“There are days that I feel defeated — like today,” said Justin Short, an assistant property manager at a luxury apartment building in downtown Kansas City, Mo. This month, Short helped post fliers announcing that masks were required in the building and thanking the 300 residents “for helping keep the community safe.” An unknown culprit started ripping down the fliers and even shattered one of the plexiglass frames.

“I had this idea that we would work together for the greater good,” Short said, a smile dissolving on his face. “I was wrong.”…

Ned Fasullo, a business development executive in Baton Rouge, helped block a local plan in July to separate vaccinated and unvaccinated students in Catholic schools, worried it would keep his unvaccinated children away from their friends. That victory was short-lived: Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards this month issued a statewide indoor mask mandate that led schools — including the Catholic schools attended by Fasullo’s children — to require students and teachers to wear masks indoors.

“I think people at the state level stepping in has been incredibly divisive for our state,” Fasullo said, decrying the Democratic governor’s order — which the state’s Republican attorney general Jeff Landry has worked to subvert by arguing Edwards’s mask mandate lacks legal authority. “It has torn Louisiana into multiple factions. It is not the government’s job to tell people to wear masks and get vaccinated.”