> The push to ban masks in some public settings began in June after some pro-Palestinian demonstrators covered their faces during protests. They said that they

> The push to ban masks in some public settings began in June after some pro-Palestinian demonstrators covered their faces during protests. They said that they had done so to avoid online harassment, though some activists used the anonymity provided by their masks to harass people or to engage in acts of vandalism. > The man arrested on Sunday, Wesslin Omar Ramirez Castillo, 18, the first to face charges under a mask ban passed this month in Nassau County, N.Y., was not engaged in protest. He was walking down Spindle Road, a residential street of tidy lawns and single-family homes in Hicksville, wearing dark clothes and a ski mask in August, the county police said in a statement. Emphasis mine. Unrelated, did the NYTimes do something to their website to break copy and paste? It doesn’t work, you can just take a screenshot and copy the text from that, but seriously?