Mother Jones September/October 2023

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.…

SOME OF YOU, dear readers, have powerful memories of Daniel Ellsberg. You remember the impact he had on the way Americans thought about the war in Vietnam when he leaked the Pentagon Papers back in 1971. My memory is more recent. It’s from May of this year, when—in hospice care, knowing he had only weeks to live—he comforted a young whistleblower who felt her act was pointless. Ellsberg was speaking to an audience of journalists and students at the University of California, Berkeley. He towered over the room on a giant Zoom screen, next to another window showing Reality Winner—the woman who, as a 25-year-old National Security Agency translator, leaked classified material exposing Russian interference in the 2016 election, and was sentenced to prison for it. She sat in her…

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…

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…

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…

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…