The Wall Street Journal’s personal tech columnist Nicole Nguyen shares why it might be a good idea to delete certain personal data about yourself online. Amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on free speech and initiatives aimed at bolstering diversity, teachers are worried they might run afoul of new, vague rules around discussions of inclusivity. NPR has the story. The value of the dollar is in question as a result of Trump’s trade war. The Washington Post’s David Lynch has the details. Plus, colleges band together to condemn Trump, the executive producer of ‘60 Minutes’ resigns, Montana confirms the first measles infections in the state in 35 years, and a woman forgives and hugs the mass shooter who killed her brother. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Chapter 1: Who is Shumita Basu and what is today's show about?
Good morning. It's Wednesday, April 23rd. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. 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.
Chapter 2: What are the new challenges educators face regarding diversity and inclusion?
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.
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.
Chapter 3: What happened in the Brevard County School Board meeting about a teacher's dismissal?
Ma'am, I'm going to go ahead and stop you.
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. We have to recess this meeting. If you continue to cause a disruption.
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.
Chapter 4: How are schools responding to the Trump administration's directives on DEI programs?
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.
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. 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.
In another incident in Idaho, a sixth grade teacher named Sarah Inama 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. 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.
Chapter 5: What was the controversy involving teacher Sarah Inama and classroom posters?
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. 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.
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.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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?
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Chapter 6: How is the value of the US dollar impacting the economy according to experts?
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.
And the reason for that is that 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. When they don't know what else to do, they rush into treasuries, rush into dollars.
Chapter 7: What insights does David Lynch provide on the recent fluctuations in the bond and stock markets?
But that didn't happen in this case.
Stock prices fell, but bond prices fell at the same time, which is really unusual. 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. You can drive it for a little while, but when that light starts blinking, you know you 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. 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. 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.
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.
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. 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.
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? A recent piece from The Wall Street Journal personal tech columnist Nicole Nguyen titled Go Delete Yourself from the Internet tells you how to do exactly that.
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.
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