It's the Brian Lairn show on WNYC.

Welcome back, everybody.

I'm Matt Katz, sitting in the big seat for Brian today.

We're going to move to Long Island now, where Nassau County Republicans did something that took a lot of us by surprise this week.

They voted to ban masks in public with some exceptions.

Why? Why now?

Masks have been a culture war touchstone since COVID when the right railed against mandates that masks be worn in public spaces.

And now the opposite is happening.

Banning masks is becoming a public policy priority.

And that has less to do with COVID and more to do with anti-Israel protests.

My colleague in the WNYC in Gothamist Newsroom, Charles Lane, has been covering the story.

And he's here with me in the studio to talk over the issue. Good morning, Charles. Good morning.

Listeners, are you in Nassau County resident affected by the mask band? Do you support it, oppose it, or are you just confused why this is an issue at all? Give us a call or send us a tax step. 212-433 W-NYC. That's 212-433-9692. Charles, where did this come from?

Why did Nassau County legislators bring this up as an issue to be addressed in the first place?

Well, I think it all goes back to sort of the increasing tensions that we've had around the protests,

starting in the springtime, early springtime.

They just become more tense, and very often the protesters want to wear face coverings

in order to hide their identity.

And, you know, during the springtime, there was, you know, some graffiti, some fistfights,

but we really reached a flashpoint probably about six weeks or so ago when there, there was a

video that surfaced in a subway car where the pro-Palestinian protesters were doing sort of a call-in response, looking for, quote, Zionist.

And I think a lot of people felt very uncomfortable about that in terms of it sort of brought back images of you know mass arrests in

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