‘When in Doubt’
East Hampton
April 6, 2026
To the Editor,
“When in doubt, English,” Peter Matthiessen’s advice to a young Baylis Greene (in his recent “Gristmill” column), jumped out at me. Peter was a man, I think, of few words and long books.
I use more words and balance that with having written no books. My advice, which on occasion I have given, is to choose a subject you could imagine doing for the rest of your life. If you love stars, study astronomy; if business fascinates you, your choice is clear.
But if, like me, you cannot imagine a day without reading something great, then yes, English will do well for you, and you will never regret it.
TOM MACKEY
Continues to Grow
Norfolk, Va.
April 3, 2026
To the Editor,
Nikki Glick’s reflection on opening and closing Nikki’s Not Dog Stand (“Guestwords,” April 2) is candid and interesting, but her experience points less to a problem with vegan food and more to the common struggle small restaurants face today.
What ultimately undermined the stand were forces familiar to many independent owners: soaring rents, landlord incentives that reward turnover, delivery app chaos, public relations costs, and razor-thin margins. Those pressures affect restaurants of every kind, regardless of what’s on the menu — especially in high-cost resort towns like Sag Harbor.
Vegan eating continues to grow beyond individual storefronts — into homes, schools, workplaces, and everyday meals — often in ways that don’t depend on surviving an unforgiving restaurant economy.
Nikki’s Not Dog Stand may have closed, but the appetite for food that spares animals clearly remains.
Sincerely,
REBECCA LIBAUSKAS
The PETA Foundation
Forward March!
Springs
April 2, 2026
To the Editor,
“The beauty of the Not Dog Stand was that I met people who are trying to change the system, and I also directly encountered the large energies and forces that keep the system as it is.” — Nikki Glick, “Guestwords: A Vegan Diner’s Lessons.”
Keep going, Nikki, your heart (and head) are in the right place and, although discouraging, this is what progress looks like!
First, let me acknowledge my indebtedness to all you vegans out there and all vegans to come. I owe this debt of gratitude because your efforts have made my life better and more vital. Thank you for that.
To explain: 55 years ago, I began my vegetarian diet. The influence of the 1960s was profound. Like Nikki, I was a little naive; in my case I assumed that within 10 years everyone would eat vegetarian. I missed that by a mile.
Restaurants then offered me one choice: salad. Not what I was hoping for.
Skip ahead a decade or so, and restaurants now began to be more accepting of my unusual diet, I now could choose between salad or, wait for it — steamed vegetables.
Decades passed, adding offers of pasta without meat and “you can have a main course without the meat or poultry or fish” to the list.
This slog was slow going until vegans showed up — a force of nature that changed restaurants forever! I salute you all, with special honors to Nikki!
I am now approaching 80 and can finally eat vegetarian at most restaurants. But if you need more evidence of how far we have come, let’s go back a couple of generations.
My dear mother-in-law would often treat her lovely daughter and her appreciative son-in law to a restaurant meal together. At that time, it was salads-only for vegetarians. To supplement her salad, my mother-in-law had to skirt social norms. She’d sneak a baked potato in her handbag and stealthily eat it. A lovely woman pushed underground for her need to eat.
So, Nikki, take courage in the steps you have added to the forward march. Some day, and I hope soon, my grandchildren will eat heartily and healthfully among their fellow citizens!
DANIEL FRIEDMAN
Several Points
East Hampton
April 5, 2026
To the Editor,
I would like to correct several points of misinformation in last week’s Star article.
Your reporter stated that Blake Fleetwood was shunned by members because they believed he had written the article that appeared in last summer’s Star. This is not accurate.
While many members believed that Mr. Fleetwood may have provided information that contributed to the article, no one believed he was the author. In a small community, conversations are frequent, and Mr. Fleetwood was known to have communicated with The Star on several occasions over the past year.
The article also states that Devon has been inflexible regarding requests to relocate the tennis courts and staff housing. This characterization is misleading.
Prior to the development of rebuilding plans, the town had not made such requests. Once initial plans were presented to the town, Devon voluntarily designed a plan that would move the staff housing out of the wetlands. Devon recognizes the environmental considerations and plans to relocate it as part of the rebuild. In addition, Devon owns two off-site properties currently used exclusively for staff housing.
