Good morning. Welcome, Naxios today. It's Wednesday, August 30th. I'm Myla Boudou.

Today on the show, inside the new business boom of 2023, plus the latest on Hurricane

Idalia, and our one big thing. Foreign language cuts at one university stoke nationwide fears.

We start this morning in Florida, where 22 counties are under evacuation orders from

Hurricane Idalia, which as forecast overnight has gone from a category one to a category

four storm. The major worries for the system are its storm surge, with forecasts of water

as high as 12 to 16 feet, and what forecasters are calling life-threatening winds of 130

miles per hour or higher. Idalia is expected to make landfall later this morning in Florida's

big bend region. That's where the Florida Panhandle curves into the peninsula, and where no

major hurricane has ever been recorded to hit. The 5A advisory from the National Hurricane Center

said Hurricane warnings are also now in effect for parts of eastern Georgia and

southeastern South Carolina. Please visit axios.com for the latest info on Idalia and hoping

everyone in its path can stay safe today. West Virginia University announced this month

it would eliminate 32 of 338 majors, or about 9 percent of its course catalog.

Well, WVU is staring down a $45 million budget deficit. Some of the biggest proposed cuts are to

the languages program, and humanity scholars and others are worried this could be a blueprint

for attacks on higher education. Axios' Jennifer Kingston has been following this story.

Hi, Jennifer. Hi, Naila. First off, why is West Virginia University doing this? Is it all about

the money? The university says that this is a dollars driven decision that's based on declining

enrollments in specific language majors, but professors in the department and academics more broadly

tell a very different story about liberal arts and languages being a convenient target for cuts

from educators who want to steer their universities towards bigger classes that are more

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