The scene is Tulsa, Oklahoma......a city with a violent past when it comes to race relations, a city that's experiencing a dangerous spike in coronavirus cases.......and a city that will play host to a Trump campaign rally tomorrow that has just about everyone on edge. 

Speaking of coronavirus cases, there is more evidence that the virus is nowhere near done with us; and now there might be some acknowledgement that the country opened up too early. We'll talk with California's health and human services secretary about what new precautions might be needed.

And remember all of that talk about antibodies? And how with antibodies might come immunity? Some potential problems...in just how much time those antibodies can buy you.

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar was likely already out of the "veepstakes" when she formally withdrew her name for consideration to become Joe Biden's vice president candidate; but Klobuchar's call that Biden picks a woman of color as his VP certainly ramps up the pressure to get that pick right.

And today is Juneteenth, the holiday marking when slaves in Texas learned of their freedom in 1865. This Juneteenth comes in the mist of a national moment...and people celebrating  are hoping there are much bigger changes in the works.

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The roughly 700,000 immigrants who were legally protected under the DACA program are breathing sighs of relief today after the Supreme Court overruled the Trump administration's canceling of the program.  And while that's a very big deal, also a very big deal is how this allegedly conservative-leaning Supreme Court has twice this week delivered surprisingly moderate rulings.

The great face mask debate will continue to rage here in California, after Governor Gavin Newsom just signed an order requiring the wearing of face masks, state-wide, in "high risk" situations.  This comes amid a slow-but-steady increase in coronavirus cases here in the state, and in several other areas of the country.

Is such an order enforceable, and why have face masks become such political  lightening rods?  We'll hear from both sides of the debate.

COVID-19 is indeed on the march again, with some areas of the United States on the verge of losing control over the spread of the virus.  But if you listened to President Trump or Vice President Pence, you'd think all is well and we've got coronavirus totally under control:  have we been left on our own by the federal government?

And Congressman Adam Schiff, lead prosecutor in the impeachment trial of President Trump, gives his reactions to John Bolton's new book, which is highly critical of the president.  Suffice it to say, these three men won't be getting together for drinks anytime soon.

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On this much Dr. Anthony Fauci and Vice President Mike Pence agree:  we're not in a second wave of coronavirus infections in this country; the first wave never really ended.  But we pressed ahead with reopening most segments of the economy, even as COVID-19 continues to spread.......and the curve that the United States had succeeded in flattening is now slowly going back up.

And with businesses and events starting to com back, you should be prepared to sign on the dotted line of a liability waiver; we'll look at a likely waive of pandemic lawsuits.

And this country's sports leagues continue to struggle with either starting or restarting their seasons:  will professional sports be played again this year? 

Aunt Jemima, and Uncle Ben, two symbols that helped sell food for generations, were sent packing today - we'll look at the racist origins of these brands. And does this continue? With other images that have been baked into American culture.

Which leads to our final story for today's In Depth, and it's a complicated one:  racism isn't just an American phenomenon, as just about every country and every culture has its own brand of racism.  Are humans born racist?

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The only hope for returning to a truly normal way of life in the midst of this coronavirus pandemic is the development of treatments and a vaccine to reduce the risk from the virus.  And today, there's promising news out of the United Kingdom about a possible COVID treatment: dexamethasone. It's a widely available, and cheap.

Meanwhile, coronavirus cases continue to increase across many parts of the United States; and here in California, the average age of COVID patients is getting younger.

This will probably come as a surprise to almost no one: Americans are very unhappy.  We'll look at a new survey showing Americans as as grumpy and pessimistic as they've been in at least 50 years.

President Trump offered up his version of police reforms today; we'll look at his executive order. Does it have teeth?

And the murders of two law enforcement officers during the early, violent days of protests over George Floyd's death were initially blamed on ANTIFA. Well, now officials say it was a right-wing group that thinks a second American civil war is coming. So we'll get into all that.

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With COVID-19 cases on the rise all over the country, it seems like this pandemic is showing no signs of ending anytime soon. A former acting CDC director talks about how the country and states are handling the virus. 

LA County public health officials are being criticized following an LA Times report that questions how well they carried out contact tracing back in March before the number of cases exploded. So what went wrong? 

The FDA deals a blow for two anti-malaria drugs promoted by President Trump. It revokes emergency authorization for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, saying they're unlikely to be effective in treating the coronavirus. How big of a setback is this for doctors trying to save lives? 

