Welcome to the report card with Nat Malpice, the Education Policy podcast from the American Enterprise Institute.

A lot has happened over the last couple of months.

Elections were held in Virginia,

New Jersey, and New York City. The Trump administration continued waging war on elite universities.

The longest government shutdown in U.S. history came to an end. Cuts were made at the Department of Education, only to be reversed, at least for now, and Oklahoma's

controversial superintendent resigned. There's a lot to discuss here, too much for a single

episode. But to take up a few of the most important topics, I invited Rick and Andy back

onto the podcast. Andy Rotherham is a co-founder and senior partner at Bellwether,

and he's the author of the Eduwonk blog. Rick Hess is a senior fellow and the director of

Education Policy Studies here at the American Enterprise Institute. Quick note, this episode was

recorded on Monday. That was before the Trump administration announced further

plans to dismantle the Department of Education. We'll pick that up in a future episode.

Andy, Rick, welcome back to the report card. Hey, good to be with you, but. It's great to see you

both. All right. So there were recently elections in Virginia, New Jersey,

and New York City. Three places that tend to get a lot of focus in the education world. Okay,

maybe two places that tend to get a lot of focus. I don't know if New Jersey's been in the news for a while.

But Rick, Andy, you're probably both closest with the Virginia. So let's start there. Abigail Spamberger won the

governor's race by a large margin, larger than expected. Democrats have a trifecta in the state.

They considerably expanded their Virginia, the majority in the House of Delegates. Andy,

what does this all mean for education in the Commonwealth?

Yeah, it's the question everybody's asking. And I think you have to bifurcate it between

what does it mean for higher ed education? What does it mean for early ed and K-12? And on all

...