James' World 2

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In the 2024 election, the fact that Donald Trump’s hardcore MAGA base aggressively supported him came as no surprise. But it was independents and swing voters who ultimately got Trump past the finish line and gave him a narrow victory in a close election.

Trump won the popular vote for the first time in 2024, defeating Democratic nominee Kamala Harris by roughly 1.5 percent — and the economy, according to polls, played a key role in that victory. Although the United States enjoyed record-low unemployment during Joe Biden’s presidency, frustration over inflation worked to Trump’s advantage.

But The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie, in his September 17 column, argues that Trump sold U.S. voters a “fantasy” that is now unravelling.

Trump, according to Bouie, told 2024 voters that “that there were no trade-offs” with the economy — and that Americans “could have their cake and eat it, too” when, “in reality,” it “was a binary choice.”

“The essence of President Trump’s pitch to the American people last year was simple: They could have it both ways,” Bouie explains. “They could have a powerful, revitalized economy and ‘mass deportations now.’ They could build new factories and take manufacturing jobs back from foreign competitors, as well as expel every person who, in their view, didn’t belong in the United States. They could live in a ‘golden age’ of plenty — and seal it away from others outside the country with a closed, hardened border.”

One “binary choice,” according to Bouie, was that “Americans could have a strong, growing economy, which requires immigration to bring in new people and fill demand for labor, or they could finance a deportation force and close the border to everyone but a small, select few.”

“Millions of Americans embraced the fantasy,” Bouie laments. “Now, about eight months into Trump’s second term, the reality of the situation is inescapable. As promised, Trump launched a campaign of mass deportation. Our cities are crawling with masked federal agents, snatching anyone who looks ‘illegal’ to them — a bit of racial profiling that has, for now, been sanctioned by the Supreme Court. The jobs, however, haven’t arrived.”

The New York Times columnist continues, “There are fewer manufacturing jobs than there were in 2024, thanks in part to the president’s tariffs and, well, his immigration policies…. To embrace nativism in a global, connected economic world is to sacrifice prosperity for the sake of exclusion, just as the main effect of racial segregation in the American South was to leave the region impoverished and underdeveloped.”

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Mark Harmon crouches low next to log number 219: a moss-covered western hemlock tree trunk, five meters long, lying dead on the ground in the lush green woods. It’s marked by a thin aluminum tag. The forest ecologist leans in close, his unruly white beard nearly brushing against the decomposing cylinder. Dark, flaky patches on the dull, reddish-brown wood closer to the ground show where fungi have infiltrated the cellulose within. Farther down the trunk, multicolored fungal conks protrude like hard shelves barely big enough for a mouse. A shiny black beetle scurries along the ground, then out of sight under the log. Harmon presses gently on 219 with three fingertips. It’s so spongy that he is reluctant to roll back a chunk of it to reveal what lies underneath. “Oh, I don’t want to destroy it,” he says slowly. “It’s all falling apart.”

Harmon, a longtime faculty member at Oregon State University, has been watching number 219, and more than 500 other logs nearby, decay for 40 years. He has trekked to this site in the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest, a watershed nestled in Oregon’s western Cascade Mountains, at least 100 times. He drives more than two hours on paved and gravel roads from his home in Corvallis, Ore., then hikes in half a mile through the undergrowth, carrying tape measures, scales, saws and a computer to chronicle the relentless changes. His goal: establish an exhaustive baseline dataset that any scientist could use to test hypotheses about tree decomposition or to compare patterns of decomposition in the Pacific Northwest with those in other regions.

Decomposition can explain how and how fast carbon, captured by plants during photosynthesis, returns to the atmosphere. That process, which plays out at dizzying scales of both space and time, influences the long-term productivity and biodiversity of a forest. Harmon’s findings could influence when, or even whether, forest planners decide to remove dead logs to improve the health of the woods. Decay shapes how wildfire spreads through a timberland, too. Snags (dead but standing trunks) and downed trees also provide habitat for animals.

