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founding fathers
We Didn't Fight a Revolution for a King
Why presidential power should worry every American.
Jul 04, 2025
The Fourth of July marks the day America declared our independence from the idea that one man should hold unchecked power over an entire people and from a system that placed loyalty to the crown above fairness, above freedom, and above the law. That's the kind of government America's founding fathers risked their lives to overthrow.
Alexander Hamilton summed it up in Federalist No. 47, which most readers were required to read in high school, "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." President Donald Trump does not wear a crown, but some of his unilateral, unconstitutional actions—past and planned—echo the exact abuses that America's founders opposed. And whether you support him or not, this should give you pause.
I say this as someone not looking to insult or belittle anyone's vote. Millions of Americans supported Trump in 2024 for valid reasons. Many voters simply felt he was the better of two flawed choices. But if you're one of those Americans—someone who voted for Trump but doesn't want to see one man hold all the power—this message is for you.
A system that allows one person to "do whatever I want" is only comforting if you always agree with that person.
The Founders didn't just oppose King George III because of taxes or trade. They rejected the very idea that one man should rule without real accountability. The Declaration of Independence laid out a vision of a republic in which power is limited, divided, and checked.
Our system was built with friction on purpose—three co-equal branches, independent agencies, freedom of the press, and state sovereignty—all to prevent the rise of a single ruler.
Donald Trump has stated that Article II of the Constitution gives him "the right to do whatever I want as president."
Maybe you trust Trump with that power. Maybe you think he is using it wisely, or at least in your interests by abducting college students off of city streets because of their speech, cutting off federal funds to universities that refuse to cede academic freedom to the government, summarily stripping away birthright citizenship from children born in our nation, starting a war with another nation without any justification or congressional authorization, and funding a genocide in clear violation of U.S law. But what about the next president who runs with this precedent and goes even further? Or the one after that? A system that allows one person to "do whatever I want" is only comforting if you always agree with that person.
Many Americans, especially Republicans, have historically been skeptical of big government and concentrated power—and rightly so. Because when power gets centralized, it never stays in the hands of just one party.
Presidents of both parties have tested boundaries. But what President Trump proposes goes further: He's not testing the guardrails—he's removing them. And he's doing it while promising "retribution" and calling political opponents "enemies of the state."
The Declaration of Independence includes 27 grievances against King George III. Among them: obstructing justice, making judges dependent on his will alone, keeping standing armies under his personal command, manipulating elections, and using public offices as instruments of personal loyalty.
Read those carefully and reflect on the last few months.
As a Muslim, I'm also reminded that the warning against absolute authority isn't just a constitutional principle—it's a moral one. In Islam, power is a trust (amanah), not a privilege, and leaders are servants accountable to those they lead—and to God. Yusuf ben Ali, whose name appears in a revolutionary war era military muster role, is just one example of Muslims risking all for American ideals.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said, "Every one of you is a shepherd, and every one of you is responsible for his flock." American Muslims know what it's like when government power turns its gaze on a single community—through surveillance, profiling, and fear-mongering. That's why we are especially sensitive to executive overreach. Because when power becomes personal, the Constitution becomes optional.
Too often, we treat criticism of a president as disloyalty. But that's not how the Founders saw it. They built a system where debate, dissent, and accountability were patriotic. Where allegiance is owed to the Constitution—not to a man.
We can and should insist on a system where no one—left or right—can ignore the law, silence opponents, or rig the system for personal gain.
The Founders gave us a framework strong enough to withstand kings, tyrants, and demagogues—but only if we choose to uphold it. We uphold it by not letting any president—Trump, Joe Biden, or the next one—rule without limits. And that's something every American—no matter who you voted for—should stand up and defend.
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This Juneteenth, America Must Choose to Live Up to Its Founding Documents
When we limit conversations about our complex past, we not only lose historical accuracy but also our capacity for growth and the honest reckoning that could finally help us fulfill our founding promises.
Jun 19, 2025
In 1796, 22-year-old Ona Marie Judge became one of America's most wanted fugitives. Born into slavery and held by President George Washington, Judge escaped from Philadelphia and fled north to New Hampshire. Washington immediately began hunting her, placing newspaper advertisements offering rewards for her return. For over 50 years, she would live as a fugitive, knowing that bounty hunters could appear at any moment to drag her back into bondage. Her story of survival reveals tensions that we're still grappling with today.
Judge's escape revealed the America we rarely acknowledge in our founding stories. As efforts to silence discussions of race and history spread nationwide—from federal agencies barring recognition of Black History Month to more than 44 states, including my home state of New Hampshire, limiting how schools can discuss racism—her story demands our attention.
Judge's escape laid bare the America we rarely acknowledge in our founding mythology.
The paradoxes Judge witnessed still define us. Washington was not the infallible moral leader of our imagination, but a flesh-and-blood man who owned other human beings and spent years trying to recapture the woman who dared seek freedom. New Hampshire was not removed from slavery's horrors—Portsmouth had been a major slave trading port since the 1600s.
