Two hundred and fifty years.

On July 4, 2026, the United States turns 250. Not a minor milestone. A quarter of a millennium of an experiment that was never supposed to work. A republic built on an idea, not a dynasty, not a bloodline, not a royal signature.

I've spent the last few weeks building something a little unusual, together with a new best friend, Claude. Historical portraits of the Founding Fathers. Each one ends with the same question: if they could see us now, what would they actually say?

Not what we wish they'd say, but what they'd say honestly, looking at us now, 250 years later.

Starting this week with John Jay, one founder at a time. Some posts are inspiring. Some are uncomfortable. All of them are honest.

250 years deserves an honest reckoning, served fresh by… our Founding Fathers.

John Jay, 1745 - 1829
Founding Father · Diplomat · First Chief Justice of the United States · Governor of New York

I spent my public life building two things: an independent judiciary and a credible American foreign policy. I regarded them as related projects. Both rested on the same foundation — the proposition that law, faithfully applied and consistently honored, was more durable than force or favor; that a republic which kept its word and bound its own government to legal constraints was a republic that could survive in a dangerous world. I did not expect these achievements to be permanent without maintenance. I did not expect the maintenance to be quite so urgently needed quite so soon.

I approach your present moment with the trained eye of a diplomat and a jurist — someone who spent decades watching how nations behave when they believe the rules no longer apply to them, and how courts are corroded when those who hold executive power decide that judicial authority is an inconvenience rather than a constraint. What I observe in 2025 and 2026 is, in both dimensions, alarming.

On the Courts and the Rule of Law

When I served as the first Chief Justice of the United States, the Supreme Court was so new and so politically fragile that it met in a basement room and was regarded by many capable lawyers as beneath their professional dignity. I spent six years trying to establish, through the consistent quality of its decisions and the integrity of its procedures, that the Court was a serious institution — that it would apply the law as written regardless of political convenience, that it would not issue advisory opinions on behalf of the executive, and that its independence was not a courtesy that the other branches could revoke when they found it inconvenient.

It is therefore with more than ordinary distress that I observe the current executive branch's conduct toward the federal judiciary. Court orders on deportation defied or evaded. Officials who, when asked whether they would comply with Supreme Court rulings, gave answers that were evasive rather than unequivocal. A pattern of behavior that treats judicial authority as a procedural obstacle rather than a constitutional constraint. I want to be very clear about what this means: when an executive branch decides that it need not comply with court orders it disagrees with, it has not merely violated the separation of powers. It has made the judiciary irrelevant. And a judiciary rendered irrelevant is not reformed — it is destroyed.

I also observe the systematic effort to reshape the judiciary through politically motivated appointments — which is, within constitutional limits, a legitimate exercise of executive and senatorial power. What is not within constitutional limits is the attempt to influence ongoing judicial proceedings, the public attacks on judges who issue unfavorable rulings, and the use of congressional mechanisms to threaten judicial independence. These are not the actions of an administration that believes in an independent judiciary. They are the actions of one that would prefer a compliant one.

"The restraints our Constitution puts on government are about protecting the rights of citizens, not about limiting government's ability to do what it wants." — John Jay (paraphrased from his judicial writings)

On America's Standing in the World

I negotiated the Treaty of Paris. I understand what it costs to build diplomatic credibility from nothing. The United States in 1782 was a financially exhausted, militarily depleted, institutionally fragile new nation trying to negotiate with the world's most powerful empire. What we had to offer Britain was not strength — we had very little of that. What we had to offer was the prospect of a reliable, law-abiding commercial partner that would honor its agreements and whose word could be trusted across administrations. That reputation, carefully cultivated, was our primary diplomatic asset.

I then spent a decade and a half building on that foundation — as Secretary of Foreign Affairs, as Chief Justice, and as the negotiator of the Jay Treaty. The Jay Treaty was deeply unpopular. I understood why. It did not give Americans everything they wanted. It did not punish Britain for the very real grievances — the impressment, the occupied forts, the seized cargoes — that Americans had every right to feel. What it did was preserve peace with the world's dominant commercial power at a moment when war would have bankrupted the republic. I accepted the political cost because I understood the alternative.

What I observe in your present administration's foreign policy is the systematic destruction of the assets I spent my career building. The withdrawal from international organizations — sixty-six of them, by one account. The abandonment of multilateral frameworks that took generations to construct. The treatment of long-standing alliances as commercial transactions to be renegotiated rather than strategic relationships to be maintained. The language of contempt directed at partners whose cooperation is essential to American security and prosperity. These are not the behaviors of a great power confident in its position. They are the behaviors of a nation that has confused aggression with strength, and isolation with independence.

I made myself very unpopular defending a treaty that preserved American interests at the cost of American pride. I would make myself equally unpopular today defending the proposition that America's long-term security depends on its reputation as a reliable partner — that the alliances being treated as burdens are in fact the most valuable strategic assets the republic possesses, built over decades and destroyable in months.

On Moderation and the Temptation of Force

I am, by temperament and by conviction, a moderate. I have never regarded this as a weakness. The history of republics suggests that they are destroyed not primarily by external enemies but by internal extremism — by the escalating logic of faction and counter-faction that eventually produces a Sulla, a Cromwell, a Napoleon. The Founders who worried most about this pattern — and I was among them — argued for institutional moderation: checks and balances, staggered terms, independent branches, all designed to force deliberation and prevent any single passion or faction from moving too quickly.

What I observe in your present political culture is the deliberate weaponization of immoderation — the cultivation of permanent emergency, permanent grievance, permanent crisis, as the psychological context in which ordinary constitutional constraints seem like luxuries the moment cannot afford. This is a technique as old as demagogy itself. The emergency is always real enough to feel urgent; the constitutional constraint is always abstract enough to seem dispensable; the leader promising resolution is always charismatic enough to seem indispensable. And the republic, if it is not careful, wakes up one morning to find that the emergency has been resolved and the constraints have not been restored.

On What He Would Hope

I am not without hope. I spent years watching the United States navigate crises — financial collapse, foreign threats, internal faction, constitutional stress — and emerge, battered but intact. The courts are still functioning. The press is still publishing. The elections are still being held. These are not small things.

I would urge particular attention to the courts in this moment. An independent judiciary is the most fragile and the most essential of the republic's institutions. It has no army, no treasury, no electoral constituency. Its authority rests entirely on the willingness of the other branches and of the citizenry to treat its decisions as binding — to accept that the rule of law means accepting outcomes you disagree with, including outcomes that constrain executive power you believe is justified. When the courts hold, the republic holds. When they are made irrelevant, nothing else matters very much.

I also want to say something about America's role in the world, because I believe it matters more than most domestic political actors recognize. The institutional order that has prevented great-power war for eighty years — imperfect, unequal, often serving American interests more than others' — is not self-sustaining. It requires American engagement, American credibility, and American willingness to accept the constraints that binding institutions impose. Walk away from it, and you do not produce a freer world. You produce a more dangerous one. That is not an abstraction. It is the lesson of every generation that tried the alternative.

— J. Jay

Bedford, New York, in spirit, May 2026