Before Harmon and his colleagues launched this log-decomposition experiment, scientists studying the impact of dead wood on the environment primarily looked only at what had already rotted, without understanding the variety of long-term factors that affected the decay. But by the early 1980s Harmon and other researchers realized patterns of decomposition emerged only from detailed tracking of actual logs sustained over decades, like snapshots stitched together into a multidimensional movie. Even after 40 years, Harmon says, ecologists are unearthing new questions: How does temperature affect the activity of decomposers such as brown rot fungi on various wood species? How do changing ecosystems promote or hinder interactions among invertebrates, microbes and wood? At what rate is carbon released from downed wood? This last one is of particular importance because it affects nutrient cycling through soils and roots, as well as climate change.

Harmon is leading the way to answers, but he may never know what they are. He designed the grand project to run for at least 200 years—well beyond his lifespan and those of his immediate successors. Ecologist Jennifer Powers of the University of Minnesota says that Harmon “really thought about long-term processes that shape forests in setting up a study he knew he would never see the end of.

”Most people regard dead trees as a nuisance, a wasted resource or something to trip over. Harmon sees revelation. When he was 21, during a run in the hilly forests of central Massachusetts, he encountered a green log that seemed to glow against the dark wooded backdrop. He had a vision that he would one day run a research effort on log decay. Granted, he wasn’t entirely clearheaded at the time. “It was helped by some substances,” he admits. “But I can still see that log.” For his first major research project, Harmon compared decomposition rates of 10 species of trees killed by fires in the Smoky Mountains. Conifer species, he found, decayed more slowly than deciduous trees, and Quercus prinus, the chestnut oak, decayed the fastest, losing 11 percent of its wood density every year.

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Hmmmm… Free Speech?

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Where Things Stand

• Networks threatened: President Trump said federal regulators should revoke broadcast licenses over late-night hosts who speak negatively about him, a day after ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel’s show “indefinitely” after pressure from the Federal Communications Commission chairman. Mr. Trump and administration officials have long championed free speech, but their actions — as well as their promises since Charlie Kirk’s killing — to guarantee it have been replaced by efforts to quash criticism. Congressional Democrats plan to introduce long-shot legislation to bolster legal protections for people targeted by the president for speaking freely.

• Child deportations: A federal judge temporarily blocked the hasty deportation of hundreds of Guatemalan children, saying the Trump administration had misleadingly presented its actions as a “reunification” effort. Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, said the government relied on false pretexts that “crumbled like a house of cards.”

Vaccine panel: A federal vaccine advisory panel appeared poised to vote against recommending vaccinating children under 4 with a combination shot that protects against measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox. It was also expected to vote to limit the use of a hepatitis B vaccine.

Federal officers arrested 11 Democratic elected officials inside a federal building in Lower Manhattan on Thursday after the officials demanded access to cells used by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to detain migrants.

The officials, including Brad Lander, the city comptroller, and city and state lawmakers, were arrested after they showed up at 26 Federal Plaza and sought to inspect the 10th-floor holding cells, which are operated by ICE and closed to the public. The cells have drawn scrutiny following complaints of unsanitary and overcrowded conditions, leading a federal judge to order ICE to improve the conditions last month.

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President Trump and Melania Trump, the first lady, leaving London on Thursday.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

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If Pope Leo XIV had a seat on Tesla’s board, Elon Musk’s newly proposed trillion-dollar paycheck would be dead on arrival.

The 70-year-old pontiff slammed the widening income gap between the working class and the wealthy—specifically calling out the Tesla CEO as an egregious example of executive excess.

“CEOs that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times more than what the workers are receiving, the last figure I saw, it’s 600 times more than what average workers are receiving,” he told Catholic news site Crux in an interview released Sunday.

“Yesterday, the news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world: What does that mean and what’s that about? If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble.”

