Bill of Rights Day, 2025

Proclamation 10997 of December 15, 2025 Bill of Rights Day, 2025 A Proclamation Two hundred and fifty years ago, our Nation was conceived in liberty, our freedom was wrested from the hands of tyranny, and our people courageously united as one Nation under God, committed to the immortal principles of sovereignty, justice, and self-determination. Today, we proudly celebrate the ratification of our Bill of Rights—the revolutionary document that enshrines in law the principles of freedom, human dignity, and due process upon which the United States was founded. On this Bill of Rights Day, we proudly carry forth the bold vision of our Founding Fathers. We recommit to the timeless freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and we vow to always preserve, protect, and defend our God-given rights, our glorious American heritage, and our constitutional way of life. Following the Revolutionary War, the framers of our Constitution set aside 10 core protections from government authority that would ultimately become known as the “Bill of Rights.” After decades of oppression under British rule, James Madison—the Father of the Constitution—came to understand that it was necessary to clearly define what freedoms the law protected, setting the stage for the triumph of true self-government. Though Madison was once concerned that a written bill of rights would not succeed in fending off forces of tyranny and oppression, his friend Thomas Jefferson later convinced him: “A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse or rest on inference.” In 1789, the First United States Congress drafted the first 10 amendments to the Constitution and later sent them to the States to ratify. In doing so, the States forever secured a series of freedoms that no tyrant could ever infringe—including the rights to speak and worship freely, to keep and bear arm…