Where should Washington look for moral authority in 2026?

Washington’s moral authority can be found where it has always been: in leaders whose work is rooted in integrity, dignity and a commitment to the common good. There is no shortage of such leaders, but we can’t hear their voices because others are louder — the ones that reinforce our prejudices, promise easy answers to complex problems and blame others for what we’ve all had a hand in creating.

It’s possible for an entire society to lose its way. But never underestimate the power of moral leaders, backed by a movement, to bring us back to our collective senses.

Think of Sen. John McCain, who voted against his own party in 2017 to protect health care for millions of Americans. Some called it betrayal. It was, in fact, exemplary moral leadership.

Washington has more people like that than we realize. Faith communities, civic leaders and voters all have a role to play in amplifying their voices.

We know cruelty when we see it. We know when a policy will hurt people. We can tell when our leaders are lying to us for personal gain. What’s harder to admit is when we are lying to ourselves. When we reward people who tell us the hard truths, we make it easier for the next person to do the same. Courage doesn’t arrive alone. It shows up because someone else went first.

Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde is Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

It has always been risky to look to the powerful or the privileged in search of moral guidance — but never more so than now. Congress is in a perpetual stalemate of finger-pointing and outrage. The White House is busy tearing down long-standing institutions, whether brick by brick or executive order by executive order. And the Supreme Court teeters on the edge of partisan meltdown save for Chief Justice John Roberts’ apparent determination to maintain its independence. Is the center holding? Who can tell whether there’s even a center anymore?

To recalibrate, our government needs to look beyond itself and turn to a group of people who neither have power nor are in pursuit of it: comedians. The wise fools who are keen observers of human nature. The jokesters who’ve dedicated their lives to relieving the mighty of their self-righteousness and solipsism. The satirists who punch up. The jesters who find common cause with the afflicted. Humor can clear a path to engage on topics that give us agita: race, sexuality, gender, ethnicity, religion — as well as fairness and decency.

The great stand-up comics of the day may be going for the laugh, but they often get there by way of truth-telling, by highlighting Washington’s hypocrisy, double-talk and selfishness. In the hands of a ferocious comic, shame can be weaponized in the nation’s service.

Comics don’t offer a way forward. But perhaps they can remind our leaders of the flawed, striving, complicated humanity we all share.

Robin Givhan is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, a Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion critic and a former senior critic at large for The Washington Post.

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address offers a moral compass for Washington. He asked whether a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to human equality can endure, urging his audience to rededicate themselves to that proposition. Drawing on Proverbs 25:11, he elsewhere called the Declaration of Independence’s equality and liberty principle the “apple of gold,” protected by the Constitution as a “frame of silver.”

What does focusing on universal human equality mean in practice? At minimum, it requires carrying respect for fellow citizens’ basic dignity into everything we do. The toxic culture of insult slinging that Americans are so tired of stands as the antithesis of this founding ideal.

Lincoln further illuminated equality’s meaning at Gettysburg’s close, calling for government of, by and for the people. His point was that only a government truly dependent on the whole populace — through genuinely majoritarian elections — can resist oligarchic capture by narrow interests, whether moneyed or ideologically extreme. Protecting freedom and equality for all requires precisely forestalling such capture. Washington could do much to root out corruption and to reform electoral institutions failing through gerrymanders and other forms of party capture.

Danielle Allen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University.

Politicians should look to park-district youth sports coaches for moral leadership. Baseball, basketball, football, volleyball, cheerleading — any team sport or activity will do. Volunteer coaches in community-wide programs literally do the three most important things in a diverse democracy:

1. Help form character. They teach things like: You have to wait your turn to bat. You have to shake hands with the other team, win or lose. You have to practice hard both so you can excel as a player and so you can help your team.

2. Facilitate cooperation across differences. If you have Jewish and Muslim players on your team, you can’t bring ham sandwiches as a snack. If there is tension in the Middle East, it can’t break up a baseball team in the Midwest. Leading a team, you realize in very concrete ways how necessary it is to bracket disagreements on some fundamental things (like Middle East wars) if you want to work together on other fundamental things (Sunday afternoon double headers).

