development of all human faculties. Because “communities” have rights, those rights are more important than the personal liberty of any one individual in that community. Therefore, they believed, government should provide citizens with the environment and the means to improve themselves through government-sponsored programs and policies as well as economic redistribution of goods from the rich to the poor.

The twentieth century saw continued unrest over the conditions of workers in all industrial countries.

In the U.S., some organized labor demonstrations became violent. When more than 100,000 workers protested pay cuts in the 1894 Pullman strike, disrupting all rail service west of Detroit, President Cleveland eventually used the U.S. Army to break the protests. Many believed socialism promised the relief they sought. The Socialist Party of America was formed in 1901. International Workers of the World, a union that called for the end of capitalism and wage labor, formed in 1905. Industrial tragedies like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, in which more than one hundred workers died, further incited those demanding reforms. In 1917, the drama erupted in Europe as well, when the Bolshevik Revolution established Soviet Russia.

Strikers confront the Illinois National Guard during the 1894 Pullman Strike.

Some saw the integration of some socialist party goals into the Democratic Party platform as a compromise. While the Socialist Party never captured the presidency in the U.S., Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs received almost six percent of the popular vote in 1912. Socialist ideas were clearly part of the national conversation, and found their way into Progressive reforms of the period. Progressivism was not Marxism, but the two schools did agree that the community and its purposes should come before the individual and his preferences. These progressive reforms included the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments.

Wilson, who served as president from 1913-1919, advocated what we today call the living Constitution, or the idea that its interpretation should adapt to the times. The Founders’ Constitution, in which ambition is set to “counteract” ambition, owes more to Newtonian mechanics than to Darwinian evolution, Wilson argued. As such, the Founders’ Constitution is outdated and needs improvement. The evolutionary adaptability of species identified by Darwin suggests a constitutional model. He wrote:

“Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice” (Woodrow Wilson, “What is Progress?” 1912).

Wilson oversaw the implementation of progressive policies such as the introduction of the income tax and the creation of the Federal Reserve System to attempt to manage the economy.

The Sixteenth Amendment authorized the national government to tax incomes. It was ratified in 1913, and Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1913 that same year. With a progressive income tax (where those who produce more pay more), the national government could now take wealth from some who had more and redistribute it to others who had less.

President Woodrow Wilson, a leading Progressive in the early twentieth century.

The Seventeenth Amendment, providing for the election of senators by the people of each state, was approved that same year. This amendment provided for the direct election of U.S. Senators. This change to the Constitution was a challenge to the principle of federalism. The Founders had carefully structured the two houses of Congress and given them different powers based on those differences. For example, representatives were elected by the people of each state for two year terms, and had the “power of the purse.” Senators were selected by their state legislatures, had six year terms, and had the duties of ratifying treaties, trying impeachments, and approving executive appointments. As Madison had written in  Federalist No. 10,  the design of Congress was meant to strike a balance, allowing the people to govern themselves while still protecting individual rights and the powers of states (James Madison,  Federalist No. 10 , 1788). The Senate was, to put it another way, a “check” against democracy and the tyranny of the majority. The Seventeenth Amendment loosened this “check and balance.”

Prohibition of the sale of liquor was a drastic progressive reform for the improvement of popular morality.

While the Temperance movement began as a female-dominated attempt to persuade individuals to abstain from drinking, it later shifted to a campaign to use the force of law to ban the manufacture and sale of alcohol. The Eighteenth Amendment (1920) banned the manufacture, sale, or transport of intoxicating beverages and the Volstead Act codified it in U.S. law. A massive failure in every way, Prohibition was repealed with the Twenty-First Amendment in 1933.

The last of the progressive amendments to the Constitution, the Nineteenth Amendment barred states from denying female citizens the right to vote in federal elections. This amendment extended the right to vote to half the population which had, in most states, been denied the right to cast votes for their representatives. Interestingly, some woman’s suffragists campaigned for the extension of the franchise to women not on women’s equality, but on women’s claimed superior moral character, which was needed to guide the U.S. down the right paths. By acknowledging and basing their arguments on natural differences between the sexes, the suffrage movement differed from modern feminism which emphasizes the view that the sexes are essentially the same.

The Progressive Era represented a dramatic shift when it came to many peoples’ understanding of democracy, the purpose of government, and the role it should play in our lives. It also set the stage for the New Deal, and a definition of “rights” that was also a dramatic break from tradition.

Suffragettes march in New York City in 1912 for the right of women to vote.

Related Content

Part of the Civil War’s legacy was a shift in the role of the national government. The defeat of the South, Reconstruction, and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment gave the national government growing power over the states and the people. The Fourteenth Amendment gave the national government power (though exactly how much power was still being debated) to ensure state laws did not violate the rights of the freedmen. Additional amendments during the Progressive Era (the 1890s - 1920s) continued this transfer of power to the national government. In the name of giving power to the people, the national government was given power to tax incomes; states lost their representation in Congress, the manufacture and sale of alcohol was banned, and women achieved the right to vote.

Understanding the Progressive Era

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It can be difficult for students to understand the relevance of the period we call The Progressive Era because society before this period was very different from the society and the conditions we know today. We often assume that certain things have always been around, like laws about child labor and fire safety standards.

If you are researching this era for a project or research paper, you should begin by thinking about the way things were before government and society changed in America.

American Society Once Very Different

Before the events of the Progressive Era occurred (1890-1920), American society was much different. The federal government had less of an impact on the lives of the citizen than we know today. For example, there are laws that regulate the quality of food that is sold to American citizens, the wage that is paid to workers, and the work conditions that are endured by American workers. Before the Progressive Era food, living conditions, and employment was different.