We appreciate the opportunity to clarify these points for your readers.
Respectfully,
HOLLIS FORBES
Disc Golf Course
East Hampton
April 3, 2026
Dear Editor:
It is a little-known fact that in the United States of ’Merica there exist more (Frisbee) disc golf courses than Dunkin’ Donuts stores. That would be in the neighborhood of 10,000, with more under construction daily. Currently there are more than 136,000 enthusiasts registered with the Professional Disc Golf Association. And as official member number 1272, I can recall playing in disc golf tournaments in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the disc golf Dinosaurs roamed the earth.
It is even a lesser-known fact that an amazing disc golf course is situated right here in East Hampton off Buckskill Road. I drove by this place for more than a year before I realized it was back there, but when I found it, I picked up a frisbee for the first time in roughly 40 years.
A little local history first: Back in the middle 1990s the Town of East Hampton Planning Department headed by Lisa Liquori and assisted by Marguerite Wolffsohn, wrote a four-inch-thick encyclopedia known then as the Open Space Plan for the Town of East Hampton. In 1995, it was acknowledged that 12,673 acres — 31.8 percent of the town’s 40,000-plus acres — had already been preserved as protected open space. Today that number is in excess of 16,500 acres.
The purpose of this new “encyclopedia” was to identify, map, and plan eventual outcomes for roughly 700 more individual parcels of land, many vacant but some built out and occupied.
As both an active real estate broker specializing in land and development and an active participant in the rebirth of the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society, yours truly found himself seated in Town Hall as co-chairman of a committee tasked with determining the importance and eventual outcome wish for each of those 700 properties.
It took a while but eventually it morphed into and resulted in the now well-known community preservation fund. That fund became the engine for purchasing many of the parcels identified in that plan. The 20-acre property on Buckskill Road was at the time the actual residence of the Trunzo family. How it came to be included on a list for preservation escapes my feeble memory, but it was and eventually it was purchased by the town. Today, the beautiful meadow surrounded by woodland contains the original red barn, a small parking area, a half-mile, paved-loop walking trail, and an exquisite 18-hole and beautifully maintained disc golf course.
This is the part of the story where I commend the current Town of East Hampton Land Acquisition and Management Department, specifically Scott Wilson and Andrew Drake, for the planning and construction of the Buckskill Meadow Disc Golf Course.
If you want to know more without actually visiting the park you can find maps and photos on the town’s website and also on an app used by disc golfers worldwide (when they are not at a Dunkin’ Donuts). The app is named U-Disc and is free.
Currently, this amazing town asset is underutilized simply due to a lack of promotion. My sense here is that it’s kinda like locals explain our surf breaks: “There are no waves here and if there were, the sharks would get you.”
The great thing about disc golf is its inclusivity; male, female, young, old, it can be the perfect family activity, an after-work or weekend get-together or even a date. On the wrong side of 70 years on the planet, I can play a few times a week.
If you are curious and you go intending to try it, you’ll find a box near the first tee containing loaner discs. There is zero initial investment to test-drive the course but if you decide you like it then perfectly fine new discs are available online, some for less than 10 bucks apiece.
As with everywhere these days, as the weather warms it becomes a tick factory so please be aware.
Fore!
TOM MACNIVEN
More-Nuanced Tragedy
Highland Lakes, N.J.
To the Editor;
I am writing to address a significant inaccuracy in Mark Segal’s article “Man and Nature: No Harmony,” March 19, regarding the life and death of Timothy Treadwell.
While Mr. Segal’s piece provided a general overview of Mr. Treadwell’s tragic end, one particular statement is false and perpetuates a damaging myth about the events of October 2003.
Mr. Segal wrote that after Mr. Treadwell “believed he had bridged the gap between human and beast,” one of the bears he “loved and protected turned on him.” This is absolutely not what happened. Timothy Treadwell did not die at the paws of a bear he had befriended.
The narrative that he was killed by a trusted animal he had known for years is popular but an untrue simplification. The facts, as documented by the National Park Service and an Alaska medical examiner are clear: Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were killed by an old, starving, and emaciated bear, not one of the “regulars” in the Katmai National Park area that Mr. Treadwell had observed and named over his summers there.
