Wrestling with the Education Department

Summary

Podcast Summary: Today, Explained – "Wrestling with the Education Department"

Release Date: December 2, 2024
Hosts: Sean Rameswaram and Noel King, Vox

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1. Republican Movement to Abolish the Department of Education

Key Discussion: The episode opens with a discussion about Senator Mike Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, who has introduced a bill aimed at abolishing the Department of Education (DOE). This initiative is rooted in the belief that education decisions should primarily be made at the state and local levels rather than by a federal entity.

Notable Quotes:

• Senator Mike Rounds: "We're going to end education coming out of Washington. We're going to close it up. All those buildings all over the place and you have people, can it be done?" [00:28]
• Erica Meltzer: "It would require an act of Congress to get rid of the Department of Education. I don't know that there's enough support among Republicans. There's certainly not 60 votes in the Senate to do it. So as long as we have a filibuster, I think it's probably not happening." [00:37]

Analysis: Erica Meltzer, Chalkbeat's national editor, highlights the significant challenges in dismantling the DOE, primarily the lack of sufficient support within the Republican party to achieve the necessary 60 Senate votes. The idea of abolishing the department, despite its longstanding presence, faces substantial procedural and political hurdles.

2. Linda McMahon's Nomination as Education Secretary

Key Discussion: The conversation shifts to Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump's nominee for Education Secretary. McMahon, primarily known for co-founding the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) with her husband Vince McMahon, has limited direct experience in the education sector.

Notable Quotes:

• Erica Meltzer: "She doesn't have a lot of education experience. She did serve briefly on the Connecticut State Board of Education... but she's primarily known as one of the founders of WWE, the wrestling entertainment empire." [03:04]
• Unnamed Contributor: "Donald Trump is in a world he has no... We had had a couple of business interactions with WWE... a very good working relationship." [03:55]
• Erica Meltzer: "She's involved in both a think tank and a super PAC that spent a lot of money to help get Donald Trump elected. And she co-chairs his transition team." [04:31]

Analysis: Linda McMahon's nomination has sparked discussions about her qualifications, given her extensive background in business and entertainment rather than education. Her close ties to Trump and involvement in pro-Trump organizations underscore her alignment with the administration's broader political agenda.

3. Donald Trump's Education Priorities

Key Discussion: President Trump’s educational agenda is characterized by a desire to reduce federal involvement in education. Core priorities include abolishing the DOE, promoting school choice, and eliminating what he terms "woke" and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices in education.

Notable Quotes:

• Erica Meltzer: "He's talked a lot about getting quote, unquote, woke out of education. It's not entirely clear what that means or what that would look like." [05:25]
• Unnamed Contributor: "These standards will include defending the American tradition in Western civilization, protecting free speech, eliminating wasteful administrative positions..." [06:06]

Analysis: Trump’s policies aim to decentralize education control, advocating for increased parental choice and reduced federal oversight. This includes expanding voucher programs and education savings accounts, which allow public funds to be used for private or homeschooling options. Additionally, there is a focus on restructuring civil rights enforcement within education to align with conservative values.

4. Historical Republican Opposition to the Department of Education

Key Discussion: The episode delves into the historical context of Republican opposition to the DOE, tracing back to Ronald Reagan's administration. Reagan criticized the DOE as an unnecessary and ineffective bureaucratic entity, a stance that has persisted within the party.

Notable Quotes:

• Erica Meltzer: "Ronald Reagan... had promised that he was going to get rid of it. He thought it was this bad idea." [18:12]
• Unnamed Contributor: "Better education doesn't mean a bigger Department of Education. In fact, that department should be abolished." [18:20]
• Erica Meltzer: "The Department of Education is responsible for ensuring that students' civil rights are protected at school... Republicans have reacted to that as an example of government overreach." [07:52]

Analysis: Republican critiques of the DOE have historically centered on the belief in limited federal intervention and the promotion of local control over education. Initiatives like "A Nation at Risk" under Reagan highlighted perceived deficiencies in the education system, inadvertently reinforcing the necessity of some federal oversight despite initial opposition to the DOE's existence.

5. Recent Challenges: FAFSA Technical Glitches

Key Discussion: A significant portion of the episode addresses recent technical issues with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which has led to delays in financial aid processing for millions of students. This situation has intensified criticisms of the DOE's efficiency and competence.

