--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Wednesday, February 2nd. I'm Shamita Basu. And I'm Duarte Giraldino. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Today, the NFL is reckoning with racism on several fronts. Washington's team announced its new name. The previous name was a slur against Native Americans. They are now called the Washington Commanders.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: There's also an explosive new lawsuit from a Black coach. Former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores is suing the NFL and three teams. He's suing the Dolphins, the Denver Broncos, and the New York Giants.
--:-- Shamita Basu: His lawsuit alleges discrimination in the Dolphins firing of him, as well as in the interview processes for coaching positions with other teams. NFL teams have faced a lot of criticism over the years for failing to hire more black coaches.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Now, the league has attempted to address this with things like the Rooney Rule, which says teams have to interview minority candidates for open positions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: ESPN explains how one of the allegations in this lawsuit is that Flores' interview with the Giants was a sham. He says the team had already decided to hire another coach, but talked with him as a way to satisfy the Rooney rule.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: He also says the Broncos didn't take his interview seriously, that some people arrived late and hung over to that meeting.
--:-- Shamita Basu: All three teams have defended their actions, and the NFL said it's serious about diversity and that Flores' lawsuit is without merit.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: His attorney says Flores may not be the only person involved in the lawsuit. The long firm, it's looking at allegations from other coaches who could be part of a class action suit.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This year, teaching Black History Month in some public schools may be very different. Because of new laws that limit how teachers can talk about racism and sexism.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Education Week counts 14 states that have restricted what teachers can teach and 20 more states that are considering similar moves.
--:-- Shamita Basu: An NBC News investigation looks at how this is playing out in school libraries. Moves to ban books are growing, and according to the American Library Association, these bans often target Black authors.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: NBC News pulled records from several Texas school districts and found, during the first four months of this school year, there were 75 formal requests to remove books.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A year earlier, there was only one request during the same period.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: One parent in Texas asked the school district to ban a children's biography of Michelle Obama.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Another parent objected to the book How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi and instead suggested it be replaced with copies of the Bible.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: There's another case in Texas involving a dispute over a graphic novel called New Kid.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This book is not explicitly about racism, slavery, civil rights, or police brutality. It's about a 12-year-old Black kid who goes to a new, mostly white private school.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The author, Jerry Craft, talked to This American Life about the gap he was trying to fill in books that are designed for kids.
--:-- Jerry Craft: All the books with Black protagonists were history or misery. You know, no kid like me ever made it to the end of a book.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There was no dad, there was nothing, You know, the kids always lived on the south side of somewhere that was just really horrible, you know, and it was gangs or slavery or civil rights or police brutality.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And I'm like, can I just see a kid who the biggest problem of the day is whether he wants to play Xbox or PlayStation?
--:-- Jerry Craft: And that's why I do what I do. I make those books that I wish I had.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Kraft's book is semi-autobiographical, and it does mention racial slights or microaggressions, things that Kraft or his kids experienced themselves, like being called the wrong name or white classmates assuming black students love basketball or touching black students' hair.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Some parents in Texas argued that these scenes could psychologically harm white kids.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you watch CNBC from time to time, you're going to hear this guy giving his take on the markets. You can have 10 12 percent Now the negative stuff impresses me more longer term as I long term oriented
--:-- Leon Cooperman: That's legendary investor Leon Cooperman. He's worth somewhere around $2.5 billion.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's a level of wealth that's absolutely unrelatable to most people. Literally, only a few hundred Americans can comprehend his experience.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: That's why a profile of him in The Washington Post struck us as something that's worth reading.
--:-- Eli Saslow: It's written by Eli Saslow, who is this really talented reporter who's been writing stories about how ordinary people are dealing with the pandemic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So we asked him why he wanted to spend time with someone whose daily experience is way out of the ordinary.
--:-- Eli Saslow: It's easy to talk about billionaires as one of two things, right? Like people who are the great winners in American society and should be celebrated as thus. or people who have capitalized on a broken system and have contributed to, like, the disenfranchisement of huge numbers of people in an economy that's not working for a vast number of Americans.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The truth, I think, is messier in between.
--:-- Eli Saslow: Leon spends a lot of time talking about his relatively humble background. You know, he was born to poor immigrant parents in a small one-bedroom apartment in New York.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Leon worked remarkably hard to sort of get himself into college at a time when college tuition cost $24.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: He took a job making $12,000 a year. He worked his way up through financing until he was high up at Goldman Sachs and then running his own hedge fund.
--:-- Eli Saslow: Leon admits he has more money than he can ever spend. He and his wife have committed to giving away more than 90% of their wealth. They donate to dozens of organizations.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But right now, a lot of people are concerned about growing inequality. They're also very critical of billionaires.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And Leon, well, he's taking it personally.
--:-- Eli Saslow: Leon has suddenly been perceived very differently as in some ways like the villain in the American story of where we are right now as a country.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So instead of getting the congratulatory notes that he thinks that he deserves he instead sometimes getting death threats or attacked by politicians
--:-- Eli Saslow: Sasselow piece isn a defense or a critique of Leon It kind of just lays out all the contradictions He a billionaire who drives a Hyundai shops at Costco and donates to charity.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But he's also got a $5 million home with a custom infinity pool that he has never stepped foot in.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He calls a trading desk a dozen times a day to check his net worth.
--:-- Eli Saslow: Saslow thinks there's something worth understanding about people like Leon.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: I guess my hope is to take people beyond the place of stereotype and assumption and instead think about what are the fundamental problems here and what maybe are some of the ways that we can still work together in some respect to solve them, rather than name-calling and engaging in sort of warfare with one another.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's Groundhog Day and you probably know that a rodent is very unlikely to give you a better forecast than just opening up the weather app.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This is about tradition and a cute animal not science but that's not stopping the data journalism site 538 from throwing some serious analytical power at a fun question.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Can a groundhog be a good meteorologist?
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This is such a 538 piece. They've got charts on charts on charts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And as for Punxsutawney Phil, you know, the most famous groundhog, he doesn't have a great record.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This morning, Phil reportedly saw his shadow, which means a late spring.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But, you know, take that with a huge grain of salt.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: 538's analysis shows he's actually worse than just flipping a coin. He's only right about 36 6% of the time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: 538 doesn't stop there, of course. It also crunches the numbers on many other animal forecasters.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So if you want to see how other famous animals fared, I'm talking about prairie dog Pete, buckeye chuck, or Snohomish slough. That's a frog in Washington State, by the way.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Check out the whole story and all the infographics. It's on the Apple News app, along with all the stories we talked about today.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Goodbye for now.
