behavior

Rapper Gucci Mane’s newest release might be his most vulnerable yet.

The Atlanta-based musician, promoting his third memoir, “Episode,” revealed to “The Breakfast Club” crew on Monday that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He also went into detail about how he has learned to manage the mental health conditions, with a stern but helping hand from his wife, Keyshia Ka’oir.

The 45-year-old hip-hop star, born Radric Davis, said in a joint interview with Ka’oir that he sought professional help for his mental health after experiencing an episode during the pandemic. “After that I was just like, ‘Man, I gotta really hold myself accountable and take care of my health,’” he said.

“I don’t ever wanna have another episode again. I’m like, I’m gonna see a therapist, if I have to take medicine — I kinda like threw in the towel,” the rapper continued. “Whatever I need to do to get better.”

Schizophrenia is a serious mental health condition that affects how people behave, think and feel, according to the Mayo Clinic. Someone living with schizophrenia — which the clinic says can be managed with medicine and therapy — can experience “a mix of hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking and behavior” and can “lose touch with reality.”

Bipolar disorder is a treatable mental health condition marked by extreme changes in mood, thought, energy and behavior, according to the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. A widely known symptom of the illness is manic episodes, which are marked by elevated changes in mood or behavior. But many people with a bipolar disorder diagnosis more commonly experience depressive episodes.

During the hour-long conversation, the “Wake Up in the Sky” rapper and Ka’oir shared details about his various episodes over the years and how it affected their relationship. They married in 2017 and share two kids. Ka’oir recalled witnessing Gucci Mane’s episodes even before they tied the knot.

During the episodes, “you’re seeing someone you don’t know,” said Ka’oir, who was born Keyshia Watson and modeled as Keyshia Dior. She recalled the rapper making “disrespectful” remarks and understood that he didn’t mean it. “I felt like if I left, he wouldn’t have been the same,” she said Monday. “He needed someone to help him.”

“I’m cool with this,” Ka’oir recalled thinking when someone voiced concern for their marriage.

Helping the Grammy-nominated “Exactly How I Feel” rapper manage his conditions proved challenging over the years, Ka’oir said. She said she worked with his inner circle to plan a “kidnapping” to a hospital so he could receive professional help. Ka’oir said she was confident that the rapper would never hurt her, even if other people worried otherwise.

Gucci Mane, who has faced legal woes including a federal prison sentence that ended in 2016, said he was “super embarrassed and hurt by the things I said” during his episodes. After his release from prison, he said, he apologized to a number of rap artists, name-dropping Rick Ross, Drake and Nicki Minaj. The latter had her own thoughts about the pair’s interview, accusing Ka’oir on X of sedating the “I Get the Bag” artist.

“I felt bad. I felt terribly bad,” he said, adding that apologizing to fellow stars felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

Ka’oir said she worked to keep her husband’s episodes away from the public eye by controlling his social media presence. She explained that she learned how to identify an episode before it became a full-blown incident, noting that some signs included him making mean comments or odd requests. Gucci Mane said that during episodes of what he called “psychosis,” he would hear voices speaking ill about people in his close circles.

Drug use, stress and a lack of sleep were among his triggers, he said. He added that other musicians did not reach out to support him during his episodes.

Throughout the interview, Gucci Mane made it abundantly clear that he prioritizes his family life, noting he sought professional help to be present and to raise his children with Ka’oir.

“My best decision was to marry her and be with her,” he said. “I got somebody to hold me accountable and I got somebody to watch TV with. Sometimes that’s all you wanna do … I don’t really need a lot.”

Gucci Mane released his memoir and his newest album — both titled “Episodes” — on Friday. This marks the third book from the rapper, who previously released memoirs in 2017 and 2020.

An estimated 7 million Americans turned out Saturday to peacefully protest against the breakdown of our checks-and-balances democracy into a Trump-driven autocracy, rife with grift but light on civil rights.

Trump’s response? An AI video of himself wearing a crown inside a fighter plane, dumping what appears to be feces on these very protesters. In a later interview, he called participants of the “No Kings” events “whacked out” and “not representative of this country.”

I’m beginning to fear he’s right. What if the majority of Americans really do believe this sort of behavior by our president, or by anyone really, is acceptable? Even funny? A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that 81% of Republicans approve of the way Trump is handling his job. Seriously, the vast majority of Republicans are just fine with Trump’s policies and behavior.

According to MAGA, non-MAGA people are just too uptight these days.

Vice Troll JD Vance has become a relentless force for not just defending the most base and cruel of behaviors, but celebrating them. House Speaker Mike Johnson has made the spineless, limp justification of these behaviors an art form.

Between the two approaches to groveling to Trump’s ego and mendacity is everything you need to know about the future of the Republican Party. It will stop at nothing to debase and dehumanize any opposition — openly acknowledging that it dreams of burying in excrement even those who peacefully object.

Not even singer Kenny Loggins is safe. His “Top Gun” hit “Danger Zone” was used in the video. When he objected with a statement of unity, saying, “Too many people are trying to tear us apart, and we need to find new ways to come together. We’re all Americans, and we’re all patriotic. There is no ‘us and them’,” the White House responded with … a dismissive meme, clearly the new norm when responding to critics.

It may seem obvious, and even old news that this administration lacks accountability. But the use of memes and AI videos as communication, devoid of truth or consequence, adds a new level of danger to the disconnect.

These non-replies not only remove reality from the equation, but remove the need for an actual response — creating a ruling class that does not feel any obligation to explain or defend its actions to the ruled.

Politico published a story last week detailing the racist, misogynistic and hate-filled back-and-forth of an official, party-sanctioned “young Republican” group. Since most of our current politicians are part of the gerontocracy, that young is relative — these are adults, in their 20s and 30s — and they are considered the next generation of party leaders, in a party that has already skewed so far right that it defends secret police.

Here’s a sample.

Bobby Walker, the former vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans, called rape “epic,” according to Politico.

Another member of the chat called Black Americans “watermelon people.”

“Great. I love Hitler,” wrote another when told delegates would vote for the most far-right candidate.

There was also gas chamber “humor” in there and one straight up, “I’m ready to watch people burn now,” from a woman in the conversation, Anne KayKaty, New York’s Young Republican’s national committee member, according to the Hill.