Notable Quotes:

• Erica Meltzer: "The FAFSA is the Federal Financial Aid form. It was notoriously complicated... they decided to simplify it. But in the process... technical problems." [22:31]
• Unnamed Contributor: "This is about the integrity of a process that the Department of Education has totally failed at." [24:31]

Analysis: The technical failures in the FAFSA system exemplify the broader challenges faced by the DOE in managing and modernizing educational services. These issues have fueled partisan debates, with conservatives using the glitches to argue for reduced federal involvement and Democrats emphasizing the need for improved federal support and oversight.

6. Prospects for Reform and Abolishment of the Department of Education

Key Discussion: Erica Meltzer discusses the feasibility of significant reforms or the abolishment of the DOE under the current political climate. She suggests that while some functions of the DOE might be stripped away, complete dismantling remains unlikely in the near term.

Notable Quotes:

• Erica Meltzer: "Getting rid of the Department of Education would require an act of Congress, and I think would be controversial. I'm not sure that all Republicans even agree with that." [09:28]
• Erica Meltzer: "Since the election... there's some energy around the idea that people are talking about it in a new way." [25:01]

Analysis: Reform efforts are more likely to focus on reducing the DOE's scope rather than eliminating it entirely. The presence of strong conservative movements advocating for parental rights and local control, combined with Trump's unconventional approach to governance, suggests a gradual shift in education policy rather than abrupt dismantling.

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Conclusion: The episode "Wrestling with the Education Department" provides a comprehensive overview of the ongoing debates surrounding the DOE, highlighting Republican efforts to curtail its influence, scrutinizing the qualifications of key nominees like Linda McMahon, and examining the historical context of federal involvement in education. Recent challenges, such as the FAFSA technical issues, have further intensified calls for reform. While significant changes are on the horizon, complete abolishment of the DOE remains uncertain, with political and procedural obstacles presenting substantial barriers.

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Produced by Amanda Llewellyn and Peter Ballenan Rosen. Edited by Miranda Kennedy. Fact-Checked by Laura Bullard, Kim Eggleston, and Anouk Dussaud. Engineering by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Christian's daughter.

Transcript

[Noel King]

Senator Mike Rounds, Republican, South Dakota, remembered the name, just introduced a bill that would abolish the Department of Education. States, for the most part prefer to.

[Erica Meltzer]

Make their decisions on how they educate.

[Unnamed Contributor]

The children on their own.

[Noel King]

They really don't need a bureaucrat in.

[Unnamed Contributor]

Washington, D.C. sending out a one size fits all policy in order to receive federal funding in a particular.

[Noel King]

It matters because Rounds has a powerful ally on this one.

[Unnamed Contributor]

We're going to end education coming out of Washington. We're going to close it up. All those buildings all over the place and you have people, can it be done?

[Erica Meltzer]

It would require an act of Congress to get rid of the Department of Education. I don't know that there's enough support among Republicans. There's certainly not 60 votes in the Senate to do it. So as long as we have a filibuster, I think it's probably not happening.

[Noel King]

Then why has this idea held such appeal for 40 years? On today Explained Support for this episode comes from aws. AWS Generative AI gives you the tools.

[Unnamed Contributor]

To power your business forward with the.

[Noel King]

Security and speed of the world's most experienced cloud. Support for the show comes from ATT. What does it feel like to get the new iPhone 16 Pro with AT&T next up Anytime. It's like when you first light up the grill and think of all the mouthwatering possibilities. Learn how to get the new iPhone 16 Pro with Apple Intelligence on AT&T and the latest iPhone every year with ATT. Next up anytime ATT connecting changes everything. Apple Intelligence coming fall 2024 with Siri and device language set to US English. Some features and languages will be coming over the next year. $0 offer may not be available on future iPhones. Next Up Anytime feature may be discontinued at any time, subject to change. Additional fees. Terms and restrictions apply. See att.com iPhone for details.

[Unnamed Contributor]

What do you think Today Explained this?

[Erica Meltzer]

I don't know. So I'm Erica Meltzer and I'm the national editor at Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to education coverage.

[Noel King]

Perfect. All right, for those of us in the back of the classroom, what is the the Department of Education and what does it do?

[Erica Meltzer]

So the Department of Education is a cabinet level federal agency that provides support to schools. They oversee Title 1 funding which provides billions of dollars to high poverty schools. They provide information about best practices and a certain amount of oversight of low performing schools. They also run financial aid programs for higher education and they're responsible for civil rights enforcement, which I think is something that we'll probably talk about later in.

