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Democrats labeled Gov. Ron DeSantis a “bully” after video surfaced of him curtly asking a group of students to take off their masks before a press conference in Tampa. “You do not have to wear those masks,” DeSantis told the students as he took the podium at the University of South Florida on Wednesday. “Please take them off. Honestly, it’s not doing anything. We’ve got to stop with this Covid theater. So, if you want to wear it, fine — but this is ridiculous.” (Atterbury, 3/2)

New Orleans is lifting its indoor mask mandate now that the annual Carnival season, which draws large crowds to city streets and packs bars and restaurants, is over, the city health director said Wednesday. Dr. Jennifer Avegno said the mask mandate ends Thursday at 6 a.m. She added that another COVID-19 mitigation measure — a requirement that customers show proof of vaccination or a recent negative test for entry into bars, restaurants or other venues — will end March 21, if hospitalization rates remain stable. (McGill, 3/2)

Maine’s state government said Wednesday it is rescinding a recommendation for universal masking in schools and child care facilities. The Maine Department of Health and Human Services and Maine Department of Education said they are considering mask use optional in those settings starting March 9. The final say will rest at the local level, as local school boards have authority about mask requirements in the state’s school districts. (Whittle, 3/2)

Just before classes began on Wednesday morning, Jordan Goldberg, a fifth grader at Guggenheim Elementary School on Long Island, strode through the doors and stopped short. “This doesn’t feel normal!” he said, clutching his bare, unmasked chin. For the first time since schools reopened during the pandemic, Jordan and many other public school students across the state entered homerooms, gymnasiums and class without masks. (Nir, 3/2)

Americans have been arguing about pandemic restrictions for two years, and the debate is particularly fraught among parents of small children, for good reasons. While measures such as masking and isolation mean temporary discomfort or inconvenience for most people, their consequences for still-developing young children are more mysterious, and possibly more significant and lasting. Children with speech or language disorders offer perhaps the clearest example of these murky trade-offs. Pandemic restrictions vary by state, county, and school district, but I spoke with parents in California, New York, Massachusetts, Washington, New Jersey, Iowa, and Maryland who said their children’s speech therapy has been disrupted—first by the loss of in-person therapy and then by masking requirements, in places that have them. (Murray, 3/2)

With more than 750 employees choosing to ignore San Jose’s new mandate requiring them to get a booster shot, city leaders have decided to soften the policy. Instead of facing up to a week of unpaid leave, officials announced Wednesday that the city’s hundreds of holdouts will only be subject to a 1-day suspension equivalent to the number of hours an employee typically works in a day. City leaders also no longer intend to impose more aggressive discipline against employees, such as longer unpaid suspensions or termination, for failing to take steps to come into compliance with the order. However, they left it open to be revisited in the event of substantial changes to the COVID-19 pandemic or if more boosters become available and are considered necessary. (Angst, 3/2)

Google is requiring workers in the Bay Area and other U.S. regions to return to the office part-time on April 4. The mandatory return date, originally slated for last fall, was repeatedly delayed by coronavirus variants and surges in cases. With cases dropping and masks mandates ending in California, around 30% of Bay Area workers have already returned and the company recently restored signature perks like shuttle buses and free food. (Li, 3/2)

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander found the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection failed to adequately investigate price-gouging complaints during the pandemic. The comptroller said DCWP achieved some progress with the complaints it investigated. Some of the most egregious violations the agency uncovered included sellers pricing an 8-ounce bottle of hand sanitizer for $28, a 10-pack of masks for $300 and a single N95 mask for $20, and that most of the price-gouging complaints came from Black and Latino neighborhoods hit hardest by the pandemic. (Sim, 3/2)

Public health workers from different corners of Maryland told state lawmakers Tuesday that they felt threatened by residents and undermined, and even retaliated against, by leadership at the state health department during the past two years of the coronavirus pandemic. Lawmakers sought the stories from the state employees — a whistleblower from the health department headquarters and two county health officers — who normally go about their duties in relative anonymity. But they found themselves in more public roles and sometimes at odds with residents and parents, local council people and the very people at the state whose policies on masking, vaccinations or school closures they were seeking to interpret and implement. (Cohn, 3/2)