Characteristics of the Progressive Era

• Children were employed in factories
• Wages were low and unregulated (with no wage minimums)
• Factories were crammed and unsafe
• No standards existed for food safety
• No safety net existed for citizens who couldn't find employment
• Housing conditions were unregulated
• The environment was not protected by federal regulations

The Progressive Movement refers to social and political movements that emerged in response to rapid industrialization from which caused societal ills. As cities and factories emerged and grew, quality of life declined for many American citizens.

Many people worked to change the unjust conditions that existed as a result of the industrial growth that took place during the late 19th century. These early progressives thought that education and government intervention could ease poverty and social injustice.

Key People and Events of the Progressive Era

In 1886, the American Federation of Labor is founded by Samuel Gompers. This was one of many unions that emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century in response to unfair labor practices like long hours, child labor, and dangerous working conditions.

Photojournalist Jacob Riis exposes deplorable living conditions in the slums of New York in his book How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York . 

Conservation of natural resources becomes a matter of public concern, as the Sierra Club was founded in 1892 by John Muir.

Women's Suffrage gains steam when Carrie Chapman Catt becomes president of the National American Women's Suffrage Association. 

Theodore Roosevelt becomes president in 1901 after the death of McKinley. Roosevelt was an advocate for "trust busting," or the breaking up of powerful monopolies that crushed competitors and controlled prices and wages.

The American Socialist Party was established in 1901. 

Coal miners strike in Pennsylvania in 1902 to protest their terrible working conditions.

In 1906, Upton Sinclair publishes "The Jungle," which portrayed the deplorable conditions inside the meatpacking industry in Chicago. This led to the establishment of food and drug regulations.

In 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, which occupied the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of a building in New York. Most of the employees were young women aged sixteen to twenty-three, and many on the ninth floor perished because exits and fire escapes were locked and blocked by the company officials. The company was acquitted of any wrongdoing, but the outrage and sympathy from this event prompted legislation concerning unsafe working conditions.

President Woodrow Wilson signs the Keating-Owens Act in 1916, which made it illegal to ship goods across state lines if they were produced by child labor .

In 1920, Congress passed the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

Research Topics for the Progressive Era 

• What was life like for children who worked in factories? How was this different from the work of children who lived on farms?
• How did views on immigration and race change during the Progressive Era? Did the legislation of this era effect all people, or were certain populations most affected?
• How do you suppose the "trust busting" legislation affected business owners? Consider exploring the events of the Progressive Era from the point of view of wealthy industrialists.
• How did living conditions change for people who moved from the country to the cities during this time period? How were people better off or worse off during the shift from country living to city living?
• Who were the major figures in the Women's Suffrage movement? How was life impacted for these women who came forward?
• Explore and compare life in a mill village and life in a coal camp.
• Why did the concern for environmental issues and natural resource preservation emerge at the same time as concern and awareness for social issues like poverty? How are these topics related?
• Writers and photojournalists were key figures in Progressive Era reforms. How does their role compare to changes that have taken place due to the emergence of social media?
• How has the power of the federal government changed since the Progressive Era? How have the powers of individual states changed? What about the power of the individual?
• How would you compare the changes in society during the Progressive Era to changes in society during and after the Civil War?
• What is meant by the term progressive? Were the changes that took place during this time period actually progressive? What does the term progressive mean in the current political climate?
• The Seventeenth Amendment, which allowed for the direct election of US Senators, was ratified in 1913 during the period known as the Progressive Era. How does this reflect the sentiments of this period?
• There were many setbacks to the Progressive Era movements and campaigns. Who and what created these setbacks, and what were the interests of the parties involved?
• Prohibition, the constitutional ban on the production and transportation of alcoholic beverages, also took place during the Progressive Era. How and why was alcohol the subject of concern during this period? What was the impact of Prohibition, good and bad, on society?
• What was the role of the Supreme Court during the Progressive Era? 

Further Reading

Prohibition and Progressive Reform

The Fight for Women's Suffrage

• African Americans in the Progressive Era
• Progressivism Defined: Roots and Goals
• The Three Historic Phases of Capitalism and How They Differ
• African-American Organizations of the Progressive Era
• The History of Sociology Is Rooted in Ancient Times
• Florence Kelley: Labor and Consumer Advocate
• African-American Men and Women of the Progressive Era
• Grace Abbott
• History of Government Involvement in the American Economy
• Sociology of Work and Industry
• A Beginner's Guide to the Industrial Revolution
• Why We Celebrate Women's History Month
• All About Marxist Sociology
• The Jim Crow Era
• Women's Trade Union League - WTUL
• The Reconstruction Era (1865–1877)

Home — Essay Samples — History — Progressive Era — Major Achievements of the Progressive Era in America

Major Achievements of The Progressive Era in America

• Categories: Progressive Era The Progressive Era

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Words: 1070 |

Published: Feb 8, 2022

Words: 1070 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, the achievements of the progressive movement.

