National

Slate reports: Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is attempting to strip legal parentage from families who conceive children using a genetic donor, launching an attack on one same-sex couple that has sweeping ramifications for thousands more—including heterosexual and adoptive parents. The Miami Herald reported last week that Uthmeier, a Republican appointee of Gov. Ron DeSantis, intervened in a routine case to argue that Florida’s surrogacy contract language violates the 13th Amendment’s prohibition on slavery, and, more sweepingly, that the state constitution bars biological parents from transferring parental rights at all. These theories—which one far-right judge has already endorsed—would end both surrogacy and donor […]

The Christian Post reports: James Robison, the Texas-based televangelist who founded LIFE Outreach International, died Sunday. No cause of death had been disclosed at the time of the announcement. He was 82. The ministry’s board of directors confirmed the death in a statement posted to social media, saying the mission Robison devoted his life to would continue. “James devoted his life to sharing the Gospel and bringing hope, help, and healing to those in need around the world,” the board wrote, adding that the organization would press forward with food and clean water programs and broader outreach efforts. Robison had a life-altering […]

The Gainesville Sun reports: Gainesville city officials and residents gathered at City Hall Plaza on May 8 to celebrate the ribbon-cutting of the newly renovated space. The redesigned plaza, city officials said, will provide a more functional community hub and can accommodate more than 2,000 people. The space also incorporates the rainbow bricks salvaged from the downtown crosswalks removed last year. Their removal came after state officials ordered communities across Florida to take down or paint over rainbow crosswalks, including the crossing in Orlando that memorialized the 49 victims of the 2016 Pulse Nightclub massacre. Gainesville officials pulled roughly 1,900 bricks from […]

The Wisconsin Examiner reports: Three weeks after two right-wing groups demanded the repeal of a professional licensing board’s ban on conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ clients of social workers and other therapists, Gov. Tony Evers sent a sharply worded reply. In a letter to the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and Wisconsin Family Action, Evers declared, “my administration has no intention of repealing Wisconsin’s conversion therapy ban.” Evers asserted that the April 14 demand letter from the two groups was based on “a significant misreading” of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that threw parts of a Colorado ban on conversion […]