Dressed in a floral shawl, Benji Dezaval carefully places hallucinogenic mushrooms on the tongues of the faithful of his Colorado “psychedelic church,” as if they were communion wafers.A fervent advocate of psychedelic therapies, Dezaval believes these fungi can help fight depression, alcoholism and post-traumatic stress.So in theory, he might be expected to welcome the appointment of Donald Trump’s new Health Secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr — a famously contrarian figure who has expressed enthusiasm for exploring these alternative treatments.But Dezaval instead dismisses Kennedy’s supposed interest as “a lot of lip service.””RFK’s history of misinformation, I believe, will hurt our movement more than help it,” he said, using a popular nickname for Kennedy. “If misinformation was a disease, he’d be patient zero.”A nephew of the late US president John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy Jr is well-known for embracing conspiracy theories.The former environmental lawyer has amplified discredited research linking vaccinations to autism, claimed Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, and alleged that HIV does not cause AIDS.None of which prevented his confirmation as health secretary last month by the Republican-controlled US Senate.A strong critic of the pharmaceutical industry, the former Democrat also advocates the legalization of psychedelics.”My inclination would be to make this available, at least in therapeutic settings and maybe more generally, but in ways that would discourage the corporate control and exploitation of it,” he said in a late 2023 interview.- ‘Eye-opening experience’ – Long associated with hippie counter-culture, magic mushrooms remain illegal in much of the United States.But in recent years, major US universities and the government have revived research into their active ingredient, psilocybin.It shows promising potential for treatment of certain forms of depression and addiction. But the consequences of chronic use are still poorly understood.Without waiting for federal law against them to change, the western states Oregon and Colorado have legalized the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms. Across the country a handful of cities that include Washington DC have decriminalized them.Dezaval, a 38-year-old resident of Colorado Springs, leapt at the chance. He founded a “church” in the basement of his home.Surrounded by plastic plants and wearing circular blue sunglasses, Dezaval distributes magic mushrooms during group and individual sessions that he supervises.He says he has received well over 1,000 people in the past year.Many of them take tiny doses — enough to provoke fits of laughter, and a slight distortion of the senses, without dissociating their mind from their bodies.For Luna Valentine, a depressed transgender woman, this was enough to change her life. After a decade of ineffective antidepressants, she tried mushrooms last June. Thanks to psilocybin, which she now “micro-doses” every other day, Valentine has regained the motivation to take care of herself and get back to work.Taking mushrooms was an “eye-opening experience,” said the 28-year-old. “They’ve helped more than any of the pharmaceuticals.”- ‘Broken clock’ -Colorado law still does not allow the free purchase of psychedelic mushrooms.They must instead be ingested under the supervision of a licensed “facilitator,” at a designated center. The first of these are scheduled to officially open this summer.Already up-and-running in Oregon, this model involves extensive training and licensing fees. As a result, sessions can cost up to $3,000.Dezaval rejects this system. He distributes his mushrooms for free, financing their cultivation with donations from his community. The decision to found a “church” allows him to comply with the law, which authorizes their use in “spiritual ceremonies.””This is free because it needs to be, because people are dying every day… The acceptable number of suicides is zero. This is how we fix that,” he said.Dezaval hopes that his work will help to expel some of the sinister connotations that psychedelics retain in broader American culture.For this reason, Kennedy’s arrival in government is far from helpful, he says.”A broken clock is still right twice a day,” says Dezaval, who is saddened that Kennedy’s positive position on psychedelics may be drowned out by the rest of his untruths.”I would not expect somebody to look at what he’s saying and to treat it with the actual respect that it deserves,” he says.

Nvidia chief Jensen Huang is expected to showcase cutting-edge chips for artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing on Tuesday, shrugging off talk of China’s DeepSeek disrupting the market.Huang’s keynote presentation at Nvidia’s annual developers conference should pack the SAP Center in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose, where the Sharks NHL hockey team plays.Industry watchers expect Huang to spotlight Nvidia’s latest Blackwell line of graphics processing units (GPUs), including new updates in the works.The AI boom propelled Nvidia stock prices to stratospheric levels until a steep sell-off early this year triggered by the sudden success of DeepSeek.The stock, one of the most traded on Wall Street, is down more than nine percent this year despite a recent rebound from a March low.China-based DeepSeek shook up the world of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) with the debut of a low-cost but high-performance model that challenges the hegemony of OpenAI and other big-spending behemoths.But several countries have questioned DeepSeek’s handling of data, which the firm says is collected in “secure servers located in the People’s Republic of China.”Nvidia high-end GPUs are in hot demand by tech giants building data centers to power artificial intelligence, and some say a low-cost option could weaken the Silicon Valley chip star’s business.Yurts co-founder and CEO Ben Van Roo, whose company specializes in keeping sensitive data protected while allowing access by AI models, believes DeepSeek’s popularity bodes well for Nvidia.”DeepSeek drastically accelerated the desire to consume these models,” Van Roo told AFP.”You’ve opened the world’s appetite even more (to generative AI) and independent of the fact that it’s Chinese, I think it was a good day for Nvidia.”- Blackwell Booming -Nvidia has ramped up production of its top-of-the-line Blackwell processors for powering AI, logging billions in sales in its first quarter on the market.”AI is advancing at light speed” and is setting the stage “for the next wave of AI to revolutionize the largest industries,” Huang told financial analysts recently.Huang believes Nvidia chips and software platforms will continue to power or train AI for robots, cars, and digital “agents,” the term used for AI that can execute decisions instead of humans.The CEO is also likely to talk up a leap to quantum computing.After several dashed predictions, quantum computing is accelerating rapidly with actual use cases and scientific breakthroughs expected within years, not decades.US tech giants, startups, banks, and pharmaceutical companies are pouring investments into this revolutionary technology.GPUs like those made by Nvidia are ideal for handling multiple computing tasks simultaneously, making them well suited for quantum computing.The US and China are racing ahead in quantum development, with Washington imposing export restrictions on the technology.Nvidia reported that it finished last year with record high revenue of $130.5 billion, driven by demand for its chips to power artificial intelligence in data centers.Nvidia projected revenue of $43 billion in the current fiscal quarter, topping analyst expectations.