• American-historama.org. (2021). Theodore Roosevelt. https://www.american-historama.org/1901-1929-early-20th-century-era/theodore-roosevelt.htm
• Hansan, J. E. (2021). Child Labor and the Building of America. Federal Judicial Center. https://www.fjc.gov/history/timeline/child-labor-and-building-america
• Khan Academy. (n.d.). Industrialization and the Progressive Movement. https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/rise-to-world-power/1920s-america/a/industrialization-and-the-progressive-movement
• Library of Congress. (2021). The Conservation Movement and the Progressive Era. https://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/progress/conserve/
• National Women's History Museum. (2021). The 19th Amendment. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/19th-amendment
• ProCon.org. (2021). Minimum Wage - ProCon.org. https://minimum-wage.procon.org/
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2021). A History of the FDA and Drug Regulation in the United States. https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fdas-evolving-regulatory-powers/history-fda-and-drug-regulation-united-states

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51 | The Evolution of Voting Rights | Summer 2018

50 | Frederick Douglass at 200 | Winter 2018

49 | Excavating American History | Fall 2017

48 | Jazz, the Blues, and American Identity | Summer 2017

47 | American Women in Leadership | Winter 2017

46 | African American Soldiers | Fall 2016

45 | American History in Visual Art | Summer 2016

44 | Alexander Hamilton in the American Imagination | Winter 2016

43 | Wartime Memoirs and Letters from the American Revolution to Vietnam | Fall 2015

42 | The Role of China in US History | Spring 2015

41 | The Civil Rights Act of 1964: Legislating Equality | Winter 2015

40 | Disasters in Modern American History | Fall 2014

39 | American Poets, American History | Spring 2014

38 | The Joining of the Rails: The Transcontinental Railroad | Winter 2014

37 | Gettysburg: Insights and Perspectives | Fall 2013

36 | Great Inaugural Addresses | Summer 2013

35 | America’s First Ladies | Spring 2013

34 | The Revolutionary Age | Winter 2012

33 | Electing a President | Fall 2012

32 | The Music and History of Our Times | Summer 2012

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars | Spring 2012

30 | American Reform Movements | Winter 2012

29 | Religion in the Colonial World | Fall 2011

28 | American Indians | Summer 2011

27 | The Cold War | Spring 2011

26 | New Interpretations of the Civil War | Winter 2010

25 | Three Worlds Meet | Fall 2010

24 | Shaping the American Economy | Summer 2010

23 | Turning Points in American Sports | Spring 2010

22 | Andrew Jackson and His World | Winter 2009

21 | The American Revolution | Fall 2009

20 | High Crimes and Misdemeanors | Summer 2009

19 | The Great Depression | Spring 2009

18 | Abraham Lincoln in His Time and Ours | Winter 2008

17 | Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era | Fall 2008

16 | Books That Changed History | Summer 2008

15 | The Supreme Court | Spring 2008

14 | World War II | Winter 2007

13 | The Constitution | Fall 2007

12 | The Age Of Exploration | Summer 2007

11 | American Cities | Spring 2007

10 | Nineteenth Century Technology | Winter 2006

9 | The American West | Fall 2006

8 | The Civil Rights Movement | Summer 2006

7 | Women's Suffrage | Spring 2006

6 | Lincoln | Winter 2005

5 | Abolition | Fall 2005

4 | American National Holidays | Summer 2005

3 | Immigration | Spring 2005

2 | Primary Sources on Slavery | Winter 2004

1 | Elections | Fall 2004

The Square Deal: Theodore Roosevelt and the Themes of Progressive Reform

By kirsten swinth.

These economic and social crises stemmed from the rise of industrial capitalism, which had transformed America between the Civil War and 1900. By the turn of the century, American factories produced one-third of the world’s goods. Several factors made this achievement possible: unprecedented scale in manufacturing, technological innovation, a transportation revolution, ever-greater efficiency in production, the birth of the modern corporation, and the development of a host of new consumer products. Standard Oil, Nabisco, Kodak, General Electric, and Quaker Oats were among those companies and products to become familiar household words. Many negative consequences accompanied this change. Cities, polluted and overcrowded, became breeding grounds for diseases like typhoid and cholera. A new unskilled industrial laboring class, including a large pool of child labor, faced low wages, chronic unemployment, and on-the-job hazards. Business owners didn’t mark high voltage wires, locked fire doors, and allowed toxic fumes to be emitted in factories. It was cheaper for manufacturers to let workers be injured or die than to improve safety—so they often did. Farmers were at the mercy of railroad trusts, which set transport rates that squeezed already indebted rural residents. Economic growth occurred without regard to its costs to people, communities, or the environment.

Many were appalled. Even middle-class Americans became outraged as the gap widened between the working and middle ranks of society and wealthy capitalists smugly asserted their superiority. A new class of muckraking journalists fed this outrage with stunning exposés of business exploitation and corruption of government officials. Lincoln Steffens’s 1902 The Shame of the Cities , for example, demonstrated the graft dominating politics in American urban centers. To many, such a society violated America’s fundamental principles and promises. Progressivism grew out of that dismay and a desire to fix what many saw as a broken system.

Progressivism emerged in many different locations from 1890 to 1917, and had varied emphases. Sometimes it had a social justice emphasis with a focus on economic and social inequality. At other times an economic and political emphasis dominated, with primary interest in moderate regulation to curtail the excesses of Gilded Age capitalists and politicians. It was, in short, a movement that is very difficult to chart. Historians most conventionally trace its movement from local initiatives through to the state and national levels. But it is potentially more useful to think of progressivism as falling under three broad areas of reform: efforts to make government cleaner, less corrupt, and more democratic; attempts to ameliorate the effects of industrialization; and efforts to rein in corporate power.

