“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [sic] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men [sic], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776
Every generation meets the abyss in its own form. Shortly after the 2025 inauguration, on the recommendation of my father, Stephen Trott — a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judge — I read Eric Foner’s “The Second Founding.” Foner illustrates how the Civil War opened the door to transforming our Constitution through the Reconstruction Amendments.
After a brutal conflict over whether states could claim the right to enslave an entire race of people and subject them to relentless violence and degradation, much of the nation answered with moral certainty: no, neither a state nor an individual has that right. Protections were enshrined into the Constitution to guard against man’s crueler instincts.
“Together, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, known as the Reconstruction Amendments, transformed a charter that had been fundamentally based on slavery into a blueprint for an egalitarian society. They were, in effect, a second founding of the United States.“
Eric Foner, The Second Founding, 2019
In the year since the inauguration, the moral and constitutional crucible we currently face has only intensified. Project 2025 and this administration’s actions and executive orders are no less than a repeal of the 14th and 15th amendments: birthright citizenship, due process, equal protection under the law, and voting rights. We are witnessing blatant violence perpetrated against people deemed unworthy of care or a viable path to citizenship. One can come to no other conclusion about the intent of this administration when reviewing their actions. To summarize:
- The Birthright Citizenship Executive Order attempts to end automatic citizenship for certain U.S.-born children of noncitizen parents, contradicting the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.
- Alien Enemies Act deportations, upheld in part by SCOTUS in July 2025, enabled mass deportations with limited due process. The act undermines the Due Process Clause for immigrants and creates a precedent for race-based and nationality-based targeting.
- In Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, SCOTUS lifted restrictions on ICE racial profiling during immigration stops. This undercuts Equal Protection by allowing enforcement based explicitly on race, accent, or type of work — practices the 14th Amendment was meant to abolish.
- The Department of Justice has sided with restrictive state laws on voter ID, mail-in voting limits, and purges of voter rolls. These disproportionately impact Black, Latino, and immigrant voters; the very groups the 15th Amendment was meant to protect.
- The Administration is spreading false narratives that immigrants, urban voters, and communities of color are threats to election integrity to potentially justify deploying a paramilitary force to the polls to intimidate voters and undermine free and fair elections.
A Third Founding
Beyond the assault on the 14th and 15th Amendments, the scale and retaliatory nature of Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota raise urgent constitutional concerns under the First, Fourth, Fifth, and 10th Amendments. State Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey argue that the ICE deployment unlawfully intrudes on state sovereignty, disrupts local governance and public safety, and interferes with the normal exercise of state and municipal authority. Sworn evidence and detailed affidavits show that federal immigration agents have engaged in racial profiling, suppressed free speech, used excessive force, and carried out unconstitutional seizures and arrests.
“Do nothing by violence. Maintain all by reason and justice. In this way you will best assure the safety of the Republic and the rights of all.“
Charles Sumner, 1865
History will judge this administration, its leaders, and its enablers harshly. Very few, if any, of the executive orders will be enforced beyond this term. Future congressional hearings and investigations will reveal and condemn the morally corrupt and unconstitutional actions taken. The Supreme Court rulings, Trump v. United States and Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, will be on par with the much-maligned Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Korematsu v. United States.
The Supreme Court and the Senate, the branches of government meant to serve as checks and balances, will carry the responsibility for the erosion of democracy and our country’s decline.
Progress and backlash have been the human story throughout history. This reinvigorated attempt to drag our country back to an earlier form of structural inequality must fail, and it will fail. While some might want to believe otherwise, our country is firmly rooted in rights constitutionalism. Our Constitution guarantees and safeguards fundamental, inalienable rights, even against state or federal majorities.
Just as our emergence from the Civil War was a Second Founding for America, this similarly precarious moment sets the stage for a Third Founding1. We must reject and transcend a zero-sum, dominion-over worldview toward a positive-sum, power-with system that centers human dignity, agency, and possibility.
Reigniting First Principles
“Never was there a time when the destinies of this Republic were more in the hands of its people than now. It is ours to decide whether liberty shall be the inheritance of all, or the exclusive privilege of a part.“
Frederick Douglass, 1866
Make no mistake, the future is in our hands, the people’s hands. As has often been true throughout history, when dark and oppressive forces rise, hope and resistance rise, too. The people rise.
A Third Founding is emerging, and we all play a role, no matter how big or small, in transforming this moment. It’s time to reinvigorate the first principles of popular sovereignty, equality, liberty and human rights, rule of law, separation of powers, checks and balances, civic virtue, and justice for this era. To guarantee voting rights, ensure fair and equal representation, democratize campaign finance, build a democratic economy rooted in shared prosperity, affirm immigrant, LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights, and restore the balance of powers necessary for a representative and self-governing democracy.
Change of this magnitude can feel almost impossible when the forces against it seem all-powerful, much as Reconstruction did in 1865. Though it was later dismantled through violence, judicial retreat, and political abandonment, generations fought their way forward after Jim Crow. To cede those gains would be to dishonor the people who sacrificed to secure them.
It’s our turn now. What we dream and build from these ashes matters. We cannot surrender our rights to the patterns of oppression that have so often inflicted suffering on the most vulnerable.
What Is Philanthropy’s Role?
“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.“
Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963
Historically, philanthropy has played a decisive role in protecting democracy when public institutions faltered or retreated.
During Reconstruction, private philanthropy helped fill gaps by funding schools, colleges, and organizations for newly liberated people, often in the face of violent backlash. Religious and civic donors, alongside public efforts like the Freedmen’s Bureau, helped lay the groundwork for Black education by founding Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and providing legal services and pathways for civic participation.
Philanthropy again proved essential in the Civil Rights Era: supporting litigation, organizing, voter education, and backing movement leaders when government hostility made such work dangerous or near impossible. In each era, philanthropy did not replace democratic action, it protected the people and conditions that made it possible.
Today’s Call Is No Different
Leaders in Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, and Minneapolis are acting with moral clarity and courage, bold in both word and deed, by standing with organizers and everyday citizens who are building democratic power and bearing the greatest risks. Other cities are facing similar, escalating threats, and more will follow if we allow it.
The biggest determinate of public participation in nonviolent, lawful resistance is access to a safety net. Labor councils, faith-based networks, immigrant serving and other community organizations need resources to provide hardship funds, mutual aid, wage-gap stipends, legal defense, retaliation documentation, public safety, and mental health services. Multi-sector solidarity is needed at a scale sufficient to safeguard the rights of all people, without exception.
This is not a time to hesitate. It is a time for profound, flexible support that leans fully into (and demands) our constitutional guarantees and carries this work across generations. Protecting our democracy is not partisan politics; it is a common cause that invites all people, across differences. United, we can usher in a Third Founding movement — anchored in the consent of the governed — and hold America to its promise of dignity, freedom, equality, and justice for all.
Shelley Trott is executive director of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation.
- This piece was in draft before the publication of Nonprofit Quarterly’s new collection, “A Third Reconstruction,” with which it shares a conceptual framework and joins a growing call for structural transformation. ↩︎