Group members engaged in slurs against South Asians, another popular target of the far right these days. There’s an entire vein of racism devoted to the idea that Indians smell bad, in case you were unaware.

Speaking of a woman mistakenly believed to be South Asian, one group member — Vermont state Sen. Samuel Douglass, wrote: “She just didn’t bathe often.”

While some in the Republican party have denounced, albeit half-heartedly, the comments, others, including Vance, have gone on the attack. Vance, whose wife is Indian, claims everyone is making a big deal out of nothing.

“But the reality is that kids do stupid things. Especially young boys, they tell edgy, offensive jokes. Like, that’s what kids do,” Vance said. “And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke — telling a very offensive, stupid joke — is cause to ruin their lives.”

Not to be outdone, Johnson responded to the poop jet video by somehow insinuating there is an elevated meaning to it.

“The president was using social media to make a point,” Johnson said, calling it “satire.”

Satire is meant to embarrass and humiliate, to call out through humor the indefensible. I’ll buy the first part of that. Trump meant to embarrass and humiliate. But protesting, of course, is anything but indefensible and the use of feces as a weapon is a way of degrading those “No Kings” participants so that Trump doesn’t have to answer to their anger — no different than degrading Black people and women in that group chat.

Those 7 million Americans who demonstrated on Saturday simply do not matter to Trump, or to Republicans. Not their healthcare, not their ability to pay the bills, not their worry that a country they love is turning in to one where their leader literally illustrates that he can defecate on them.

But not everyone can be king.

While the young Republicans believe they shared in their leader’s immunity, it turns out they don’t. That Vermont state senator? He resigned after the Republican governor put on pressure.

Maybe 7 million Americans angry at Trump can’t convince him to change his ways, but enough outraged Vermont voters can make change in their corner of the country.

Which is why the one thing Trump does fear is the midterms, when voters get to shape our own little corners of America — and by extension, whether Trump gets to keep using his throne.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter, under fire for recently emerged videos showing her scolding a reporter and swearing at an aide, expressed remorse for her behavior on Tuesday in her first public remarks since the incidents were publicized.

Porter, a former Orange County congresswoman and a top candidate in California’s 2026 governor’s race, said that she “could have handled things better.”

“I think I’m known as someone who’s able to handle tough questions, who’s willing to answer questions,” Porter told Nikki Laurenzo, host of Inside California Politics and anchor on Fox40 in Sacramento. “I want people to know that I really value the incredible work that my staff can do. I think people who know me know I can be tough. But I need to do a better job expressing appreciation for the amazing work my team does.”

Last week, a video emerged of Porter telling a separate television reporter that she doesn’t need the support of the millions of Californians who voted for President Trump, and brusquely threatening to end the interview because the reporter asked follow-up questions. The following day, a second video emerged of Porter telling a young staffer “Get out of my f—ing shot!” while videoconferencing with a member of then-President Biden’s cabinet in 2021.

Porter on Tuesday said that she had apologized to the staffer. She repeatedly sidestepped Laurenzo’s questions about whether other videos could emerge.

“What I can tell you … is that I am taking responsibility for the situation,” Porter said.

Porter’s behavior in the videos underscored long-standing questions about her temperament and high staff turnover while she served in Congress.

The most recent polls showed that Porter held a narrow lead in the competitive race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is serving his second and final term as governor. After the videos emerged last week, several of Porter’s rivals criticized her behavior, including former state Controller Betty Yee, who said she should drop out of the race.

On Tuesday, Yee argued that Porter’s temperament could imperil Democrats’ efforts to pass Proposition 50, the Nov. 4 ballot measure to redraw congressional districts in California to boost their party’s numbers in the House.

Yee, a former vice chair of the state Democratic party, warned that a Republican could potentially win the governor’s race and Democrats could lose the U.S. House of Representatives because of Porter’s “demeanor.”

“I don’t relish picking a fight, and it’s not even a fight,” Yee said during a virtual press conference. “I’m doing what’s best for this party.”

Porter is also expected to address the issue Tuesday night during a virtual forum with the California Working Families Party.

Prior to her statements on Tuesday, Porter had released one statement about the 2021 video, saying, “It’s no secret I hold myself and my staff to a high standard, and that was especially true as a member of Congress. I have sought to be more intentional in showing gratitude to my staff for their important work.”

The UC Irvine law professor has not responded to multiple interview requests from the Times.

Mehta reported from Los Angeles and Smith reported from Sacramento.

Former Rep. Katie Porter’s gubernatorial prospects are uncertain in the aftermath of the emergence of two videos that underscore long-swirling rumors that the Irvine Democrat is thin-skinned and a short-tempered boss.

How Porter responds in coming days could determine her viability in next year’s race to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to both Democratic and Republican political strategists.

“Everyone’s had a bad day. Everyone’s done something that they wouldn’t want broadcast, right? You don’t want your worst boss moment, your worst employment moment, your worst personal moment, captured on camera,” said Christine Pelosi, a prominent Democratic activist from the Bay Area and a daughter of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“I definitely think that it’s a question of what comes next,” said Pelosi, who had endorsed former Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis before she dropped out of the race.

Porter, the 2026 gubernatorial candidate who has a narrow edge in the polls, came under scrutiny this week when a recording emerged of her brusquely threatening to end a television interview after growing increasingly irritated by the reporter’s questions.

After CBS reporter Julie Watts asked Porter what she would say to the nearly 6.1 million Californians who voted for President Trump in 2024, the UC Irvine law professor responded that she didn’t need their support if she competed against a Republican in the November 2026 runoff election.

After Watts asked follow-up questions, Porter accused Watts of being “unnecessarily argumentative,” held up her hands towards the reporter’s face and later said, “I don’t want this all on camera.”

The following day, a 2021 video emerged of Porter berating a staffer who corrected her about electric vehicle information she was discussing with a member of the Biden administration. “Get out of my f— shot!” Porter said to the young woman after she came into view in the background of the video conference. Porter’s comments in the video were first reported by Politico.

