By COREY WILLIAMS

DETROIT (AP) — For Black youth and teens growing up in the mid-1980s, “The Cosby Show” offered something rarely seen on television up until that time: a sitcom that placed characters who looked like them in a positive light.

And Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s Theo Huxtable was the character Generation X most related to. Fans took quickly to social media on Monday as news of Warner’s accidental drowning in Costa Rica spread.

“It’s like losing one of us,” said Harriet Cammock, a 58-year-old Detroit author and speaker. “This is the thing with television. When you’re watching people every week on television, you think you know them and you’re related to them.”

Warner was swimming Sunday afternoon at Playa Cocles in Costa Rica’s Limon province when a current pulled him deeper into the Caribbean, according to that country’s Judicial Investigation Department.

First responders found him without vital signs.

Cori Murray, executive vice president of content at Ebony Magazine, was saddened upon hearing about Warner’s death. She said his Theo character mirrored the everyday Black teenager, which was rare to see on TV at the time.

While so many portrayals of young Black teenagers leaned negative, “The Cosby Show,” especially Theo, showed warmth, joy and relatability.

“He wasn’t just a character. We saw ourselves in him,” Murray said. “You know how Kendrick Lamar has the song ‘Not Like Us’? Well, Theo was one of us. He was like us.”

Murray, who met Warner a few times, recalled his character off-screen matched the warmth he exuded on television. She called him respectful and pleasant and said he had a “megawatt smile” that lit up the room.

“His energy stayed with you,” Murray said. “You don’t have a bad memory when it comes to Theo or Malcolm-Jamal Warner. As much as we loved the character, we also watched Malcolm grow up in real life. No scandals. No mess. Just a talented young man who matured into an upstanding, handsome adult.”

FILE – Malcolm-Jamal Warner speaks on stage at the 65th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 5, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

“The Cosby Show” was groundbreaking and a ratings giant, drawing in viewers across racial, cultural and economic backgrounds. The show ran for 197 episodes from 1984 to 1992. In 1986, Warner earned an Emmy nomination for supporting actor in a comedy.

The show starring Bill Cosby as Cliff Huxtable and Phylicia Rashad as his wife, Clair, “made the wider society aware that there are Black people who live like white people do,” said Cammock, who is Black. “The perception that we don’t live like they do was hurtful.”

Gil Robertson, co-founder and president of the African American Film Critics Association, reflected on Warner’s rare path in the entertainment industry.

“There was never any scandal, no controversy,” said Robertson. “He transitioned from a teen star to a respected adult without the baggage we often see from others in his generation. That’s no small feat.”

Robertson added: “The legacy of Theo Huxtable — and Malcolm’s performance — will live on. It left an imprint that will continue to resonate in our culture for generations.”

Lynn Reasonover, 62, of Oak Lawn, Illinois, began receiving messages Monday afternoon about Warner’s death. Her initial thoughts were “Nope, didn’t happen.”

“Then, I kept seeing the news flashes and friends started sending texts,” Reasonover said. “So, it’s sinking in. Makes you realize how much some celebrities help shape our memories. His work had such a huge impact. I’m feeling a personal loss because we grew up with him. It’s like losing a part of our childhood.”

Reasonover saw much of her family in the Huxtables, where both parents were professionals who valued education and handled family issues with understanding and love.

“They had similar problems to what we experienced growing up,” she said. “We could relate and that’s why we laughed.”

Rasheda Williams, 46, of Detroit was about the same age as Rudy, the youngest character on “The Cosby Show” and Theo’s little sister. Williams said she and others are mourning Warner’s passing because of what they saw in the character he played.

“He’s like the ideal cousin you wish you had,” Williams said. “Hearing the news has really affected some of us. It was unexpected. He wasn’t sick. That makes it even more tragic.”

“He wasn’t just an actor,” she said. “He was also an activist, a positive role model, not just for young Black men, but for young Black women as well.”

AP Entertainment Writer Jonathan Landrum Jr. in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

By BERNARD CONDON and DAVID FISCHER

MIAMI (AP) — Elon Musk fought court cases on opposite coasts Monday, raising a question about the billionaire that could either speed his plan to put self-driving Teslas on U.S. roads or throw up a major roadblock: Can this wildly successful man who tends to exaggerate really be trusted?

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In Miami, a Tesla driver who has admitted he was wrong to reach for a dropped cell phone moments before a deadly accident, spoke of the danger of putting too much faith in Musk’s technology — in this case his Autopilot program.

“I trusted the technology too much,” said George McGee, who ran off the road and killed a woman out stargazing with her boyfriend. “I believed that if the car saw something in front of it, it would provide a warning and apply the brakes.”

