Editorials

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?

Nancy Goroff should be the East End of Long Island’s next representative in Congress.

With the coming retirement of State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, eastern Long Island voters have a renewed opportunity to gain a more active and responsive representative in the New York Legislature’s upper chamber.

Two matters for voters to decide in the form of propositions are included on the Nov. 3 ballots for most Suffolk residents. The first would lengthen the term of office for county legislators. The second would allow the county to avoid repaying money it borrowed from a sewer-tax reserve fund. We recommend “no” votes on both propositions.

When white Americans talk about a “second civil war” there can be no mistaking their meaning — a return to a divided society with men at the top and Black Americans and other segments of the population at the bottom.

Suffolk County provides health clinics and low-cost buses for East Enders, but the paradox of a cash crisis UpIsland that will largely be escaped here does point to an unresolved question, whether the five East End towns are so different that their needs would be better served by breaking away and trying something new.

By the numbers, Donald Trump had a better chance of recovery than many Americans. Statistics from across the country show that Black and Latino patients die from Covid-19 disproportionately more than other ethnic groups do.

Local governments on the East End are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in missed revenue by not charging for public parking in some areas.

Among the most important races in the Nov. 3 election are those not making headlines, yet a functional American democracy depends on them — the contests for state-level positions.