Porter did not respond to multiple interview requests. She put out a statement about the 2021 video, saying: “It’s no secret I hold myself and my staff to a high standard, and that was especially true as a member of Congress. I have sought to be more intentional in showing gratitude to my staff for their important work.”

Several Porter supporters voiced support for her after the videos went viral on social media and became the focus of national news coverage as well as programs such as “The View.”

“In this critical moment in our country, we don’t need to be polite, go along to get along, establishment politicians that keep getting run over by the opposition,” wrote Peter Finn and Chris Griswold, co-chairs of Teamsters California, which has endorsed Porter and represents 250,000 workers in the state. “We need strong leaders like Katie Porter that are willing to call it like it is and stand up and fight for everyday Californians.”

EMILYs List, which supports Democratic women who back abortion rights, and Rep. Dave Min (D-Irvine), who won the congressional seat Porter left to unsuccessfully run for U.S. Senate last year, are among those who also released statements supporting the embattled Democratic candidate.

Lorena Gonzalez, president of the influential California Labor Federation, alluded to growing rumors in the state’s Capitol before the videos emerged that powerful Democratic and corporate interests dislike Porter and have been trying to coax another Democrat into the race.

“The only thing that is clear after the past few days is that Katie Porter’s willingness to take on powerful interests has the status quo very afraid and very motivated,” Gonzalez said in a statement.

There has been a concerted effort to urge Sen. Alex Padilla into the race. The San Fernando Valley Democrat has said he won’t make a decision until after voters decide Proposition 50, the redistricting proposal he and other state Democratic leaders are championing, on the November ballot.

A pivotal indicator of Porter’s plans is whether she takes part in two events that she is scheduled to participate in next week — a virtual forum Tuesday evening with the California Working Families Party and a live UC Student and Policy Center Q&A on Friday in Sacramento.

Democratic gubernatorial rivals in California’s 2026 race for governor seized on the videos. Former state Controller Betty Yee called on Porter to drop out of the race, and wealthy businessman Stephen Cloobeck and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa attacked her in ads about the uproar.

Former Sen. Barbara Boxer said she saw the same traits Porter displayed in the videos — anger, a lack of respect, privilege — previously, notably in the 2024 Senate contest, which is why she decided to back then-Rep. Adam Schiff, who ultimately won the race. Boxer has endorsed Villaraigosa for governor.

“I had a bad taste in my mouth from that experience,” Boxer said, growing upset while describing her reaction to the video of Porter cursing at her staffer. “This video tells us everything we need to know about former Congresswoman Porter. She is unfit to serve. Period.”

Disagreements arose between Boxer and her staff during her more than four decades in elected office, she said.

But even when “we weren’t happy with each other, there was always respect, because I knew they deserved it, and I knew without them, I was nothing,” Boxer said, adding that men‘s and women’s behavior as elected officials must be viewed through the same lens. “We are equal; we are not better. She’s proof of that.”

Beth Miller, a veteran Sacramento-based GOP strategist who has worked with female politicians since the 1980s, said women are held to a different standard by voters, though it has eased in recent years.

“In some ways, this plays into that bias, but in other ways, it unfortunately sets women back because it underscores a concern that people have,” Miller said. “And that’s really disappointing and discouraging to a lot of female politicians who don’t ascribe to that type of behavior.”

Miller also pointed to the dichotomy of Porter’s terse reaction in the television interview to Porter championing herself in Congress as a fearless and aggressive inquisitor of CEOs and government leaders.

“You exhibit one kind of behavior on the one hand and another when it affects you,” Miller said. “And you know, governor of California is not a walk in the park, and so I don’t think she did herself any favors at all. And I think it really is a window into who she is.”

Rory McIlroy hadn’t even left the practice range last Friday morning when a small section of fans at the Ryder Cup started a profane chant aimed at his image on a video screen at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, N.Y.

The verbal abuse and other inappropriate behavior directed toward McIlroy and his European teammates worsened as the weekend went on. At one point Saturday a cup of beer sailed out of the crowd and hit the brim of a hat worn by McIlroy’s wife, Erica Stoll, who was walking next to her husband.

The poor treatment didn’t prevent Team Europe from claiming a 15-13 win over the U.S. Afterward, McIlroy told reporters, “What happened here this week is not acceptable” and “I think golf should be held to a higher standard than than what was was seen out there this week.”

Derek Sprague, chief executive of PGA of America, told the Athletic this week that he had apologized to McIlroy and Stoll in an email.

Comedian Heather McMahan, who served as a morning emcee on the first two days of the Ryder Cup, also apologized this week for participating in a profane chant toward McIlroy.

And on Thursday — several days after he had seemingly trivialized the boorish fan behavior at the Ryder Cup by likening it to that of attendees at youth soccer games — PGA of America president Don Rea Jr. finally apologized in an email to the organization’s 30,000-plus members.

PGA of America president Don Rea Jr. speaks during a news conference at the PGA Championship in May.

(Matt York / Associated Press)

“Let me begin with what we must own. While the competition was spirited — especially with the U.S. team’s rally on Sunday afternoon — some fan behavior clearly crossed the line,” Rea wrote in the email, which was viewed by the Associated Press. “It was disrespectful, inappropriate, and not representative of who we are as the PGA of America or as PGA of America golf professionals. We condemn that behavior unequivocally.”

It was a different tone from the one Rea took Sunday when the BBC asked him about the unruly behavior of fans.

“Well, you’ve got 50,000 people here that are really excited, and heck, you could go to a youth soccer game and get some people who say the wrong things,” Rea said. “We tell the fans, booing at somebody doesn’t make them play worse. Typically, it makes them play better. And when our American players have to control the crowds, that distracts them from playing. So our message today to everybody who’s out here is, cheer on the Americans like never before, because that’ll always get them to play better and get them out of crowd control and let them perform.”

Asked specifically about the verbal abuse directed toward McIlroy, Rea said: “You know, it happens when we’re over in Rome on the other side. And Rory understands. I thought he handled the press conference just amazingly. But yeah, things like that are going to happen. And I don’t know what was said, but all I know is golf is the engine of good.”

Sprague, who took over as PGA of America’s chief executive in January, told the Athletic on Wednesday that he had apologized to McIlroy’s manager that morning and asked him to pass along a message to the five-time major champion and his wife.