In unusual coincidence, regulators arguing an Oakland, California, case tried to pin exaggerated talk about the same Tesla technology at the center of a request to suspend the carmaker from being able to sell vehicles in the state.

Musk’s tendency to talk big — whether its his cars, his rockets or his government costing-cutting efforts — have landed him in trouble with investors, regulators and courts before, but rarely at such a delicate moment.

After his social media spat with President Donald Trump, Musk can no longer count on a light regulatory touch from Washington. Meanwhile, sales of his electric cars have plunged and so a hit to his safety reputation could threaten his next big project: rolling out driverless robotaxis — hundreds of thousands of them — in several U.S. cities by the end of next year.

The Miami case holds other dangers, too. Lawyers for the family of the dead woman, Naibel Benavides Leon, recently convinced the judge overseeing the jury trial to allow them to argue for punitive damages. A car crash lawyer not involved in the case, but closely following it, said that could cost Tesla tens of millions of dollars, or possibly more.

“I’ve seen punitive damages go to the hundreds of millions, so that is the floor,” said Miguel Custodio of Los Angeles-based Custodio & Dubey. “It is also a signal to other plaintiffs that they can also ask for punitive damages, and then the payments could start compounding.”

Tesla did not reply for a request for comment.

That Tesla has allowed the Miami case to proceed to trial is surprising. It has settled at least four deadly accidents involving Autopilot, including payments just last week to a Florida family of a Tesla driver. That said, Tesla was victorious in two other jury cases, both in California, that also sought to lay blame on its technology for crashes.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the Miami case argue that Tesla’s driver-assistance feature, called Autopilot, should have warned the driver and braked when his Model S sedan blew through flashing lights, a stop sign and a T-intersection at 62 miles-an-hour in an April 2019 crash. Tesla said that drivers are warned not to rely on Autopilot, or its more advanced Full Self-Driving system. It say the fault entirely lies with the “distracted driver” just like so many other “accidents since cellphones were invented.”

Driver McGee settled a separate suit brought by the family of Benavides and her severely injured boyfriend, Dillon Angulo.

McGee was clearly shaken when shown a dashcam video Monday of his car jumping a Key West, Florida, road and hitting a parked Chevrolet Tahoe which then slammed into Benavides and sent her 75 feet through the air to her death. Asked if he had seen those images before, McGee pinched his lips, shook his head, then squeaked out a response, “No.”

Tesla’s attorney sought to show that McGee was fully to blame, asking if he had ever contacted Tesla for additional instructions about how Autopilot or any other safety features worked. McGee said he had not, though he was heavy user of the features. He said he had driven the same road home from work 30 or 40 times. Under questioning he also acknowledged he alone was responsible for watching the road and hitting the brakes.

But lawyers for the Benavides family had another chance to parry that line of argument and asked McGee if he would have taken his eyes off the road and reached for his phone had he been driving any car other than a Tesla on Autopilot.

McGee responded, “I don’t believe so.”

The case is expected to continue for two more weeks.

In the California case, the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles is arguing before an administrative judge that Tesla has misled drivers by exaggerating the capabilities of its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features. A court filing claims even those feature names are misleading because they offer just partial self-driving

Musk has been warned by federal regulators to stop making public comments suggesting Full Self-Driving allows his cars to drive themselves because it could lead to overreliance on the system, resulting in possible crashes and deaths. He also has run into trouble with regulators for Autopilot. In 2023, the company had to recall 2.3 million vehicles for problems with the technology and is now under investigation for saying it fixed the issue though it’s unclear it has, according to regulatory documents.

The California case is expected to last another four days.

Condon reported from New York.

By DAVID BAUDER

President Donald Trump on Monday followed up his lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over last week’s Jeffrey Epstein story by banishing one of the newspaper’s reporters from Air Force One for an upcoming Scotland trip.

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The moves reflect Trump’s aggressiveness toward media who displease him — even a media magnate, Rupert Murdoch, with outlets that have been friendly to him in the past.

Trump filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Journal and Murdoch on Friday because of the newspaper’s article about a sexually suggestive letter bearing Trump’s name that was included in a 2003 album compiled for alleged sex trafficker Epstein’s birthday. The president has denied having anything to do with it.

On Monday, the White House said it was removing a Journal reporter from the pool covering the president’s trip this weekend to his golf courses in Turnberry and Aberdeen in Scotland. The Journal’s Tarini Parti had been scheduled to cover him on the trip.

“Due to the Wall Street Journal’s fake and defamatory conduct, they will not be one of the thirteen outlets on board,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

The Journal declined comment on the action.

Aggressiveness with the press is in the Trump playbook

It’s a tactic the Trump White House has used before. It restricted the access of journalists from The Associated Press to press events when the news outlet would not change its style guidelines to reflect Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. That launched a legal battle that is wending its way through the courts.

