Evaluate the Second New Deal's major programs and the arguments of its critics from both the left and the right, and assess the New Deal's overall legacy even-handedly.
By 1935, with the Depression still far from over, Roosevelt launched a "Second New Deal" more focused on long-term security than emergency relief. The Social Security Act (1935) created a permanent old-age pension system funded by payroll taxes, along with unemployment insurance -- a landmark, still-existing safety net, though its original design excluded agricultural and domestic workers, occupations in which Black and Mexican American workers were disproportionately concentrated, meaning the new safety net's benefits reached white industrial and office workers far more completely than everyone else at first. The National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act, 1935) guaranteed workers' right to unionize and bargain collectively, dramatically strengthening the American labor movement. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) employed millions directly on public infrastructure, art, and theater projects.
The New Deal faced serious, organized opposition from more than one direction, and a fair history presents each honestly. From the left, Louisiana Senator Huey Long argued the New Deal did not go nearly far enough, proposing a "Share Our Wealth" program of much heavier taxation on the rich; he was assassinated in 1935 before his national political ambitions could fully develop. From the right, the American Liberty League, backed by conservative businessmen, argued the New Deal dangerously expanded federal power and undermined free enterprise and property rights. The Supreme Court agreed with parts of that critique, striking down the NIRA (1935) and the AAA (1936) as unconstitutional overreaches of federal power; Roosevelt responded in 1937 with a "court-packing" plan to add friendly justices, which even many of his own supporters in Congress rejected as a dangerous power grab, and it failed. Historians still debate the New Deal's overall economic effectiveness -- unemployment remained high throughout the 1930s, and many economists argue it was ultimately World War II's spending, not the New Deal, that ended the Depression -- while broadly agreeing that Social Security, the FDIC, and the right to unionize permanently reshaped the relationship between Americans and their federal government.
Mastery looks like: They can describe two Second New Deal programs accurately, state a real critique from the left and one from the right, and explain the court-packing episode's outcome and significance.
Common stumbles: Treating the New Deal's legacy as a simple, settled success story, without engaging the real contemporary critiques from both directions or the genuine, ongoing economic debate over its effectiveness.