“I sent a long email to share with Rory and Erica and just told him that we will do better in the future,” Sprague said. “I’m the CEO now. I don’t condone this type of behavior. This is not good for the game of golf. It’s not good for the Ryder Cup. It’s not good for any of the professional athletes, and we will do better.”

Heather McMahan arrives at the 76th Emmy Awards on Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater.

(Jae C. Hong / Invision / Associated Press)

In video footage from the first tee Saturday morning, McMahan appeared to be taking part in a profane chant aimed at McIlroy. That night, the PGA of America released a statement saying McMahan had apologized to McIlroy and Team Europe and had stepped down from her first-tee hosting duties.

McMahan addressed the situation Wednesday on her “Absolutely Not” podcast, saying she did not start the chant, as some outlets have reported, and said it only once before realizing it wasn’t something she wanted to take part in.

“I will take full responsibility and sincerely apologize to Rory, Team Europe for saying that,” McMahan said. “It was so foolish of me. I did not start the chant. I would just like that narrative to get out there. I did not start it, but any way that I had participated in that, even just saying it once, was so foolish and silly of me.

“And as soon as it came out and they started chanting, I was just like, ‘Oh, the energy just shifted.’ It went from us trying to be fun and funny … to immediately just was negative and felt really kind of toxic. So as soon as I said that I was like, ‘I don’t want any part of this.’”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This week, the Trump administration announced that it was taking “bold action” to address the “epidemic” of autism spectrum disorder — starting with a new safety label on Tylenol and other acetaminophen products that suggests a link to autism. The scientific evidence for doing so is weak, researchers said.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said federal officials “will be uncompromising and relentless in our search for answers” and that they soon would be “closely examining” the role of vaccines, whose alleged link to autism has been widely discredited.

Kennedy has long argued that rising diagnoses among U.S. children must mean more exposure to some outside influence: a drug, a chemical, a toxin, a vaccine.

“One of the things that I think that we need to move away from today is this ideology that … the autism prevalence increase, the relentless increases, are simply artifacts of better diagnoses, better recognition or changing diagnostic criteria,” Kennedy said in April.

Kennedy is correct that autism spectrum disorder rates have risen steadily in the U.S. since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control began tracking them, from 1 in 150 8-year-olds in 2000, to 1 in 31 in 2022, the most recent year for which numbers are available.

But physicians, researchers and psychologists say it is impossible to interpret this increase without acknowledging two essential facts: The diagnostic definition of autism has greatly expanded to include a much broader range of human behaviors, and we look for it more often than we used to.

“People haven’t changed that much,” said Alan Gerber, a pediatric neuropsychologist at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., “but how we talk about them, how we describe them, how we categorize them has actually changed a lot over the years.”

Defining ‘autism’

The term “autism” first appeared in the scientific literature around World War II, when two psychiatrists in different countries independently chose that word to describe two different groups of children.

In 1938, Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger used it to describe child patients at his Vienna clinic who were verbal, often fluently so, with unusual social behaviors and at-times obsessive focus on very specific subjects.

Five years later, U.S. psychiatrist Leo Kanner published a paper about a group of children at his clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore who were socially withdrawn, rigid in their thinking and extremely sensitive to stimuli like bright lights or loud noises. Most also had limited verbal language ability.

Both Asperger and Kanner chose the same word to describe these overlapping behaviors: autism. (They borrowed the term from an earlier psychiatrist’s description of extreme social withdrawal in schizophrenic patients.)

This doesn’t mean children never acted this way before. It was just the first time doctors started using that word to describe a particular set of child behaviors.

For the next few decades, many children who exhibited what we understand today to be autistic traits were labeled as having conditions that have ceased to exist as formal diagnoses, like “mental retardation,” “childhood psychosis” or “schizophrenia, childhood type.”

Autism debuted as its own diagnosis in the 1980 third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Assn.’s diagnostic bible. It described an autistic child as one who, by the age of 2½, showed impaired communication, unusual responses to their environment and a lack of interest in other people.

As the decades went on, the DSM definition of autism broadened.

The fourth edition, published in 1994, named additional behaviors: impaired relationships, struggles with nonverbal communication and speech patterns different from those of non-autistic, or neurotypical, peers.

It also included a typo that would turn out to be a crucial driver of diagnoses, wrote cultural anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker in his book “Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism.”

The DSM’s printed definition of autism included any child who displayed impairments in social interaction, communication “or” behavior. It was supposed to say social interaction, communication “and” behavior.

The error went uncorrected for six years, and the impact appeared profound. In 1995 an estimated 1 in every 500 children was diagnosed with autism. By 2000, when the CDC formally began tracking diagnoses (and the text was corrected), it was 1 in every 150.

Reaching underserved communities

In 2007, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended for the first time that all children be screened for autism between the ages of 18 and 24 months as part of their regular checkups. Prior to that, autism was diagnosed somewhat haphazardly. Not all pediatricians were familiar with the earliest indicators or used the same criteria to determine whether a child should be further evaluated.

Then in 2013, the fifth edition of the DSM took what had previously been four separate conditions — autistic disorder, Asperger’s disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder and pervasive developmental disorder — and collapsed them all into a single diagnosis: autism spectrum disorder.

The diagnostic criteria for ASD included a broad range of social, communication and sensory interpretation differences that, crucially, could be identified at any time in a child’s life. The term was no longer limited only to children whose development lagged noticeably behind that of their peers.

Since that definition was adopted, U.S. schools have become more proactive about referring a greater range of children for neurodevelopmental evaluations. The new DSM language also helped educators and clinicians better understand what was keeping some kids in disadvantaged communities from thriving.

“In the past, [autism was] referred to as a ‘white child’s disability,’ because you found so few Black and brown children being identified,” said Shanter Alexander, an assistant professor of school psychology at Howard University. Children of color who struggled with things like behavioral disruptions, attention deficits or language delays, she said, were often diagnosed with intellectual disabilities or behavioral disorders.

In a sign that things have shifted, the most recent CDC survey for the first time found a higher prevalence of autism in kids of color than in white children: 3.66%, 3.82% and 3.30% for Black, Asian and Latino children, respectively, compared with 2.77% of white children.