The Pope’s critique comes as Tesla’s board has proposed a $1 trillion pay package for Musk—contingent on his ability to grow the electric vehicle company by eightfold over the next decade. Just this morning, Musk purchased $1 billion worth of Tesla stock, an indication that he’s sticking around, according to CNN.

While Pope Leo is entitled to an over $400,000 yearly salary, on par with U.S. presidents and university chancellors, his concerns reflect broader anxiety about executive compensation. Among the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker pay, the average CEO compensation hit $17.2 million in 2024 as compared to an average median worker pay of $35,570, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. That’s a ratio of 632 to 1.

Billionaires’ wealth is booming—but their philanthropic giving isn’t

While everyday workers continue to struggle with inflation, wage stagnation, and a tightening job market, the wealth of the ultrarich soars. Billionaire wealth increased three times faster in 2024 than it did in 2023, according to Oxfam. And over the last decade, the top 1% increased their wealth by nearly $34 trillion—enough to eliminate annual poverty 22 times over at the highest poverty line.

ust last week, Larry Ellison broke the record for the biggest one-day increase ever recorded in the history of Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index—with his net worth soaring $89 billion thanks to his tech firm Oracle’s rapid growth.

At the same time, many billionaires are behind on their pledges to give away their money through The Giving Pledge—the commitment launched in 2010 by Warren Buffett as well as Bill and Melinda French Gates, to give away at least 50% of their wealth to philanthropy during their lifetimes or in their wills.

Among the 256 signers, just nine have followed through with the pact, and even among those who donate, it’s largely given to intermediaries, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. Of an estimated $206 billion donated by the original 2010 Pledgers, roughly 80%, or $164 billion, has gone into private foundations.

And while The Giving Pledge told Fortune the IPS report “paints a misleading picture of the impact and intent of Giving Pledge signatories and the spirit and intent of the Giving Pledge,” the organization admitted there remain important questions that aim to “encourage greater giving.”

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Forty years after global policymakers began grappling with the crisis posed by a gaping hole in Earth’s protective ozone layer over Antarctica, the damage is continuing to heal, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization.

Found between about nine and 19 miles above Earth’s surface, the ozone layer is a broad region of the stratosphere where the molecule, which contains three oxygen atoms, is particularly concentrated. Here, ozone plays a vital role in blocking the sun’s ultraviolet radiation—essentially acting as a planetary sunscreen of a sort.

In the 1980s, scientists realized that a massive hole was developing in the ozone layer over Antarctica every southern spring and then tied the observation back to earlier research that discovered that a group of chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were able to eat away at atmospheric ozone. Nations came together to develop an agreement called the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, adopted in 1987, to stop the production of these chemicals.

“The Montreal Protocol is the best environmental agreement we’ve ever created,” says Durwood Zaelke, an environmental policy expert at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and founder and president of the Institute of Governance & Sustainable Development, an organization that is focused on addressing short-lived but high-powered climate pollutants. These include hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which do not harm the ozone layer and replaced many CFCs as they were phased out. The agreement has garnered global signatories, several rounds of successful amendments and the near-total elimination of the chemicals that break down ozone. “This is a hell of an agreement,” Zaelke says.

The result is an ozone layer that scientists predict will recover the health it had in 1980 over the tropics and midlatitudes by 2040, over the Arctic by 2045, and over the Antarctica by around 2066. “It takes a long time to heal stratospheric ozone,” Zaelke says.

The new 2024 report from the World Meteorological Organization proves that slow process is continuing as scientists have expected, says A. R. Ravishankara, an atmospheric chemist at Colorado State University. The report shows that, over 2024, total levels of ozone in the atmosphere were above the 2003–2022 average for most of the planet—just a strip near the equator and a small patch of the Antarctic coastline south of Africa were below that marker.

A particularly notable change came over Antarctica, where ozone depletion was notably lower than those from the years between 2020 and 2023. The 2024 ozone hole also formed relatively slowly and recovered relatively quickly—a good sign for the future of the ozone layer, according to the report.

Ravishankara notes that on the long road to recovery, scientists expect to see some better years and some worse years. “One year does not make a trend,” he says. Ravishankara adds that the new report and other observations of ozone in the atmosphere do show slow but steady ozone replenishment.

Ozone is produced primarily at latitudes nearer the equator. And from there, it must disperse out toward the poles, where production is much slower because of reduced sunlight, Ravishankara says. The production and transportation of ozone can be influenced by larger happenings in atmospheric phenomena, including the natural climate phenomenon called El Niño, the sun’s level of activity, the large-scale movement of the atmosphere, and of course, climate change.

An additional complication is that ozone in the lowest part of the atmosphere, called the troposphere, still blocks sunlight but also acts as a pollutant that is harmful to human health. “You need to know not only the total amount of ozone above your head but also where it is and how it is changing in different parts of the atmosphere,” Ravishankara says.

That’s why different forms of monitoring—both by satellites and from the ground—are so vital to understanding the status of the ozone layer. “This is what I call the accountability phase of the Montreal Protocol, where you want to make sure the results you want are being achieved,” Ravishankara says. “It is going to get better unless we screw up something else.”

Zaelke worries that the Montreal Protocol, like international agreements generally, won’t fare well under President Donald Trump—even though, at the request of industry groups, he signed U.S. legislation that joined the nation to the latest amendment of the protocol, Zaelke says. Still, he thinks that the global infrastructure dedicated to ozone recovery should be sufficient to withstand the administration’s tendency away from global partnerships. “While the world will miss the U.S. leadership,” Zaelke says, “it will survive.”

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Just Security notes that 21 lawsuits have been filed against the U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice and 12 lawsuits reveal Linda McMahon’s Department of Education as the litigant. Legal challenges have been placed against each of the 21 Cabinet members’ respective endeavors. This news, in and of itself, lays bare the fact that the majority of our 100 Senators failed to do their due diligence in approving Mr. Trump’s nominees for Cabinet positions.

The volume of legal battles poses significant long-term risks to American democracy, let alone the cost to Americans like you and me who will have to pay attorney fees to defend Donald J. Trump, Cabinet members, and other officials’ actions.

On May 13, I asked three people elected to represent me (i.e., Iowans’ Sen. Chuck Grassley, Sen. Joni Ernst, and Rep. Ashley Hinson) to provide an “approximate cost that Americans will have to pay legal counsel to defend Trump 2.0’s 328 lawsuits filed to date.” No reply has been received from any of my elected delegates. So, there goes accountability by Congress to the electorate and representation by, for, and of the people, a core principle of a representative democracy.

You might like to know the average hourly rate for lawyers in the U.S. is $341 and a mere $462/hour for attorneys at law in Washington, D.C. (Clio Report, 2024).

A Perplexity AI research-based inquiry noted—as compared to more recent presidents like Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden—“The Trump 2.0 administration has faced an unprecedented volume of litigation.”

Lawsuits are not novel to Mr. Trump. According to a comprehensive review by USA Today, published nine years ago (July 7, 2016), Donald Trump has been involved in at least 4,095 lawsuits where he was the defendant. These include a wide range of civil and criminal cases, relating to business disputes, defamation, political campaigns, casinos, taxes, golf clubs, real estate, government investigations, and sexual abuse. And, Mr. Trump has filed a documented minimum of 1,600 lawsuits against other individuals and organizations. In summation, Donald John Trump has encountered at least 5,695 lawsuits in his lifetime.

Besides the cost of Trump 2.0-related lawsuits that you and I — one way or another — will pay for, the long-term risks to American democracy seem unending, and they include:

1. The Brookings Institution independent research group noted that if the Trump administration disregards court rulings and/or pressures the Department of Justice and/or Supreme Court to act politically, America’s revered checks and balances will be eroded along with our 250-year understanding of what democracy represents.

2. If Donald Trump and the Trump administration disobey a Supreme Court order, the following legal consequences are possible: civil contempt of court, criminal contempt of court, monetary fines, imprisonment, constitutional crisis, and impeachment as the president is constitutionally required to ensure the faithful execution of the laws.

3. Congress’s failure to counter funding freezes or unconstitutional orders is already destabilizing the separation of powers for now and future presidencies, ushering in — with their non-action — an authoritarian, dictatorship, and fascist-oriented country. Our do-nothing 119th Congress (Jan. 2025-Jan. 2027) is a disgrace!

4. A Harvard Law Review article claims lawsuits challenging voting rights will exacerbate public distrust in the electoral system, discouraging voter participation.

5. The Emory Law Journal reports that litigation used as a political strategy could deepen partisan division and stall critical legislative reforms.

6. The Brookings Institution, along with the Campaign Legal Center, cites that executive abuses will test our 535 elected delegates to the U.S. Capitol to see if they will or will not strengthen anti-corruption laws like closing Citizens United loopholes, protecting the 74 statutory and independent Inspector Generals, and clarifying judicial enforcement mechanisms.

The cost of defending Trump 2.0’s 328 lawsuits is unknown, but the long-term risks to democracy are frightening. The future of democracy to withstand the legal perils brought about by Mr. Trump and his Cabinet appointees lies in the hands of 100 Senators, 435 Representatives, 74 Inspector Generals, 94 U.S. District Courts, the Court of International Trade, the Supreme Court, and, most importantly … you and me.

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The 22-year-old man accused of assassinating Charlie Kirk said in text messages to his romantic partner that he had “had enough of his hatred” and that “some hate can’t be negotiated out,” according to prosecutors who filed a murder charge against the suspect on Tuesday.

The text message exchange between the suspect, Tyler Robinson, and his romantic partner provides the clearest explanation yet into a motivation for the killing of Mr. Kirk, a conservative political activist.

Mr. Robinson was charged with aggravated murder on Tuesday, as well as several crimes related to his direction to his partner to delete “incriminating” text messages and not to talk to the police. No lawyer is listed for Mr. Robinson in court records.

A charging document filed by prosecutors in court said that Mr. Robinson’s mother told investigators that her son had grown more political, and that his political views had moved to the left over the last year or so. She also told the police that he had become “more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented.” Mr. Robinson’s partner, who was living with him, had been transitioning to being a woman from a man, prosecutors said.

The text exchange between Mr. Robinson and his partner was reproduced by prosecutors in the charging document. It showed that Mr. Robinson had texted his partner shortly after the shooting on Wednesday about a note left under his keyboard, which read, “I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I’m going to take it.”

The partner reacted with shock, asking him if he was joking. “You weren’t the one who did it right????” the partner wrote. “I am, I’m sorry,” Mr. Robinson responded.

When Mr. Robinson’s partner asked why he had done it, Mr. Robinson wrote: “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.” Mr. Robinson then texted about trying to grab his rifle from where he had left it, near the scene.

Mr. Robinson was raised by Republican parents in southwestern Utah, a conservative stronghold, but had never voted in any election, according to Washington County election officials. In the text messages to his partner, Mr. Robinson mentioned that his father “has been pretty die-hard MAGA” since President Trump had been re-elected.

A series of phrases were etched into ammunition found with the rifle, prosecutors said, including “Hey Fascist! Catch!” on a fired cartridge and “If you Read This, You Are GAY Lmao” on one of three unfired cartridges. In the text message exchange, Mr. Robinson said the messages were “mostly a big meme.”

He said that he had been planning the shooting for a bit over a week and “had hoped to keep this secret till I died of old age”; he also apologized for involving his partner. Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah has said that the authorities believe Mr. Robinson acted alone, and that Mr. Robinson’s partner was cooperating with the police.

The text messages are illuminating, but they do not show Mr. Robinson discussing which specific views of Mr. Kirk’s he found to be hateful. Jeff Gray, the Utah County attorney, was asked directly at a news conference on Tuesday whether transgender issues played a role in the shooting. When he was shot, Mr. Kirk was debating a person on the subject of shootings carried out by transgender people.

“I’m going to stick to what I just stated in our” court documents, Mr. Gray said. “I think that is pretty much set forth there.”

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Hmmmm… of 8.2 billion people in the world, 15% are white.

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The Trump administration has ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks, according to four people familiar with the matter, including a historic photograph of a formerly enslaved man showing scars on his back.The individuals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media, said the removals were in line with President Donald Trump’s March executive order directing the Interior Department to eliminate information that reflects a “corrosive ideology” that disparages historic Americans. National Park Service officials are broadly interpreting that directive to apply to information on racism, sexism, slavery, gay rights or persecution of Indigenous people.

Following Trump’s order, Interior Department officials issued policies ordering agency employees to report any information, including signage and gift shop items, that might be out of compliance. Trump officials also launched an effort asking park visitors to report offending material, but they mostly received criticisms of the administration and praise for the parks.

The latest orders include removing information at Harpers Ferry National Historic Park in West Virginia, two people familiar with the matter said, where the abolitionist John Brown led a raid seeking to arm slaves for a revolt. Staff have also been told that information at the President’s House Site in Philadelphia, where George Washington kept slaves, does not comply with the policy, according to a third individual.

Jonathan Zimmerman, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies the history of education, said this is the latest installment in the Trump administration’s unprecedented interference with the nation’s civic institutions — a campaign which also includes Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center and attempts to pressure the Smithsonian.

“This represents an enormous increase in federal power and control over the things we learn,” Zimmerman said. “Brought to you by the team that says education should be state and local.”

“Interpretive materials that disproportionately emphasize negative aspects of U.S. history or historical figures, without acknowledging broader context or national progress, can unintentionally distort understanding rather than enrich it,” Pawlitz said.

At Harpers Ferry, staff flagged more than 30 signs, according to a person familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by The Post, that highlight information potentially in violation of Trump’s policy. They include signs referring to racial discrimination and the hostility of White people to people who were formerly enslaved.

Park Service officials marked the submission as “out of compliance,” with staff now expected to cover up parts of signs or remove them, the person said.

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“The Scourged Back” shows the scarred back of escaped slave Peter Gordon in Louisiana, 1863. (McPherson & Oliver/National Gallery of Art)

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Researchers tested 12 “magic mushroom” edible products sold in Portland, Ore., and found no trace of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound that gives magic mushrooms their name. Instead, seven of the products contained at least one undisclosed active ingredient. Such ingredients included cannabis extract and synthetic psychedelics whose effects and safety have not been formally documented or studied.

“We found no evidence of mushroom compounds of any kind, coming from any species,” says the new study’s co-author Richard van Breemen, a pharmaceutical sciences professor at Oregon State University. The research was published on Thursday in JAMA Network Open.

Psilocybin and other psychedelic drugs have received a lot of attention in recent years as potential treatments for mental health conditions such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. “There’s a lot of hype around these substances, so people are increasingly trying them outside current legal pathways,” says Lori Bruce, a bioethicist at Yale University, who researches psychedelics.

In June 2024 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the agency was investigating reports of severe illness after people consumed certain purported psilocybin edibles. By last October, 73 hospitalizations and three deaths—all possibly associated with such products—had been reported across 34 states. “The mislabeling highlighted in this [study] causes harms,” Bruce says. “And as usage rates increase across the U.S., harms from retail products are also likely to increase.”

Are Any Commercial Psilocybin Products Legal?

Psilocybin comes from several mushroom species, including some in the genus Psilocybe. When consumed, the body breaks down the compound into psilocin, an alkaloid that can cause startling visual hallucinations and psychological effects, often including intense introspection. The U.S. federal government classifies both psilocybin and psilocin as Schedule I drugs, meaning they’re deemed to have a high potential for abuse and no currently accepted medical use.

But a handful of states have recently legalized the manufacture, sale, possession and use of psilocybin under certain conditions. Both medical and recreational use are legal in Colorado, and New Mexico passed a law this year that legalizes certain medical uses. In Oregon, the regulations are stricter: the drug must be taken in the company of a licensed facilitator at a specific “psilocybin service center.” These centers receive psilocybin from licensed growers, whose products are tested by a licensed laboratory.

Oregon does not allow the sale or use of psilocybin products outside of these centers; it is otherwise a criminal offense to buy, sell or possess the drug in the state. But the legal channels are prohibitively expensive to many: the average trip costs somewhere between $750 and $1,200.

This dynamic may be leading more people to try purported psilocybin products that are untested and prohibited but nonetheless sold at some retail stores, says legal researcher Mason Marks, a law professor at Florida State University who focused on psychedelics. “A lot of people are very curious about these substances. And if you’re in a state, like Oregon, that does not decriminalize them, people might go to these shops and buy these products that are either blatantly illegal or kind of in this gray area.”

Undisclosed and Untested Ingredients

For the new study, the researchers purchased 12 edible products (11 gummies and a chocolate) that were advertised as containing “magic mushrooms” and were sold at gas stations and convenience stores in Portland. These products are “being marketed widely in local convenience stores and on the Internet,” van Breemen says.

The edibles were first tested at a state-licensed facility that normally certifies the quality of the drug for Oregon’s psilocybin service centers. None of the products contained any psilocybin at all. To determine what they actually did contain, van Breemen and his colleagues turned to more advanced mass spectrometry techniques.

Seven products contained undisclosed active ingredients such as caffeine, kava extract (a legal herbal supplement with antianxiety and hallucinogenic effects), and cannabis extract (including the plant’s main psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC). Four of the gummies contained no active ingredients at all.

Two of the gummies did contain psilocin, which also occurs naturally in some mushrooms in small quantities—and which is easier to synthesize in a laboratory than psilocybin. If the psilocin in the edibles came from natural sources, the researchers would expect to also detect other, related compounds from mushrooms. Such compounds turned out to be absent, leading van Breemen and his colleagues to conclude that the psilocin was likely synthetic.

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“The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday night.

The lawsuit is being filed in Florida, Trump said.

The White House and the Times did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, filed the lawsuit on Monday in the Tampa division of the Middle District of Florida. Brito represented Trump when he sued ABC News and The Wall Street Journal for defamation. ABC News paid Trump a $15 million settlement last year.

In the court filing, Trump’s lawyers said the Times had been trying to “destroy his reputation as a successful businessman, and subject him to humiliation and ridicule.”

The filing cited several articles about Trump published by the Times last year. It also took aim at “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success,” a book written by two Times reporters, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner. Craig, Buettner, and their publisher, Penguin Random House, were listed as defendants alongside the Times.

“The Book and Articles are part of a decades-long pattern by the New York Times of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the court filing.

“Today, the Times is a fullthroated mouthpiece of the Democrat Party. The newspaper’s editorial routine is now one of industrial-scale defamation and libel against political opponents,” the filing said.

Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

This isn’t the first time Trump has sued the Times. In 2021, he filed a lawsuit against the paper, accusing the Times and its reporters of conspiring with his niece, Mary Trump, to obtain his tax records. Craig and Buettner were two of the three reporters named in Trump’s lawsuit.

Justice Robert Reed of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan dismissed the suit in May 2023 and ordered Trump to pay the outlet and its reporters their legal fees. In January 2024, Reed said Trump owed the Times and its reporters $392,638.69 in legal expenses.

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President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post on Monday that he was filing a $15 billion defamation and libel lawsuit against The New York Times in Florida. Andrew Harnik via Getty Images

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