The defamation lawsuit is another tool Trump has used against media outlets. He has sued CBS News for its editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with former opponent Kamala Harris; ABC News for a false statement made by George Stephanopoulos in a story regarding a New York writer who had accused Trump of sexual abuse; and Meta after it removed Trump’s social media accounts following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

In each of those cases, Trump won multimillion-dollar settlements. But in those instances, news was only one part of a major corporation’s business. In the case of Murdoch and News Corp., news is the chief part of his business. The Journal has vowed to fight.

It’s also the first time Trump has sued for defamation as a sitting president, and it’s not clear whether any president has done that in the past.

“There’s nothing inherently wrong with a president bringing a libel suit,” said noted free speech attorney Floyd Abrams. “But this claim certainly seems like nothing more or less than an effort to suppress speech that our president finds discomforting. That’s not why we have libel law. It’s why we have a First Amendment.”

News organizations have reacted in varied ways

It’s all part of a broader pattern of trying to intimidate news organizations that report stories Trump does not like, said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

“These are lawsuits that have no hope of actually succeeding as lawsuits, but nevertheless have the potential to chill media organizations from doing what all of us need them to do,” Jaffer said.

Not every news organization has bowed down; “60 Minutes,” in fact, did some notably tough stories about the early days of Trump’s second administration. But it’s impossible to quantify stories that weren’t done because of fear of a fight with the White House, he said.

The Wall Street Journal leans conservative editorially, but hasn’t been afraid to take Trump on in both its opinion and news sections. Other Murdoch outlets — Fox News Channel and the New York Post — are much friendlier to him.

Ever since the administration announced that it would not be releasing additional government files from the case against Epstein, factions of Trump’s base supporters have turned on him. That has put some normally supportive news outlets in a difficult position.

Fox News largely avoided the story after Trump suggested his allies stop wasting time on it. But Fox’s Howard Kurtz reported on The Wall Street Journal lawsuit on his “Media Buzz” show Sunday, saying that by doing so, “the president has drawn extra attention to the Journal’s reporting.”

The president’s battle with the press has taken on several dimensions. He has been fighting to take away government support for news organizations like Voice of America, and last week the Republican-controlled Congress voted to take away federal funding from NPR and PBS because the president says their news programming is biased against conservatives.

David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.

By KEVIN FREKING

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s tax and spending law will add $3.4 trillion to federal deficits through 2034, the Congressional Budget Office reported Monday, a slight increase in the projection that takes into account the final tweaks that Republicans made before getting the legislation over the finish line.

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More than 10 million people will be uninsured under the law in 2034 because of the law, CBO found, an improvement from an earlier projection that found 11.8 million people losing coverage over the decade.

The release of the CBO analysis Monday comes at the end of a grueling legislative fight, but at the start of a longer political struggle to come as the two parties clash over the law’s impact on the economy, healthcare and government programs. Republicans are touting the bill as a tax cut for all Americans, yet a recent AP-NORC poll found about two-thirds of U.S. adults expect the new tax law will help the rich as Democrats attack the legislation.

The bill Trump signed into law on July 4 extended current tax rates for individuals that were set to expire at the end of this year and temporarily created new tax deductions for tips, overtime and auto interest loans for new vehicles assembled in the U.S. Republicans also used the bill to cut future spending on Medicaid and food assistance, and to phase out certain clean energy tax credits more quickly.

Democrats were quick to highlight the CBO’s findings.

“Today’s report reminds us of something: facts are stubborn and the facts are clear,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. ”The big, ugly betrayal is a loser for the country and will be a loser for the Republicans.”

Republicans say the bill was critical to ensure most Americans didn’t experience a significant tax increase next year. Trump and Republicans have also insisted that economic growth will exceed the CBO’s projections for the next decade, erasing the projected deficits as more revenue comes into the Treasury than anticipated.

Nonpartisan fiscal watchdogs also highlighted the CBO’s latest projection. Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said there will be a shorter-term “sugar high” as stimulus makes its way through the economy. But modelers from across the ideological spectrum agree that any sustained economic changes are likely to be modestly beneficial, or negative.

“And not one serious estimate claims this bill will improve our fiscal situation,” MacGuineas said. “Rather, positive growth effects are likely to be swamped by the effects of higher debt and interest rates.”

The CBO said more than $1 trillion in deficit savings is generated through the health portions of the bill, which includes new work requirements for certain Medicaid beneficiaries in states that expanded the program through the Affordable Care Act.

Some late changes on Medicaid were made to the bill to win over holdouts. One of those changes added a $50 billion fund for rural hospitals.

Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.