“A lot of people think, ‘Oh, no, what does this mean? This is terrible.’ But it’s actually really positive. It means that we have been better at diagnosing Latino children [and] other groups too,” said Kristina Lopez, an associate professor at Arizona State University who studies autism in underserved communities.

The severity issue

An autism diagnosis today can apply to people who are able to graduate from college, hold professional positions and speak eloquently about their autism, as well as people who require 24-hour care and are not able to speak at all.

It includes people who were diagnosed when they were toddlers developing at a noticeably different pace from their peers, and people who embraced a diagnosis of autism in adulthood as the best description of how they relate to the world. Diagnoses for U.S. adults ages 26 to 34 alone increased by 450% between 2011 and 2022, according to one large study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

Kennedy was not correct when he said in April that “most cases now are severe.”

A 2016 review of CDC data found that approximately 26.7% of 8-year-olds with autism had what some advocates refer to as “profound autism,” the end of the spectrum that often includes seriously disabling behaviors such as seizures, self-injurious behavior and intellectual disability.

The rate of children with profound autism has remained virtually unchanged since the CDC started tracking it, said Maureen Durkin, a professor of population health science and pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Indeed, the highest rate of new diagnoses has been among children with mild limitations, she said.

For many researchers and advocates, the Trump administration’s focus on autism has provoked mixed emotions. Many have lobbied for years for more attention for this condition and the people whose lives it affects.

Now it has arrived, thanks to an administration that has played up false information while cutting support for science.

“They have attempted to panic the public with the notion of an autism epidemic as a threat to the nation, when no such epidemic actually exists — rather, more people are being diagnosed with autism today because we have broader diagnostic criteria and do a better job detecting it,” said Colin Killick, executive director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. “It is high time that this administration stops spreading misinformation about autism, and starts enacting policies that would actually benefit our community.”

This article was reported with the support of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s National Fellowship’s Kristy Hammam Fund for Health Journalism.

A hiker who was attacked by a bear — probably a grizzly — in Yellowstone National Park this week has been released from the hospital.

The 29-year old man had been hiking alone on the remote Turbid Lake Trail when he apparently surprised the bear, according to park officials. While trying to use bear spray, he sustained “significant but not life-threatening injuries to his chest and left arm,” according to officials.

National Park Service medics responded to the scene, and the victim was able to walk with them to the trailhead, where he was loaded into an ambulance and taken to a nearby clinic. From there, a helicopter flew him to a hospital. He was released Wednesday.

As is true in the rest of the U.S., bear attacks are exceedingly rare in Yellowstone. Since the park was established in 1872, eight people have been killed by bears, according to the park’s website. For comparison, 125 people have drowned and 23 have died from burns after falling into hot springs.

Even seeing a grizzly bear is pretty uncommon in the lower 48 states. Prior to 1800, they were much more common, with an estimated 50,000 roaming the American West. But European settlers viewed them as a mortal threat to people and livestock and hunted them to near extinction, reducing their number to less than 1,000 in the contiguous U.S.

Thanks to recovery and conservation efforts in recent decades, the population has increased to nearly 2,000, mostly in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Still, the specter of a bear attack, especially by a grizzly, is enough to make most hikers’ blood run cold. While experts tell backcountry travelers to stand their ground and fight back if attacked by a black bear, the standard advice for years has been to lie down and play dead in the face of a much larger, more aggressive grizzly.

That advice has been updated lately, but not by much. A national parks website providing guidance on what to do says, “If you surprise a grizzly/brown bear and it charges or attacks, do not fight back! Only fight back if the attack persists.”

The hiker who was attacked on Tuesday told park officials he thought it was a black bear, but the location, behavior and size of the bear made park staff suspect it might have been a grizzly.

Discovery of an animal carcass near the attack, and confirmation that bear tracks found nearby were left by a grizzly, support that conclusion.

The trail has been closed indefinitely and rangers swept the area to make sure there weren’t any other hikers in imminent danger.

As for the bear? Parks officials say it was probably surprised too and merely acting in self-defense. So the park, “will not be taking any management action against the bear.”

Last year, Jon Kyle Mohr faced a similar encounter with a black bear in California’s Yosemite National Park.

He was less than a mile from the end of a 50-mile ultra-run he had started 16 hours earlier in Mammoth Lakes when he saw a huge black shape charging at him.

In an instant, he said, he felt “some sharpness” on his shoulder followed by a powerful shove that sent him stumbling in the dark. When he turned around, people about a hundred feet away were shining their headlamps in his direction and shouting, “Bear!”

It worked. The bear disappeared into the darkness and Mohr was left with torn clothes and a few scratches, but no more serious damage.

Asked how he felt about the experience, Mohr said he was incredibly shaken at first, and lucky it had happened near the Vernal Falls trailhead, one of the most populated places in the park.

But after a day or two to reflect, he had settled into a more zen frame of mind.

“It was just a really strange, random collision,” he said. “If I had rested my feet for 20 seconds longer at any point,” during the 16-hour run, “it wouldn’t have happened.”

A 55-year-old man was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty to stalking and harassing Indiana Fever superstar Caitlin Clark.

Michael Lewis of Denton, Texas, reached a deal with Marion County, Ind., prosecutors before pleading guilty Monday to one felony count of stalking and one misdemeanor count of harassment.

Lewis will receive credit for the 197 days he has already served behind bars since his January arrest. He allegedly sent the then-22-year-old Clark hundreds of “threats and sexually explicit messages” via social media between Dec. 12 and Jan. 11.

Days before his arrest, Lewis told police who were making a welfare check to his Indianapolis hotel room that he was in “an imaginary relationship.” He continued to message the WNBA star after the police visit.

“This resolution ensures that the defendant is held accountable for his threatening actions, the fear he instilled, and the disruption he caused,” Marion County prosecutor Ryan Mears said Monday in a statement. “… The victim will be able to have peace of mind while focusing on what matters to her.”

As part of the ruling, Lewis was ordered to have no contact with Clark and to stay away from Gainbridge and Hinkle venues in Indiana, as well as all events associated with the Fever or Indiana Pacers. He is also not allowed to have internet access while serving his sentence.

