New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee today as the Republican-led panel investigates Democrat-led states with so-called sanctuary immigration policies that limit state cooperation with federal immigration agents.

Hochul will appear alongside Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota in a hearing that comes as the Trump administration has ramped up its mass deportation campaign with recent worksite raids across the country.

Laura Figueroa Hernandez reports in NEWSDAY that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R- Ky.) called for today’s hearing months ago — issuing a letter to Hochul, Walz and Pritzker in April, requesting they appear before the panel for questioning.

Hochul spokesman Avi Small said in a statement to Newsday: "Gov. Hochul has voluntarily agreed to appear before the committee and will reiterate what she’s said dozens of times: New York cooperates with federal immigration officials to deport violent criminals, but absolutely does not support cruel actions that tear families apart or rip children away from their parents." Comer, in a statement released Monday, accused "reckless sanctuary states like Illinois, Minnesota, and New York" of "actively seeking to obstruct federal immigration enforcement."

New York currently has a patchwork of laws and executive orders that limit the state’s cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agencies, unless a judicial warrant or judicial order is provided.

In his April 10 letter to Hochul, Comer specifically raised issues with a 2017 executive order signed by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo that prohibits state employees from providing information "to federal immigration authorities for the purpose of federal civil immigration enforcement, unless required by law."

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The Southampton Town Board this week officially adopted a battery of town code amendments that redirect the town’s allowances for the installation of battery energy storage systems, or BESS, that greatly restricts the size of systems and where they can be employed to store electricity.

Michael Wright reports on 27east.com that the board approved amendments that repealed all of the current, more permissive regulations regarding BESS facilities in Southampton Town code since 2020, replacing them with stringent new constraints that ban the systems from residential areas, cap their size at a fraction of what’s already been proposed by developers, and put in place an exhaustive set of safety requirements and fail-safes intended to head off some of the predictions of conflagration and toxic smoke threatening the health of residents raised by critics of the technology.

The new rules are also so punitive that it is unlikely that anyone will bring new BESS proposals to the town in the foreseeable future, industry experts have said — something town officials have gone out of their way to say is not their intention in crafting the code amendments.

The vote on the amendments, which was unanimous by the five members of the board, comes some 20 months after the Southampton Town Board enacted a moratorium on approvals of any BESS facilities amid outrage over a proposal for a large battery system in Hampton Bays that was on the verge of being green-lighted.

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In the summer of 2001, Brian Wilson made two memorable appearances on Long Island…at Jones Beach Theater in Nassau County on Tuesday July 24th...and a day earlier on the East End at the ALL FOR THE SEA concert on the grounds of Southampton College.

Following the Southampton show and through the next week, folks across the south fork spoke admiringly about how a supposedly burnt out Beach Boy delightfully delivered one Brian Wilson masterpiece after another.

A small sampling of his 25 song set-list from that Monday evening performance nearly 24 years ago includes everlasting favorites such as California Girls, I Get Around, Help Me Rhonda, Fun Fun Fun, and God Only Knows.

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A school district on Long Island estimates it’ll spend $23 million to erase its “Thunderbirds” team name — as it’s forced to comply with a state ban on Native American logos and imagery. Alex Mitchell reports in THE NY POST that Connetquot, whose baseball team recently won the Suffolk County championship, has been in quiet communication with the state of New York and expects to entirely phase out its longtime moniker by March of next year, according to documents obtained by The Post.

“The District has invested significant funds in larger-scale athletic costs at the high school and middle schools without the Thunderbirds name or imagery,” Superintendent Joseph Centamore wrote to Dave Frank, assistant commissioner of the NYS Department of Education.

“These costs included the replacement of turf fields, indoor gym floors and equipment, and other fixtures, as well as repainting projects throughout the schools totaling $23,620,000,” he said in the letter, dated May 6. Connetquot will also have to spend “an additional $323,470.42” on “scorers’ tables, cheer equipment, wall pads, scoreboards, additional uniforms, and certain banners and signage.” The Thunderbirds, which use no relevant imagery, shares its name with a Canadian Hockey League team based outside Seattle and an Air Force demonstration squadron that performs at Jones Beach. The Connetquot School District has been fighting in court since 2023 with fellow Native American-named districts on Long Island, including Massapequa, Wantagh and Wyandanch. However, a chief justice dismissed the suit in March, but only Massapequa amended its complaint to keep the fight going. President Trump intervened in April, declaring “LONG LIVE THE MASSAPEQUA CHIEFS!” and ordered Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to investigate the issue at a national level. She recently visited Massapequa. The Connetquot School district was granted a year’s extension last week.

