Face-off erupts over masks as virus, mandates spread

Calls for another round of mask mandates, fueled by an uptick in COVID-19 cases, have public officials going nose-to-nose on whether Americans should once again cover up.

The clash was on display Tuesday when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office threatened to withhold the pay of school officials who defy his July executive order against K-12 mask mandates, prompting President Biden to say his administration is “checking” to see whether he has the power to intervene.

Mr. Biden said he doubted he had such authority, but White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration was looking into funneling unspent pandemic relief funds to backfill any pay cuts enacted by Mr. DeSantis.

“We’re continuing to look into what our options are to help protect and help support these teachers and administrators who are taking steps to protect the people in their communities,” Ms. Psaki said.

Two months after Americans from California to New York went mask-free, the battle is back. At least eight red states have banned mask requirements, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has made an about-face on masks for vaccinated people, and the debate over personal freedom versus mask effectiveness remains heated.

Case numbers have been climbing since early July but remain below the U.S. peak in January. Reports showed 235,099 new cases on Aug. 9, with a rolling seven-day average of 124,470. At the height of national outbreaks on Jan. 8, new cases exceeded 300,000 and the rolling seven-day average was 259,616, according to The New York Times’ tracker.

Republican governors in two of the states banning mask mandates, Mr. DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, are fighting local officials ahead of the fall school semester. Elsewhere, the move back to mandatory masks is well underway.

In California, more than half the state is under an indoor mask mandate under rules implemented by the largest counties. Los Angeles County is requiring facial coverings for all K-12 students and staff regardless of vaccination status.

Driving the cover-up is the delta variant surge, which helped increase the rolling two-week daily average of new cases to 8,533, an increase of 165%, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed legislation barring mask mandates in April but said Sunday that he regrets it. He announced that he would ask the state legislature to reverse the measure to give school districts more flexibility in dealing with outbreaks.

“Facts change, and leaders have to adjust to the new facts that you have and the reality of what you have to deal with,” Mr. Hutchinson said on “Face the Nation.” “I realized that we needed to have more options for our local school districts to protect those children.”

COVID-19 hospitalizations in Arkansas hit a new high for the second day in a row Tuesday as a surge in cases continued to overwhelm the state’s health care system. The state Department of Health said hospitalizations for COVID-19 rose by 59 to 1,435. A day earlier, the state broke the record it set in January for total COVID-19 hospitalizations. Cases rose by more than 2,600 from Monday to Tuesday, and the number of COVID-19 deaths increased by 24. 

Sen. Bill Cassidy, Louisiana Republican, said Sunday that he disagreed with his state’s orders. “We should allow local officials to make those decisions best for their community” based on factors such as infection and hospitalization rates, he said.

“The local officials should have control here,” Mr. Cassidy said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I don’t want top-down from Washington, D.C. I don’t want top-down from a governor’s office.”

Challenging the theory behind masking was Mr. DeSantis, who said scientific research has not proved the efficacy of facial coverings.

“The premise of the claim that mask mandates work is not backed up by real-world evidence,” DeSantis spokesperson Christina Pushaw said in an email. “The data does not support the assertion that mask mandates make people safe from COVID-19.”

She cited data showing that COVID-19 cases dropped in Texas after the state lifted its mask mandate in March and that California experienced a surge in December and January, months after imposing its indoor mask mandate in June 2020.

“Florida never had a statewide mandate, but some counties were enforcing mask mandates last year,” Ms. Pushaw said. “Counties in Florida that imposed mask mandates last year did not demonstrate significantly better COVID-19 outcomes, in terms of hospitalizations and deaths, than counties that had no mask mandates.”

Florida recorded about 15,300 new COVID-19 cases Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, accounting for 16.5% of the nation’s new cases. The state has about 6.5% of the country’s population. The state’s seven-day moving average of new cases was 20,058 as of Monday, rising from a moving average of 2,478 on July 5, the Miami Herald reported.

COVID-19 patients have filled so many hospital beds that ambulances and fire departments are having difficulty responding to emergencies. Some patients wait inside ambulances for up to an hour before hospitals in St. Petersburg, Florida, can admit them. Pinellas County Administrator Barry Burton told The Associated Press that the admission process itself takes about 15 minutes.

The fight over whether to mandate masks has also reemerged at the federal level. Last month, Mr. Biden required unvaccinated federal workers and contractors to cover up on government facilities.

Seeking to topple his order is Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, who introduced on Monday the No Masks Mandate Act of 2021 to bar the federal government, including the CDC, from requiring facial coverings.

“My view is very simple: There should be no mandates. Zero concerning COVID,” Mr. Cruz said on Fox’s “Hannity.” “That means no mask mandates, regardless of your vaccine status.”

Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and 18 other Republicans who work in the medical profession questioned the House mask mandate, which covers both the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

Mr. Cruz defended Mr. Abbott’s order barring facial covering requirements by pointing out that the “governor of Texas didn’t say you can’t mask inside of schools.”

“If a child or a teacher wants to wear a mask, he or she can,” Mr. Cruz said on CNBC. “Any individual can choose to wear a mask. What the governor has said is that the government isn’t going to force you to wear a mask.”

Even so, school districts in Dallas and Austin, two of the largest in the state, announced Monday that they would require masking for all staff, students and visitors.

In Bexar County, a district judge on Tuesday issued a temporary restraining order against Mr. Abbott’s ban on masking mandates, allowing school districts in the county and San Antonio to require facial coverings.

“As the school year begins, the health of our students, especially those under 12 who are not eligible to be vaccinated, are being put at risk,” Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said in a statement. “The pandemic is not over. We need to continue to utilize every tool we have to combat the very contagious delta variant. We have come too far to allow our students to be super-spreaders and put more lives at risk.”

The Texas Department of Health reported 14,000 new cases Tuesday afternoon, a number not seen since the winter. Mr. Abbott told officials to use agencies to find more medical staff from outside the state. He also sent a letter to the Texas Hospital Association to ask that hospitals postpone all elective medical procedures.

Last week, Mr. Biden took a jab at Florida and Texas over their bans on mask mandates versus their rising infection rates. He said the two states account for “one-third of all new COVID-19 cases in the entire country.”

His comments prompted pushback on his lax approach to containing the delta variant at the southern border.

“President Biden’s reckless open border policies have created a crisis along our southern border, as he rolls out the welcome mat for a 20-year record-high influx of migrants coming from over 150 countries — many with spiking COVID cases and low vaccination rates,” said Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze. “Adding to the chaos, the Biden administration has been all over the map when it comes to their COVID response and messaging for our own citizens.”

Republicans claimed hypocrisy after photos of former President Barack Obama’s 60th birthday party Saturday in Martha’s Vineyard showed Mr. Obama and his guests without masks.

New York Times reporter Annie Karni fueled the double-standard outcry when she said those defending the party viewed the Obama bash as “a sophisticated, vaccinated crowd.”

“I think this is just abusive, it is dangerous, where these government figures believe they have the right to impose rules on you, rules that they don’t intend to follow, as all the people partying up at Martha’s Vineyard demonstrated,” Mr. Cruz said.

• Kery Murakami contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.