Perpetuating the full story that Mr. Treadwell was betrayed by a “friend” undermines the actual, more-nuanced tragedy. It reduces a complex story of obsession, wilderness ethics, and tragic misfortunes into a simple fable of hubris.
Regardless of one’s opinion on Mr. Treadwell’s methods, which were certainly controversial, accuracy in reporting his death is essential. I ask that you please correct this record to prevent this false information from spreading further.
Sincerely,
SUSAN KEHOE
Motivate Landscapers
Montauk
April 1, 2026
To the Editor:
When I purchased my house in Montauk in 1990, most houses in Hither Hills had predominantly wild brush. Today, manicured lawns are everywhere and consequently the noise is amplified more and more each year. The sound of three or four individuals blowing concurrently is unbearable.
The current blower ban in Montauk, as I understand it, is to require a resident to call code enforcement about noise as it occurs. And the landscaping company has to be caught in the act, which means the enforcement system has to be highly responsive, which it is not. More important, it requires one neighbor to “rat” on another. Even with confidentiality, it can be obvious who filed the complaint. Consequently, the current ban has done nothing to mitigate the noise.
In terms of enforcement, all that is needed is to have one individual periodically drive through communities and ticket anyone using a gas blower. The revenue from the tickets will certainly more than offset the cost of an individual enforcing the law and will motivate landscapers to adhere to the law.
As far as impacting landscaping companies financially, they’ve seen the writing on the wall for years so they can’t claim sudden hardship.
A two or three-year transition phase is more than reasonable; any longer is political evasion and waffling. I owned my own video production company for over 30 years, and technological and other sudden changes were a cost of doing business. Profits were adversely affected at first, but you adapted and, in some cases, even became more profitable as a result.
In my youth, I worked for two landscaping companies for over 10 years in the ’70s and early ’80s when blowers were first introduced. They can become addictive and often used counterproductively. The quest to get every leaf off a property is ridiculous, particularly in fall, but landscapers become obsessed with that goal probably because homeowners expect it.
I use an electric blower and, although it’s not quite as powerful, it’s close enough to warrant a change in our community.
JEFF GEWERT
Peace and Quiet
East Hampton
April 6, 2026
Dear David,
I’m glad to see that there is a new initiative to ban gas-powered leaf blowers in the Town of East Hampton. There was an excellent letter in the April 2 edition of The Star by Lena Tabori titled “Time to Act,” which cites several reputable sources giving hard evidence about the harm these machines do to the environment, as well as the extremely loud and annoying noise disturbance.
Prior to this letter, there was an article in the March 26 edition of The Star on page A1 by Christopher Gangemi titled, “Pressure Builds for Ban on Gas Leaf Blowers.” In it he also gives evidence from many reputable sources of the harm, both to the environment as well as to the citizens of the town and the operators of the blowers. He cites resistance to this initiative from both the landscape industry lobby, as well as from some members of the town board.
I find it hypocritical that so many in the town claim to be environmentally active and averse to noise pollution from the airport and music venues yet are not willing to come out against these loud, droning blowers.
At the end of Mr. Gangemi’s article, there is a link to a petition from ChangeHampton. I went to this link and after the video there was a message, “Please click to sign our petition here,” but it did not take me to the petition. This is the way I was able to get to it: Go to changehampton.org, scroll down to “Projects,” click on “Extend the Gas Blower Ban Year-round,” click on “Please sign our petition here.” I urge everyone to take a few minutes to do this in order to restore peace and quiet to our town.
JON HOWARD
Will Pay Either Way
Springs
April 4, 2026
To the Editor,
With regard to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s justification for delaying compliance with the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, what is being overlooked is a fundamental economic principle: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
New Yorkers will pay either way — either through proactive investment in resilient, renewable infrastructure, or through the mounting social and economic costs of a destabilized climate. The difference is that one path builds long-term value, while the other compounds irreversible losses.
It is in our clear self-interest to invest now rather than continue paying to merely keep pace — or worse, to lose ground, both economically and literally — as sea levels rise and extreme weather intensifies.
