Indholdsfortegnelse for September/October 2023 i Mother Jones

ON THE COVER Diving into online dating can be strange, even scary—especially when you don’t know who’s on the other side. Zi Xu’s illustration, lively but spooky, conjures up the unsettling world of those apps and the tech giants that run them. CONTRIBUTORS Where would you most love to go on assignment? BY THE NUMBERS To see our masthead, visit motherjones.com/about. For questions about your subscription or to make a tax-deductible donation to support our journalism, call (800) 438-6656. To advertise or for other questions, call (415) 321-1700.…

AFTER GRADUATING from a Denver nursing school in 2016, Neil Rudis knew the real training wouldn’t start until his first job—ideally in acute care at a Level 1 trauma center treating the sickest and most injured patients. So he was excited to sign on at the neurological intensive care unit at University of Colorado Hospital, the flagship facility of one of the state’s largest and richest health care employers. His contract included a catch that’s become common for new nurses: If he quit or was fired before a year on the job, Rudis would have to repay UCHealth up to $7,500 for training, with any debt accruing 12 percent annual interest. The arrangement is called a Training Repayment Agreement—critics add the word “Provision” to round out the acronym. Rudis focused…

MATTHEW HERRICK’S dating profiles depicted a muscular man with olive-green eyes and red-hot bedroom interests. The aspiring actor liked orgies and bondage. He was HIV-positive but preferred unprotected sex. He had a “rape fantasy,” and if he seemed resistant to the advances of would-be partners, it was simply part of what got him off. Between October 2016 and March 2017, more than 1,100 men accepted invitations to meet Herrick in person. They showed up at his West Harlem apartment in droves, and on several occasions broke into the building. They followed Herrick into public restrooms and approached him at the midtown Manhattan restaurant where he worked as a server, because that’s what they had been instructed to do. But Herrick had not matched with any of these men online. His…

EARLIER THIS YEAR, I found an empty THC cartridge package by the court after one of my son’s high school basketball games. Cannabis vapes are illegal for everyone in Texas, where I live, much less for minors. I scooped up the box, which displayed a California Republic bear and the brand Gold Coast Clear. Later, around the dinner table, I asked my two teens, “So, does anyone know anything about this company?” After blank stares and an awkward silence, I decided to seek answers myself and hopefully shed light on what exactly had been inside. I’m hardly naive about the possibilities. As a medical anthropologist, I’ve spent 18 months trying to understand how society is adapting to cannabinoids—cannabis’ psychoactive components—by talking to growers, retailers, cops, consumers, and chemists. In 2018’s…

JOVAAN LUMPKIN ENTERED the Connecticut state prison system in 2004, at age 17. In the eyes of his mother, Diane Lewis, he was still her goofy, skinny teenager. She loved him and had always made sure he had the right clothes: Polo Ralph Lauren, the latest jeans. Her biggest fear was for her son’s safety in prison. But she worried about smaller things, too. Without anyone to braid his hair, she wondered, would he need to cut his cornrows off? Lewis gave birth to Jovaan at 21 and raised him on her own in Hartford, a once-prosperous city that had gained a reputation for crime and municipal neglect. She later took in three of his younger cousins, whom she treated as her own. Lewis worked various jobs to support them,…

EVERY MONDAY, Abby Abildness leads her “Penn’s Sacred Challenge Tour,” a guided walk through the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg. On the day I join, a group of stylish and well-behaved Christian homeschoolers trail her through marbled hallways, beneath mosaic ceilings, and past stained-glass windows, dissecting the early-20th century art for hidden meanings, like a Christian nationalist Da Vinci Code. “God’s message is on the walls,” she says, directing our eyes to Edwin Austin Abbey’s “Spirit of Light,” a fresco of semi-nude nymphs silhouetted against burning oil derricks, each holding their own flame. “Doesn’t this remind you of Pentecost?” she asks the students. To Abildness, the building’s art doesn’t just transmit Pennsylvania’s founding myths—it reveals her state’s, and the nation’s, true Christian origins. The fresco is not only an homage to…

THE FIRST TIME Katrina Edwards was locked in a psychiatric hospital for children, she was sure a foster parent would pick her up the next day. It was a spring evening in 2012 when Edwards, then 12 years old, was admitted to North Star Behavioral Health in Anchorage—the latest in a series of events that had turned her world upside down. That January, Alaska’s Office of Children’s Services had put her in foster care after she reported being sexually abused, according to court records. Edwards, who has a round face and a quick laugh, found herself living in the home of a woman in her late 50s. When Edwards mentioned thoughts of suicide to her foster mom, she told me recently, she hadn’t meant it literally; she’d meant that she…

IN EARLY JUNE, roughly 250 Michiganders filed into a windowless banquet hall for the Macomb County GOP’s annual Lincoln Dinner. The dining tables were decorated with white tablecloths, tiny American flags, and famous Lincoln quotes, while the silent auction display off to the side featured Trump Wine, a cardboard cutout of Donald and Melania, and 30 mm rounds the size of a baby’s torso that had “Jesus is Lord!” etched into the shells. After I introduced myself to my tablemates, they were happy to provide an overview of the local political scene. Macomb was home to the middle-class Reagan Democrats who famously broke with their party and their unions. Neighboring Oakland County was home to Rockefeller Republicans who’d become Democrats, and a Muslim woman was now a deputy county executive…

NOT LONG AGO, I was one of 22 authors honored at a fundraising dinner for my local library. It was a swanky affair, with a multicourse meal, a pair of emcees, and a photographer to capture the rare sight of authors in cocktail attire rather than the sweatpants and baggy T-shirts we tend to favor. Midway through the meal, a waiter placed a full bottle of wine in front of me. “Thanks for giving ’em hell,” he said. “Keep up the good fight.” An emcee had just announced that my Stonewall Award–winning New York Times bestseller, The 57 Bus, was the 10th most frequently challenged book in Texas and the 35th in the United States last year, a fact that caused the entire room to burst into applause. Bottles of…