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A Georgia judge on Thursday ordered the governor and Atlanta’s mayor to enter mediation over the governor’s lawsuit aimed at stopping the city from enforcing its requirement that people wear masks in public during the coronavirus pandemic. Fulton Superior Court Judge Jane Barwick ordered Governor Brian Kemp and Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms to attend mediation with another judge and try to resolve the dispute before an emergency hearing scheduled in the case for Tuesday. (McKay, 7/23)

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds is encouraging Iowans to wear face masks in public, although she has declined to join the growing list of governors who have ordered mask wearing to slow spread of the coronavirus. (Leys and Smith, 7/23)

Two Florida mayors who govern Miami and Miami-Dade County encouraged their residents on Thursday to wear masks inside to lower the transmission rate of COVID-19 between family members. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez (R) explained that while the city's number of daily new cases is down, the virus is still being spread easily through households, as multigenerational households are commonplace in Miami. (Johnson, 7/23)

Three Democratic senators are criticizing Interior Secretary David Bernhardt over reports that he refused to wear a mask in a meeting with tribes in Oregon earlier this month. “On your July 9 visit with the Klamath Tribes of Oregon, the tribe expressed concerns that you and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the State of California refused to wear a mask ” wrote Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Jeff Merkley (Ore.). (Frazin, 7/23)

Homemade face masks should ideally be made from multiple layers of fabric to trap the viral-laden droplets from the nose and mouth associated with the spread of Covid-19, a study found. Scientists in Australia compared the effectiveness of single and double-layer cloth face coverings with a surgical mask. Using a tailored LED lighting system and high-speed video camera, they showed a single layer reduced the spread of droplets from speaking, but less than a double layer. (Gale, 7/23)

When Ben Sass and Aliza Jaffe Sass learned in January that they had a baby boy on the way, preparations for a bris started immediately. Along with the rest of the logistical advance work of pregnancy, they now had to decide which family members would have the honors of escorting their new son into the ceremony, who would hold the child during the circumcision procedure, and what they would serve their guests at the reception afterward. They didn’t plan for how they would facilitate a surgery on an infant in their Philadelphia apartment during a global pandemic. (Rubin, 7/23)

Hundreds of worshipers, led by an organizer affiliated with a megachurch whose members believe they can heal the sick and raise the dead, gathered Wednesday at the Sundial Bridge in Redding, flouting mask-wearing orders and bans on large crowds. (Sabalow and Stanton, 7/23)