Just about anybody in America can officiate a wedding, thanks to the internet – and one determined preacher

  Wedding season is here again, and my calendar is filling up – not just as a guest.

  Over the past 15 years, I have officiated over 20 weddings for friends and family, plus nearly 200 more as a part-time professional wedding officiant. These weddings have ranged from simple elopements to fancy ceremonies before hundreds of guests. They have taken place at farms, beaches, mountaintops, hotels, wineries, and warehouses – but never at a church. They have been secular, spiritual, religious, and interfaith.

Decades of public messages about recycling in the US have crowded out more sustainable ways to manage waste

  You’ve just finished a cup of coffee at your favorite cafe. Now you’re facing a trash bin, a recycling bin, and a compost bin. What’s the most planet-friendly thing to do with your cup?

  Many of us would opt for the recycling bin – but that’s often the wrong choice. In order to hold liquids, most paper coffee cups are made with a thin plastic lining, which makes separating these materials and recycling them difficult.

  In fact, the most sustainable option isn’t available at the trash bin. It happens earlier, before you’re handed a disposable cup in the first place.

DeSantis’ ‘war on woke’ looks a lot like attempts by other countries to deny and rewrite history

  A Florida law that took effect on July 1, 2023 restricts how educators in the state’s public colleges and universities can teach about the racial oppression that African Americans have faced in the United States.

  Specifically, SB 266 forbids professors to teach that systemic racism is “inherent in the institutions of the United States.” Similarly, they cannot teach that it was designed “to maintain social, political and economic inequities.”

Survey: Where America stands on the First Amendment in 2023

  How we view – and how much some of us support – the First Amendment is changing, and all of us ought to be concerned.

  The change is not in the actual 45 words: Those remain the same, protecting our freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.

Students, teachers and advocates fight against censorship in Alabama schools

  Jamiyah Brown and about 30 other Black students at Hillcrest High School in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, were excited about a Black History Month program they were planning last winter.

  They wanted to use dance, song, and the spoken word to present a timeline of Black history – from enslavement to the Jim Crow era to the civil rights movement of the 1960s to the present.

Harm of anti-LGBTQ laws includes economic pain for communities, families

  Roberto Che Espinoza had been thinking about leaving Tennessee after the 2024 election, but in June they noticed that the state attorney general was seeking medical records on gender-affirming medical care, which Espinoza, a nonbinary transgender man, said included their own records.

  “Being on any kind of list … I knew after the release of those records that this is not good,” Espinoza said.

How small wealthy suburbs contribute to regional housing problems

  The odd headlines about little towns in the San Francisco Bay Area just keep coming.

  First Woodside, a tiny suburb where several Silicon Valley CEOs have lived, tried to declare itself a mountain lion habitat to evade a new California law that enabled owners of single-family homes to subdivide their lots to create additional housing.

Why Trump’s prosecution for keeping secret documents is lawful, constitutional, precedented, nonpartisan and merited

  Donald Trump and his allies have responded with a variety of objections to his federal indictment, brought in June 2023 by special counsel Jack Smith. The federal charges – the first against a former president – listed 37 counts of obstruction of justice and wrongful retention of classified documents after Trump left office in January 2021.

Curing America’s loneliness epidemic would make us healthier, fitter and less likely to abuse drugs

  A national health advisory issued by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on May 3, 2023, sheds light on the urgent public health issues of loneliness and isolation.

  The report reflects Dr. Murthy’s personal and professional experience with the damaging health impacts of loneliness. As surprising as it sounds, social isolation and loneliness have the same effect on human health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, which is to say, it can shorten life span by up to 15 years.

Puerto Rico has been part of the US for 125 years, but its future remains contested

  In the 125 years since U.S. troops invaded Puerto Rico on July 25, 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the U.S. government has controlled the island militarily, politically, and economically – with no end in sight or, for Puerto Rico, a clear path to statehood.

  That has been an issue of contention for many Puerto Ricans living on the island and stateside.