Every week, GBH News political reporter Adam Reilly runs down the big political stories of the week, including the ways that the Trump administration and its decisions are intersecting with the politics and people of Massachusetts.

Reilly joined GBH’s Morning Edition host Mark Herz to share his analysis of the latest developments. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Mark Herz: Let’s start with the arrest in Florida of Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins. He’s accused of extorting $50,000 from a cannabis company seeking to operate in Massachusetts. And the case against Tompkins, it’s laid out in an 11-page indictment from the U.S. Attorney’s office. But so far, there hasn’t been a big push among Massachusetts elected officials calling on Tompkins to step down. It’s sort of a deafening silence, we might say.

Adam Reilly: Yeah, a deafening silence certainly among Massachusetts Democrats who occupy all the biggest roles in the state.

One possible explanation for this silence is that the big names in Massachusetts politics firmly believe in the presumption of innocence. And they don’t think that Tompkins should be forced to step down until the case against him has run its course.

The problem with that explanation is that, in other cases, calls for resignation have come before court cases play themselves out. Think of Tania Fernandes Anderson, the former Boston city councilor. She was indicted on federal corruption charges last year and when she was, Mayor Michelle Wu said right away that she should resign because the seriousness of the allegations against her were going to prevent her, according to Wu, from effectively representing the public.

State Rep. Chris Flanagan of Cape Cod was indicted this spring on fraud charges. We heard a similar argument at that point from Gov. Maura Healey, who said that if he stayed on and didn’t step down, it was going to undermine the work of the Legislature. But we are not hearing calls like that when it comes to Tompkins — from Wu, from Healey or from anyone else.

Herz: So what’s behind that?

Reilly: You want me to actually answer the question that you asked at the outset? OK, I’ll try to do that.

I think we are not hearing calls for Tompkins to step down, first and foremost, because he is an exceptionally well connected politician. He played a key role in Elizabeth Warren’s first run for Senate back when she was running against Scott Brown. He actually got to know Michelle Wu on that Senate campaign before Wu had ever held elected office in Massachusetts.

Tompkins makes a videocast he calls “Real Talk in the Commonwealth,” and I want you to take a listen to how he and Wu spoke with each other when she was running for mayor back in 2021 and he interviewed her.

[archival tape]

Steve Tompkins: Today’s guest is none other than someone who is near and dear to my heart, someone who’s just like family to me. And we go way back to the 2012 — now-Senator — Warren campaign, but when she was running, she was a candidate running against Scott Brown.

Michelle Wu: Well, I’m just really excited to be having this conversation with you as someone who I see as a mentor and a friend. And you know me from way back. This is before my eight years on the council, in my very first formal political experience working on that campaign.

[archival tape ends]

Reilly: To me, that is clearly the sound of two old friends who like each other a lot catching up. Tompkins ultimately endorsed Wu for mayor in 2021. When Elizabeth Warren ran for president back in 2020, Tompkins had a speaking slot introducing her at her kickoff. And he’s got ties to a multitude of other Mass. politicians.

He’s a coveted endorsement, I think, for a couple of reasons. He’s a member of law enforcement, and people like to get that law enforcement imprimatur. He’s also a Black politician in a place where Black politicians tend to be underrepresented.

So for all those reasons, I think that’s why so far we have not heard Wu or Warren or Governor Healey or Attorney General Andrea Campbell — or others — calling on Tompkins to step down as Suffolk County sheriff.

Herz: We did hear in our newscast this week that he stepped down as chair of the board of Roxbury Community College this week, and Healey praised that move, right?

Reilly: She praised that move in a statement to the Herald, which is tough to square with her not calling on Tompkins to step down from his day job, or even to take a leave as he fights the charges against him. But so far, at least publicly, Healey has not yet done that.

Herz: And we have another development to talk about. It’s eliciting a lot of commentary from Massachusetts politicians, specifically the Massachusetts Congressional delegation.

You wrote a story this week about how the delegation is responding to Israel’s new plan to take over Gaza City and the rest of the Gaza Strip, which will involve mass relocation of Gaza’s residents if it were to come to pass. So broadly speaking, the delegation all on the same page here, is that right?

Reilly: Yeah, if by that you mean they are all reacting negatively to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan, then yes, they are definitely on the same page. The whole delegation seems to think that Netanyahu’s vision for Gaza right now is a bad idea. And that includes voices that tend to be more critical of Israel, like Reps. Jim McGovern and Ayanna Pressley, but also voices that tends to be supportive of Israel.

Rep. Jake Auchincloss was the first person who called me back when I was working on this story. He is, I think it’s fair to say, a very staunch supporter of Israel. But he has grave misgivings about what’s happening right now, starting with the fact that, as he told me, there is no actual plan in place for who is going to run Gaza once Israel takes over.

Rep. Jake Auchincloss, pre-recorded: The assured welfare of the Palestinian people requires that there be governance in Gaza that is consistent with Israel’s security, that ensures Palestinians’ welfare. And the prime minister has put forward no proposal — has architected no plan — to achieve that.

Reilly: Mark, as you know, Netanyahu has also claimed that images showing Gazans starving are fake. When I asked Auchincloss about that, he basically scoffed at Netanyahu’s denials and said that he trusts Cindy McCain, who runs the UN’s World Food Program, more than he does Netanyahu himself. It was a brief conversation, but I came away really struck by how almost despairing Auchincloss sounded about what Israel is doing right now in Gaza.

Herz: And you mentioned more critical voices, reliably critical voices of Israel, like Jim McGovern and Ayanna Pressley. What did they tell you?

Reilly: Both of them gave us statements as opposed to interviews. Pressley said the U.S. is complicit in what is happening in Gaza right now as the main supplier of offensive weaponry for Israel. She called on the U.S. to do everything it can to get Netanyahu to pull back and pour aid into Gaza.

McGovern said, “America should not spend one more penny to fund Netanyahu’s war crimes, nor should we provide diplomatic cover for his illegal and immoral plan to occupy the Gaza Strip.”

Herz: And there’s some big poll numbers that have come out recently about support or lack thereof among Americans for what Israel’s doing in Gaza. Give us a quick recap of that.

Reilly: According to Gallup, just 32% of Americans currently support Israel’s actions in Gaza. That is a new low.

It includes 71% of Republicans, which is a substantial number. But when you think about how uniformly supportive Republicans have tended to be of what Israel has done in the wake of the October attacks, it’s actually a lower number than you might expect.

And meanwhile, just 8% of Democrats support what’s happening in Gaza, which is really a remarkably low figure.