--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Wednesday, April 23rd. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, why economists are worried about the value of the dollar. It might be time to delete yourself from the internet. And the executive producer of 60 Minutes resigns. But first, educators across the country are trying to figure out in real time if their lesson plans, library books, classroom decor, or even how they speak to their students might be perceived as going against the Trump administration or local government's stated goals around eliminating programs that support diversity, equity and inclusion.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Just yesterday, a meeting of the Brevard County School Board in Florida descended into chaos as teachers and others attempted to speak up in defense of Melissa Calhoun, a teacher with over a decade of experience who lost her job in the district after calling a high school student by their preferred name instead of their legal name.
--:-- [Audio of a meeting]
--:-- Shamita Basu: Ma'am, I'm going to go ahead and stop. Let me finish and I'll let you speak. OK, so I'm going to give you a warning that you're supposed to speak during your time. OK, it's a warning to those in attendance. So if you cause a disruption, you will be asked to leave the premise. We have to recess this meeting. If you continue to cause a disruption.
--:-- Shamita Basu: School board members threatened to have meeting attendees removed. A motion to bring back this teacher and, quote, retrain her was brought up at the meeting. It failed. Her teaching credentials are also under review by the state board.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Washington Post reports this is the first known dismissal to come from the campaign to crack down on teachers who recognize alternative gender identities in the classroom. Florida is one of 14 states that now have a rule that bars school staff from using students' alternative names or pronouns.
--:-- Shamita Basu: President Trump signed an executive order in January that directs the Department of Education to rescind federal funds from schools that don't follow its guidance to eliminate DEI and what it refers to as divisive ideology from schools.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But the order itself is quite vague, which some educators say has made it extremely difficult for them to interpret and has left them afraid for their jobs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In another incident in Idaho, a sixth-grade teacher named Sarah Ainama was directed by her district to remove two posters from her classroom. One said, quote, everyone is welcome here above an illustration of hands with different skin tones.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The other said everyone is, quote, welcome, important, accepted, respected, encouraged, valued and equal. The backdrop of each word was a color of the rainbow. The school district told Inama it wasn't the words on these posters that were a potential problem, but rather the colors of the rainbow and the different skin tones on the illustrated hands.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The school district said they violated policy requiring classroom content to remain neutral. At first, Inama took down the posters, but she told NPR that made her feel gross. So she put them back up.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She told NPR a district staffer confronted her. He told me that political environments ebb and flow and what might not have been controversial three or six or nine months ago can be considered controversial now.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She says she still has the Everyone is Welcome poster up now. When I was told that it doesn't allow for people to express differing opinions, there's only two opinions of that poster. You either believe that everyone is welcome here or you don't.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I just was so shocked. As a result of the on-again, off-again tariff policy from the Trump administration, there's been a lot of attention on the fluctuations in the stock market.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The market swung wildly at the start of the month, prompting brokerages like J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and S&P to raise their odds of a recession in the United States.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And economists are also watching the value of the U.S. dollar with growing concern. It dropped to a three-year low at the start of the week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And since Inauguration Day, the dollar has lost almost 10 percent of its value. So what does that mean for the health of our economy?
--:-- Shamita Basu: We called up David Lynch, a global economics correspondent for The Washington Post, and he explained Trump's tariff announcement in early April was the type of event that usually spurs more investment in treasuries and bonds, which investors typically consider to be more stable assets.
--:-- David Lynch: The treasury market is the biggest bond market on the planet, $28 trillion. So it's big, it's liquid, it's easy to get in and get out. And so that makes it attractive to investors.
--:-- David Lynch: When they don't know what else to do, they rush into treasuries, rush into dollars. But that didn't happen in this case. Stock prices fell, but bond prices fell at the same time, which is really unusual.
--:-- David Lynch: And when the price of a bond falls, not to get too technical, the yield on it or the interest rate it carries goes up. And that was like a red warning light flashing on the dashboard of an old car.
--:-- David Lynch: You can drive it for a little while, but when that light starts blinking, you know you've got a problem. Rising yields can drive up interest rates for mortgages, credit cards, and pretty much every type of consumer loan, which can make people hesitant to make big purchases.
--:-- David Lynch: And long term, it can hurt the financial system by putting a bigger strain on the balance sheets of big banks and firms. So what consumers and businesses do at a time like this is they just freeze.
--:-- David Lynch: And that's why economists worry that all this uncertainty multiplied by millions and millions of individual consumers, all feeling uncertain, can have a chilling effect.
--:-- David Lynch: Now, Lynch told us that it's important to not read too much into what falling bond prices might mean for the future. However, during this tariff episode, suggested to a lot of prominent and smart people that global investors were losing confidence in the future of the dollar, the future of the treasury market, and that they were doing so because when they looked at Washington, they didn't see a steady hand at the wheel.
--:-- David Lynch: In the meantime, investors are continuing to monitor the situation, looking towards company earnings and economic reports, as well as trade talk developments for signals of what will come next.