The social cost of carbon, as estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency and supported by peer-reviewed economic models, is now widely understood to be far higher than earlier federal estimates. Recent analyses — particularly those incorporating a 1.5-degree Celsius warming scenario — place the social cost in the range of roughly $190 to over $400 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, depending on discount rates and damage assumptions. These figures attempt to quantify the real costs of climate impacts, including health effects, property damage, agricultural loss, and ecosystem degradation.
When applied over time, these costs are staggering. Cumulative global damages from continued high emissions are projected to reach tens of trillions of dollars by midcentury. Even a proportional share attributable to New York and the broader United States economy represents an enormous and largely avoidable burden.
These are not abstract numbers — they represent real economic harm borne by the public. In effect, failure to act functions as a de facto subsidy to fossil fuel interests, allowing private profits to persist while externalized costs are socialized across society. Economists broadly agree that unpriced carbon emissions constitute one of the largest market failures in history. So, we will pay one way or the other.
However, one category of expenditure is an investment: creating jobs, modernizing infrastructure, improving public health, and enhancing energy security. The other is a reactive cost: rebuilding after disasters, addressing health crises, and compensating for lost productivity and damaged ecosystems.
Investments in clean energy and electrification are already demonstrating cascading benefits, including lower long-term energy costs, reduced air pollution (with measurable public health savings), and increased grid resilience through distributed energy resources like solar and battery storage.
By contrast, the costs of inaction are not only escalating but effectively unbounded. While models can estimate damages over specific time frames, there is no natural ceiling to the economic and societal impacts of unchecked climate change.
Understanding the distinction between investment and cost is critical at this moment. The evidence makes clear that the only economically rational and socially responsible path is to invest now.
KRAE VAN SICKLE
Correct the Record
East Hampton
To the Editor,
As the former chief building inspector for the Town of East Hampton, I write to correct the record.
It has recently been reported by the Suffolk County district attorney’s office that it had secured indictments against several prior employees of the Town Building Department. In response to that report, the Town of East Hampton issued a press release which casts aspersions upon me as the town’s Building Department chief during the time that criminal activity resulting in these indictments transpired. I refer specifically to the fourth paragraph of the town’s press release that reads: “The conduct underlying these charges occurred during the tenure of the former Chief Building Inspector. It does not reflect the way the Building Department operates today.”
The town knows that I was not, in any way, involved in criminal acts. The press release also refers to action taken by the town when it became “aware of concerns.” What the town fails to say is that I was the one who noticed irregularities in the department’s paperwork and processing of building permits and certificates of occupancy, including an example dating as far back as 2015, prior to my tenure.
It was I who brought these findings to the attention of the department’s liaison (a member of the town board) in late summer of 2024 expressing my concerns. I was told by the liaison that I would hear immediately from the supervisor, which never happened. Subsequently, I was contacted by the Suffolk County district attorney’s office about my concerns within the Building Department, and I cooperated fully with their office.
The town’s press release implies that I was somehow responsible or there were deficiencies in my leadership. This characterization is inaccurate and does not reflect my record of professional conduct. My position in this regard is not only supported by those who have worked with me and can attest to my integrity and commitment to my responsibilities but also by the East Hampton Town Board itself, for why else would they have entered into a bidding war for my services as chief of the Town Building Department with the Village of East Hampton, all taking place subsequent to the start of the investigation into those employees who are now under indictment?
I subsequently accepted the position as chief of the Village Building Department, resulting in the submission of my resignation to the town board in March 2025.
Respectfully Yours,
JOE PALERMO
Occam’s Razor
Amagansett
April 3, 2026
To the Editor:
My first thought upon reading Christopher Gangemi’s “Two Arrested in East Hampton Building Department Probe” was Jerry Larsen will probably win the election now.
When you only know East Hampton from articles about megamansions, helicopter noise, celebrity-driving-while-intoxicated arrests, and the like, it’s easy to imagine it’s a big place, but anyone living here knows what a small town this is. It has in common with the huge places, like New York City, that party machines create a culture of corruption; think of Tammany, the relics of which are still quite powerful there. However, one excuse a mayor can make is, “New York City has more than 300,000 employees. I can’t possibly know what all of them are doing.” East Hampton Town has a full-time staff of 300. The two workers accused of bribe-taking sat in an office about a two-to-three-minute walk from Town Hall.