Judge's escape laid bare the America we rarely acknowledge in our founding mythology. These tensions were the defining forces that shaped America's first century and continue to do so today. Judge's story illuminates how deeply slavery was woven into the fabric of the entire nation, connecting Black and white lives in ways our history books have long worked to hide. Understanding her experience becomes essential to understanding ourselves, especially as movements to obscure these complexities grow stronger.
The Pattern of Progress and Backlash
This current backlash against Black history education shouldn't surprise us—it follows a persistent American pattern. Every period of racial progress has triggered fierce resistance designed to roll back gains and rewrite the past. After Reconstruction brought Black political participation and civil rights, the country allowed Jim Crow laws to flourish and KKK terror to reign while Confederate monuments were erected across the South to rewrite the Civil War as a noble struggle rather than a fight to preserve slavery. The rise of the war on drugs and mass incarceration of Black Americans followed the 1960s civil rights laws. The election of the first Black president, Barack Obama, triggered the Tea Party movement and birtherism campaigns designed to delegitimize his presidency.
Today's attacks on how we discuss race and history represent the latest iteration of this cycle. When we limit conversations about our complex past, we not only lose historical accuracy but also our capacity for growth and the honest reckoning that could finally help us fulfill our founding promises.
Why Local Stories Matter
This ongoing struggle is why the work happening in New Hampshire—a politically purple state where Black residents make up just 2% of the population—offers constructive lessons for the rest of the nation. If honest conversations about Black history can flourish here, they can do so anywhere; however, success requires understanding what we like to use as a guideline: the rule of thirds. One third will support, one third will be persuaded, and one third will oppose. The progress is determined by the persuadable middle. We've seen how we can make real change by reaching that crucial middle group in New Hampshire.
Look no further than our annual July 4 readings of Frederick Douglass' "What to the Slave Is Your Fouth of July" speech, which has grown from one participating town to 22, with communities reading simultaneously across the state. From synagogues to rural town halls, people gather simply to hear Douglass' words—no discussion required, no positions demanded. This creates space for reflection and connection without the political battles that often shut down conversation before it begins.
Judge's legacy calls us to specific action: Resist erasure wherever we encounter it—in our children's schools, local libraries, state legislatures, and national debates.
Building unexpected alliances has proven equally powerful. Working with the Daughters of the American Revolution to install historical markers honoring Black Revolutionary War heroes demonstrates that historical truth enriches rather than threatens our understanding of patriotism. We've now placed nearly 40 markers throughout the state, each one making visible stories that were always there but rarely acknowledged.
This success stems from focusing on education and storytelling rather than confrontation, allowing facts and local narratives to speak for themselves. New Hampshire residents hunger for authentic stories about their own communities, even when those stories complicate their narratives about the past.
From resistance to Reckoning
The power of personal narrative will be on full display this Juneteenth, as Portsmouth hosts an unprecedented gathering where direct descendants of America's founding fathers and the people they enslaved come together to explore our intertwined histories. Shannon LaNier, the ninth-generation descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, will join Laurel Guild Yancey, descendant of Portsmouth's Prince Whipple, a Black man who fought in the Revolutionary War while enslaved by Declaration of Independence signer William Whipple. In a profound twist of history, the Whipple family would later become the very people who provided sanctuary to Ona Judge when she sought refuge in Portsmouth—the same family line that had owned Prince Whipple would become her protectors, demonstrating how the arc of justice sometimes bends through the most unexpected transformations.
When descendants sit together sharing these narratives, they reveal how the stories of America's founding fathers and the people they enslaved have been inseparably linked across generations. These family histories, passed down through centuries, offer living proof that our nation's racial past isn't separate and distinct, but intimately woven together from the very beginning. Their gathering in Judge's adopted hometown creates a bridge across time, connecting her story of resistance to our current moment of choice.
After all, her choice to flee slavery, knowing the dangers ahead, required extraordinary courage. She lived in poverty, often depending on charity, and had outlived her three children and husband when she died in 1848. Yet she chose uncertainty over oppression, a fugitive's life over bondage, never abandoning her claim to freedom despite facing consequences far more severe than anything we encounter today.
The free Black families in Portsmouth who risked everything to shelter her further demonstrate that resistance has always been collective work, requiring people to see their own freedom as incomplete while others remained in chains. Their courage offers a template for our current moment, when we need that same spirit of collective action.
Judge's legacy calls us to specific action: Resist erasure wherever we encounter it—in our children's schools, local libraries, state legislatures, and national debates. Speak up when school boards attempt to ban books that tell the full story of American history. Engage with the persuadable middle in our communities, attend town halls, and vote for leaders who understand that historical truth strengthens, rather than weakens, our democracy. Most importantly, discover the complete stories of all who have lived in your community—Indigenous peoples, Black families, immigrants, and others whose experiences have been overlooked—and support those working to bring these histories to light.
