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Main Newsletter July 25
July 25, 2026
Today: Sunny with moderate humidity, high 79, winds east at 10 to 15 miles per hour. Tonight: Clear, low 62. Tomorrow: Sunny, high 79, winds east-northeast at 10 to 15 miles per hour. Sunset tonight: 8:15. Sunrise tomorrow: 5:43.
Representative Nick LaLota, who announced last month that he was cutting off East Hampton Town and Village from federal community project funding over their adoption of laws prohibiting cooperation with the federal government in civil immigration enforcement, is not letting up in his threats.
By Christopher Gangemi
 | On the South Fork, where the effects of climate change are seen in woodlands decimated by the southern pine beetle, Rivers Burke hopes to plant as many redwood and sequoia trees, both of which are highly fire resistant, as he possibly can, in the process inspiring others to take up the cause. By Christopher Walsh |
 | Never has a group of people been happier to talk about human composting than at Edwina von Gal’s Perfect Earth panel discussion on green burial held at the LongHouse Reserve last weekend. By Christopher Gangemi |
 | Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine announced last week that the county intends to buy the 822-acre island, largely untouched by development except for the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, and described it as an environmental jewel. By Christopher Gangemi |
 | The time for America’s testing has come, Judge Michael Luttig told a rapt audience at Guild Hall in East Hampton on Monday. “In Lincoln’s terms,” he said, “we are going to determine, in this calendar year, whether this nation, or any nation so conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, can long endure.” By Christopher Walsh |
 | From a 1985 Unimog platform fire truck imported from Germany to black open-toe platform booties, you can find a bit of everything vintage at Georgopoulos Motors on Main Street in Amagansett, where the brother-and-sister team of Stathios and Tiffany Georgopoulos are in business together this summer. He sells the cars, she sells the clothes. By Alison Morris Roslyn |
 | “This has been the best experience I’ve ever had. I’ve been telling people, ‘I feel more welcome now than when I actually came home,’ ” said Sabrina Mohammed, a veteran who took part in Soldier Ride the Hamptons on July 18. By Margot Kohn |
 | For the last five weeks, a FIFA World Cup frenzy has taken over. Americans — many of whom would normally be watching baseball or no sports at all — have been glued to televisions and packing into stadiums, enraptured by soccer. By Alison Morris Roslyn and Margot Kohn |
 | Following several changes to legislation that would allow for rent-restricted employer-sponsored housing, the town board held a second public hearing on the proposal on July 16, but the changes were not enough, apparently, to create public support. By Christopher Gangemi |
 | The Olympic gold medalist Kerri Walsh Jennings will return to the South Fork with a crew of pro volleyball athletes this week for Hero Volley, featuring volleyball clinics for adults and kids on Tuesday and a pro-am competition next Thursday. By Carissa Katz |
 | With hazy wildfire smoke as a backdrop, East Hampton Village lifeguards took on the town in their annual volleyball tournament at Main Beach on July 16. By Alison Morris Roslyn |
 | The rain stopped, the skies cleared, and the wind started blowing to the east, creating near-perfect conditions for the Montauk Lighthouse Triathlon on Sunday, despite choppy waters. By Alison Morris Roslyn |
 | Shark Week, which starts on Sunday on the Discovery Channel, chums up a ton of viewers — and fear. The fact is, New York’s marine waters are home to 13 different species of sharks, and while millions of people swim in the ocean every year, shark incidents remain exceptionally low. By Jon M. Diat |
 | Mahjong’s popularity on the East End has been building gradually for the past two or three years. “But this year it just exploded,” says says Donna Vigliotti, a founder of Montauk Mahj. By Frances Sacks |
 | Join us in the cab of a GP-38 heading east on the Montauk Branch on a September day in 1996, as night falls and conductor and engineer trade salty and strange tales of life on the tracks By J.J. Anderson |
 | As soon as the campground opened at Hither Hills State Park in Montauk in 1929, camping on the beach became popular, as shown in this vintage postcard. By Kristen Ahearn |
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Opinion | Columnists |
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