[Noel King]

The so Linda McMahon is Donald Trump's pick for education secretary. What do we know about her? What are her qualifications?

[Erica Meltzer]

Well, she doesn't have a lot of education experience. She did serve briefly on the Connecticut State Board of education in 2009 and 2010, and she served on the board of Sacred Heart University, which is a private Roman Catholic university. But she's primarily known as one of the founders of wwe, the wrestling entertainment empire that she founded with her husband, Vince McMahon.

[Unnamed Contributor]

On behalf of the entire McMahon family, you're fired.

[Erica Meltzer]

My wife, Linda McMahon, Stone Colt, Linda. And she has been very much in the Trump orbit. Trump made some appearances in professional wrestling.

[Noel King]

What's going on over here?

[Unnamed Contributor]

Donald Trump is in a world he has no.

[Erica Meltzer]

They've known each other for decades.

[Unnamed Contributor]

We had had a couple of business interactions with WWE and a couple of the properties that then Donald Trump, Mr. Trump owned and that WWE promoted in those facilities. And it was a very good working relationship.

[Erica Meltzer]

She served in his first administration at the head of the Small Business Administration.

[Unnamed Contributor]

As an entrepreneur myself, I have shared the experiences of our nation's small business owners. We are more than our products and services. We are, we are families.

[Erica Meltzer]

And she's involved in both a think tank and a super PAC that spent a lot of money to help get Donald Trump elected. And she co chairs his transition team. So she's very much a pick that comes from this sort of inner orbit of Trump loyalists.

[Unnamed Contributor]

He has the heart of a lion and the soul of a warrior. And I believe that if necessary, he would stand at the gates of hell to defend our country.

[Noel King]

Okay, so not a ton of experience in education? Some, but not a ton. A lot more experience in wrestling and with small business. What are Donald Trump's priorities when it comes to education?

[Erica Meltzer]

It's worth kind of saying at the outset that education has not actually been a huge part of his campaign. You know, he has talked a lot about abolishing the Department of Education and.

[Unnamed Contributor]

Sending all education and education work needs back to the states.

[Erica Meltzer]

And he's talked a lot about getting quote, unquote, woke out of education. It's not entirely clear what that means or what that would look like.

[Unnamed Contributor]

I have concepts of a plan.

[Erica Meltzer]

He's talked about promoting a more patriotic civics education, teach students to love their.

[Unnamed Contributor]

Country, not to hate their country like they're taught right now.

[Erica Meltzer]

He's talked about a very stripped down federal role. And he's also talked a lot about getting rid of WOKE and DEI practices in higher education and using the accreditation process to push changes in higher education.

[Unnamed Contributor]

These standards will include defending the American tradition in Western civilization, protecting free speech, eliminating wasteful administrative positions that drive up costs, incredibly, removing all Marxist diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucrats offering options.

[Erica Meltzer]

So the Department of Education is responsible for ensuring that students civil rights are protected at school. So under the Biden administration, Title IX protections on the basis of gender identity were made clearer and more explicit. And a lot of Republicans and conservatives have reacted to that as an example of government overreach that they believe would endanger cisgender girls who might have to share a restroom with a transgender classmate, or that it might impede the free speech of a teacher who doesn't believe that transgender identity is a thing. And that teacher wants to keep using the previous names and pronouns of a student. Republicans have said that they are going to roll these back. And then if you have a school where, you know, black boys make up 10% of the student body, but they make up half of the kids being suspended, things like that might be scrutinized as potential civil rights violations. Republicans have wanted to treat civil rights as a much more individualized type of concern, like, was someone being called a slur and the school didn't do anything about it.

[Noel King]

Okay, so there's stuff that Donald Trump has said and there's stuff that Linda McMahon has said. What has she said?

[Erica Meltzer]

Linda McMahon, through this America First Policy Institute, has been an advocate for school choice. The organization's education goals include more vouchers.

[Noel King]

For school choice and giving parents more say over curriculum.

[Unnamed Contributor]

Parents deserve the chance to send their children to the school that best meets each child's needs.

