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Is There Any Good News Left?

For the last few weeks, doomscrolling has felt like playing a slot machine of existential threats: Will AI Kill Us? (Yes.) When Will the Iran War End? (Not soon enough.)

But—and don’t leave—despite what our algorithms and daily digests suggest, there is still some good news worth celebrating.

Earlier this month in Rhode Island, progressives notched a win with democratic socialist David Morales’s victory in Providence’s mayoral Democratic primary. Morales, a 27-year-old state representative who supports capping rent increases, improving public transportation, and increasing taxes on polluting industries, bested centrist Mayor Brett Smiley in the city’s first-ever primary defeat of an incumbent mayor.

Morales’s primary win is part of a broader embrace of progressive left politics ahead of the midterms. Nearly nine months into his first term as mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani has not only proven popular and effective, but his star continues to rise beyond the traditional honeymoon period—becoming something of a hopeful icon for people everywhere who might otherwise be disengaged with politics. And he’s been commodified: While lurking around Central Park West (across from Trump Tower), I spied souvenir shops selling Mamdani T-shirts, and his upbeat visage has even lent itself to a best-selling children’s book. He has much to smile about.

There’s cause for optimism across the pond, too. Earlier this month, the UK’s foreign secretary Ed Miliband—who, I cannot resist noting, is a former Nation intern (class of 1989)—announced that his country, along with Canada and France, would impose economic sanctions on Israel’s illegal West Bank settlements. This action would be significant even if these countries weren’t long-standing allies of Israel. Given the history, the sanctions could well be a historic turning point.

And in the public consciousness, support for the Palestinian people has reached an unprecedented hold, and in........

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