This Juneteenth, as conversations unfold in the place where Judge found refuge, her story asks us to choose: Will we allow fear to silence these essential truths, or will we find the courage to engage in the honest reckoning needed to fulfill the promises of equality our founding documents made to all Americans?
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What Would the Founders Make of Trump’s Authoritarianism?
The Founders imagined the president as an administrator, not a policymaker, and definitely not an imperial unitary executive.
Mar 26, 2025
The U.S. Constitution is very specific about the powers of Congress and very vague about the powers of the president and the judiciary. While the authors of the nation’s founding documents were explicit that power had to be divided between three coequal branches, the legislative, executive, and judicial, they did not anticipate the authoritarianism of President Donald Trump, the cowardice of congressional representatives beholden to a populist demagogue for endorsements and campaign funds, nor the reactionary ideology of a right-wing Supreme Court. It is not fair to blame the founders for events 250 into the future, with the United States in the midst of a major constitutional crisis.
In 1787, Benjamin Franklin placed the responsibility for upholding the Constitution on future generations when he warned that the new government is “A republic, if you can keep it.” Abraham Lincoln recognized the difficulty of maintaining a country based on this one’s founding principles in his Gettysburg Address over 150 years ago when he told the assembled, “We are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
The Constitution assigns the president an undefined executive power with some very specific tasks. The president represents the country in talks with other countries and can negotiate treaties, but the treaties must be approved by the Senate; the president can veto or sign bills approved by both houses of Congress, and then they are responsible for enforcing the laws; and the president acts as Commander-in-Chief of the military during a war, nominates judges and ambassadors pending Senate approval, and grants pardons.
The Trump claim for a unitary executive and virtually unlimited executive power undermines everything they were trying to create.
There is no mention in the Constitution of political parties or of Cabinet members. Departments and Cabinet positions were created by Congress later to make the government run more smoothly. Executive orders are not mentioned in the Constitution either, and they do not carry the power of law, but every president since George Washington has issued executive orders as instructions to heads of the different federal departments about how to carry out their duties. The Constitution does not give the president the authority to issue executive orders that overturn or ignore laws passed by Congress or decisions made by the Supreme Court.
Since George Washington’s presidency, different presidents have interpreted their powers and responsibilities as chief executive in different ways. President Trump embraces the modern unitary executive theory, which claims that the president has sole authority over the executive branch of the government. According to this theory presidential power can only be restrained if a president is impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted by the Senate, something that it so difficult that it has never happened in United States history.
Without restraints, Trump argues he can summarily fire without cause any employee of the executive branch including Cabinet members approved by the Senate, he can decide not to spend money allocated by Congress, and he can ignore laws he does not agree with even though they were passed by Congress and signed by a previous president. The right-wing majority on the Supreme Court seems inclined to support Trump’s view of executive power. In 2020, during Trump’s first presidency, the Supreme Court narrowly ruled 5-4 that “the entire ‘executive power’ belongs to the president alone,” although it never actually explained what executive power means.
Three of the nation’s founders, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, addressed the allocation of power in the new government and explained why power had to be divided. Thomas Jefferson was not at the Constitutional Convention, but he did address the separation of powers in his 1784 Notes on the State of Virginia, with ideas that helped shape the Constitution. While Jefferson was more concerned with the legislative branch assuming too much power, he was very clear that “all the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to the legislative body,” but “concentrating these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government... An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.” Jefferson warned, “The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.”
James Madison, who was the secretary at the Constitutional Convention, explained how separation of powers should work in essays he wrote during the debate in New York State over ratification of the Constitution. In Federalist Papers 47-50, he explained the importance of separating powers and how the principle was applied in the Constitution. He also addressed concerns about how the system would work. An underlying principle of the new government was that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” balancing power among the branches of government to protect individual rights and prevent tyranny. Madison famously wrote in Federalist Paper 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
Alexander Hamilton, an active participant in the Constitutional Convention, wrote in favor of a strong executive and is used to justify the unitary executive theory; however, Hamilton was not discussing unlimited executive authority but was disputing the idea of a presidential council. Hamilton explained the specific powers assigned to the president and did not anticipate claims that a president would be virtually unchallengeable. According to Hamilton, “The only remaining powers of the executive are comprehended in giving information to Congress of the State of the Union; in recommending to their consideration such measures as he shall judge expedient”; and “faithfully executing the laws.” He was very careful to distinguish between the president as an elected executive subject to impeachment and the power of a hereditary monarch.
I think the Founders imagined the president as an administrator, not a policymaker, and definitely not an imperial unitary executive. Their bigger fear was that congressional majorities would attempt to usurp the executive’s responsibility to administer laws in order to benefit special interest groups. For the same reason they wanted an independent judiciary to prevent the politically motivated administration of justice. The Trump claim for a unitary executive and virtually unlimited executive power undermines everything they were trying to create.
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