3. Show that citizenship is not a spectator sport. You have to contribute, and it takes time. The government can supply the fields and the basic equipment, but a functioning democracy requires people to coach teams. If you want your kid to be in constructive activities, you need to give your time to help develop other people’s kids. That’s democracy — enlightened self-interest leads to mutual enrichment.

Eboo Patel is the founder and president of Interfaith America.

Washington should find moral authority in 2026 by recovering something of the force behind the phrase “Under God.” By that I mean neither the bland culture-worship of least-common-denominator civil religion nor the anti-democratic tribal idolatry of Christian Nationalism nor the biblical and historical revisionism of a “Christian America.”

In fact, I mean the reverse of all those things, each of which makes the strength of the state (or blood or soil) the ultimate goal, with religion as a means to that end. Instead, I mean a moral authority that flows from the acknowledgement that there is something greater than the state or the tribe to which all statecraft is ultimately accountable. If there is a moral reality that is more than just the laws passed and the elections won, then “winning” cannot retroactively justify decisions and actions that warp us one soul at a time.

Every lasting change for the better in this country — from abolition to the civil rights movement to the defeat of authoritarianism and totalitarianism in the last century — has recognized that loyalty to conscience, truth and human dignity must outrank loyalty to tribe, party or even country.

Only when we recognize that the most ultimate things outlast the lifespan of a person, a nation and even a cosmos, not to mention the factions and herds in which we hide, will we have the moral resources to judge our actions by something more permanent than ourselves — and actually to love our country. We are Americans best when we are not Americans first.

Russell Moore, a Christian theologian, is an editor-at-large and columnist for Christianity Today, the host of “The Russell Moore Show” podcast, and the author of “Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America.”

Washington should look for moral authority not only in principles but in practices that cultivate the heart. In Hinduism’s tradition of devotion (bhakti), moral clarity arises from humility, service (seva) and a living relationship with the Divine, who resides in all beings. The Bhagavad Gita calls leaders to act without attachment to personal gain, offering their work for the good of others. Concretely, this could mean creating regular spaces in Washington — across differences — for reflection, listening and moral accountability, not just strategy. In a polarized age, authority will belong to those who embody compassion in action, not simply those who claim it in rhetoric.

Vineet Chander is an assistant dean for religious life at Princeton University, where he directs the Hindu Life Program. This piece was written in a personal capacity.

From the moment he walked onto the balcony above St. Peter’s Square almost a year ago, Pope Leo XIV has stood out for his commitment to first principles, integrity and steady leadership. He began his papacy by calling for peace, mercy and justice in our troubled world, and he reminds us that each person possesses equal human dignity no matter where they were born, their stage in life or what they earn.

As an American and the leader of the global Church, Pope Leo brings a distinctive perspective to the moral challenges we face. He’s called us to serve the poor, to work for peace, to build bridges, not walls, and to stand in solidarity with those in need. He’s not afraid to speak to particular issues, calling for a ceasefire in the Iran war and hoping that President Trump is looking for “an off-ramp” and “a way to decrease the amount of violence.” He will spend July 4 — the 250th anniversary of the United States — on Italy’s island of Lampedusa, highlighting the plight of migrants.

Pope Leo’s moral authority is rooted in something deeper than politics, and, in Washington, that’s a rare thing.

Kim Daniels is the director of Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life.

Hello, Washington. Civilian here: I’ve never worked in government. But I just want to say, I get it. I see why it would be nice to hand moral questions over to an outside authority. It’s not always easy to discern the correct course of action — or to muster the courage to act. Oh, to be spared the burden of moral decision-making! To be relieved of responsibility for your actions!

But let’s say you designate a person, a book or a deity for this purpose. Is there really no instance when your own conscience might conflict with this Authority? Can you imagine none? I won’t name names, but I can think of certain trusted authorities that turned out to exhibit, promote or sanction behavior no one in good conscience would abide. If that ever happened with yours, what would you do? Would you ignore your conscience to follow your Authority instead?

