Lori Trahan

Pressley traveled last weekend to Tennessee to campaign alongside Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Justin Pearson, a Democratic state representative and one of the “Tennessee Three" who is running for the state’s open 9th Congressional District.

Warren has already been to Illinois to rally for Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton (now the state’s Democratic Senate nominee) and Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, who topped the primary field in Illinois’s 9th Congressional District primary. She also stopped in New York City to campaign with Brad Lander in his successful bid to unseat Representative Dan Goldman. And she traveled to Maine during the spring to rally with Graham Platner before the end of his ill-fated Senate campaign.

Now, she’s heading west to stump for two Senate hopefuls. The Cambridge Democrat is headlining a rally in Minnesota on Friday with Peggy Flanagan, the state’s lieutenant governor, as she competes for the Democratic Senate nomination there against US Representative Angie Craig.

A Warren spokesperson said she’ll also hit the trail this weekend for Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Senate hopeful whom she endorsed Monday after her preferred pick, Michigan state Senator Mallory McMorrow, ended her campaign earlier this month. Next month, Warren is off to North Carolina to headline the state party’s “Unity Dinner” and campaign for Roy Cooper, the governor and US Senate hopeful.

Trahan has hit some of the country’s most competitive districts, campaigning in battleground districts for incumbents such as Ohio Representative Greg Landsman and Representative Kathy Castor in Florida. Trahan, the co-chair of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, also helped fundraise for candidates in districts Democrats are looking to flip (Rebecca Cooke in Wisconsin and Bobby Pulido in Texas) and hold (Representative Susie Lee in Nevada).

Why log the miles putting their political clout on the line? Helping elect other Democrats can help members in safe-seats boost their credibility and branding beyond their districts. And many of the candidates they’re assisting are ideologically aligned, building up the bench of like-minded members with whom they can work.

Not that they aren’t lending a hand to some of their colleagues at home. Warren and Pressley both recently appeared in an ad for Senator Ed Markey as he tries to fend off a primary challenge from Representative Seth Moulton.

Representative Jim McGovern appears ready to cruise to reelection with no challengers, Democrat or Republican. But the rest of the Democrats’ delegation mates have their own races. Representatives Jake Auchincloss, Katherine Clark, Richard Neal, Bill Keating, and Stephen Lynch are all facing primary challenges from the left this year.

And none of the delegation’s current members have yet weighed in on the state’s only open congressional race in the Sixth District, where six Democrats are vying to replace Moulton.

SIGN NOT OF THE TIMES: Spotted at Rachael Rollins’s campaign headquarters in Roxbury: a campaign sign touting an endorsement from the Boston Globe’s editorial board, per a photo obtained by the Globe.

There’s just one catch: The Globe’s editorial board hasn’t endorsed in the Suffolk County district attorney’s race this cycle.

The sign, posted in a prominent spot above the front window of Rollins’s Centre Street campaign office, includes a quote from the newspaper’s 2018 endorsement, which described the then-political newcomer as “the best choice” in the five-person primary.

A spokesperson for Rollins’s campaign said in a statement that the team was “proud” of the 2018 endorsement, and that while Rollins has since updated the logo for her new campaign, “we love the vintage signs at our headquarters.”

Rollins, who resigned from her subsequent job as US attorney amid scandal three years ago, is now vying for the office against incumbentKevin Hayden and another challenger,Linda Champion.

“It’s an old sign, and we’re having new ones made,” the spokesperson said.

COMING SOON TO YOUR SCREENS: Patrick Roath, the Jamaica Plain attorney challenging Lynch in the Eighth District, is the latest congressional candidate to hit the airwaves.

Roath rolled out his first TV ad Wednesday, a 30-second spot that features footage of him from around the district, which stretches from South Boston to Easton.

“This moment requires urgency, and a conviction that we can actually change things,” Roath says in the ad. Lynch, who has been in office for more than two decades, is “not a bad guy,” Roath adds. “But he’s not the leader we need right now.”

Roath’s campaign declined to say how much money it’s putting behind the spot beyond describing it as a “six-figure” buy. The ad will run on broadcast and digital platforms.

LIT DROP: Roath’s campaign is also getting a hand from Leaders We Deserve, the PAC created by gun rights activist David Hogg that helps challengers taking on sitting Democrats.