Occam’s razor is the principle that phenomena are best explained by the simplest hypothesis possible. Applying it to the Democratic machine’s operation of the town, the results are really rather stark. Why would the town board not notice bribery on its doorstep? If it did know what was going on, why would it tolerate it?
Or pull up any random controversy of recent years, such as my personal favorite, the mysterious settlement agreement the town signed with Marc Rowan’s restaurant entity in 2019 giving him carte blanche to expand Duryea’s, for which Peter Van Scoyoc soon after blamed — and forced out — the town attorney. In that case, the official narrative was far more complicated than the one Occam’s would produce.
Or ask yourself the question, what was so darn important about the senior center that Kathee Burke-Gonzalez would fight for it more ferociously than any other project?
That brings us to the optics. The old adage that Caesar’s spouse “must be above suspicion” is echoed in a resonant quote from New York’s highest court (which I find myself increasingly often citing in briefs and correspondence to its lower courts) that the legal system must “deal impartially with litigants; promote stability in the law; allow for efficient use of the adjudicatory process; and maintain the appearance of justice.”
Why indeed would the Democratic machine have fought so fiercely to stay in control that it repeatedly ejected intelligent, talented, ethical — and independent — people from its ranks? Talk to old-timers out here who have themselves suffered the machine’s slings and arrows, and there is a general assumption that Occam’s razor leads to one conclusion, that the battle was not for ego satisfaction alone.
Growing up in Brooklyn in the 1960s, I observed that middle class professionals like my doctor parents assumed that all politicians were on the take, and that the only way to preserve democracy was to keep the corruption within bounds. Every other year or so, criminal charges involving a familiar name would confirm this jaundiced view: Elliott Abrams, Alan Hevesi, Bernard Kerik, Hiram Monserrate, Bertram Podell, Sheldon Silver, Andrew Stein, Sol Wachtler; and of course, Eric Adams. However, I began to understand that voting for people you believe to be only “normally” corrupt is a form of complicity.
Whether people higher up in the town power hierarchy will also become investigation targets or did not really care what was going on or even if they simply never noticed, there is enough blame to go around, simply for letting town affairs come to this, and opening such a large window for Mr. Larsen.
Writing this letter, I had an epiphany: Occam’s razor also supports the conclusion that another world is possible.
For democracy in East Hampton,
JONATHAN WALLACE
Our Own Betrayal
North Haven
April 6, 2026
Dear David:
Tenebrae is an old Latin word meaning “darkness or shadows.” It now refers to the Christian liturgical service observed during Holy Week commemorating the Crucifixion. It ends in darkness representing the betrayal and loss of their leadership.
The First Presbyterian Church of East Hampton conducted a powerful Tenebrae service this Friday ending in a darkness that led me to consider how this darkness may also represent our own betrayal and loss of good leadership.
The horrors currently happening worldwide with vast destruction, pain, and death made me reflect, and wonder if all the sacred holidays just celebrated by three of the most popular world religions could give us any insight into how shamefully we are now behaving? People are suffering worldwide from the actions of their leaders — not just here or at the gas pump!
How can anyone make sense out of our own president’s TV fabulist diatribe at 9 p.m. Wednesday evening on April Fools’ Day? It is painfully obvious this man is entirely without any commitment to any clear plans for almost anything except for inflicting continued destruction everywhere and a personal retribution for his own fragile ego.
Iran has become a lethal mess and it’s getting worse by the moment. The “regime change” isn’t happening and only getting more combative. We are now losing U.S. fighter jets and crews, and our own military ground troops may soon be put at risk!
Ukraine was cut off from U.S. support for its efforts to defend itself from Russia. Oil and other vital commodity prices everywhere are rising fast, since world supplies are strangled by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
We heard “The Donald” boast that we will leave Iraq in shambles soon, leaving the oil situation he created for other nations to fix. He also said that he will bomb the entire Iranian nation “back to the Stone Ages where they belong.”