Despite their anxieties about the problems in all three areas, progressives accepted the new modern order. They did not seek to turn back the clock, or to return to a world of smaller businesses and agrarian idealism. Nor, as a general rule, did they aim to dismantle big business. Rather, they wished to regulate industry and mitigate the effects of capitalism on behalf of the public good. To secure the public good, they looked to an expanded role for the government at the local, state, as well as national levels. Theodore Roosevelt declared in a 1910 speech that the government should be "the steward of the public welfare." Progressivism was a reform movement that, through a shifting alliance of activists, eased the most devastating effects of industrial capitalism on individuals and communities. Except in its most extreme wing, it did not repudiate big business, but used the power of the state to regulate its impact on society, politics, and the economy.

These progressive reformers came from diverse backgrounds, often working together in temporary alliances, or even at cross-purposes. Participants ranged from well-heeled men’s club members seeking to clean up government corruption to radical activists crusading against capitalism altogether. They swept up in their midst cadres of women, many of them among the first generation of female college graduates, but others came from the new ranks of young factory workers and shop girls. Immigrant leaders, urban political bosses, and union organizers were also all drawn into reform projects.

Still, some common ground existed among progressives. They generally believed strongly in the power of rational science and technical expertise. They put much store by the new modern social sciences of sociology and economics and believed that by applying technical expertise, solutions to urban and industrial problems could be found. Matching their faith in technocrats was their distrust for traditional party politicians. Interest groups became an important vehicle for progressive reform advocacy. Progressives also shared the belief that it was a government responsibility to address social problems and regulate the economy. They transformed American attitudes toward government, parting with the view that the state should be as small as possible, a view that gained prominence in the post–Civil War era. Twentieth-century understandings of the government as a necessary force mediating among diverse group interests developed in the Progressive era. Finally, progressives had in common an internationalist perspective, with reform ideas flowing freely across national borders.

To address the first major area—corrupt urban politics—some progressive reformers tried to undercut powerful political machines. "Good government" advocates sought to restructure municipal governments so that parties had little influence. The National Municipal League, which had Teddy Roosevelt among its founders, for example, supported election of at-large members of city councils so that council members could not be beholden to party machines. Ironically, such processes often resulted in less popular influence over government since it weakened machine politicians who were directly accountable to immigrant and working-class constituents. The good government movement attracted men of good standing in society, suspicious of the lower classes and immigrants, but angered by effects of business dominance of city governments. Other reforms, however, fostered broader democratic participation. Many states adopted the initiative (allowing popular initiation of legislation) and referendum (allowing popular vote on legislation) in these years, and in 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution mandated the direct election of US Senators. Perhaps the most dramatic campaign for more democratic government was the woman suffrage movement which mobilized millions to campaign for women’s right to the franchise.

Ameliorating the effects of industrialization had at its heart a very effective women’s political network. At settlement houses, for example, black and white woman reformers, living in working-class, urban neighborhoods, provided day nurseries, kindergartens, health programs, employment services, and safe recreational activities. They also demanded new government accountability for sanitation services, for regulation of factory conditions and wages, for housing reform, and for abolishing child labor. Leaders like Jane Addams and Ida B. Wells-Barnett in Chicago as well as Lillian Wald in New York pioneered a role for city and state governments in securing the basic social welfare of citizens. This strand of progressive reform more broadly involved improving city services, like providing garbage pickup and sewage disposal. Some activists concentrated on tenement reform, such as New York’s 1901 Tenement House Act, which mandated better light, ventilation, and toilets. Laws protecting worker health and safety mobilized other reformers. Protective legislation to limit the hours worked by women, abolish child labor, and set minimum wages could be found across the country. Twenty-eight states passed laws to regulate women’s working hours and thirty-eight set new regulations of child labor in 1912 alone.

The second major area—the effort to rein in corporate power—had as its flagship one of the most famous pieces of legislation of the period: the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. The Act outlawed business combination "in restraint of trade or commerce." In addition to trust-busting, progressive reformers strengthened business regulation. Tighter control of the railroad industry set lower passenger and freight rates, for example. New federal regulatory bureaucracies, such as the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Reserve System, and the Federal Trade Commission, also limited business’s free hand. These progressive initiatives also included efforts to protect consumers from the kind of unsavory production processes revealed by Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle . Somewhat unexpectedly, business leaders themselves sometimes supported such reform initiatives. Large meatpackers like Swift and Armour saw federal regulation as a means to undercut smaller competitors who would have a harder time meeting the new standards.

Among progressivism’s greatest champions was Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt had a genius for publicity, using the presidency as a "bully pulpit" to bring progressivism to the national stage. Roosevelt’s roots were in New York City and state government, where he served as state assemblyman, New York City police commissioner, and governor. As governor, he signaled his reformist sympathies by supporting civil service reform and a new tax on corporations. Republican Party elders found him so troublesome in the governor’s office that in 1900 they proposed him for the vice presidency, a sure-fire route to political insignificance. The assassination of William McKinley just months into his presidency, however, vaulted Roosevelt into national leadership of progressive reform.

Although Roosevelt was known as a trust buster, his ultimate goal was not the destruction of big business but its regulation. For Roosevelt the concentration of industry in ever fewer hands represented not just a threat to fair markets but also to democracy as wealthy industrialists consolidated power in their own hands. He turned to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to challenge business monopolies, bringing suit against the Northern Securities Company (a railroad trust) in 1902. The Justice Department initiated forty-two additional anti-trust cases during his presidency. During Roosevelt’s second term, regulating business became increasingly important. Roosevelt had always believed big business was an inevitable economic development; regulation was a means to level the playing field and provide the "square deal" to citizens, as Roosevelt had promised in his re-election campaign. He supported laws like the 1906 Hepburn Act, which regulated the railroads, and the same year’s Pure Food and Drug and Meat Inspection Acts, which controlled the drug and food industries.