[Erica Meltzer]

What I think we're really seeing is we're seeing a push from the Republican Party and from the Trump administration away from public schools and into private schools, whether they're religious or not. Recently, we've seen a big expansion of private school choice in which families can get vouchers that they can either apply against tuition or in some cases, an education savings account that they can apply against homeschool expenses. And so families are getting public money that would have otherwise gone to, presumably, a public school that their child would have been attending, but now they can take that money and use it elsewhere. And this has been a really big priority for Republicans. And in about a dozen states in the last couple years, we've seen a major expansion of private school choice that used to be primarily for kids who were sort of seen as poorly served by public schools. And now we're getting into a situation where in some states, just about any family at any income level is eligible. And the fear is that this is taking money out of public school systems that really can't afford it and need all the resources that they can. What proponents would say back is, well, you haven't done a good job controlling the quality of public schools, and if my child is not going there, there's no reason to expect that my tax dollars would go to that school. But I think there's a concern that we're moving from public education as a collective good to something that's where the parental choice is sort of the supreme driving factor.

[Noel King]

Tell me how likely it is she can get some of these priorities accomplished.

[Erica Meltzer]

So I think there's a few things that could be done. I mean, I think sort of the big things that Trump talked about on the campaign trail, some of those things, like changes in civil rights enforcement, could happen at a much more administrative level. Getting rid of the Department of Education would require an act of Congress, and I think would be controversial. And I'm not sure that all Republicans even agree with that. So I think that's seen as less likely. And I think some of the stuff around, like getting woke out of education, sort of what the actual mechanics of that would be are a little hard to imagine, but the actual sort of mechanisms of controlling things at the classroom level are a little less clear.

[Noel King]

All right, so Linda McMahon will also have to be confirmed by the US Senate if she's going to get the job. What can we expect to hear during her Senate confirmation?

[Erica Meltzer]

Yeah, I mean, I expect that we'll hear a lot of questions about her experience or lack thereof. I think. I think that she'll be pressed on whether she supports this goal of getting rid of the Department of Education. She's also named in a lawsuit against wwe, against her wrestling company, that these teenage boys who were recruited to work as ring boys experienced sexual abuse. Five men who were between 13 and.

[Unnamed Contributor]

15 years old at the time say.

[Erica Meltzer]

They were taken advantage of.

[Unnamed Contributor]

McMahon denies the claims, but the lawsuit says she failed to protect the kids.

[Erica Meltzer]

I do expect that that will come up in her confirmation hearing. How much of an issue that is, I would say I think we're still learning what the bar is for this set of Cabinet picks. Like, obviously, Matt Gaetz is out. That's kind of a more extreme example. There are other allegations against some of his other Cabinet picks. I think we're sort of in a process of learning what kind of standard his picks will be held to. I would be surprised if people really want to go to the mat to try and block this nomination unless something more significant comes out between now and January or February.

[Noel King]

Erica Meltzer of Chalkbeat Coming up, the long history of trying to kill the DOE Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. If you're a finance manager, you're probably used to having to toggle between multiple disjointed tools just to keep track of everything. And sometimes that means there's limited visibility on business spend. I don't know what any of that means, but RA might be able to help. Ramp is a corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your back pocket. RAMP's accounting software automatically collects receipts, categorizes your expenses in real time. You can say goodbye to manual expense reports. You will never have to chase down a receipt again. You can customize spending limits and restrictions so your employees are empowered to purchase what your business needs. And you can have peace of mind. And now you can get $250 when you join ramp. You go to ramp.com explained ramp.com explained ramp.com Explained cards are issued by Sutton Bank, a member of the fdic, and terms and conditions do apply. Support for Today Explained comes from Deleteme. Deleteme thinks your data might be one of the most important things that you own, and that is the reason that data brokers value it so much. What is your data? Your name? Your contact information? Your address? These are just some of the examples, but you can help protect yourself with the services of DeleteMe. When you sign up for Deleteme, you'll see exactly the information you want deleted and their experts will take it from there. If you've got a loved one that wants to delete themselves, this could make a great gift. Our colleague Claire White actually did gift Deleteme to a friend, and here's what she had to say.

[Erica Meltzer]

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[Unnamed Contributor]

We move into the 1980s with confidence and hope and a bright vision of the America we want, an America with jobs and good health and good education for every citizen.