Mailers from the group, which endorsed Roath earlier this year, hit voters’ mailboxes this week labeling Lynch “MAGA’s favorite Democrat,” pointing to a vote he took (along with 74 other Democrats) to thank Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, along with other law enforcement officials, as part of a 2025 resolution.

It’s a similar line of attack a pro-Markey super PAC has waged against Moulton, whose campaign framed the resolution as “broad” and the criticism over the vote as “misleading.”

Roath has regularly pitched himself as a more forceful foe to President Trump than Lynch, who is among the delegation’s most moderate members (but also an oft-critic of Trump, too).

NUMBERS GAME: The order of the record-tying nine(!) ballot questions Massachusetts voters will weigh this fall are officially set after a last-ditch effort to strike a proposal that would repeal the law that legalized recreational marijuana failed Tuesday.

The questions run the gamut:

Question 1: Expanding the public records law;

Question 2: Giving collective bargaining rights to Committee for Public Counsel Services employees;

Question 3: Overhauling the state’s primary elections system;

Question 4: Instituting Election Day voter registration;

Question 5: Changing the state’s tax-cap law;

Question 6: Creating a new conservation fund;

Question 7: Changing single-family zoning laws;

Question 8: Repealing legal recreational marijuana sales;

Question 9: Repealing a 2024 gun control law.

Get ready to spend some time in the ballot booth this November. Secretary of State William F. Galvin’s office said some ballots could be three pages long, depending on the district.

BUT BUT BUT: An eleventh-hour Senate move could upend tax rebate ballot question by Chris Lisinski, CommonWealth Beacon: A majority of senators are coalescing around a late-term push to repeal the law known as Chapter 62F, which would both wipe out the statutory artifact that four years ago forced Beacon Hill to return billions of dollars to taxpayers and also neuter a measure set to go before voters this fall.

HEALTH SCARE: Boston City Councilor Henry Santana hospitalized for ‘persistent and unresolved health issues by Niki Griswold, The Boston Globe: Boston City Councilor Henry Santana said Tuesday he has been hospitalized for treatment of “persistent and unresolved health issues,” and is taking what he described as a temporary absence from the city council. Santana did not clarify what he is receiving treatment for, and his office on Tuesday declined to share any further information. He said Tuesday that he remains hospitalized for “additional testing” at the Shapiro Cardiovascular Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

TEST PILOT: BU to pay city of Boston more than $104 million over five years in record PILOT deal by Niki Griswold, The Boston Globe: Boston University will pay the City of Boston more than $104 million in cash and other benefits over the next five years as part of a newly signed deal that Mayor Michelle Wu’s office touted as the largest of its kind for a tax-exempt nonprofit in the city’s history.

Boston officials on Tuesday framed the agreement as a significant win at a time when the city is struggling with surging costs and stalling revenue growth. Some advocates argued, though, that the university, backed by a multibillion-dollar endowment, could afford to give more.

ABORTION EXPANSION: House Democrats to pass bill to make Massachusetts’ late-term abortion laws among nation’s broadest by Samantha J. Gross and Anjali Huynh, The Boston Globe: Massachusetts Democratic leaders said they expect to pass a bill Wednesday that would dramatically loosen the state’s already-liberal abortion laws by making it easier for women to terminate late-term pregnancies.

Currently, those in Massachusetts can terminate pregnancies up to 24 weeks’ gestation, and beyond that, doctors are permitted to perform abortions under specific circumstances, including only if it’s necessary to preserve a patient’s life. The legislation would instead leave the decision to end a pregnancy at 24 weeks or later up to “the professional judgement of a physician” alone.

A multimillion dollar complex is being built in Mattapan. Local homeowners ask, why now? by Danny McDonald, The Boston Globe.

Why Massachusetts is suing over wind farm leases off Cape Cod and New York by Heather McCarron, The Cape Cod Times.

Easthampton City Council joins regional push to hold ICE agents accountable by Sam Ferland, Daily Hampshire Gazette.

‘A period of suffering.’ What it’s like when a 20-minute Red Line commute takes more than two hours. by Spencer Buell, the Boston Globe.

Thanks for reading The Scrum.

This newsletter was edited and produced by Matt Stout.

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