Although not always successful in achieving his goals, Roosevelt brought to the federal government other progressive causes during his presidency, including support for workers’ rights to organize, eight-hour workdays for federal employees, workers’ compensation, and an income and inheritance tax on wealthy Americans. Under his leadership, conservation of the nation’s natural resources became a government mandate. He encouraged Congress to create several new national parks, set aside sixteen national monuments, and establish more than fifty wildlife preserves and refuges. Through the new Bureau of Fisheries and National Forest Service, Roosevelt emphasized efficient government management of resources, preventing rapacious use by private businesses and landowners.

After leaving the presidency in 1909, Roosevelt initially withdrew from politics. But his dismay at the slow pace of reform under his successor, William Howard Taft, prompted him to return for the 1912 election. When Republicans failed to nominate him, he broke with the party and formed the Progressive Party. He campaigned under the banner of a "New Nationalism." Its tenets united the themes of his leadership of progressivism: faith in a strong federal government, an activist presidency, balancing of public interest and corporate interest, and support for a roll-call of progressive reform causes, from woman suffrage and the eight-hour work day to abolishing child labor and greater corporate regulation.

While progressives guided the country down the path it would follow for much of the twentieth century toward regulation of the economy and government attention to social welfare, it also contained a strong streak of social control. This was the darker side of the movement. Progressive faith in expert leadership and government intervention could justify much that intruded heavily on the daily lives of individual citizens. The regulation of leisure activities is a good example. Commercial leisure—dance halls, movies, vaudeville performances, and amusement parks like Coney Island—appeared to many reformers to threaten public morality, particularly endangering young women. Opponents famously deemed Coney Island "Sodom by the Sea." Seeking to tame such activities, reformers, most of whom were middle class, promoted "Rules for Correct Dancing" (no "conspicuous display of hosiery"; no suggestive dance styles) and enacted a National Board of Censorship for movies. These rules largely targeted working-class and youth entertainments with an eye to regulating morality and behavior.

Eugenics also garnered the support of some progressive reformers. Eugenics was a scientific movement which believed that weaker or "bad" genes threatened the nation’s population. Eugenicists supported laws in the name of the rational protection of public health to compel sterilization of those with "bad" genes—typically focusing on those who were mentally ill or in jails, but also disproportionately affecting those who were not white. Any assessment of the progressive movement must grapple with this element of social control as reformers established new ways to regulate the daily lives of citizens, particularly those in the lower ranks of society, by empowering government to set rules for behavior. It was often middle-class reformers who made their values the standard for laws regulating all of society.

Progressive reform’s greatest failure was its acquiescence in the legal and violent disfranchisement of African Americans. Most progressive reformers failed to join African American leaders in their fight against lynching. Many endorsed efforts by southern progressives to enact literacy tests for voting and other laws in the name of good government that effectively denied black Americans the right to vote and entrenched Jim Crow segregation. By 1920, all southern states and nine states outside the South had enacted such laws.

Progressivism’s defining feature was its moderateness. Progressives carved out what historian James Kloppenberg describes as a "via media," a middle way between the laissez-faire capitalism dominant in the Gilded Age and the socialist reorganization many radicals of the period advocated. It was a movement of accommodation. Some regulation of business joined some protection of workers, but no dramatic overhaul of the distribution of wealth or control of the economy occurred. Instead, progressives bequeathed the twentieth century faith in an active government to moderate the effects of large-scale capitalism on citizens and communities. Government would secure the public claim to unadulterated food, safer workplaces, decent housing, and fair business practices, among many other things. Theodore Roosevelt epitomized progressive rebuke of the outrageous excesses of capitalists and their cronies, but also typified progressive accommodation of the new order. He opposed unregulated business, deemed monopolies antithetical, defended labor unions, supported consumer protections, and initiated government protection of natural resources. Yet he never believed we could turn away from the new economy and the transformation it had wrought in American society. The balancing act of reform and regulation that Roosevelt and other progressives pursued led the nation through the moment of crisis at the end of the nineteenth century and accommodated it to the modern industrial society of the twentieth century.

Kirsten Swinth is associate professor of history at Fordham University and the author of Painting Professionals: Women Artists and the Development of Modern American Art, 1870–1930 (2001).

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Clinical social worker: "With the Trump Bible, one must consider dementia"

"a person who isn't cognitively impaired should be doing a cost-benefit analysis", by chauncey devega.

Fascism is a type of political religion. Donald Trump is preaching the religion of fascism.

History has repeatedly shown that fascism and other forms of political religion almost always end in widespread violence and destruction. With his promises and threats of “bedlam” and a “bloodbath,” Trump, the dictator in waiting, has basically guaranteed such an outcome if he “wins” the 2024 election. And that outcome is perhaps just as, if not more, likely if he were to be defeated by President Biden.

"Trump has turned Holy Week into an opportunistic carnivalesque grift."

Over the last few months, Donald Trump has escalated his claims of god-like prophet-messiah status. He has declared that “Jesus Christ” and “God” chose him to win the presidency and defeat President Biden in the 2024 election. He has promoted a video online declaring that “God made Trump” – again elevating himself to near superhuman status as a force of destiny and divine retribution against his and the MAGA movement’s enemies. The corrupt ex-president has taken to comparing himself to Jesus and just announced that he is selling his own Trump-branded version of the Bible with “exclusive” content. Even for those of us who are not Christians, Trump’s behavior is obscene and absurd to the extreme.