[Erica Meltzer]

And the hope there was that by having a standalone federal department that you would get more money and more attention on public education. But we have had public education for at least 100 years before that, and we would continue to have public education after that. Most funding for public education comes from state and local sources. That said, the Federal government provides 8 to 10% of funding, and this money is particularly important in high poverty schools where Title 1 funds help them do things like hire more social workers, keep class sizes small, hire classroom aides, provide tutoring and reading and math. And I think schools would definitely notice the lack of this funding if it went away. Depending on your political view, I think there's other things that the Department of Education does that people find valuable and that would be missed. The other thing that's important to discuss is that it's really unclear what would come after getting rid of the Department of Education. So, for example, there's different levels of detail in different plans. So if you look at Project 2025, they go function by function, by function of the Department of Education, and they say this function should go to the Department of Justice, like Civil Rights Enforcement. This function should go to the Department of Laboratory. This function should go to Department of Health and Human Services, and this function should go away entirely. If we start to talk about Republicans in Congress, I think you will find a range of views and not everyone will agree that we should get rid of the Department of Education, and not everyone will agree what that should look like.

[Noel King]

All right, so, Erica, what you're telling us is that Donald Trump is not the first conservative to say the Department of Education is a problem and we want to shut it down. When the Department of Education was first created and in the ensuing years, what has the Republican argument against it looked like and sounded like?

[Erica Meltzer]

So Ronald Reagan is elected basically right after the Department is created, and he had promised that he was going to get rid of it. He thought it was this bad idea.

[Unnamed Contributor]

Better education doesn't mean a bigger Department of Education. In fact, that department should be abolished. Instead, we must do a better job teaching the basics.

[Erica Meltzer]

And then his first education secretary commissions this report, A Nation at Risk, that outlines all these problems in education and how the United States is going to be at a disadvantage on the world stage because our students aren't graduating knowing enough. And that makes it really hard to get rid of the Department of Education, because clearly we need to fix this problem.

[Unnamed Contributor]

For the sake of all our children, our country, and our future. We must join together in a national campaign to restore excellence in American education.

[Erica Meltzer]

And so that was, you know, more than 40 years ago, and we still have a Department of Education under George W. Bush. You saw this articulation of a somewhat conservative but also bipartisan idea of the role of the federal government, where there was supposed to be a lot of accountability for schools based on their test scores. If students weren't making progress, there was going to be consequences for those schools. This is no Child Left Behind.

[Unnamed Contributor]

As of this hour, America's schools will be on a new path of reform and a new path of results.

[Erica Meltzer]

There turned out to be a fair number of challenges with implementation and actually making progress under this. I don't think there's really any defenders of no Child Left behind anymore. Like everyone says, they would have, I think, done it differently if they could do it again. But that is sort of the beginning of this enhanced federal role in school accountability that takes a new form under Obama.

[Unnamed Contributor]

And here's how Race to the Top works. First, we encourage states to adopt more challenging Standards that will actually prepare our kids for college and their careers. We also encourage schools to adopt better assessments.

[Erica Meltzer]

There's actually a huge Republican backlash to this, and I think to some degree, sort of the most current iteration of Republican ideas around education. I think to some degree still tied to this backlash to the Obama policies. People say, like, we're not. You're not going to tell us what to do.

[Unnamed Contributor]

The question is whether we believe Congress ought to write the laws or the United States Department of Education ought to write the laws. Article 1 of the United States Constitution says that the United States Congress, we should write the laws.

[Erica Meltzer]

So there's a couple different issues in play. Some of this is just philosophical, ideological. We favor smaller government. We favor a more constrained federal role. And education is primarily a local issue. So we shouldn't have a federal Department of Education.

[Unnamed Contributor]

90, 95% of your education dollars are state and local. That 100 billion gets swirled around in a big bureaucracy up there. They send rules down that don't help education. They hinder innovation. I would cut them out of the loop. I don't think you'd notice if the whole department, we're gone tomorrow, we might have a disagreement on that.

[Erica Meltzer]

No, we. And then some of it has to do with specific things that the department has done. So, for example, a lot of conservatives really disagree with the approach to civil rights enforcement under Democratic administrations. And of course, when they take control, they can change how civil rights enforcement is handled. But then if the Democrats come back in, then you get the Democratic approach again. And so let's just get rid of, of the department. And then I think people will point to the fact that many of the problems in education are very persistent and haven't necessarily improved a lot, like things like gaps between racial and ethnic groups in test scores and graduation rates, that these things have been very stubborn, probably because they're closely tied to socioeconomic issues. I mean, child poverty is a huge predictor of how kids do in school, and we have not solved child poverty. But what conservatives will say is like, look, we're spending all this money and we're not getting anything for it, so let's get rid of of the department. But what kind of counters that is that if you're saying that education is very important and schools aren't doing a good job, then that also kind of calls out for a federal role to fix it. And so I think that's why it's been a little bit hard to let go of the Department of Education, sort of, regardless of your political perspective, when.

