Opinion | Republicans Have Gone Too Far in the Region Hit Hardest by Covid

Fortunately, many citizens in these states and others in the region are determined to keep themselves and their children safe, even if their leaders keep undermining those efforts at every turn.

No sooner had Mr. Lee signed his executive order than Dr. Sara Cross, a Memphis physician on his own Covid task force, issued a public statement decrying his decision. “I fear for my 6-year-old daughter,” she said in a video. “Opting out of wearing masks is putting all of our children in harm’s way.”

In Texas, the families of 14 children with disabilities have filed a federal lawsuit against Mr. Abbott and the Texas Education Agency commissioner, Mike Morath, arguing that the ban on school mask mandates puts their children in peril. (Texas has paused the enforcement of its ban, pending the resolution of several legal challenges.)

Here in Music City, the pushback against state leaders began, naturally enough, with musicians and music venues. For people whose work brings them into contact with thousands of strangers, this is not a political issue; it’s a life-or-death issue.

Nashville has so far issued neither a mask mandate nor a vaccine mandate for businesses operating here, but there’s an ever-growing list of music venues that require proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test to enter, including the massive Bonnaroo music festival in Manchester, Tenn. The musician Jason Isbell now requires proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test to attend his shows, wherever they are held. “I’m all for freedom, but I think if you’re dead, you don’t have any freedoms at all,” he told MSNBC.

Meanwhile, Tennessee’s two largest school districts — Metro Nashville Public Schools and Shelby County Schools — continue to enforce their mask mandates in defiance of the governor’s executive order, and Nashville’s district attorney, Glenn Funk, has said that he “will not prosecute school officials or teachers for keeping children safe.” Some Tennessee pastors are encouraging other districts to defy the ban, too: “I’m well aware of what we are asking,” the Rev. Lillian Lammers told The Tennessean’s Brett Kelman. “There were many times in the Bible where Jesus broke the law in order to feed people or care for people, as a way of teaching others that sometimes the law can get in the way of doing what is right.”

That message of civil disobedience seems to be resonating across the South.

Last week, the school board of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Florida’s largest school district, and school districts in Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa and Palm Beach County, voted to approve mask mandates in open defiance of Mr. DeSantis’s ban. And they did so despite the threat of penalties leveled by the Florida state board of education against board members and superintendents in Broward and Alachua Counties, which had already established mask mandates.