More than a year into Donald J. Trump’s second term as president, our national politics can often feel dominated by rage, anguish and cynicism. As we celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary, rhetoric describing America as a generous refuge for the world’s downtrodden and as a land of new beginnings rings false.

Violent actions against both migrants and American citizens, Mr. Trump’s threats and bullying of longtime allies as well as political colleagues at home, and haphazard military strikes against Venezuela, Iran and now possibly Cuba and Colombia lead many to question what this nation has become. What is the antidote for the anger, cynicism and despair that roil the land?

As always, there are lights among the shadows, and it is worthwhile to hold up those groups and people who are valiantly and publicly pushing back against the worst impulses of our national character and the specific violence and dishonesty of the current administration. Their work of courageous fortitude provides powerful counter-examples and reasons for hope.

First and foremost are the many activists taking part in actions of civil disobedience and peaceful protest around the nation. Mr. Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection Act to quash protests in Minneapolis and elsewhere, and his vice president has falsely described activists as “insurrectionists carrying foreign flags” and “far left agitators, working with local authorities.” This is part of a concerted effort to discredit any resistance to the administration’s plans—even as the national headlines have been dominated with the news of the recent killings of Renee Good and of Alex Pretti by federal officers and the subsequent resignation of six federal prosecutors over the Justice Department’s mishandling of both incidents.

But the vast majority of protestors, including in hotspots like Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland and most prominently Minneapolis, have undertaken peaceful, nonviolent and legal action to decry the actions of ICE and other federal agencies leading Mr. Trump’s campaign against our nation’s most vulnerable. Many have done so knowing that no such quarter would be offered by ICE or Border Patrol agents who have operated with seeming impunity in attacking Americans at the slightest pretext and have turned to violence without compunction.

These activists and fellow neighbors are doing the daily anonymous work of ensuring the dignity and safety of migrants who fear for their lives and their livelihoods in this dark time, providing food, shelter and comfort in small and quiet ways. We might never know most of their names—but we can take consolation from their example.

It has also been heartening to see the Catholic bishops take the lead standing up to Mr. Trump on a number of issues. The “special message” released by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Nov. 12, 2025, was remarkable not just for its rejection of Mr. Trump’s plans for the violent mass deportation of millions but for its collective nature. Not since 2013 have the bishops released such a joint statement, giving added weight to the blunt critique.

So, too, have individual prelates taken the lead in calling the Trump administration to account. In January, the three U.S. cardinals currently leading dioceses issued a joint statement calling for the Trump administration to abandon the actions and rhetoric against foreign nations that have roiled international diplomacy and raised the specter of worldwide conflict. The cardinals—Blase Cupich of Chicago, Robert McElroy of Washington and Joseph Tobin of Newark—warned that “the building of just and sustainable peace…is being reduced to partisan categories that encourage polarization and destructive policies.”

On Jan. 25, Cardinal Tobin was even more outspoken in his criticism of the Trump administration’s deportation and immigration enforcement plans, encouraging Americans to call their legislators and demand ICE be defunded. “We mourn for our world, for our country, that allows 5-year-olds to be legally kidnapped and protesters to be slaughtered,” he said, adding that voters should ask the legislators, “for the love of God and the love of human beings, which can’t be separated, [to] vote against renewing funding for such a lawless organization.”

Another welcome voice of conscience has been that of Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, who told U.S. troops on Jan. 18 that they could in good conscience disobey orders to participate in an immoral and unjustified military operation such as Mr. Trump’s proposed takeover of Greenland. Calling the decision to disobey such orders “morally acceptable,” the archbishop evoked the ire of the administration and some figures in the military—but also exercised his duties as the spiritual shepherd of those whose lives are put on the line when the United States makes its unilateral shows of force.

Additional groups that deserve credit for their resistance to the government’s immoral actions can be found on the other end of the political spectrum from many protestors and activists: pro-life advocates. In recent years, this lobby has seemed solidly in Mr. Trump’s camp despite his repeated betrayals of the pro-life cause, from the removal of the “pro-life” plank from the Republican Party platform in 2024 to his recent statement to Republican politicians that they should “be a little flexible” on the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funding of abortion.

No more. On Jan. 7, Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of a lobby that works to elect pro-life candidates to public office, said that any change in the government’s support of Hyde would be “a massive betrayal.” John Mize of Americans United for Life predicted that if Mr. Trump forsook the amendment (one long supported by the U.S. bishops and generally popular with the public), “it will leave the Republican Party in pieces, fractured and without a base strong enough to win important battles for life in coming years.” In a political world where pro-life friends can be hard to find, the courage of these groups to buck their onetime ally is admirable.

So too have a number of Republican elected officials displayed fortitude in the face of what has often been furious pushback from Mr. Trump when his party members do not fall into lockstep. Senator Thom Tillis has been a leading critic of many of the president’s actions, but Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana has also been an outspoken voice for accountability and honesty.

It takes great courage and faith to speak truth to power. It requires even more in an environment dominated by threats of economic or political retribution—or, in recent days, by the physical violence and intimidation that used to be associated with totalitarian regimes and police states. As we are all called to stand by our moral principles and longheld convictions in the days to come, may their examples be beacons of hope.