[Noel King]

You Talk about the Department of Education screwing things up. One of the things that even if you don't have kids, even if you're not paying very careful attention, one of the things I think you may know about is the mess up with fafsa. This is the time of the year when many high school seniors choose their college. But millions are in limbo, still waiting to hear how much financial aid they can expect this year.

[Unnamed Contributor]

Frustration as improvements to the application caused a slew of technical glitches and processing delays.

[Erica Meltzer]

Yeah, so the FAFSA is the Federal Financial Aid form. It's pretty much the prerequisite to qualify for any kind of aid. It was notoriously complicated. It made people cry and feel very upset. And so they decided to simplify it. But in the process of simplifying it, they also decided we need to update all these computer systems, some of which are 40 and 50 years old. But this whole kind of massive IT update was not doable in the timeframe. And so the new FAFSA launched, and people encountered a lot of technical problems. I mean, I had a senior in high school filling out the form, and for, like, a minor technical issue, our form got held up for months and months and months. The normal decision date for college passed, and we didn't know what our financial aid package was going to be because our form had not been processed. Without these award packages, I can't make my final decision, which is ultimately delaying me getting to the finish line.

[Noel King]

Whoever modified or adjusted the FAFSA process for this year. Mm, mm. No, ma'am. No, sir. What in the world were you thinking?

[Erica Meltzer]

It was something that touched a lot of families, including, you know, a lot of sort of middle class families that don't necessarily otherwise have a lot of dissatisfaction. And I think it just fueled this idea that it's a bureaucratic mess, that people don't really know what they're doing over there.

[Unnamed Contributor]

This should not be partisan. It is about the students. It is about the parents. It is about the integrity of a process that the Department of Education has totally failed at.

[Noel King]

Erica, let me run a thought past you. Clearly, as you've laid out, people have been talking about big changes to the Department of Education for years, and not that much has actually changed. Why are we still entertaining the idea that a new president could come in, appoint a secretary, and blow the whole thing up?

[Erica Meltzer]

Donald Trump is not someone who kind of plays by the normal rules of government or abides by the traditional norms. And we also have the role of Project 2025, which was written by the Heritage foundation by a number. A lot of the authors were people who worked in his first administration. And so I think to some degree the aftermath of the pandemic where we see these really heated fights at school boards and just sort of this general dissatisfaction with education, and we have this really strong conservative parents rights movement. And so I think for people who have wanted this for a long time, for decades, it was just a line and a platform that no one really thought about. And now it feels like there's some energy around the idea that people are talking about it in a new way. And I actually feel like since the election I've even noticed a slight shift in the language that people use. Conservatives. I mean, so it used to be we're going to dismantle the Department of Education, and now I sometimes hear people say we're going to dismantle or diminish the Department of Education. And so you could I think it might be more likely that we keep the Department of Education, but that some of its functions are stripped away, that it has a more diminished role. And I think that would be more politically achievable as well.

[Noel King]

Erica Meltzer of Chalky, Amanda Llewellyn and Peter Ballenan Rosen produced today's show. We were edited by Miranda Kennedy, Fact Checked by Laura Bullard, Kim Eggleston and Anouk Dussaud. Patrick Boyd and Andrea Christian's daughter are our engineers. I'm Noel King. It's Today Explained.

[Erica Meltzer]

Sample.

[Noel King]

Support for this episode comes from AWS AWS Generative AI gives you the.

[Unnamed Contributor]

Tools to power your business forward with.

[Noel King]

The security and speed of the world's most experienced cloud. Support for this podcast comes from Stripe. Stripe is a payments and billing platform supporting millions of businesses around the world, including companies like uber, BMW and DoorDash. Stripe has helped countless startups and established companies alike reach their growth targets, make progress on their missions, and reach more customers globally. The platform offers a suite of specialized features and tools to fast track growth like Stripe Billing, which makes it easy to handle subscription based charges, invoicing and all recurring revenue management needs. You can learn how Stripe helps companies of all sizes make [e-mail] that's stripe.com to learn more. Stripe Make Progress.