Editorials

By persisting in the stolen-election lie, Lee Zeldin took the side of the pro-Trump armed attackers and betrayed United States democracy.

There are perhaps as many ways to look at the rampage at the Capitol as there were participants, but one thing is indisputable: It was a planned attempt for one branch of federal government to take over another.

Talk at a recent East Hampton Town Board meeting about the potential use of the former Child Development Center of the Hamptons building on Stephen Hand’s Path as a Covid-19 testing and vaccination site suggests that local officials are at last beginning to realize that they must do more.

With a vote on Wainscott village incorporation a possibility, the moment has come for the East Hampton Town Trustees to play hardball. 

Before now, few American voters would have known that the sixth day of January following a presidential election year was important.

The East Hampton Town Board is considering banning gas-powered leaf blowers during the warm-weather months and placing curfews on them during the off-season.

There has really never been any question about the right thing to do where the Montauk downtown ocean beach is concerned.

The annual charity Polar Bear Plunge at Main Beach will not be held this New Year’s Day, leaving East Hampton food pantries without the many thousands of dollars usually generated by participation fees.

In a year of unrelenting bad news, the region got an end-of-December gift in the form of language in a federal appropriations bill that would stop the looming sale of Plum Island to the highest bidder.

Living-room spread does not quite match what could be 2020’s phrase of the year, “superspreader event,” but in defeating the Covid-19 pandemic, we are now told that our smaller social gatherings are the source of more infections.

How the Republican Party rebuilds after the president is out of office — or even if it can — has been the subject of a great deal of discussion as his term ends.

There have been more deaths in Suffolk than there have in 20 states, more than in Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and Nebraska, to name a few. Fourteen people died from the virus in Suffolk on Monday, the highest single-day number since May.

It is terribly disappointing, but not at all surprising, that Representative Lee Zeldin would join 125 other members of the House of Representatives in opposing the orderly transfer of the presidency from one administration to another.

We have to admit that we were more than a little puzzled at news last week that large oysters are considered too big to market. This seems like a missed opportunity for shellfish growers and restaurants alike.

No one wants their loved ones to die of Covid-19 in a hospital hallway. But many places in the United States are at that point right now, or near to it, as virus cases soar.

The creation of a geographic entity — a village in this case — out of opposition to offshore wind power would seem the stuff of some far fringe of society. Only it isn’t.

So of all people, Attorney General William Barr on Tuesday made the obvious concession that there was no evidence of voting fraud that could change the outcome of the November election.

A last-gasp effort by the Trump administration to mess with the 2020 census to undercount as many as 10.5 million people living in the United States with proper documents appears to have run into immovable opposition from the Supreme Court.

The bane of many drivers’ daily travels between East Hampton Village and Sag Harbor, the dread state Route 114, will get a makeover next fall.

This has been a sobering month so far for anyone who hoped that New York had seen the last of the coronavirus.

The Biden administration is already shaping up to be something different.

For a second-home seasonal resort economy such as ours, the winter months can be one of scarcity in terms of putting food on the table.

Troubling locally is that new Covid-19 cases seem to be popping up all over, even in parts of the East End that had been stable more or less from the beginning of the pandemic.

Efforts to improve water quality in Montauk are moving ahead with the centerpiece: a $129,000 study for a sewage treatment plant to serve the downtown area with possible tie-ins to other neighborhoods.

What if Americans were not as divided as we believe them to be? Indulge us for a moment to lay this out.

For months, the number of Covid-19 cases among East End residents held steady. Then, as the season turned and more people remained indoors, trouble began.

Suffolk voters may be divided when it comes to which political party’s candidates they align with, but they nearly spoke with a single voice on Tuesday in rejecting a ballot proposal to change the length of county legislators’ terms.

With results uncertain as Tuesday rolled into Wednesday, many thoughts turned to the Electoral College.

This has not been a banner year for land buys using money from the community preservation fund in East Hampton.

Huge lines of mostly Democratic voters have been waiting for hours for their turn at the polls across the country, and even here in New York State. Why?