US President Donald Trump barreled toward a showdown with the courts Monday after his administration expelled alleged members of a Venezuelan gang under little-used, centuries-old wartime legislation.Trump, already pushing the law to its limits on several fronts, also claimed he had annulled pardons issued by Joe Biden on the grounds that his Democratic predecessor supposedly used an autopen for his signature.The Republican’s moves to amass power in the executive have increasingly raised fears that he will defy the judiciary, upending or at least reinterpreting the constitutional balance of power in the United States.A federal judge held a hearing Monday on whether the White House had deliberately ignored his orders by flying more than 200 people to El Salvador, where the Trump administration is paying the authorities to imprison the deportees.Justice Department lawyers told Judge James Boasberg that the deportees had already left the United States when the judge issued his written order barring their departure, according to media reports.They also argued that the district judge had no jurisdiction once the planes were out of US airspace.The Justice Department had previously sought to cancel the hearing, arguing that the case interferes with “the president’s national-security and foreign-affairs authority.”When Boasberg said it would go ahead, government lawyers filed a motion with an appeals court seeking to have the judge removed from the case.Boasberg described the hearing as a “fact-finding” exercise and said he did not plan to issue an immediate ruling.White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters meanwhile that the use of the obscure 1798 Alien Enemies Act was justified as Trump had declared members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang as a foreign terrorist group.Secretary of State Marco Rubio said all the migrants sent to El Salvador were either MS-13 “criminals” wanted in their home country or Venezuelans alleged to be part of Tren de Aragua.”They weren’t supposed to be in our country to begin with,” Rubio told Fox News Radio host Guy Benson. “I would say that every single person that was on that plane was in the country illegally, one way or the other.”The Alien Enemies Act was last used in World War II to intern tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans.Rights groups have warned the wartime legislation could be used as cover for mass deportations without due process.Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro protested the deportations, saying the migrants had been “kidnapped” and vowing to ask the United Nations to protect them.”I will not rest until we achieve their rescue and their safe return,” he said.- ‘Void, vacant’ -Trump promised a crackdown on undocumented migration during his 2024 election campaign and has repeatedly painted a dark picture of a wave of crimes by migrants that is at odds with official figures.His administration has increasingly appeared to be spoiling for a legal fight that will end up in the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court, becoming a test case for the extent of executive power.Trump again tested the boundaries on Monday when he declared he was canceling pardons issued by Biden in the last days of his presidency to shield Trump critics from feared retribution.Trump said on his Truth Social platform that the pardons “are hereby declared void, vacant, and of no further force or effect, because of the fact they were done by Autopen.”US presidents have long used autopens, including to sign bills into law, and there was no evidence Biden had used the signature device on the pardons.It was unclear what, if any, authority Trump has to void presidential pardons.Asked by reporters Monday whether everything Biden signed with an autopen should be voided, Trump said: “I think so. It’s not my decision, that’ll be up to a court.”Biden issued pardons to former senior Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney and other members of the congressional committee that investigated the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters stirred up by his false claims to have won the 2020 election.Other recipients included former Covid pandemic advisor Anthony Fauci, retired general Mark Milley, and close family members including Biden’s son Hunter.

A spoon emoji, a subreddit, a viral song: US federal workers are finding sweet succor in the bosom of the internet as President Donald Trump takes an ax to their jobs.Some have lost their entire income, others have been let go only to be rehired, and yet more have been teetering on the brink for weeks.On the popular internet forum Reddit, where users, often Americans, share and rank advice and questions in communities called subreddits, a “fednews” group is among the most active — in the top one percent of subreddits with 550,000 users. With identities hidden behind usernames, employees impart suggestions and grapple with solutions as the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is run by billionaire Trump advisor Elon Musk, whittles away at the federal workforce.”I have 0900 EST meeting today with a lawyer who specializes in Federal law and government worker rights,” one user posted. “Give me any questions you have and if don’t have it already ill try to include in my time. Just paid for one hour.”Another user simply shared a sense of despair when the unthinkable finally happened: “After being anxious for weeks, I was fired today.”- Finding a ‘platform’ -Helen — who like other employees AFP spoke with only wanted to use her first name for fear of retribution — runs an Instagram account with 16,000 followers called “Feds Work for You,” which includes articles, protest information and accounts from fired federal employee.Trump and Musk “have such big platforms,” said Helen, herself a federal worker, wondering “who’s going to be standing up for federal workers; we don’t have that sort of platform.”John, a 10-year civil servant, launched a podcast on YouTube with an aim to “humanize” federal employees “so people understand that these are regular people who are just doing a public service job.”He said it was important how social media allows civil servants to share their stories while remaining anonymous: “I’m scared, right? Like, you know, they find out who I am.”Federal employees have also rallied online around a series of hashtags, emojis and other slogans.The song “Hostile Government Takeover,” initially posted on TikTok, made it onto platforms like Spotify, including a cover by world-renowned US DJ Moby.Meanwhile, the spoon emoji has become a symbol of protest, referencing a now-famous email from Musk’s team titled “Fork in the Road,” in which government employees were given an offer to leave with eight months’ pay or risk being fired in the future.”We need a communications campaign,” said Helen, adding: “I think a lot of people don’t know what we do, and it’s an easy target.”