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An air quality health advisory has been issued for today covering Long Island and NYC Metro regions due to elevated levels of fine particulate matter, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation announced yesterday. Denise Civiletti reports on Riverheadlocal.com that elevated fine particulate levels have been reported across areas of New York State due to smoke from more than 200 wildfires that have raged in the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan since early last month, burning more than 2.3 million acres as of last week, according to the government of Canada. Outdoor air quality levels are predicted to be greater than an air quality index value of 101 for fine particulates today in the New York City and Long Island metro regions, according to the advisory, reaching 101 in the Long Island region and 107 in the NYC Metro region today. An AQI of 101-150 is considered unhealthy for sensitive groups. The air quality index for Long Island yesterday was 70 for fine particulate matter and 87 for ozone. Both values are considered moderate. The AQI value for ozone today is forecast to reach 93. Ozone is produced by summer heat as a result of emissions from vehicles and smokestacks. Those emissions typically migrate to Long Island from out of state sources, the DEC said. The counties covered by today’s air quality health advisory are New York, Bronx, Kings, Queens, Richmond, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam. A toll free air quality hotline, 1-800-535-1345, has been established so New York residents can stay informed on the air quality situation, the DEC said.

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The Nationwide “No Kings” rallies planned throughout the country during the president’s military parade in Washington, D.C. this Saturday will include several on the East End. Beth Young reports in EAST END BEACON that rallies are being planned in Riverhead, Orient, Hampton Bays, Sag Harbor, Southampton and East Hampton.

Organizers of the Riverhead rally said Tuesday that more than 700 people had already RSVP’d.

“On June 14 — Flag Day — Donald Trump wants tanks in the street and a made-for-TV display of dominance for his birthday. A spectacle meant to look like strength. But real power isn’t staged in Washington. It rises up everywhere else,” says the No Kings organization in describing its nationwide day of protest.

The Riverhead No Kings rally, organized by the Riverhead and Southampton Democratic Committees, will be held from noon to 1:30 p.m. Saturday in front of the Suffolk County Supreme Court at One Court Street. The Hampton Bays rally will be held at the Macy’s shopping center from 10:30 a.m. to Noon. The Sag Harbor rally will be held at 11 a.m. at Steinbeck Park. The East Hampton rally will be held at 11 a.m. at East Hampton Town Hall. The Southampton rally, “Shut Down Billionaire’s Lane, No Kings!” will be held at Coopers Beach from 2 to 4:30 p.m.

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A six-year survey of humpback whales that are increasingly lingering in the waters off Long Island found almost 90% carried scars from entanglement in fishing ropes or nets. A smaller but still significant number, particularly young whales, had been wounded by ship propellers.

Tracy Tullis reports in NEWSDAY that researchers from Stony Brook University used drones to take images of the whales swimming off the South Shore, which allowed them to capture a more comprehensive view of the animals’ bodies than is generally possible when taking photos from a boat.

Entanglements from commercial fishing gear and vessel strikes in shipping lanes are thought to be the leading causes of whale mortality on the East Coast.

"It's sobering to realize how often these animals are interacting with fishing gear," said Lesley Thorne, the director of the Thorne Lab at Stony Brook University’s marine science department and the lead scientist on the study. And "even more sobering," she said, "was the proportion of juveniles that had evidence of vessel strike scars."

Thorne cautions that once a wound has healed, it’s hard to know where these whales, which migrate between the Caribbean in winter and as far north as Labrador, Canada, in summer, got entangled or injured by a propeller.

She found no evidence that offshore wind developments were implicated in these deaths.

As humpbacks spend more time near the busy port of New York, researchers believe they are at greater risk of ship strikes.

The entanglements Thorne documented, on the other hand, may well have happened in waters far from Long Island, possibly in the whales' traditional feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine.

Lobster harvesters have been collaborating with conservationists and manufacturers to test remote-controlled pop-up traps, which are already being used in the Gulf of Maine