It marked a rare public escalation of tensions between the White House and GOP governors that the administration has tried to tamp down for weeks, both to keep the pandemic response on track and in acknowledgment of the fact that there’s little the administration can do legally to rein in states that go rogue…

“Crazy,” one senior administration official said soon after the announcements. “Last thing we should be doing right now is putting down our guard.”

Another senior administration health official told POLITICO that the White House believed the Texas and Mississippi announcements — posted on Twitter within 30 minutes of each other — were a “coordinated effort” by Republican governors, and that it expected to see more in the coming days.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey could lift the state’s mask mandate later this week, with a spokesperson telling POLITICO that Alabama is “heading in the right direction” and that Ivey’s “made clear that she prefers personal responsibility to government mandates.”