--:-- David Lynch: Lynch writes that, at least so far, there aren't indications that the recent change in the dollar's value will impact the currency's global status permanently.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Do you know just how much of your personal information is floating around on the internet for anyone to find? Things like your home address, phone number, birthday, or names of family and friends?
--:-- Shamita Basu: A recent piece from the Wall Street Journal's personal tech columnist Nicole Nguyen titled Go Delete Yourself from the Internet tells you how to do exactly that.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And you better believe that was an instant click from me. Now, I'll get to the tips in just a second. But first, it's important to understand why you should delete personal data from the Internet.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As Nguyen explains, there are a lot of risks that come with leaving personal data exposed, from relatively benign nuisances like getting more junk mail to much more serious threats like identity theft or impersonation scams.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Especially deep fake voice scams. And there are billions of lost every year in this type of cybercrime. Anyone who has a buck and some time can learn a lot about you. And the more they know about you, the more enticing and convincing that attack can be.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A lot of your personal data online can be found by scammers for free through social media and public government records. Things like speeding tickets or home sale records.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But there's also an entire industry for personal data, where data brokers scrape the internet for information on you, digging into things like magazine subscriptions, credit card applications, and warranty cards, and then they package that information up for a price.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Avoiding the data brokers isn't easy. You have to live off the grid, avoid online shopping, never sign up for a credit card, I realize that this is extremely hard to do. But you can prevent some of this information from leaking out.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Nguyen recommends using a burner email and phone number to shop online. Don't post publicly on social media either, and try to avoid sharing your birthday with websites.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But that's not all. Turn on Do Not Track on your phone. This prevents the tracking of activity across different websites. And that's what allowed data brokers to connect your behavior as you search the web.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that information is for sale. If you want to figure out what personal information data brokers have collected about you, there are a few tools. Google has a free one called Results About You, which surfaces search results that contain your personal data.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can use it to request to have your data removed from those sites. And if you really want to keep your exposure low, you'll have to comb through people search websites and data brokers to request they delete your information too.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, that can get pretty tedious. There are hundreds of these sites, and you'll need to rescan the internet a few times a year and repeat the process. But there are a couple of tools for a price that can do the work for you on an ongoing basis.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The services Nguyen mentions by name in the article are called Optory and DeleteMe. These services ask each data broker and PeopleSearch database to remove your information from them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You have to pay them a fee, but you don't have to pay them to give you an exposure report. And if hearing all of this as you feeling a little overwhelmed, just know Nguyen says the reality is it's really hard to not leave digital breadcrumbs these days.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So be patient, be aware, and just do your best to stay vigilant.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. The presidents of more than 200 colleges and universities signed a letter on Tuesday condemning the Trump administration's attempts to shape policy at higher education institutions by threatening to revoke their federal funding.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The administration has paused billions of dollars in federal grants in recent weeks to pressure some of the nation's most prestigious schools to change hiring and admissions, to shut down DEI programs, and in some cases to hand over disciplinary records for students who participated in protests against Israel's war in Gaza.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The White House, in response, said the administration, quote, will not be swayed by worthless letters by overpaid blowhards.
--:-- Shamita Basu: An unusual moment in a hearing for the gunman who killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso in 2019, Yolanda Tinajero, whose brother was killed, told the gunman she forgave him and wished that she could give him a hug, and the judge allowed it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Patrick Crucius had driven to El Paso to shoot people and stop what he called the Hispanic invasion of Texas. Tinajero said to him in court, If he would have gotten to know their culture, it would have turned his ugly thoughts around.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Crucius will serve multiple life sentences after pleading guilty to capital murder and 22 counts of aggravated assault.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In media news, the executive producer of 60 Minutes, Bill Owens, quit yesterday because he said he could no longer run the show with editorial independents.
--:-- Shamita Basu: CBS and 60 Minutes have been involved in a legal battle with President Trump since 2024 when Trump sued the network for $10 million over an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a promotional preview of that episode, 60 Minutes shortened one of Harris's answers, which Trump claims the show did to make her look better.
--:-- Shamita Basu: 60 Minutes has described it as a common practice. A number of legal experts have called Trump's argument indefensible.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After Owens resigned, the president of CBS praised him for his, quote, unwavering integrity, curiosity, and a deep commitment to the truth.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, an update on the measles. First, in Texas, officials say more than 600 cases have now been confirmed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So far, two unvaccinated children with no underlying conditions have died in Texas. Cases in New Mexico and Oklahoma have been linked to that outbreak.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Meanwhile, health officials in Montana last week confirmed the first cases of measles in the state in 35 years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Five individuals who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown are currently isolated at home.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Montana health authorities say those infected are adults and children who were exposed while traveling outside of the state.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the news app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly has been working on a new drug to address diabetes and weight loss. What makes it stand out from other options on the market, though, is that it's a pill, not an injection.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The early phase studies of its effectiveness have been promising, and Time Magazine spoke to the team behind it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story. And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
