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TODAY'S HEADLINES:

California becomes the sixth state to require masks out of doors. But a lot of other states have leaders who are happy to pretend the pandemic is over and done.

Meanwhile, Facebook penalizes Donald Trump’s reelection campaign for promoting organized hate. This may or may not surprise you, but Trump’s advertisements featured genuine Nazi iconography from the 1930s.

And lastly: good news for millions of American families. The Supreme Court intervened to stop Trump from deporting DACA recipients.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

California Says Mask Up

As the global death toll from COVID-19 nears half a million people, the overall government response in the US remains chaotic. California’s Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom, announced a new statewide order requiring masks outside the home. Masks will now be required in public indoor settings, and outdoors when it’s not possible to stand six feet apart. California joins Michigan, New York, Maine, Delaware and Maryland in requiring masks during the pandemic. Newsom’s order includes several exceptions, including walking, hiking, running and bicycling – but social distancing is expected for those exercising outside. The announcement did not mention any penalties for people who break the rules. The mayor of Costa Mesa in Orange County told the Associated Press QUOTE nobody wants to have to arrest people for not wearing a facial covering. We just want people to care about others, so people don’t die ENDQUOTE.

It’s a different story over in Nebraska. Republican Governor Pete Ricketts has threatened to deny federal aid money to local governments that require pepole to wear masks in public. And in China, where COVID-19 was first detected, lockdown measures are being reinstituted in light of a new wave of cases in Beijing. The pandemic isn’t over folks, don’t kid yourselves. Even the communications director for Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is advising supporters in high-risk categories to watch tomorrow’s presidential hate rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on television, rather than expose themselves and their families.

Facebook Permitted Trump Propaganda

If the Trump’s public health messaging seems confused, at best, his campaign’s neo- Nazi propaganda is crystal clear. Yesterday Facebook removed Trump ads targeting disparaging antifascists that featured unmistakable Nazi symbolism. The campaign placed eighty-eight ads different in all fifty states featuring a large inverted red triangle. The accompanying text spoke of QUOTE dangerous mobs of far left groups...running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem ENDQUOTE. Back in the 1930s and ’40s the German Nazi Party used the red triangle to identify suspected communists, social democrats, liberals, Freemasons, and other opposition members in their concentration camps.

As for the eighty-eight placements – that number is widely used by neo-Nazis as a kind of code for praising Adolf Hitler. The paid posts on Facebook featuring this iconography were reportedly sponsored by accounts belonging to Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, as well as the official Team Trump campaign page. It’s not the first time Trump campaign or his administration has used Nazi iconography, but it is one of the more egregious.

The ads were viewed nearly a million times before Facebook removed them yesterday, after getting questions from the Washington Post. The company says the ads violated its policy against organized hate.

Supreme Court Upholds DACA

The Supreme Court intervened yesterday to stop Trump from canceling the DACA program that protects child migrants from deportation. In a five-to-four decision, the Court ruled that Trump lacked sufficient justificatin to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, instituted by President Barack Obama in 2012. DACA confers a temporary protected status to non-citizens who came to the US as children and are American in every sense that counts except for some paperwork. Because of the ruling, some eight-hundred thousand people may be spared deportation. More than a million families will be spared the pain of separation.

One of the beneficiaries the program – a Dreamer named Marisol Montejano (MONTAY- YANO) – told the New York Times QUOTE I feel like I can breathe. I feel like I can tell my kids it’s going to be OK ENDQUOTE.

As the Times reported: the decision not only paves the way for immigrants to continue renewing their protected status, it also opens the program to some 66,000 undocumented young people who had been excluded from the program since the Trump administration began winding it down.

Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the liberal wing of the Court to secure the decision. Trump seemed caught off guard, accusing the court of firing QUOTE shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives ENDQUOTE. Not quite, but we’re only halfway through the year 2020.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Washington State activated the National Guard to help process unemployment claims. Not coincidentally, the federal Department of Labor released new figures yesterday showing another one-and-a-half million Americans filed for jobless benefits last week.

Steven Ray Baca, the New Mexico man who fired into a crowd of protesters this earlier week, managed to avoid charges in the shooting. Albuquerque press say the state police have taken over the investigation, which the District Attorney called fundamentally incomplete. Baca’s lawyers are claiming self-defense.

The US House of Representatives will hold a vote on statehood for the District of Columbia on next Friday, June 26, Democratic leadership announced. House rules prevent DC Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton from participating in the vote. She first brought a statehood bill to Congress in 1993.

Dutch police are chasing a new lead in the case of a stolen Vincent Van Gogh painting from a museum in The Netherlands this past March. A famous art detective, Arthur Brand, tipped police after he found a photo of the painting being shared in QUOTE mafia circles ENDQUOTE. The oil-on-paper work by Van Gogh depicts a garden, and is valued at $6.3 million. But what about the movie rights?

That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report, with guest Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez! Please have a good Juneteenth.

June 19, 2020 - AM Quickie

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn