The Brief

Federal regulators are taking aim at a popular category of psychoactive edibles that contain an iconic red-capped mushroom in the wake of a rash of illnesses and even a few suspected deaths.

This week, the Food and Drug Administration warned food manufacturers that Amanita muscaria and the compounds in that mushroom are not authorized for use in food, citing a review of the scientific evidence that found these ingredients do not meet "safety standards."

There's considerable folklore surrounding the white-spotted fungus, also known as "fly agaric," which still permeates popular culture, even appearing in the Mario video game franchise and as emojis.

Unlike psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, Amanita muscaria isn't listed as a controlled substance.

It's advertised as an ingredient in some edibles, which are touted as having cognitive-enhancing "nootropic" or "microdosing" blends. Many are sold in trippy-looking packaging at convenience stores, smoke and vape shops, and online.

In its warning letter to food manufacturers, the FDA notes these are sometimes marketed as "psychedelic edibles" or "legal psychedelics," and that "adverse event reports" prompted the agency to assess the mushroom's safety profile.

"I feel it's the right call," says Eric Leas, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Diego who has documented public health concerns around the mushroom. "It could potentially have very large implications for this market."

Christian Rasmussen, who runs an online retailer of Amanita muscaria, said his lawyers are still figuring out the implications, but called it a "huge obstacle" for his business, the industry and individuals who've been using the mushroom.

"A lot of this seems to be brought on by the actual adulterated products that have hit the market in recent years, containing various synthetic drugs and being marketed as Amanita," Rasmussen, who runs MN Nice Botanicals, said in an email.

NPR contacted several other major companies that sell these mushroom edibles and did not receive a response.

Hospitalizations led to edible recall

These products drew considerable attention earlier this year as poison centers across the country received reports of people being hospitalized after consuming chocolates and gummies marketed under the brand name Diamond Shruumz, which were made by a California-based company known as Prophet Premium Blends. The company recalled the products.

Subsequent testing revealed some of those edibles contained "muscimol," one of the active ingredients in Amanita muscaria. However, there was also a mixture of other substances, including a synthetic version of psilocybin, the prescription anticonvulsant drug pregabalin and the supplement kava. Others who've tested mushroom edible products have also documented a variety of undisclosed substances, as NPR reported earlier this year.

The FDA investigation concluded that muscimol "couldn't explain all the symptoms reported by ill people who consumed the Diamond Shruumz-brand products."

The agency is now prohibiting the use of three compounds in the mushroom — muscimol, ibotenic acid and muscarine — given safety concerns identified in its review of the evidence. Exactly how the FDA will decide to enforce its decision remains to be seen.

The market for these psychoactive edibles has grown substantially in just the last few years.

"There are hundreds of brands sold online," says UCSD's Leas, "This threatens the legal status of manufacturers so it could put a stop to that trend."

And Dr. Mason Marks, a law professor and senior fellow with the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation at Harvard Law School's Petrie-Flom Center, says inaccurately labeling food products is "quite concerning" and against federal regulations, regardless of whether or not they contain Amanita muscaria. 

"The problem with these products is we just don't know what's in them," says Marks. "It's a little bit difficult to predict what comes next."

It's unclear how the FDA will enforce mushroom prohibition

The FDA has a variety of options at its disposal — it can work with companies to initiate a recall, as it already did with Diamond Shruumz, seize products on store shelves, get a court order or an injunction to prevent sales.

In theory, the agency could even push the Drug Enforcement Administration to designate the mushroom or its active ingredients a controlled substance, although that would depend on how the incoming Trump administration wants to handle the matter, says Marks.

"The FDA issues a lot of these warning letters," he says. "There's a possibility that nothing will happen."

The situation has parallels to what's happening with certain hemp-derived products like Delta-9 THC and CBD, or cannabidiol.

Those populate stores even though they're "not considered legal ingredients by the FDA," says Shawn Hauser, a partner at the Colorado-based law firm Vicente, which focuses on psychedelics, cannabis and novel natural ingredients like mushrooms.

"There have been warning letters around that, but they generally haven't been enforced unless there's unlawful drug claims, marketing to children or other public safety issues," she says.

A spokesperson for the National Association of Convenience Stores said they were alerting their members so that they "can take appropriate action" in response to the warning letter.

Marks says the FDA ruling doesn't prohibit people from growing or picking this kind of mushroom, which has a relatively small following compared to other psychedelics.

Amanita muscaria targets GABA receptors (unlike psilocybin that primarily acts on serotonin receptors) and can lead to a dissociative state that some describe as quite unpleasant and even disturbing in high doses.

"There are people that are interested in having heavy psychedelic experiences, and this really isn't the mushroom to go to for that," says Kevin Feeney, a lawyer and a cultural anthropologist at Central Washington University who has edited a compendium on Amanita muscaria.

People often seek it out for microdosing out of the belief that it helps anxiety, sleep and even more serious problems like addiction to benzodiazepines and alcohol, though there's little evidence from clinical research on its possible therapeutic properties in humans.

"[FDA] is clearly addressing this mushroom," Feeney says. "But to what degree are they addressing the other additives that are in these products?"

Feeney is also an adviser to Psyched Wellness, a company that sells Amanita muscaria products and is affected by the FDA decision. He says his comments do not reflect the company's views.

While the mushroom is poisonous, there are not many documented reports of overdose and death.

In its scientific review, FDA staff noted there were no "toxicity studies sufficient to establish the safe use" of the mushroom or its extracts, and that the available information "underscores their potential for serious harm and adverse effects on the central nervous system," including hallucinations, drowsiness, delirium and seizure.

Online retailer Rasmussen and others in the industry have said the mushroom can be prepared in ways that reduce undesirable effects. The FDA said there are no internationally recognized food standards to support safe processing and consumption.

Hauser, the Colorado-based lawyer, sees this as a cautionary tale of the "hands-off" approach that the FDA has taken with some natural substances that have a history of being used for medicinal, beneficial or spiritual purposes.

"This is one of the places where consumer demand is moving faster than the law, and businesses are going to try and meet that demand," she says. "When these products are unregulated and when there isn't consumer education, that's where you have real public safety issues." 
Copyright 2024 NPR

California air regulators on Friday approved a contentious overhaul of the state’s carbon market, creating a program that could steer billions of dollars in free pollution permits to oil refineries and other major polluters over the objections of environmental groups, key lawmakers and three of the board’s own members.

Ten members of the California Air Resources Board voted to adopt the changes to its cap-and-invest program after two days of lengthy hearings, including a full day dedicated to hundreds of public comments.

The overhaul followed intensive lobbying by the oil industry as well as pressure from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration to help keep refineries operating in the state amid rising gas prices.

The approval sets up a potential budget fight in Sacramento. The Legislative Analyst’s Office projects that quarterly auction revenue for state climate programs will drop from roughly $4 billion a year to about $2 billion under the new overhaul.

Such a shortfall would effectively zero out programs lawmakers spent last year fighting to fund: affordable housing, public transit, drinking water in low-income communities and pollution monitoring in California’s most polluted neighborhoods.

The governor’s office praised the measure as a compromise that balanced economic uncertainty with the state’s climate goals. Refinery closures and the Iran-Israel war have driven average California gas prices above $6 a gallon.

Newsom, in a statement, used the moment to draw a contrast with President Donald Trump.

“While Trump sows ongoing chaos and uncertainty, California is staying focused by protecting our economy, safeguarding public health, and doubling down on the clean energy future all Californians deserve,” he said.

Environmentalists warned the changes to the program amount to a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry that weakens California’s only program setting a firm cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

Katelyn Roedner Sutter, California senior director for the Environmental Defense Fund, called the decision “deeply misguided” for prioritizing polluters over communities.

“Newsom’s air regulators are handing billions to oil executives at the expense of our climate, health, and affordability for working families in a rushed process that has shortchanged meaningful public participation,” said Bahram Fazeli, policy director at Communities for a Better Environment.

How the program works — and what changes

California’s 13-year-old carbon market forces major polluters to buy permits while the state lowers the overall cap each year. Friday’s vote will reduce those permits – and creates a new subsidy program carved out of the market.

The program, which may still see changes, could make available a new pool of free pollution permits available to industry valued at as much as $4 billion. Companies that pledge to invest in clean energy and efficiency may qualify for the permits in exchange for investments in clean energy.

The pool will be capped at 118.3 million permits — the same number the air board has said must come off the market for California to hit its 2030 climate target. Environmentalists say the proposal risks wiping out those reductions.

Half are reserved for the fossil fuel sector. A recent Berkeley analysis, by the chair of an independent committee that oversees the carbon market, found refineries could end up with more free permits than they need to cover their emissions.

The air board has defended the design. Officials say the credits will go only to companies undertaking decarbonization projects, will be limited and temporary and can be clawed back if companies misuse them. The plan, they say, is meant to keep California refineries operating at a time of mounting closures and global market pressure. According to air regulators, the amended program will spur clean-energy investment as Trump cuts federal support.

Here's what you should know about the vote totals currently released:

Keep in mind that June 9 will be the final day for votes postmarked by June 2 to arrive at county elections offices, so the bottom line on the vote totals won't be known until then.

In L.A. County, the combined tallied votes as of Monday morning add up to about 10% of registered voters.

In Orange County, the current tallies represent about 21% of registered voters.

How vote counts will be released

I thought it was an election NIGHT?

That hasn't been true in quite a while. It takes a while to get results because after the initial tallies on election night, there are still many, many votes to count and more mail-in ballots are usually arriving.

Here’s what we know so far:

L.A. County turnout

Los Angeles County has more than 5.8 million registered voters. As of Sunday, May 31:

• 580,720 ballots have been processed
• 95% voted by mail
• 5% voted in person

What's next:

• We'll know more on election night and the following days how many ballot remain to be counted.
• Has your ballot been tallied yet? You can track the status of your ballot here.

Orange County turnout

Orange County has more than 1.8 million registered voters. As of Sunday, May 31:

• 401,865 ballots have been processed
• 95% voted by mail
• 5% voted in person

What's next:

• We'll know more on election night and the following days how many ballot remain to be counted.
• Has your ballot been tallied yet? You can track the status of your ballot here.

Expected total turnout

Political Data Inc. is tracking ballot returns across California and in some high-profile races.

As of midday Monday, turnout statewide was at 16%. While Democrats outnumber Republicans statewide by almost double, Republicans have returned more ballots pre-election (21% of their voters compared to 16% for Democrats).

See the latest totals ▶

Why election day has turned into ballot-counting month

Because of the increasing use of vote-by-mail ballots, the vote tally has gotten longer, according to the California Voter Foundation. In an analysis, the organization found:

• In November 2004, more than 80% of votes were counted within two days of Election Day, with 32.6% voting by mail. 
• In June 2022, about 50% of ballots were counted within two days of Election Day, with more than 90% of people voting by mail. 
• In November 2024, 66% of votes were counted within the first two days of Election Day, with 81% of the vote by mail.

A closer look at ballot counting times in California where an increasing number of vote-by-mail ballots has slowed ballot counts.

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Courtesy California Voter Foundation

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Election officials must physically open mail-in ballots and verify signatures.

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, recently wrote about the ripple effect of turning in mail-in ballots by hand or in drop boxes on election day. She wrote, for our partner newsroom CalMatters:

"We turn in ballots in envelopes on Election Day that take time and care to process and cannot be processed until after Election Day. Processing these ballots — which account for as much as a quarter of all ballots cast — creates a bottleneck I like to call 'the pig in the python effect. It prevents counties from doing other tasks they need to do to certify the results."

The buzz on college campuses is that AI is disrupting the job market for young college graduates.

But new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York finds that the culprit may be something else: remote work.

An analysis of federal employment data, paired with a deep dive into the flexible work arrangements at one unnamed Fortune 500 tech company, reveals that companies are less likely to hire recent college grads into occupations that can be done remotely.

Researchers speculate that employers are reluctant to put such workers in a setting where it's harder to absorb lessons from coworkers.

The researchers found the unemployment rate among younger college grads — those under the age of 29 — rose 20% after the pandemic, while unemployment among older college grads fell slightly.

The study compares unemployment rates pre-pandemic, from 2017 to 2019, with unemployment rates after the pandemic, from 2022 to 2024.

Unemployment rose as remote work grew fourfold, the researchers write. "Our analysis suggests that these trends are related, with remote work making it more difficult for managers to train and mentor new employees."

Remote work leads to less feedback on the job

The research began with a look at how much feedback software engineers at a Fortune 500 tech company were getting, says Emma Harrington, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Virginia and one of the authors of the report.

"What we saw was this pretty striking pattern that software engineers got about 20% more feedback if they were sitting near their colleagues than if they were distant from them," she says, adding that that was true even before the pandemic.

But after the pandemic, feedback plummeted.

"And that really hit young workers much harder," says Harrington. "It was these people who had the most to learn that really saw this deficit in feedback."

The researchers then looked deeper into who was getting hired at the tech firm. Turns out, as the company embraced remote work, they switched away from hiring younger people.

"So they used to hire a bunch of new grads for their software engineering jobs," Harrington says. "Then they shifted really towards hiring much older people, like a decade older on average."

Later, the company pivoted again, implementing what Harrington calls a "pretty aggressive" return-to-office policy. At that point, the company resumed hiring new graduates.

"So [there was] some sense that these problems with mentorship were translating into whom this firm was deciding to hire," she says.

A look at the broader economy

The researchers then wanted to see if what was happening at that single tech company was playing out in the broader economy.

Using a widely-used index that measures how feasible it is to do a job from home, the team divided all occupations into two categories: "remotable," which included software engineering, and "non-remotable," which included mechanical engineering.

They found the gap in unemployment between recent graduates and older workers was significantly higher in "remotable" jobs than in jobs that have to be done in person.

The unemployment rate for younger grads in "remotable" jobs jumped by almost a full percentage point after the pandemic, while the unemployment rate among older grads fell marginally.

They concluded that remote work explained nearly two-thirds of the rise in unemployment among young graduates during this period.

"This relative increase in young people's unemployment coincided with the pandemic and has remained elevated since then, as have rates of remote work," the researchers write.

AI isn't disrupting so many jobs for recent college grads — yet

To see how the rise of AI chatbots may have contributed to rising unemployment among the younger set, the researchers used another index that divides occupations into those more exposed to AI, such as engineering and accounting, and those less exposed, such as teaching and nursing.

They found exposure to AI didn't explain the divergence in unemployment rates in the 2022-24 time period. Remote workflows were much more of a driving force, Harrington says, while emphasizing that this could change.

"It's always hard to make guesses about what's going to happen with generative AI," she says. "It's certainly possible that this story could really change over the next few years."

Researchers at the London School of Economics have reached a similar conclusion — that remote work is having a clearer impact on early-career hiring than AI — in a working paper examining new hires in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia.

Regardless of the cause, the New York Fed report warns that a high unemployment rate among young college grads is concerning.

"Early-career experiences can have lasting consequences," the researchers write. "Research finds that individuals who began looking for jobs in slacker labor markets tend to have lower earnings and slower career progression relative to comparable peers who began their job search in better market conditions."

Copyright 2026 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

With voting for the June primary well underway, mayoral candidate and reality TV star Spencer Pratt is resurrecting one of the most painful chapters in Korean American history in Los Angeles — and he’s not getting the details quite right.

On social media this week, Pratt’s campaign claimed Bass is racist and accused her of “Asian hate” as she “cheered on the destruction of Koreatown in the riots” — a reference to controversial comments she made after the 1992 unrest about liquor stores in South Los Angeles.

The campaign’s claim blurs two distinct parts of the 1992 story: the devastation Koreatown suffered during the unrest and a separate debate over the oversaturation of liquor stores in South L.A. While Bass’ comments in 1992 were tied to the latter, they have long been a source of pain for the Korean community, as many of those stores were Korean-owned at the time. 

In November 1992, Bass told the New York Times that it felt like “a miracle” that many of the liquor stores community activists had wanted to close in South L.A. were destroyed during the unrest.

Her comments have come up repeatedly in local politics, including during the 2022 mayoral race, when Bass apologized to a group of Korean American liquor store owners during a private meeting.

Bass’ campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and Pratt’s campaign said he was traveling and unavailable to provide comment. 

“The night before the uprising, a lot of us were in a meeting discussing how we might reduce the number of liquor stores in South Central, and a few days later, like a miracle, a large chunk of the stores we wanted to close were burned to the ground,” she told the New York Times in 1992. 

“That’s not the way we wanted it to happen, but the rioting accomplished in a few days what we have spent decades working to achieve.”

She did not celebrate the destruction of Koreatown as Pratt’s campaign said on X.

Some Korean Americans say they’re sick of their community’s trauma being reduced to a campaign talking point. 

Filmmaker So Yun Um, whose 2022 documentary “Liquor Store Dreams” explores the experiences of second-generation Korean Americans raised in liquor stores in L.A. and the first-generation immigrant parents who operated them, says Pratt is exploiting the community.

Um’s family until recently operated liquor stores in Hawthorne and West Athens. So she understands why some Korean Americans continue to feel anger toward Bass.

“It was insensitive of Bass to say that,” Um said.

But she added, “What’s important to us is that she acknowledged what she said and apologized.”

“As a family who has lived in Koreatown their whole lives and are part of the liquor store community who has experienced the 1992 L.A. Uprising, we know all too well when our narratives get skewed,” she said.

Pratt is fusing two separate grievances into one narrative for his campaign, Edward J.W. Park, chair of Asian and Asian American Studies at Loyola Marymount University, told The LA Local. 

“From the campaign’s point of view, it is a convenient sort of confusion that Karen Bass saw the destruction of these liquor stores in South L.A. as an opportunity to rebuild South L.A. without these liquor stores,” he said.