On this, Amanda Marcotte told this powerful truth in a recent essay here at Salon :

The teachings of Jesus Christ were always a poor fit for Republicans. They're just way more into decimating Social Security than they are into loaves and fishes. What Trump offers when it comes to Christianity is what he offers his followers in every other aspect: permission to stop pretending to be good people. His gift to them is his shamelessness. Through Trump, his followers can realize their fantasies of being unapologetic bullies. This is the same schtick as MAGA members who claim to be "patriots" while attacking the rule of law and democracy. Trump tells them what they want to hear: You can be a Christian without compassion…. Replacing the real Bible with Trump Bibles is a too-perfect symbol of what has happened to evangelical Christianity. The mistake is in believing Trump's followers are confused or ashamed about their devotion to a  godless creep who laughs at true believers . In Trump's hands, the Bible is not a text for prayer and reflection, it's just a weapon. It's much easier to beat people down with a book if it's closed.    

Ultimately, once God is invoked, and a malign actor such as Donald Trump anoints himself as a type of prophet, messiah, or Chosen One, there can be no compromise, negotiation, or consensus politics within a real democracy. Religious crusades (or specifically with the union of Christofascism, Trumpism and today’s Republican Party and larger “conservative” movement as a form of political religion), almost by definition are winner-take-all all to the extreme. Such extremism is an existential threat to American democracy and the good society.

In an attempt to better understand Trump’s Christofascism and the threat to democracy, I recently spoke to a range of experts.

These interviews have been lightly edited for clarity and length : 

Katherine Stewart  is the author of “ The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism ."

Most of the people who follow Trump don’t expect him to behave like a religious person. They are not going to hold him to account for his heresies or irreligious pronouncements, because they don’t truly believe he is religious anyway, and they don’t care. For them, religion is far less about religion than identity, so they have no interest or concern about whether Trump is blasphemous or not. For a good number of those who lend their support to the Christian nationalist movement, professed faith in the literal word of God is little more than performative. To be sure, some do have familiarity with some parts of the Bible, but their religious identity has become entwined with signaling in-group membership and loyalty to their chosen leaders.

What is curious is how some people still insist on interpreting politicized religion through an individual lens: as men’s and women’s search for meaning or as an effort to grapple with the mysteries of the cosmos. We need to be clear: For leaders of the Christian nationalist movement, along with many followers, the politics comes first, and the religion is tailored to its needs like a cheap suit.

As far as Trump himself is concerned, these statements are just further evidence of his bottomless self-pity and narcissism. It would be nice to think that we live in a world where that would cause people who claim to support religious motives to think again, but for too many Trump supporters that is just not the case.

Add in how Trump is now profiting from the sale of Bibles and it is a masterclass from a grifting insurrectionist demagogue on how to win votes by conflating a fundamentalist religion in which he does not believe with a Constitution he has attempted to undermine. Patriotic bombast in a profit-making package.

Robert P. Jones is the president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller " The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future ," as well as " White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity ."

For the approximately two-thirds of Americans who identify as Christian, this is Holy Week, a solemn time of participation in worship services that evoke self-evaluation and repentance ahead of the holiest day on the Christian calendar, Easter Sunday. In the midst of this sacred week, the presumed Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, has committed acts that in any other era would have created an outcry among serious Christians across the spectrum.

On Holy Monday, Trump compared himself to Jesus in a Truth Social post. This was not a one-off comparison. They echoed the claims he has made in other settings, such as his speech to white evangelicals at the National Religious Broadcasters annual meeting last month. There, Trump evoked the theological language of substitutionary atonement to describe himself as their savior. Trump claimed, "I’ve been very busy fighting and, you know, taking the, the bullets, taking the arrows. I'm taking 'em for you. And I'm so honored to take 'em. You have no idea. I'm being indicted for you…."

"Trying to hawk a $60 Trump Bible may be an indication of the poor judgment of early dementia exacerbated by narcissism that in the end may boomerang back on him." 

On Holy Tuesday, Trump began hawking a $60 “God Bless the USA Bible," posting this message on X: "Happy Holy Week! Let’s Make America Pray Again. As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless The USA Bible.” The book binds, within its brown leather cover, the text of the King James Version of the Bible (preferred by white evangelical Protestants) along with the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance, and a handwritten chorus of Lee Greenwood’s song, “God Bless the USA,” which Trump regularly plays at rallies. This new venture — that includes a royalty deal collected through the same company handling his $400 gold sneakers — is a tangible, monetized embodiment of Trump’s white Christian nationalism.

That Trump has turned Holy Week into an opportunistic carnivalesque grift is not surprising given his character and the financial crunch he is facing from his legal troubles, but it should be appalling. Christian theology has a word to describe those who claim the attributes of Jesus for themselves and who treat sacred things with contempt and disrespect. It’s blasphemy. And the failure of Christians, especially white evangelical Christians to whom Trump is pandering, to speak out against such disgrace during the holiest week of the Christian year is a measure of their captivity and complicity in the denigration of both Christianity and our nation.

Paul Djupe is a political scientist at Denison University and the editor of the Religious Engagement in Democratic Politics series at Temple University Press. He is also the co-author of "The Full Armor of God: The Mobilization of Christian Nationalism in American Politics"  and co-editor of the new anthology,  "Trump, White Evangelical Christians, and American Politics."