Don’t we care that over thousands of years Iran achieved significant cultural milestones, including mathematics, literature, science, and the arts? That embryonic peaceful culture is said to have created the (now seemingly ironic) Cyrus Cylinder that is thought to be an artifact pioneering a human rights charter. Those people are now forced to abide by a religious fanatic regime.
Today’s seemingly endless supply of ayatollahs is replacing those killed by us, or by Benjamin Netanyahu. This should tell us these religious fanatics, like most others in history, will never desist from their lethal dogmas. Only the native citizenry can and must risk resisting, to weaken that hold — not unlike anywhere else that zealotry has taken hold — even here in the U.S.A. This is what happens when decent people allow tyrants to prevail.
A shocking cacophony of threats was heard from our TV president, but typically without any way for us to know Trump’s truth.
At home we see more and more chaos and destruction. The demolition of the White House East Wing led to a court-ordered stop to that massive project, but the tragic damage caused by immigration agents and cuts to our and veterans’ benefits continues. Education, science, health, and media are also being destroyed.
The corrupt former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has just been cut out by Trump’s proverbial chain saw, or wood chipper, as Musk would put it. The office of U.S.A.G. will still be Trump’s personal choice, only to be replaced by another loyalist. Shockingly we heard Suffolk County’s guy Lee Zeldin (that we originally elevated to Congress), is on the short list to take that now-tainted position. We are responsible for gifting him that opportunity!
Let’s do something sensible about this ongoing situation. We should especially respect our veterans who have put their lives and well-being at risk for us. They are now losing their homes because the Miller-Trump team canceled their mortgages without offering any replacement options. Can we see any more shameful lack of decency and consideration than this? It also seems that ICE’s killing citizens and roughing up immigrants is still tolerable.
We have become a nation creating worldwide chaos — officially engaging in extrajudicial deaths and destruction everywhere. Why? For what purpose? Is this just for the aggrandizement and profit of a madman politician, his family, and sycophant supporters?
Please help us out of this tragic situation by understanding the actual truth of it and by supporting politicians who are honest and who care about humanity.
Save our precious democracy and self-respect.
ANTHONY CORON
A Blind Eye
St. Petersburg, Fla.
April 6, 2026
Dear Editor:
I read with much comic relief your latest op-ed about Trump’s new ballroom. As if an addition or improvement to the White House was so scandalous, so outrageously king-like, it swamped the news cycle, dwarfing a foreign war with Iran and causing the Democrats to spiral into greater depths of bottomless hypocrisy, and for no other reason but a seething hatred for a man, who if he saved a kitten from the highest tree limb, he’d be condemned for committing an environmental injustice for climbing the tree.
Congress cannot get a bill passed. How long would it take for both sides to approve site plans for a new addition to the White House of which was the other side’s idea? The answer is never. Do you think the Republicans would approve an indoor basketball court?
If the left can’t stomach a president who dared, among many, to maintain the most sacred monument to American democracy, who wasn’t a slave owner, as some past presidents who resided there were, warrants greater oversight by legislators on the take to alter it, where were they during the Summer of Love in 2020? That was the year the left began its crusade of terror against Americans who resisted their attempts to take away their constitutional rights such as the right to make their own medical decisions, the right to assemble for weddings, funerals and graduations, the right to go to school, the right to publish their ideas and opinions on social media platforms, and the right not to tolerate forced, extreme ideology shoved down their throats.
It was also the same year the left turned a blind eye to the destruction and vandalization of hundreds of federal buildings and monuments in the name of virtue-signaling and counterculture ideologies they could drum up without congressional approval just by allowing mobs to decide what passed the smell test for them in terms of American art history. Does any American really need to know anything about the history of the United States, good and bad, more than the left wants them to know? Of course not. Let’s just erase it and rewrite it by inventing new words and changing the definitions of common things. I miss the days when a woman was an adult female and a vaccine prevented disease.
