You could be forgiven for feeling a tad depressed about the state of the world this week. We woke up on Monday to the news that the far right had made inroads in the European parliamentary elections. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won so thoroughly that President Emmanuel Macron called a snap legislative election, opening the door for Le Pen’s party to gain even more power. As Harrison Stetler writes, the best chance to hold off the far-right tide appears to rest with forming a new leftist “popular front.” That would have, at least, a fighting chance.

Things are not much more cheerful on this side of the pond, where several members of the Squad are attempting to rebuff primary opponents backed by loads of money from AIPAC. On Thursday, Hadas Thier wrote about her time on the trail with perhaps the most vulnerable Squad representative, New York’s Jamaal Bowman, who is trailing in the polls despite his challenger’s obvious attempts to play on anti-Black and anti-Muslim fears. Anyone who wants to curb the power of Big Money and the Israel lobby should be keeping their fingers crossed that Bowman makes it over the line.

Please, please, some good news, I can almost hear you wail. Luckily, it hasn’t all been doom and gloom. As Arvin Alaigh chronicled this week, voters dealt a hammer blow to Narendra Modi’s efforts to turn India into a one-party Hindu nationalist state. The “uncommitted” campaign officially became President Joe Biden’s most powerful opponent in the Democratic primaries. The Supreme Court turned away an attempt to restrict access to abortion pills—for now, anyway. And Donald Trump said some bonkers things about sharks.

These things do not a utopia make, but this is 2024. And we have to take the wins where we can find them.

—Jack Mirkinson

Senior Editor, The Nation