It’s Christian holy week, so what better time than to keep the persecution narrative fully stoked? In a recent Truth Social post, Trump allowed a supporter to suggest that his legal plight is comparable to Jesus’s suffering on the cross . This has been Trump’s play since running for president in 2015: appealing to Christians who feel out of power with a promise to restore them to their believed rightful place. But Trump’s centrality to this narrative has changed drastically. Early in his presidential bid he was seen as the Christian Right’s bully – their protector in politics. As legal and political pressure mounted, Trump became the story, the proxy for how a fallen world treats Christians. He was called anointed by God and he even toyed with the idea in 2019 that he, himself, was the Chosen One.

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In the last year, with indictments piling up, he has been reinforcing his martyrdom, suggesting that he is “taking the arrows…for you and I’m so honored to take them, you have no idea.” He will continue to draw comparisons of his plight with Jesus’s persecution through to the election. He doesn’t stop there, but paints an apocalyptic scene in which his enemies are coming for Christians (“The radical left is coming after all of us.”) and only he stands in the way of broadscale persecution or even a “bloodbath.” There are so many problems with this language, but the most problematic is that the expectation of persecution serves to justify extreme measures to protect their basic rights and liberties up to and including violence. Such connections are being reinforced all over the Right, such as by Charlie Kirk who recently said, “If this election doesn’t go our way, the next day we’d fight.”

Hal Brown is a clinical social worker and was one of the first members of the Duty to Warn group. He has extensive expertise in working with multiple personality disorder (now called dissociative identity disorder) and police stress.

It has always puzzled objective observers, both mental health professionals and others, how many of Trump's lies, exaggerations, and acts of self-aggrandizement were done with him knowing full well that he was pandering to his cult, and how many he actually believed. If he believed even half of them, he'd be considered delusional. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, let's say all of this was performance art. Now with the Trump Bible, one must consider dementia as a cause since ⅓ of all people with dementia end up experiencing delusions. If you listen to his 3-minute spiel for the Bible where Trump seems to deviate from the teleprompter and ad lib you can see indications he actually believes some of what he is saying. For example, does he really think he has many Bibles in his house? His sales pitch for Trump Bible where he meanders into stream of consciousness suggests he may be delusional.

If Trump has even the slightest notion that he is some kind of Jesus-like deity he has become unmoored from reality. Whether this is due to psychosis, dementia, or a combination of the two can't be determined without a complete neuropsychiatric assessment that would include not only extended interviews with Trump and much more extensive testing than the MOCA test but also Melania who presumably would interact with him in unguarded moments and could be asked for other signs of dementia.

Another aspect of early dementia is an increase in signs of poor judgment. Poor judgment can sometimes precede memory loss. It isn't as extreme as somebody wandering off from a facility in the winter wearing only their pajamas. Somebody who is always garrulous and tends to go off on tangents when speaking may do this more frequently. They often lose their train of thought when speaking. People with early dementia can demonstrate a pattern of inappropriate decisions or actions which will ultimately be self-defeating based on their personality but not realizing that there will be predictable consequences that will hurt them.

Decision-making includes three components: courses of action, uncertain events and consequences. When you consider Trump's decision to market a special Bible just before Easter there are his narcissism and money-making inspired aspirational reason for doing this which has to be contrasted with foreseeable negative ramifications. A person who isn't cognitively impaired should be doing a cost-benefit analysis asking themselves whether the benefit will outweigh the cost. They should be able to weigh how uncertain the consequences of an action are. Trump with his narcissism would find it hard under normal circumstances to accept that there might be a final straw where one of his attempted grifts backfires on him, after all he's gotten away with so much. Trying to hawk a $60 Trump Bible may be an indication of the poor judgment of early dementia exacerbated by narcissism that in the end may boomerang back on him. 

Rick Wilson is a co-founder of The Lincoln Project, a former leading Republican strategist, and author of two books, "Everything Trump Touches Dies" and "Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump - and Democrats from Themselves."

There’s no doubt Trump is a snake oil salesman trying to make a quick buck selling overpriced Bibles to unwitting Christians during the holiest week of the year. But it’s also a clumsy attempt to sell himself as a God-fearing Christian because he’s rightly terrified that his criminal case for paying off a porn star and the E. Carroll lawsuit are making evangelicals rethink their support for him. It's just another example of Trump showing he’s willing to do or say anything to make a buck or grab a vote.

about this topic

• "Hastening his deterioration": Dr. John Gartner on impact of court trials on "Trump’s fragile brain"
• Lost in the malignant normality of the Trumpocene
• "They’ve told me he’s Jesus": Unpacking Trump's empty pseudo-religion

Chauncey DeVega is a senior politics writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at  Chaunceydevega.com . He also hosts a weekly podcast,  The Chauncey DeVega Show . Chauncey can be followed on  Twitter  and  Facebook .

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The Supreme Court Got It Wrong: Abortion Is Not Settled Law

By Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw

Ms. Murray is a law professor at New York University. Ms. Shaw is a contributing Opinion writer.

In his majority opinion in the case overturning Roe v. Wade, Justice Samuel Alito insisted that the high court was finally settling the vexed abortion debate by returning the “authority to regulate abortion” to the “people and their elected representatives.”

Despite these assurances, less than two years after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, abortion is back at the Supreme Court. In the next month, the justices will hear arguments in two high-stakes cases that may shape the future of access to medication abortion and to lifesaving care for pregnancy emergencies. These cases make clear that Dobbs did not settle the question of abortion in America — instead, it generated a new slate of questions. One of those questions involves the interaction of existing legal rules with the concept of fetal personhood — the view, held by many in the anti-abortion movement, that a fetus is a person entitled to the same rights and protections as any other person.

