Editorials

A heartbreaking story in The New York Times this week described in detail some state legislatures’ disastrous ideological rejection of federal Medicaid payments.

A tip of the hat goes to Lou Cortese, a member of the East Hampton Town Planning Board, for calling out a certain flexibility in the way land-use laws are applied.

From here, it is difficult to understand what the holdup has been on saving Plum Island.

Members of the East Hampton Town Board are correct in asking the question once again about the commercial use of beaches. A conversation they had recently about capping the number of guests at some events may not have gone far enough.

Since ex-police chief and current East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen first started his campaign against the Village Ambulance Association, the main public reaction has been if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

The East Hampton Village Board again seems intent on handing over its modest Sea Spray Cottages at Main Beach to a for-profit hospitality management company. This is a bad idea. The land should be open to the public, if anything.

When the basements of about six shops, a cafe, and a gallery in East Hampton Village flooded on Feb. 26, it was bad news at the toughest time of the year.

It is no coincidence that just as damaging and embarrassing revelations from a lawsuit by a voting machine maker against the Fox television corporation are released, the network’s Tucker Carlson has gone all in on a false retelling of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

For ordinary gun owners, the safety protocols stressed at the Maidstone Gun Club and places like it are in the public interest.

With elections every two years, it has been said that the main job of members of the House of Representatives who want to remain in office is fund-raising. This puts them at a great distance from actual voters.

The people running for town board seem steady and competent, but there is a lackluster quality to them at a time of unprecedented change for the town as a whole.

One of our favorite things that libraries are doing these days as they expand their roles in their communities is providing flower, vegetable, and herb seeds, as well as the know-how to sow them.

A year has passed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Sadly, an end to the tragedy is not in sight.

A 74,000-person study last year published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that shifting food habits absolutely helps us live longer.

Southampton College may have been doomed from the start.

The degree to which our national leaders lack a sense of contrition, or even decency, today is staggering.

The controversy involving both East Hampton Village beach-parking permits and the mayor’s attempt to take over the East Hampton Volunteer Ambulance Association might not seem related, but there is an obvious way they are linked — and that is politics.

When the seas go up because of climate change, the beaches and bluffs go back, and this should have added new urgency to the region’s coastal planning.

The scale of a 50-lot proposal in Wainscott is of regional concern, with noise, water pollution, and traffic congestion at the top of the list.

During these dark winter days it has been impossible for us to miss the proliferation of lighted “open” signs at businesses along the roads.

The layout of a new $25 million senior citizens center building, said to represent East Hampton’s iconic windmills, is a symptom of a frequent government malady — relying on outside experts.

While Nick LaLota might be new to Congress, we expect he will take his roles seriously. George Santos will be another matter.

Since the “Rust” shooting in 2021, much of the conversation has been about firearms practices in moviemaking and whether real guns should ever be on set. This misses the larger issue of why firearms and shooting have become the cinematic norm.

The East Hampton Town Trustees are to be congratulated for removing William Rysam’s name from their annual scholarship.

Libraries have adapted and now provide a wider range of services than ever before.

Mobile apps are especially risky in terms of privacy; even the most innocuous-seeming among them raise privacy concerns.

In her State of the State speech this week, Gov. Kathy Hochul outlined plans for creating more affordable housing. For downstate regions and Long Island, the proposals would have a goal of creating hundreds of thousands of new housing units.

An uprising is growing over a plan to use 14 acres of county parkland in Hither Woods to build a sewage treatment plant in Montauk.

For some Americans, the word “weaponization” is all they will need to hear about a freshly minted subcommittee in the House of Representatives aimed at blocking prosecutions of former President Trump and his cabal of election-denial plotters.

The message the Republican Party offers Long Island voters centers on a distrust of government, as well as the coded racism in its fixation on crime.