Judge Angela Dow Davis also recommended that Lewis seek mental health treatment. According to WTHR-TV in Indianapolis, Davis frequently had to stop and correct the behavior of Lewis, who at one point prophesied the end of the world.

It was similar behavior to when he first appeared in court after his arrest earlier this year. Davis repeatedly told him to “stop talking” because he kept interrupting the proceedings.

“The Summer I Turned Pretty” is the second series in as many months to directly warn its audience about cyberbullying. Posting on its official social media accounts, the Prime Video series issued a “PSA for the Summer community”: “We have a ZERO tolerance policy for bullying and hate speech. If you engage in any of the following you will be banned.” Fans were cautioned against “hate speech or bullying,” “targeting our cast or crew” and “harassing or doxxing members of the community.”

This comes on the heels of “Love Island USA” releasing similar warnings. Last month, host Ariana Madix called out “fan” behavior on the series’ recap show, “Aftersun.” “Don’t be contacting people’s families. Don’t be doxxing people. Don’t be going on Islanders’ pages and saying rude things,” she said. The show’s social accounts subsequently followed up with the message: “Please just remember they’re real people — so let’s be kind and spread the love!”

So this is where we are. Online discourse has become so toxic that television series are forced to address it in their publicity campaigns. It’s difficult to know whether to applaud or weep. Maybe both.

Certainly having television creators, and their social media teams, address a decades-long problem directly and proactively is far preferable to the more traditional entertainment industry approach. You know, waiting until some unfortunate actor or contestant is buried under an avalanche of hate speech before appearing shocked and horrified that such a thing could happen among (fill in the blank) fan base. (We will never forget, Kelly Marie Tran!)

Whether these warnings will be duplicated or prove effective remains to be seen. Studies suggest that cyberbullies who have their posts removed are less likely to repost and perhaps being called out by shows they watch will give some “fans” pause before they vent their spleen online.

It is still maddening that after years of research on the prevalence and dangers of cyberbullying, we are apparently relying on “Love Island” and “The Summer I Turned Pretty” as a first line of defense against behavior that has been proved to cause suicide, self-harm and a host of mental illnesses.

Obviously, something is very wrong. With the medium and its message.

When the internet became widely available, it promised to be an endless library of art and information. Instead, its most popular feature was easy (and often quite unintentional) access to porn.

So should we have been surprised when fan sites and social media platforms, built to allow free, unfettered and quite often anonymous discourse, became equally at risk for humanity’s less sterling qualities? Should it have been a revelation that certain film and television fans would behave badly when something occurred in their beloved universe that they did not like?

Have you ever been to Dodger Stadium?

Nothing about the impulses or language of cyberbullying is new. Hate mail has existed since writing was invented —poison pen letters caused a criminal crisis in the early 20th century — and celebrities have always been in danger of the “build ‘em up and tear ‘em down” fan flex.

What’s new (or new-ish) are the platforms that encourage such things. Poison pen letters are illegal. Poisonous posts are part of the social media business plan.

Yes, those who hate-post should take personal responsibility and our culture, like our politics, has grown more divisive and, frankly, mean. Social media at best allows and at worst encourages us to post things we might never say to a person standing in front of us. Commentary as blood sport.

Looking back, there was such heartbreaking optimism about the role social media would play in art, particularly television. Creators could actively engage with fans in real time and deepen audience commitment. A viral video or a clever Twitter campaign could save marketing departments millions. And celebrities could post their own “in real life” pictures, potentially thwarting the paparazzi, as well as stories, statements and confessionals, thereby avoiding the need for interviews over which they had far less control.

DIY publicity and deeply personal fan engagement — what could go wrong?

DIY publicity and deeply personal fan engagement, that’s what.

Say what you will about the old days when artists had to rely on legacy media for publicity — if readers had something bad to say, they shared it with the publication, which had standards about what letters would be made public. Direct contact with public figures was quite difficult — even fan mail was read and sorted by publicity departments and secretaries.

Now most everyone is accessible on one platform or another and there are very few standards.

Having leveraged the unpaid labor of millions to create profitable platforms, social media owners are not interested in providing basic consumer protection. Using the most facile definition of free speech — which is the right to voice opinions without government interference or punishment, not the right to post any hateful or incendiary thought you have — Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and other platform owners have consistently refused or pushed back against any demands of meaningful regulation.

Instead they rely on other users. The self-policing of social media is real and often effective, but it is far too arbitrary to act as a substitute for media regulation and mob rule is not something we should embrace.

The simple answer is “don’t look” — avoid the comments section or get off social media altogether. Which would be great advice if it were not so patently ridiculous. Intentionally or not, we have made social media a powerful force in this country. Particularly in the entertainment industry, where careers are made on YouTube, TikTok influencers are cultural arbiters and the number of one’s Instagram followers can determine whether they get the job or not.

It’s easy to say “ignore the haters” and virtually impossible for most of us to do. More importantly, it puts the responsibility on the wrong people, like telling a woman to just ignore a boss or colleague who makes crude comments about her appearance.

It’s been decades since Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok and all the other platforms could be viewed as simply fun forums on which to share vacation snaps. They deliver the news, shape our politics, market our businesses and create our culture. They are not public spaces; they belong to media companies that are owned and controlled by individuals just like any other media company.

So yeah, it’s great that “Love Island” and “The Summer I Turned Pretty” have taken steps to try to prevent online hate. But their warnings only illuminate the elephant in the room. A billion-dollar industry is failing to protect the very people who built it in the first place.

Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, will no longer be able to enter Australia after releasing a song that praises Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Tony Burke, Australia’s home affairs minister, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Wednesday that the country had canceled his visa in early May, around the time “Heil Hitler” was released.

Ye has visited the country frequently since marrying Bianca Censori, who is from Melbourne.

“If someone argued that antisemitism was rational, I would not let them come here,” Burke said. “[Ye] has been coming to Australia for a long time … and he’s made a lot of offensive comments.”

The song proved to be the final strike for Ye. First shared in a social media post on X, “Heil Hitler” as been widely denounced for its racial epithets and antisemitism. It was also subsequently banned on most streaming platforms.

In the song, Ye sampled an infamous speech made by Hitler in 1935 at Krupp Factory, two years after he was appointed chancellor of the Nazi party.