The first case , scheduled for argument on Tuesday, F.D.A. v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, is a challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s protocols for approving and regulating mifepristone, one of the two drugs used for medication abortions. An anti-abortion physicians’ group argues that the F.D.A. acted unlawfully when it relaxed existing restrictions on the use and distribution of mifepristone in 2016 and 2021. In 2016, the agency implemented changes that allowed the use of mifepristone up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, rather than seven; reduced the number of required in-person visits for dispensing the drug from three to one; and allowed the drug to be prescribed by individuals like nurse practitioners. In 2021, it eliminated the in-person visit requirement, clearing the way for the drug to be dispensed by mail. The physicians’ group has urged the court to throw out those regulations and reinstate the previous, more restrictive regulations surrounding the drug — a ruling that could affect access to the drug in every state, regardless of the state’s abortion politics.

The second case, scheduled for argument on April 24, involves the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (known by doctors and health policymakers as EMTALA ), which requires federally funded hospitals to provide patients, including pregnant patients, with stabilizing care or transfer to a hospital that can provide such care. At issue is the law’s interaction with state laws that severely restrict abortion, like an Idaho law that bans abortion except in cases of rape or incest and circumstances where abortion is “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”

Although the Idaho law limits the provision of abortion care to circumstances where death is imminent, the federal government argues that under EMTALA and basic principles of federal supremacy, pregnant patients experiencing emergencies at federally funded hospitals in Idaho are entitled to abortion care, even if they are not in danger of imminent death.

These cases may be framed in the technical jargon of administrative law and federal pre-emption doctrine, but both cases involve incredibly high-stakes issues for the lives and health of pregnant persons — and offer the court an opportunity to shape the landscape of abortion access in the post-Roe era.

These two cases may also give the court a chance to seed new ground for fetal personhood. Woven throughout both cases are arguments that gesture toward the view that a fetus is a person.

If that is the case, the legal rules that would typically hold sway in these cases might not apply. If these questions must account for the rights and entitlements of the fetus, the entire calculus is upended.

In this new scenario, the issue is not simply whether EMTALA’s protections for pregnant patients pre-empt Idaho’s abortion ban, but rather which set of interests — the patient’s or the fetus’s — should be prioritized in the contest between state and federal law. Likewise, the analysis of F.D.A. regulatory protocols is entirely different if one of the arguments is that the drug to be regulated may be used to end a life.

Neither case presents the justices with a clear opportunity to endorse the notion of fetal personhood — but such claims are lurking beneath the surface. The Idaho abortion ban is called the Defense of Life Act, and in its first bill introduced in 2024, the Idaho Legislature proposed replacing the term “fetus” with “preborn child” in existing Idaho law. In its briefs before the court, Idaho continues to beat the drum of fetal personhood, insisting that EMTALA protects the unborn — rather than pregnant women who need abortions during health emergencies.

According to the state, nothing in EMTALA imposes an obligation to provide stabilizing abortion care for pregnant women. Rather, the law “actually requires stabilizing treatment for the unborn children of pregnant women.” In the mifepristone case, advocates referred to fetuses as “unborn children,” while the district judge in Texas who invalidated F.D.A. approval of the drug described it as one that “starves the unborn human until death.”

Fetal personhood language is in ascent throughout the country. In a recent decision , the Alabama Supreme Court allowed a wrongful-death suit for the destruction of frozen embryos intended for in vitro fertilization, or I.V.F. — embryos that the court characterized as “extrauterine children.”

Less discussed but as worrisome is a recent oral argument at the Florida Supreme Court concerning a proposed ballot initiative intended to enshrine a right to reproductive freedom in the state’s Constitution. In considering the proposed initiative, the chief justice of the state Supreme Court repeatedly peppered Nathan Forrester, the senior deputy solicitor general who was representing the state, with questions about whether the state recognized the fetus as a person under the Florida Constitution. The point was plain: If the fetus was a person, then the proposed ballot initiative, and its protections for reproductive rights, would change the fetus’s rights under the law, raising constitutional questions.

As these cases make clear, the drive toward fetal personhood goes beyond simply recasting abortion as homicide. If the fetus is a person, any act that involves reproduction may implicate fetal rights. Fetal personhood thus has strong potential to raise questions about access to abortion, contraception and various forms of assisted reproductive technology, including I.V.F.

In response to the shifting landscape of reproductive rights, President Biden has pledged to “restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land.” Roe and its successor, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, were far from perfect; they afforded states significant leeway to impose onerous restrictions on abortion, making meaningful access an empty promise for many women and families of limited means. But the two decisions reflected a constitutional vision that, at least in theory, protected the liberty to make certain intimate choices — including choices surrounding if, when and how to become a parent.

Under the logic of Roe and Casey, the enforceability of EMTALA, the F.D.A.’s power to regulate mifepristone and access to I.V.F. weren’t in question. But in the post-Dobbs landscape, all bets are off. We no longer live in a world in which a shared conception of constitutional liberty makes a ban on I.V.F. or certain forms of contraception beyond the pale.

Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University and a host of the Supreme Court podcast “ Strict Scrutiny ,” is a co-author of “ The Trump Indictments : The Historic Charging Documents With Commentary.”

Kate Shaw is a contributing Opinion writer, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and a host of the Supreme Court podcast “Strict Scrutiny.” She served as a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens and Judge Richard Posner.