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County health departments in Nassau, Suffolk and across the state will be affected by a $300 million funding cut from the federal government, putting mental health and addiction programs at risk, as well as those that help battle infectious disease, Gov. Kathy Hochul said last night. Hochul vowed to "fight them tooth and nail" to hold onto the funding. Lisa L. Colangelo and Nicholas Grasso report in NEWSDAY that in a statement, the governor said the Department of Health and Human Services informed her office on Tuesday that it will cut more than $300 million from the state Health Department, Office of Addiction Supports and Services and the Office of Mental Health. "These include funds that county health departments across New York are planning to use to fight disease and keep people safe," Hochul said. "At a time when New York is facing an ongoing opioid epidemic, multiple confirmed cases of measles and an ongoing mental health crisis, these cuts will be devastating." The funding being cut — $11.4 billion overall nationally — was first allocated by Congress to help state and local health departments battle the COVID-19 pandemic. As the pandemic slowed, the funds were used for other health-related programming. "The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago," the agency said in a statement.

Hochul said no state will be able to restore the "massive federal funding cuts" proposed by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency and the Republican-controlled Congress.

"They are trying to rip apart the social safety net that lifts families out of poverty and gives everyone a shot at a middle-class life," Hochul said. "These cuts aren't just numbers on a page — they're going to hurt real people in every corner of New York."

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Attorneys for the Shinnecock Nation have asked the judge who ordered a halt to construction of a gas station in Hampton Bays to modify her injunction to allow contractors to complete some steps of the work already begun to secure the site in anticipation of an extended pause to the work.

Michael Wright reports on 27east.com that employees of the contractors who were constructing the 10 acre gas station and travel plaza told the judge in affidavits submitted to the court on Monday that without completing some steps of the construction — including pouring concrete over fuel sumps, completing the canopy over the gas pumps and installing the outer shell of the travel plaza building — a long work pause at the property could result in environmental issues, damage to the structures erected already and public safety concerns should people trespass on the property. “The abrupt work stoppage prevented contractors from taking customary precautions to secure the site, primarily for protecting public safety, but also to protect the assets of the incomplete project,” Harold Wingert, the owner of Eastern Woodlands Petroleum, one of the Shinnecock’s contractors on the project, wrote to Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice Maureen Liccione. “The fuel sump pumps are currently exposed at the Project site. In order to adequately protect the exposed fuel pump pits as well as the metal fasteners and fixtures within those sump pits from exposure to moisture, the full canopy must/should be installed.” The injunction ordered all work at the site halted on March 18, after Liccione ruled that the Shinnecock cannot treat the land they own in Hampton Bays as sovereign tribal territory exempt from town zoning rules — which would prohibit the