Use other people (or books or deities) to sharpen your own sense of right and wrong, to help you examine the motives and outcomes of your actions. But, for the sake of all of us whose lives your work touches, please don’t ever pick One and say, “Conscience, you may rest.”

Kate Cohen is the author of “We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (And Maybe You Should Too)” and a former contributing columnist for The Washington Post. She now writes an independent column called Scratch.

People across the nation and around the world are looking to Minnesotans for not only moral authority, but for moral inspiration.

Last month, I visited Selma, Alabama — where the fight for civil rights inspired a nation 60 years ago. In 1965, civil rights marchers in Selma faced violent opposition from their government, and their courage led to many of the freedoms we enjoy today.

On my trip, the people of Selma told me that, today, they find inspiration in the people of Minnesota. They are inspired by Minnesotans’ brave response to the largest deployment of federal immigration agents in American history. Like folks who marched in Selma in 1965, Minnesotans in 2026 refused to be intimidated by kidnapping, bullying and killing. Instead, they exercised their rights, protected their neighbors, provided mutual aid and ended the ICE surge through human solidarity.

Minnesota showed the politicians in Washington and the people of the world that our state is a place of courage, conscience, love — which are all acts of moral resistance in our current moment. I can’t wait to see what new freedoms Minnesota inspires us to reach for.

Keith Ellison is the attorney general of Minnesota.

Moral authority in America, in the early months of 2026, belongs to the people of Minneapolis. They demonstrated, over the course of some of the most fraught weeks in recent American history, that they could maintain nonviolent discipline against absurd provocation by a collection of federally funded provocateurs. They made the whistle the most important technology of the year, using it to summon neighbors for the defense of neighbors. By supporting in every way the most vulnerable people in their communities, they forced the theoretically most powerful people in the country to blink; it was a display of courage and solidarity on par with the weeks of the Montgomery bus boycott 70 years ago.

Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College.

Washington should find moral authority in restraint.

U.S. policy appears to be operating on the belief that every problem requires more force, unbound by the law or human decency. The result is a cascade of actions that push through the limits on executive power we’ve taken for granted.

Lethal force is being used in places that are not battlefields, including in the Caribbean, twisting law enforcement into warfare; immigration enforcement has crossed into violent, often racist and sometimes deadly treatment; and tools of the state, from investigations to visa revocations, are being used to punish critics.

These choices are systematically degrading trust in the United States, making its actions harder to justify and consequences harder to manage.

And recklessness, speed and profit have victims. The people bearing the cost are the families of those killed in U.S. boat strikes, families separated across U.S. cities, and families of children killed in the U.S. strike on the Minab school in Iran. Their experiences show what happens when harm is treated as a tool or a tradeoff rather than a limit.

Restraint is not weakness. It is the disciplining of power by law and conscience, and a weighing of consequences before acting. It’s time Washington found moral authority in choosing what not to do.

Sarah Yager is the Washington director at Human Rights Watch.

Moral authority cannot be claimed through power. Washington must abandon the illusion of strength as control and instead turn outward and inward toward the lived realities of its people and the values it claims to defend.

It begins with the marginalized: the poor, the displaced, the unheard. A moral compass rooted in justice demands that policies be shaped not by political expediency but by their impact on those in need. This is foundational. A nation reveals its moral core not in how it rewards the powerful but in how it protects the vulnerable. By that measure, we are falling short and causing great harm.

Reclaiming moral authority also requires humility. Admitting harm does not weaken leadership. Rather, it legitimizes it. Truth-telling, especially when uncomfortable, is the basis of trust, and repair is its proof.

Above all, Washington must ground itself in a deeper sense of collective responsibility. Beyond partisanship and polarization lies a shared human dignity that calls us to something higher. Moral authority emerges when actions align with that dignity and when leadership is guided not just by what is legal or popular, but by what is right.

