#constitutional-history

#constitutional-history

Since taking office for a second time, the Trump administration has issued a number of executive orders on religion that raise new questions about religious freedom. On May 1, 2025, the administration established the Religious Liberty Commission. The commission will advise the White House on policies intended to protect the free exercise of religion and to prevent discrimination against people of faith by the federal government.

On Feb. 25, 1986, President Ferdinand Marcos fled the Philippines after 20 years of rule in the wake of a tainted election; opposition leader Corazon Aquino the first woman to lead the country assumed the presidency.

The recent tensions between local authorities in Minnesota and the immigration enforcement agencies of the Trump administration, particularly Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), are not merely the stance of rebellious cities or states. They are the latest manifestation of a dispute as old as the nation itself: the resistance of local power against a federal center that periodically attempts to govern by imposition. To interpret what is happening today in Minneapolis and its consequences as an isolated episode of immigration policy is to remain on the surface.

It is Constitution Day 2025, and I am freshly inspired by a lecture from my Colleague Dr. Carli Conklin on the "pursuit of happiness" as used in the Declaration of Independence. Her scholarship reveals the phrase is not a hedonistic right that might be implied when used today, but rather part a collective project of human flourishing rooted in virtue, knowledge, and useful improvements.