Its music video, released May 8, shows a group of individuals dressed in animal skins reciting the song’s lyrics.

Ye’s behavior has long been controversial, but his antisemitism in recent years has put former colleagues in an awkward position.

John Legend, whose 2013 effort “Love in the Future” was executive produced by Ye, had a clear response in a recent interview.

“It never affects me personally, but just the whole story is sad. Like, seeing this guy praise Hitler, seeing this guy be this force of hate and just vitriol and nastiness,” Legend said during an appearance on New York’s Hot 97 radio show. “All the things he’s done to make the world more beautiful and interesting, for him to be this now, it’s sad. It’s just sad.”

He clarified that during his time on Ye’s G.O.O.D. Music label between 2004 and 2016, he never saw evidence that the rapper was “obsessed with Hitler.”

Legend added that despite Ye’s recent behavior, he has no regrets over their past collaborations: “I’m so glad we did what we did together.”

Elijah Allman, son of pop icon Cher and songwriter Gregg Allman, landed in the hospital this weekend after law enforcement responded to a report of a man “acting erratically” in a home in the Mojave Desert.

Deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department on Saturday responded to the residence in the unincorporated community of Landers where Allman, 48, “was being evaluated by emergency medical personnel,” officials said in a statement shared with People. Deputies also “located drugs inside the home” and the musicians’ son was transported to a hospital.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which did not immediately respond on Monday to The Times’ request for comment and additional information, said it is investigating the incident. The statement did not reveal whether drug use led to Allman’s hospitalization but TMZ, which broke the news, reported he overdosed earlier Saturday morning. A source told the outlet Allman is “receiving the best care possible” and “lucky to have survived.”

A representative for Cher did not comment to The Times on Monday.

Marieangela King, Allman’s estranged wife, expressed support for her husband and spoke about his “unwavering commitment to sobriety and his loyalty to those he loves” in a statement to People. She acknowledged that her spouse has “faced personal challenges in the past.”

“Like many, he continues to confront his inner struggles — but it is important to recognize that he does so from a place of strength, not defeat,” she added. “Despite the assumptions that often color how his journey is portrayed, the reality is that Elijah remains grounded, focused and deeply committed to living with integrity and purpose.”

Allman has been open about his struggles with sobriety in the past, telling Entertainment Tonight in a 2014 interview that his drug addiction began before he was even a teenager. “I mean it’s just what you did, it’s just what everyone did,” he told Rob Marciano at the time.

“I [was] just looking to escape all the things in my past and that’s when you turn to those kind of drugs, you know heroin and opiates,” he said in 2014. He also recalled “some close calls and some moments of really feeling at the edge of mortality.”

Details of his alleged drug use also surfaced in December 2023 when his mother filed her bid for conservatorship to take over his finances. The Grammy-winning “Believe” singer alleged at the time that her son was “substantially unable to manage his own financial resources due to severe mental health and substance abuse issues.” Cher ended her conservatorship bid less than a year later, dismissing her petition in September 2024.

King filed a petition to divorce Allman in Los Angeles in April, citing “irreconcilable differences.” The couple, who married in December 2013, was previously headed for divorce when Allman filed a petition in 2021. In January 2024, he filed to dismiss that case without prejudice. Amid their ongoing relationship tensions, King underscored in her weekend statement, “I will always root for him.

“My support is steadfast and comes from a place of deep respect for the person he is and the resilience he continues to show,” King said.

North Salinas High sophomore Clara Adams ran the fastest time in the girls’ 400-meter finals at the CIF State Track & Field Finals last weekend.

She crossed the finish line .28 seconds ahead of her closest competitor.

But Adams is not the state champion. She was stripped of that title after she used a fire extinguisher to spray her cleats while on the field inside the track moments after the race.

“I was robbed,” Adams, 16, told The Times shortly after being disqualified from that event as well the 200 finals, which took place later in the meet.

Adams said CIF officials told her that she was being disqualified because she had been “unsportsmanlike,” but that’s not how she saw it at all.

“I was having fun,” Adams said, noting her win in the 400 marked her first state title. “I’d never won something like that before, and they took it away from me. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

She added: “I worked really hard for it and they took it from me, and I don’t know what to do.”

Days later, David Adams, who said he is the sprint coach at North Salinas, told The Times his daughter was “doing better” but still trying to cope with everything that unfolded Saturday afternoon at Buchanan High in Clovis.

“Clara’s hurt. She’s hurt right now,” David Adams said Wednesday. “She’s better today than Saturday. Saturday was fresh. It just happened. It was a shock. She felt numb. They made her sit there and watch while they put those other girls on the podium, knowing Clara’s the fastest 400-meter runner in the state of California.”

Clara Adams has been running competitively since age 6, her father said. She finished fourth in the 400 at last year’s state meet and won the event with a state-best time of 53.23 at the Central Coast Section championships last month. After posting the top qualifying time in Friday’s preliminaries, Adams surged ahead of Madison Mosby of St. Mary’s Academy in Inglewood to win the race with a time of 53.24.

Immediately afterward, Adams walked over to the wall in front of the stands and found her father, who reached down and handed her what he described as a “small” fire extinguisher. She then walked back across the track into the grass, where she sprayed her cleats as if she was putting out a fire — a move her father said was a tribute to former U.S. sprinter Maurice Greene, who similarly celebrated his win in the 100 at the 2004 Home Depot Invitational in Carson.

CIF officials apparently were not amused and disqualified Adams on the spot, awarding first place to Mosby. According to rules established by the National Federation of State High School Assns., “unsporting conduct” is defined as behavior that includes but is not limited to “disrespectfully addressing an official, any flagrant behavior, intentional contact, taunting, criticizing or using profanity directed toward someone.” The penalty is disqualification from the event in which the behavior took place and further competition in the meet.

The CIF did not respond to a request for comment from The Times.

According to David Adams, the officials “were really nasty” toward his daughter. They “tugged on her arm,” he said, “they were screaming in her face. I could hear it from where I was at. I could see it — I couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, but they were just really nasty.”

Clara Adams said she specifically asked the officials to speak with her father about the disqualification, but they refused.