Yes, adding a ballroom to the White House, which was partially built by enslaved African-Americans, is an unlawful and inappropriate radical-conservative alt-right breach of power and poor use of donations otherwise better used to bribe lobbyists. Better that the entire building be razed by paid Antifa troops in training and the headquarters and living space of the commander in chief be moved to the mixed-use Obama Library in Chicago, where generational, under-privileged Black people have been displaced to make room for it. Who needs the squat, outdated, Neoclassical style White House, built on stolen land by marginalized people, when there’s a massive over-budget, over-deadline tower of atrocious architectural design smack in the center of an American city, heralded for its American architecture, that best represents how soft on crime policies in a sanctuary city, led by a mayor who touts favoritism for criminals and the undocumented over victims and citizens, can lead to the decline as a nation founded by the people, for the people?
Perhaps, too, President Trump can assist with the negotiations between the Chicago Bears and the iconic, historical, irreplaceable, homage to our military service members, Soldier Field Stadium, so Chicago doesn’t lose a billion-dollar-a-year sports franchise as well.
When it comes to architectural design, functionality, feel and space are first and foremost. If the Democrats ever regain the White House, they’ll be free to rip down the gilded ballroom and restore the grounds back to semi-functional, swampy gardens without congressional approval. Until then, opposition and feigned outrage to an addition of a ballroom in the White House is about as petty, childish, and inconsequential as when Nancy Pelosi tore up President’s Trump’s State of the Union speech. If hatred is the only fuel powering the bus, the Democrats hold the advantage. But if there is still civility and common sense, the structural components of our free republic, there is faith the country can survive a non-government funded addition to the White House without compromising the safety and freedom of the people who own it, the American citizens. War, however, is another matter.
CAROL DRAY
Right About One Thing
East Hampton
April 2, 2026
Sir,
Representative Nick LaLota is right about one thing: Affordability is crushing Long Island families. That reality demands precision and honesty from those in office. His recent letter offers neither.
Yes, the tax bill he references includes an increase in the state and local tax deduction cap, potentially up to $40,000. But presenting that as a straightforward, immediate win for middle-class families is seriously misleading. The provision is temporary, subject to income limits, and structured in a way that disproportionately benefits higher earners. Many middle-income households will see limited, if any, benefit. That is not “real financial breathing room” for most people, it is a conditional policy whose impact is uncertain at best.
More troubling is the broader pattern in the letter. He presents proposals and partial measures as settled outcomes and offers political spin in place of clarity. Constituents deserve to know what is actually law, what is delayed, and who truly benefits.
The tone of self-congratulation is also hard to square with present realities. Families are dealing with rising costs, including higher gas prices tied to escalating tensions in the Middle East. Yet Representative LaLota has been notably silent on those developments and the economic consequences for his constituents.
This is particularly striking because Representative LaLota has said he takes Congress’s Article I war powers responsibilities seriously. Those responsibilities are not abstract. They require members of Congress to scrutinize and, where necessary, challenge executive military action, especially when it risks drawing the United States into another open-ended conflict without clear authorization. Remaining aligned with or silent in the face of such actions raises legitimate questions about whether that constitutional duty is being meaningfully exercised.
That silence extends to rhetoric within his own party. When the president threatens actions such as bombing Iran “back to the Stone Ages,” language that implies indiscriminate destruction, it raises serious moral and legal concerns. One does not have to agree on every foreign policy question to recognize that such statements cross a dangerous line. Leadership requires speaking up, not looking away.
Affordability is too serious an issue to be wrapped in exaggeration and political messaging. If Representative LaLota wants to be taken seriously as an advocate for Long Island families, he should start by leveling with them.
Sincerely,
ANDREW VAN PRAAG
Nation Now Divided
East Hampton
April 2, 2026
Dear Mr. Rattray,
Whether at a public meeting or at a sporting event, we have all cited the Pledge of Allegiance, which was written in August 1892 by a Baptist minister, Francis Bellamy. In 1954, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words “under God” in response to the communist threat at the time. For over 130 years, the pledge reflected the American commitment to recognize the equality of all people with its closing words, “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Sadly, this is no longer true.
Christian Nationalists now espouse “one nation under Jesus.” Once indivisible when the pledge was written, the nation is now divided into blue and red states. Today liberty is denied to people who are deemed to be undesirable because of their religion, nationality, or sexual orientation. Justice no longer applies to everyone but operates in a discriminative manner, overlooking blatant criminal, and perhaps even treasonable, activity in selected cases.
