Top Republicans are battling school districts in their own states’ urban, heavily Democratic areas over whether students should be required to mask up as they head back to school.
This is reigniting ideological divides over mandates, even as the latest coronavirus surge ravages the US’s reddest, most unvaccinated parts.
Republican Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has issued an executive order threatening to cut funding from school districts that defy a statewide ban on classroom mask mandates.
He is now suggesting his office could direct officials to withhold pay from superintendents who impose such rules.
South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster is threatening to withhold funding to schools in his state’s capital, Columbia, over masking rules, while Texas Governor Greg Abbott has vowed to enforce an order against mask mandates, despite school districts around the state, including Dallas and Austin, promising to go ahead with classroom face covering requirements.
The posture comes with some clear political incentives for Republicans. The party’s base has opposed mask rules for more than a year and rejected the word “mandate”.
Still, some within GOP ranks have begun to warn of the safety and political risks involved in making schools – and children’s health – the chief battleground for an ideological fight.
“It’s visceral,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican strategist in Texas. “We’re approaching this tribalistically, angrily, very politically.”
He added that both sides are digging in “instead of trying to get together, I believe, at the most local level possible, and saying, ‘Hey, let’s try and work out what’s best’.”
The issue has packed local school meetings and sparked heated exchanges. Video of a meeting in Tennessee’s Williamson County showed angry parents chanting “No more masks” and following mask supporters to the car park to shout obscenities.
First-term US Representative Madison Cawthorn denounced masking rules as “nothing short of psychological child abuse”.
It comes as some Democrat-run states are moving in the opposite direction, reimposing masking rules for classrooms,
consistent with Centres for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations that children mask up in school.