Imam Khalid Latif is executive director of the Islamic Center of New York City.

Philosophers have long warned us about power and the darker currents of human nature. Plato and Aristotle both stressed the need to cultivate leaders capable of resisting greed, ambition and excess. Even John Locke, a champion of individual rights and limited government, recognized that the accumulation of property can sow inequality and place strain on a society’s moral fabric.

Today, candidates may raise vast, sometimes undisclosed, sums while wielding unprecedented reach through technology and social media. Unlimited money met with expansive influence invites corruption. The word itself suggests the danger: From Latin, to corrupt is to break apart what should remain whole.

The answer is transparency — democracy’s disinfectant. Begin simply. Require timely disclosure of lawmakers’ trades — or better, prohibit them. Reject dark money outright. And let the owners of great fortunes and corporations reconsider attempts to purchase favor, lest they help unravel the very system that sustains our common life. Guard it with steady courage.

Hilary Braseth is the executive director of OpenSecrets.

Moral authority is too often and too easily invoked to justify policies set before moral reflection began. Moral authority in Washington derives first from the consent of the governed; second, from fidelity to the procedures and restraints of the founding documents and the legal order that flows from them; and third, from the enduring moral inheritance out of which the American experiment emerged.

None of these sources is unambiguous or self-interpreting. Consent can be manipulated, law can be strained, and tradition can be selectively invoked. Yet together they point toward enduring principles: respect for the dignity and integrity of the human person, acknowledgment that there exists a moral order not reducible to power or preference and an ethic of self-restraint without which freedom decays into faction and communal life fragments. Ultimately, Washington’s various sources of moral authority should all bring us back to the biblical vision that George Washington himself described in his famous letter to the congregation at Newport, Rhode Island, invoking the prophet Micah: “Everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

David Wolpe is the Max Webb Emeritus Rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and a scholar in residence at the Maimonides Fund. He has taught at Harvard, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the American Jewish University, Hunter College and UCLA.

Washington should get its facts from the people closest to the frontier of AI, and its moral authority from the people who will have to live with the consequences.

The builders can tell you what these systems can and will actually do. That matters, because most of Washington is still arguing about old versions of AI. But capability isn’t morality. The people who deserve the most weight are the ones who will absorb the consequences: workers, parents, teachers, students and small-business owners. The people with the least power in the room are often the ones with the clearest stake in whether we get this right.

Titles, prestige and institutional consensus aren’t enough. A CEO doesn’t have moral authority because he’s building the future. A senator doesn’t have it because he oversees it. Moral authority in Washington comes from absorbing the views of rank-and-file Americans, telling the truth about what is happening to them, and then protecting human agency, dignity and a path to meaningful work as the ground shifts beneath us.

So yes, Washington should listen to the frontier. But it should take its values from ordinary people. The question isn’t whether AI is impressive or inevitable. It’s whether the future still works for humans.

Matt Shumer is the general partner of Shumer Capital. He regularly speaks and writes on artificial intelligence.

We live in an era in which Congress seems increasingly removed from the views of the people it purports to represent. If our representatives seek moral authority, they need look no further than the American people themselves. Take immigration: It’s one of our most divisive issues, with Congress hopelessly deadlocked for three decades. Yet the views of the American people have, during that same period, been remarkably pragmatic: Vast majorities have wanted order and control at the border, pathways to legality for those who have long worked peacefully in the interior, and more visas for those who seek to come and contribute legally. Even at the height of the turmoil at the border, 2 million Americans from all 50 states and all walks of life came forward to sponsor migrants in need of their help. The people of Minnesota stood up in huge numbers in the bitter cold to protest the brutal treatment of their immigrant neighbors, expressing a view that polls show is overwhelmingly shared. These are demand signals consistent with our tradition as a nation of laws and of immigrants. Congress has ignored the will of the people for far too long.

Cecilia Muñoz is the former director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Obama. She is a co-chair at More Perfect, an American alliance working to revitalize democracy.