Consider the case of Kevin Luke, a retired Army colonel, who was sentenced in February to 24 months in federal prison for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. In an email sent to impress a woman he met online, Colonel Luke revealed specific details about an imminent military operation. Did Pete Hegseth go to prison for having shared publicly in a group chat the specific details about an imminent military operation?
In June 2025, Former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan was sentenced to seven years in federal prison following his conviction on 10 of 23 felony charges. Documents recently released (inadvertently?) by the Department of Justice show that Trump took highly classified documents when he left office in 2021, some so sensitive that only six people in the entire U.S. government had access to them. Did Trump go to prison for having been found guilty in May 2024 on all 34 felony charges or for having illegally taken highly classified documents?
Perhaps those who seek justice today should recite a pledge of allegiance to Trump.
SALVATORE TOCCI
Final Nail
East Hampton
April 6, 2026
Dear David:
Last week, Donald Trump gave an unexpectedly candid — and callous — riff on his governing priorities. In the process, may have put the final nail in the G.O.P.’s mid-term coffin.
It happened during a private Easter lunch at the White House. Trump spit the bit on showing any advancing policies to enhance child daycare and other social projects. He railed that the federal government can’t take care of daycare. Instead, he would foist that responsibility onto the states, including the obligation to pay for it, even if it means raising taxes on its residents. He swept Medicaid, Medicare, and all other social programs into the same trashbin. He posited that the federal government had only one responsibility: to guard the country.
Typically, Republican leaders try hard to deny their goal to starve social programs. Yet here was Trump brazenly admitting to it. And in this case his plan to rearrange federal spending priorities may come to fruition. Just two days after those remarks, his administration released its budget for 2027. It seeks $1.5 trillion increase for defense. It proposes to offset that cost with a 10 percent reduction in domestic spending, including cutting a subsidy program that helps low-income Americans pay for heating and cooling — yes, right at a time his fruitless “excursion” in Iran has ruinously raised energy prices.
It doesn’t take this new budget to see the path Trump and his G.O.P. sycophants are following. It’s been less than a year since Republicans passed historic cuts to Medicaid and food assistance and refused to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that threatened health insurance coverage for more than 20 million Americans.
None of this has been popular. Most Americans are opposed to the war in Iran, most Americans oppose the cuts in Medicaid funding, and most wanted to see the Obamacare subsides left alone. This governing record threatens to undermine the electoral appeal of Trump and the G.O.P. in a more fundamental way.
Ten years ago, Trump presented himself as a different kind of Republican, one who was willing to buck his own party’s establishment, disagreeing with the G.O.P. establishment on the welfare state and foreign wars. Making a promise he would repeat many times during his campaign, he vowed not to cut Social Security “like every other Republican” and would not cut Medicare or Medicaid. And, while Trump pledged to repeal the Affordable Care Act (largely because it was an Obama accomplishment), he repeatedly promised anyone who would listen that he would replace it with something better, so no one would go without health care.
But anybody who followed Trump closely had good reason to question whether he could make good on his pledges. His campaign rarely released formal policy proposals and when they did, they were comically devoid of details. His lack of any specifics suggested he was either uninterested, uninformed or both and that, if elected, he would defer to Congress – and precisely the old-style Republicans he claimed to be rejecting.
Now, 10 years later, the dust is settling on a Trump-led G.O.P. that has wholly embraced the Project 2025 goal of eliminating the social safety net that has existed for decades. With no electoral future, Trump doesn’t care if he burns America to the ground. It remains to be seen whether the Congressional G.O.P. will help with matches or wield a fire extinguisher. If the past is any portent, my bet is on the match.
Whether the increasing burden on voters registers politically is a separate question. It depends on voters linking their hardship to decisions that Trump and his Republican cohorts have made. This largely depends on whether Democrats can show that link. But Trump’s continued denial of the real-world effect his war is having on energy costs; his uncaring attitude toward health care costs and rampant inflation should make that effort child’s play. Trump’s daycare riff on Wednesday makes it even easier.
The president and the G.O.P. have given Democrats the gift of political suicide. No other president in my lifetime would have made that mistake.
Let’s make them pay.
Sincerely,
BRUCE COLBATH