Those fighting for equal rights for the LGBTQ community are celebrating a major Supreme Court decision. The court ruled gay, lesbian and transgender people are protected against discrimination at work. 

And taking this case further, one of the court's staunch conservatives, Neil Gorsuch, sided with the liberal justices. What does this mean for future cases? 

 

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More businesses are being allowed to open in LA County again. Gyms, museums and film studios. This comes as health officials are warning the spread of COVID-19 is increasing in the county. So if cases are going up then why are officials letting all these businesses open? 

President Trump is planning to hold rallies again. That means lots of people packed next to each other for at least a couple of hours. The president's campaign will require everyone at the rallies to sign a waiver, saying they won't file any lawsuits if they get COVID-19. 

The pandemic will end at some point. When it does, maybe people who live in big cities will want to move to get away from people in case of the next pandemic. So where are the best cities to go? 

San Francisco is serious about police reform following the George Floyd protests. The city's mayor says police will stop responding to non-criminal activities such as disputes between neighbors. 

Protesters have literally taken over part of Seattle. They've cordoned off several blocks of the city and set up what they are calling a Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. 

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Imagine getting a phone call from outer space. We hear from an astronaut on the International Space Station. 

Are we going backward when fighting the coroanvirus? Cases are increasing in several states with the economy opening back. The stock market is tanking again like it did when this thing started.  And health officials here in LA and elsewhere are worried once again hospitals could be overwhelmed.

Masks are a hot topic again in Orange County. The former health officer, who resigned earlier this week, made them mandatory in public. That drew a lot of anger and criticism. But the new acting health officer makes them just a recommendation. Is there science behind that?

A longtime UCLA business school professor is on leave following criticism and backlash over an email response to a student's request to postpone a final exam for African-American students in light of the George Floyd protests. There's a petition circulating now to have him fired and another to have him re-instated.

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Public health officials spoke with trepidation in the days leading up to the reopening of most facets of the economy:  coronavirus infections hadn't stopped spreading, and there will be increases in hospitalizations and deaths, they warned. 

Well, as predicted, COVID hospitalizations are indeed on the rise in several states; including here in California. 

And if cases of the virus really start to get out of control, is there any political will or public appetite to go back into another lockdown to slow the spread?

Police unions in cities across the country are digging in for a fight -- they have heard the calls to defund police departments, and in response have taken a hard line stance against certain reform proposals.  We'll talk with LAPD's officers union.

A total debacle in Georgia's primary is an ominous sign of what could be coming our way during the election in November.

And HBO pulling "Gone with the Wind" from its movie offerings is really just the tip of the iceberg in revisiting our often racist history.  We'll look at the old movies, the statues honoring Confederate generals and even the names of U.S. military bases that could be on the chopping block.

 

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George Floyd was given his final send off today with an emotional funeral service in his hometown of Houston........a service that combined overwhelming grief with calls to action that his death not be in vain.

But after the death of Floyd, at the hands of Minneapolis police, what will it take to turn this latest of outrage over racial injustice into real change?  We'll ask a long time civil rights attorney and activist about breaking the patterns of institutional racism.

And then we're going to Camden, New Jersey; a city that not only defunded its police department, it blew it up entirely; firing every single officer and starting over from scratch.

The World Health Organization has had a pretty eventful 24 hours:  first, scientists there lobbed a bombshell yesterday when they declared that people infected with coronavirus who were asymptomatic posed little to no risk of transmitting the disease.  Today, they took it back--we'll get some clarity.

And even with cases of COVID-19 continuing to spread, on Friday..... California will allow gyms and movie theaters to open their doors.  What are the health risks you'll take if you go to workout class or catch a film?

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On the face of it, defunding the police in response to abuses of authority by officers against African Americans can sound like an extreme step. What does it mean? Completely shutting down departments across the country?

Not necessarily. 

We'll also go to Houston where the first of two days of funeral services for George Floyd are underway.  And we'll check back in on Floyd's adopted hometown of Minneapolis where their city council and activists are ready to carry out a list of aggressive police reforms, declaring enough.....is enough. 

There is growing frustration on the part of people who were skeptical about shelter in place policies to stop the spread of coronavirus, as public health officials in several states have either looked the other way or given blessings to te protesters cramming together in the street.  Is there hypocrisy in play?

And on the COVID-19 front, hospitalizations for covid patients are starting to creep up in several states which reopened their economies early.  And then there's this bombshell out of the World Health Organization today: asymptomatic people might not be capable of spreading the virus. Or if they do...it's very rare.

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