“They kept telling me, ‘It’s OK,’ and I was telling them, ‘It’s not OK,’ and they didn’t care,” she said. “They were trying to smile in my face, like them telling me ‘no’ amused them or something.”

David Adams said the officials would only speak to North Salinas head coach Alan Green, who declined to speak to The Times for this story.

“They told him that it was unsportsmanlike conduct,” David Adams said of the officials’ discussion with Green. “We were asking for the rule, the specific rule of what she did, and they didn’t really give anything. It was more of a gray area that gives them discretion to pick and choose what they feel is unsportsmanlike conduct.”

Adams disputes that his daughter behaved in a manner that could be considered unsportsmanlike.

“Looking at the film, Clara is nowhere near any opponent,” he said. “She’s off the track, on the grass. Her opponents are long gone off the track already, so she wasn’t in their face. It was a father-daughter moment. … She did it off the track because she didn’t want to seem disrespectful toward nobody. And they still found a reason to take her title away. They didn’t give her a warning or anything.”

He added that his daughter is a “very humble, really sweet kid.”

“I take responsibility for the situation. I’m taking full responsibility,” he said. “Clara has run several championship races and won and walked off the track. It’s just weird that she celebrates one time and now people, these strangers, these middle-aged people want to chase after her character?”

Greene, the four-time Olympic medalist who inspired Clara’s celebration, told KSBW-TV in Salinas that the CIF should reconsider its decision.

“If [the celebration] was away from everyone and not interfering with anyone, I would say reinstate her,” Greene said.

David Adams said he is trying to make that happen but so far the CIF won’t return his calls .

“We have an attorney on standby right now,” he said. “I don’t want to take it there, but I will fight this all the way. As long as I’m breathing I’m gonna fight it. But we’re trying to go through proper channels to give the CIF an opportunity to do the right thing. Having an attorney involved is our last resort, that means we tried everything.”

PARIS — French movie star Gérard Depardieu ’s fall from grace is now complete.

Depardieu further moved down from the pinnacle of French cinema Tuesday as he was found guilty of sexually assaulting two women on the set of a movie in which he starred in 2021 and given an 18-month suspended prison sentence. He was also fined a total of 29,040 euros (around $32,350), and the court requested that he be registered in the national sex offender database.

The actor, 76, has been convicted of having groped a 54-year-old set dresser and a 34-year-old assistant during the filming of “Les Volets Verts” (“The Green Shutters”). The case was widely seen as a key post-#MeToo test of how French society and its film industry address allegations of sexual misconduct involving prominent figures.

Depardieu, who has denied the accusations, didn’t attend the hearing in Paris. Depardieu’s lawyer, Jérémie Assous, said that his client would appeal the decision.

“It is the victory of two women, but it is the victory of all the women beyond this trial,” said Carine Durrieu Diebolt, the set dresser’s lawyer. “Today we hope to see the end of impunity for an artist in the world of cinema. I think that with this decision we can no longer say that he is not a sexual abuser. And today, as the Cannes Film Festival opens, I’d like the film world to spare a thought for Gérard Depardieu’s victims.”

Accused by more than 20 women

Depardieu’s long and storied career — he told the court that he’s made more than 250 films — has turned him into a French movie giant. He was Oscar-nominated in 1991 for his performance as the swordsman and poet Cyrano de Bergerac.

In recent years, the actor has been accused publicly or in formal complaints of misconduct by more than 20 women, but so far only the sexual assault case has proceeded to court. Some other cases were dropped because of a lack of evidence or the statute of limitations.

During the four-day trial in March, Depardieu rejected the accusations, saying he’s “not like that.” He acknowledged that he had used vulgar and sexualized language on the film set and that he grabbed the set dresser’s hips during an argument, but denied that his behavior was sexual.

The court, composed of a panel of three judges, concluded that Depardieu’s explanations in court were “unpersuasive” and “not credible” and stressed both accusers’ “constant, reiterated and substantiated declarations.”

The court also said that both plaintiffs have been faced with an “aggressive” defense strategy “based on comments meant to offend them.” The judges therefore considered that Depardieu’s lawyer comments in court aggravated the harm to the accusers and justified higher fines.

The two accusers testified in court

The set dresser described the alleged assault, saying the actor pincered her between his legs as she squeezed past him in a narrow corridor.

She said he grabbed her hips then started “palpating” her behind and “in front, around.” She ran her hands near her buttocks, hips and pubic area to show what she allegedly experienced. She said he then grabbed her chest.

The woman also testified that Depardieu used an obscene expression to ask her to touch his penis and suggested he wanted to rape her. She told the court that the actor’s calm and cooperative attitude during the trial bore no resemblance to his behavior at work.

The other plaintiff, an assistant, said that Depardieu groped her buttocks and her breasts during three separate incidents on the film set.

The Associated Press doesn’t identify by name people who say they were sexually assaulted unless they consent to be named. Neither women has done so in this case.

“I’m very moved,” one of the plaintiffs, the set dresser, told reporters after the verdict. “I’m very very much satisfied with the decision, that’s a victory for me, really, and a big progress, a step forward. I feel justice was made.”

Some expressed support for Depardieu

Some figures in the French cinema world have expressed their support for Depardieu. Actors Vincent Perez and Fanny Ardant were among those who took seats on his side of the courtroom.

French media reported last week that Depardieu was shooting a film directed by Ardant in the Azores archipelago, in Portugal.

The actor may have to face other legal proceedings soon.

In 2018, actor Charlotte Arnould accused him of raping her at his home. That case is still active, and in August 2024 prosecutors requested that it go to trial.

For more than a half-century, Depardieu stood as a towering figure in French cinema, a titan known for his commanding physical presence, instinct, sensibility and remarkable versatility.

A bon vivant who overcame a speech impediment and a turbulent youth, Depardieu rose to prominence in the 1970s and became one of France’s most prolific and acclaimed actors, portraying a vast array of characters, from volatile outsiders to deeply introspective figures.

In recent years, his behavior toward women has come under renewed scrutiny, including after a documentary showed him repeatedly making obscene remarks and gestures during a 2018 trip to North Korea.

Corbet writes for the Associated Press. Samuel Petrequin contributed to this report.