Park was involved in rebuilding and organizing efforts in the Korean community after the unrest. He has spent decades documenting the political and social aftermath of what happened in 1992.  

The second grievance, Park said, is more current — frustration among some Koreatown residents who may feel the neighborhood has been neglected by the city for years, particularly when it comes to homelessness and public safety.

“I think at the heart of it is this feeling where some residents don’t understand why it is just conventional wisdom that Koreatown is forced to live with rampant homelessness, open drug use, drug trafficking, tents, the outrageous homeless problem that we have in this city,” he said.

A line of Korean demonstrators march north on Western Avenue in Los Angeles calling for peace, Saturday, May 2, 1992. The march, which involved thousands, was organized by the Koreans.

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AP Photo

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Craig Fujii

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The South LA liquor store debate

The controversy stems from Bass’ work as a community organizer in South LA in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

At the time, community organizers in predominantly Black neighborhoods across South L.A. were organizing against what they saw as an overconcentration of liquor stores tied to drug activity and crime. 

“Liquor stores were everywhere, but they were incredibly concentrated in South L.A.,” Park said.

A majority of those stores were owned by Korean immigrants, who increasingly entered the liquor and convenience store industry in the 1970s and 1980s as one of the few available paths toward “an American dream” of economic mobility amid discrimination and limited job opportunities. 

Bass, then the director of the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment, wrote in a June 1992 Los Angeles Times op-ed that many South L.A. residents viewed the concentration of liquor stores as contributing to crime and deteriorating quality of life in their neighborhoods. 

Hyepin Im, president and CEO of Faith and Community Empowerment, said Korean liquor store owners felt they were unfairly portrayed in the media and in Bass’ op-ed.  

Im was active in community rebuilding efforts post-1992 and has worked to bridge tensions between Korean and Black Angelenos. 

In the years before the unrest, several Korean shopkeepers were killed during robberies, and fears of violence were a reality of daily life for many store owners, according to the Los Angeles Times. 

“The negative sentiments toward these storeowners failed to consider the reality of these storeowners providing a service while putting their lives on the line,” Im said.

Tensions between the Black and Korean community were simmering before the unrest. In 1991, 15-year-old Latasha Harlins was shot and killed by Soon Ja Du, a Korean liquor store owner who accused her of shoplifting a bottle of orange juice.

Du was convicted of voluntary manslaughter but did not serve jail time, sparking anger in the Black community.

After the acquittal of four Los Angeles Police Department officers charged in the beating of Rodney King, violence erupted across the city. 

“There was almost a targeting of liquor stores that were owned by Korean Americans during the riots and a lot of people said that was related — ‘remember Latasha Harlins,'” former L.A. Mayor Jim Hahn told LAist in 2012.

Koreans made up less than 2% of LA’s population, but they lost roughly 2,300 businesses and sustained an estimated $350 million of the city’s $785 million in property damage during the unrest, according to scholars. Many felt abandoned after police pulled out of Koreatown during some of the worst violence and destruction.

Do Bass’ comments still resonate? 

Steve Kang, the former director of external affairs at the Koreatown Youth and Community Center who now serves as president of the Board of Public Works and as Bass’ film liaison, helped organize a private conversation between Bass and Korean American liquor store owners during her 2022 mayoral campaign.

At the time, Kang said billionaire Rick Caruso’s campaign had gained traction among some Korean American voters, making Koreatown “sort of a centerpiece in one of the key battlegrounds for the mayoral election.”

“And because of that, I think people dug up old archives and things that the mayor said when she was an organizer,” he said.

Bass apologized for the comments during the private meeting, saying “while the concerns about the stores were not about the race or nationality of the owners, I understood how my comments could have been hurtful,” according to reporting from the Los Angeles Times.

Not everyone has accepted Bass’ apology.

In a video posted by Pratt’s campaign, Scott Suh, a former president of the Wilshire Center-Koreatown Neighborhood Council and former city planning commissioner, says Bass tried to block Korean store owners from rebuilding after the unrest. He goes on to say that anyone who supports Bass is endorsing “hate crime and racism.”

Suh did not respond to requests for comment.

Kevin Kang, a pastor at Tujunga United Methodist Church whose family operated a business in South L.A. during the unrest — and whose mother still does — said communities of color are too often politically co-opted. 

“We know that’s out of context,” he added, referring to Pratt’s use of Bass’ comments. “I don’t think he actually cares about Koreans. We just become another tool for them to prove their point.”