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🌁Foggy day with a chance of showers and highs in the 70s. Sunset is at 7:40 p.m.
It’s official: in the 2028 presidential election, the Democratic National Committee wants New Hampshire to once again relinquish its status as the first-in-the-nation primary to South Carolina. Third in the nation doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, and New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan has already said the state might proceed with an earlier primary date anyway. Republicans will still hold their first primary in New Hampshire.
If New Hampshire Dems move ahead with their earlier primary, the Democratic National Committee has threatened not to count the state’s delegates in its national convention, meaning New Hampshire residents won’t actually have their votes counted to decide who will represent the party in the general election.
“South Carolina does reflect more of the emerging Democratic electorate,” Ray La Raja, a political science professor at UMass Amherst, told GBH’s Amanda Keane. “There is a very high percentage of Black voters. There’s also working-class voters that [Democrats] want to start appealing to.” Keane has more reading of the political tea leaves here.
Four Things to Know
1. Sen. Ed Markey holds a significant lead over his primary challenger, Rep. Seth Moulton, according to a poll from University of Massachusetts Amherst and WCVB. About 60 percent of voters surveyed said they’d likely vote for Markey and 32 percent for Moulton, a 28-point difference. For comparison: Markey won the 2020 Democratic primary against Rep. Joe Kennedy III with 55 percent of the vote to Kennedy’s 44 percent.
Poll director Tatishe Nteta, professor of political science at UMass Amherst, said there’s still time for things to change before the Sept. 1 primary. “What we have is a snapshot in time as to where the Democratic electorate is at that moment,” he said. “You have a debate this week, you have again, a campaign that is going to continue after that debate, and there are ample opportunities for Representative Moulton to turn the tides in this.”
2. A clerk magistrate found there is enough probable cause for the assault and battery case against Brockton Mayor Moises Rodrigues to proceed. This is a procedural step that happens before a person is formally charged.
A high school student accused Rodrigues of inappropriately grabbing her and pulling her close at a parade in May. Rodrigues then attended the student’s graduation from Brockton High School, despite being asked to stay away. Rodrigues has denied that he did anything wrong.
3. Falmouth’s town meeting members are considering allowing more development in their town, and part of that discussion involves examining water consumption. Right now, consumption is higher than usual, and the ongoing drought means the reserves in Long Pond aren’t being replenished.
“It’s not that we don’t have enough water. It’s just, the summer demand is way too high,” said Michael Reghitto, chief operator of the town’s water treatment plant. “There’s no way we could keep up with it if we just continually increase the amount of service connections that we have without doing something to bring the consumption down in the peak time of summer.”
4. A herd of wooden elephants has made its way to the Commonwealth Avenue Mall in the Back Bay, that stretch of greenery west of the Public Garden. You can see GBH’s Jared Bowen walking among them here.
The sculptures, carved in India, are part of a traveling art exhibit called the Great Elephant Migration. They’ll be in Boston through Sept. 13, and the exhibit is free to visit.
In some Worcester neighborhoods, trees are few and far between
Let’s start with this fact: Worcester is greener than it was a few decades ago. The city’s Urban Forestry Master Plan shows the tree inventory increased 49% between 2005 and 2022, going from 15,486 to 23,137 trees. But GBH’s Sam Turken and the Worcester Guardian’s Charlene Arsenault set out to investigate a leafy mystery: why are trees common in some areas of Worcester but so rare in others?
First, areas with fewer trees on private land tend to have more landlords, who rent out the homes they own and live elsewhere. Those property owners may be more likely to see trees as a nuisance. “I think that if someone had a three-decker and has almost no space around it other than the building itself, they’re going to take out the trees,” Colin Novick, the executive director of the nonprofit Greater Worcester Land Trust, told Turken. “They see it as an improvement project. Everything from, ‘I don’t have to pick up leaves’ to ‘I’ll have more sun’ or ‘trees are unruly.’” If tenants who live in these neighborhoods want to plant more trees, they must seek permission from their landlords.
Second, planting a tree is not always as easy as it looks in a densely populated area.
“Above ground, [it may look] like there should be a tree there, but below ground, that tree is going to die if you put that tree there because there’s not enough space for its rooting system,” said Joy Winbourne, chair of the Worcester Urban Forestry Commission.
Still, people in Worcester are working to make their city’s greenery more common. You can read the rest of Turken’s story about their efforts here.
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