Editorials

In the ultimate presidential contest, which will hang on voter turnout, perhaps all you need to know about Joe Biden’s announcement Tuesday of Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential running mate is this: It was the Biden campaign’s best hour of fund-raising to date.

It is a good question why the operators of so many resort properties and a restaurant or two do not believe local laws apply to them.

As part of their Covid-19 responses, East End towns and villages relaxed rules on outdoor restaurant seating and the sky did not fall.

As the sun goes down, so, too, do the masks — as well as inhibitions about airing anti-mask sentiments.

It has been a relatively long time since a tropical storm or hurricane hit Long Island straight on.

A poll last week released by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that more than half of adults thought the crisis was affecting their mental health.

It is painfully ironic that that the federal agency created to keep the United States safe after the Sept. 11 attacks now targets Americans.

It’s been weeks since the last sustained soaking.

Southampton Town officials had stars in their eyes when they granted permission for a giant pop concert held in Bridgehampton on Saturday, attended by an estimated 3,000 guests.

If there was ever a moment for the myriad school districts on Long Island to cooperate, this is it. By working together across district lines, schools can help reduce the risk of a renewed Covid-19 outbreak.

The death of Jeffrey Gantt by apparent drowning in Montauk’s Fort Pond on Sunday is a tragedy for his friends, families, and business acquaintances, and is a reminder how quickly things can go wrong on the water, even in the most seemingly benign places.

Wainscott might be headed toward incorporation for all the wrong reasons. But if in doing so it can avoid the worst of what has happened elsewhere in East Hampton, forming its own village might just be the best thing that could happen to it.

For a long time, this newspaper has called for bike lanes on county, town, and village roads in a general sense. Instead of just keeping to that, we now suggest that several specific roads should be considered for widening to accommodate bicycles.

From early in the pandemic, it was clear that resort communities were different. Ski areas, which attract visitors and seasonal workers from across the United States and other countries, became hot spots for virus outbreaks. In Colorado, while the rest of the country was just becoming aware of the danger in March, numbers were already beginning to appear in places like Vail and Aspen.

With mounting evidence about a Russian plot to pay bounties to fighters in Afghanistan to target United States and coalition troops, one might have thought an Army veteran like Lee Zeldin would sympathize with the American military personnel who may have come under attack, but that would be wrong.

As summer began, Covid-19 prevention on the East End looked dangerously inadequate.

There is a sense on South Fork streets and on the beaches that we may somehow have defeated the virus. There is no evidence this is true.

The question is if — not when — schools will welcome back students. And the question also is how teachers and administrators are preparing.

Reactions have been negative to a $60,000, six-month contract between the Town of East Hampton and a New York City-based communications firm hired to help get the word out about Covid-19 issues and to redesign the town website.

For a nation that venerates the throwing off of tyranny the way the United States does at the Fourth of July, the end of a far greater repression of human life and dignity goes largely uncelebrated.

What Obama designates Trump takes away, and in the case of a recent decision to open the almost 5,000-square-mile Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument, what may be taken away if the move is allowed to stand cannot be replaced.

New Yorkers have already been voting in 2020 primaries for a range of local and statewide races. Early in-person polling places, which opened on Saturday, will remain open until Sunday afternoon and then reopen on Tuesday, the actual day of the primary.

No sooner were New York restaurants granted a reprieve from the Covid-19 lockdown did patrons come back in swarms for outdoor dining. But for many on the East End who had become used to hunkering down and ordering takeout, if at all, the return of crowds was an unsettling shock.

There are times when voters are faced with a critical choice. This is one of those times.

The outside of the envelopes from the Internal Revenue Service say “Penalty for private use $300.” It looks for all the world as if the recipient is about to be audited. The stomach drops. But what is inside these letters, which reach 90 million Americans, seems a strange contrast with that message.

When the protesters arrived at Trump Tower, the tone shifted. We were met with scores of police officers in riot gear, batons out, looking, in our opinion, for a fight.

East Hampton Village is a lot quieter now that limits are in place for leaf blowers and other gas and diesel-powered landscape equipment.

Though delayed and being conducted by absentee ballot, school board elections have arrived at last. The ballots are due back in district offices by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, so the time is now to mark them and get them in the mail.

One remarkable success story in our response to the pandemic has been how swiftly and effectively eastern Long Island medical systems scaled up to meet the challenge.

Amid generally good compliance with the New York State Pause order, the Memorial Day holiday excesses were at a minimum.