This is a web edition of GBH Daily, a weekday newsletter bringing you local stories you can trust so you can stay informed without feeling overwhelmed.

Sign up here!

☀️Sun’s back out, with highs in the 80s. Sunset is at 7:31 p.m.
Meet Emily, the only elephant in Massachusetts. She was born in the wild, captured and brought to the Buttonwood Park Zoo in New Bedford in 1968. Now 61, she has spent almost her entire life at the zoo.

GBH’s Craig LeMoult talked to people who think the zoo should move Emily to an elephant sanctuary, especially since the 2024 death of the zoo’s other elephant, Ruth. “We feel she deserves a chance to have some of her life in a place where she can actually live like a real elephant,” Courtney Scott, of the group In Defense of Animals, told LeMoult. “You know, where she can actually roam and forage and maybe meet new friends.”

But zoo officials said Emily has had a hard time connecting with other elephants in the past, including Ruth, and they worry that moving her to a sanctuary would make life more difficult for her. “We recognize that elephants are highly social animals and that, generally, they thrive in social groups. However, Emily has demonstrated throughout her life a strong preference for the companionship of her human care team,” Shara Rapoza, director of Zoological Services for the Buttonwood Park Zoo, wrote to LeMoult. “Her care must be guided not only by what is generally true for elephants, but by what is demonstrably best for Emily as an individual.” Read more of LeMoult’s story about Emily here.

Support for GBH is provided by:
Become a GBH sponsor

Four Things to Know

1. Early voting for the Sept. 1 primary election began this weekend. One of the races on the ballot is a challenge between state Sen. Will Brownsberger and Daniel Lander, a former senior advisor to Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. The district covers Allston and Brighton and parts of Fenway, as well as Cambridge, Watertown and Belmont.

At a debate last week, the two disagreed on rent control, the topic of a proposed ballot question that won’t go to voters this year. Lander said he supports it and faults the state Senate for its inaction. Brownsberger called it “a disaster” and said he wants to encourage more developers to build in Boston instead.

2. In Western Massachusetts, U.S. Rep. Richard Neal and challenger Jeromie Whalen, a high school teacher from Belchertown, talked about how to deal with increasingly expensive health care costs. 

Whalen said he wants the country to move to a Medicare for All system. Neal said he’d like to restore parts of the Affordable Care Act that Congress has since voted to dismantle, including tax credits that made premiums less expensive and the individual mandate requiring health care coverage. “If we win the House, I’ll be returned to the chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee. The Affordable Care Act is a priority,” he said.

3. Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins’ trial on extortion charges begins in Boston today. Prosecutors accuse Tompkins of extorting Frank Perullo, the owner of a cannabis dispensary, by making a $50,000 pre-IPO investment in Ascend Wellness Holdings and then getting a refund when the stock’s value fell.

Support for GBH is provided by:
Become a GBH sponsor

Tompkins’ defense has argued that this was not extortion but a business deal between friends. Prosecutors said Tompkins used his power as sheriff in the deal. Ascend had to prove it was helping neighborhoods that suffered when marijuana was criminalized, and Tompkins offered to help connect people leaving jail with jobs at the company’s stores.

4. The median net worth of families in Massachusetts Gateway Cities, a group of 26 cities across the state, most of them former industrial hubs, is $101,500, about a third of the Greater Boston median of $373,000. 

And about half of those families told researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston they would not be able to cover an emergency expense of $400, compared with about 33% in Greater Boston. Beth Mattingly, one of the report’s authors, said she hopes that data can “inform a host of conversations that address that question, that bring a range of perspectives to the table.”

12 green card holders become US citizens after earlier effort by Trump administration to block them

Here’s an update on a story GBH’s Sarah Betancourt first reported earlier this year: Back in April, 14 immigrants sued the federal government with the nonprofit Project Citizenship, saying they had completed every step of the citizenship process except the last one: being scheduled for a naturalization ceremony. All 14 were from Haiti, Venezuela and Côte d’Ivoire. They were among many people who were not given opportunities to take their citizenship oaths, including people who arrived at their citizenship ceremony at Faneuil Hall last December but were not allowed to complete the naturalization process. 

Now, 12 of the 14 plaintiffs are U.S. citizens.

One of them, Mireille Desormeaux, told Betancourt that her 12-year-old son was glad to see her come home with her certificate of naturalization.

“He said, ‘Now you are [a] U.S. citizen, so I don’t have to worry about being separated from you. They’re not going to send you back to Haiti. You’re going to stay here with me,’” she told Betancourt. “I was going through a lot of emotions because I saw it was really me becoming a U.S. citizen during this period of high deportation. I said to myself that now I have to serve the country back.”

Betancourt spoke with another immigrant and with advocates here. 

Dig deeper: 

-Green card holders sue Trump administration over stagnated citizenship decisions