Virginia Foxx May Lose Her Seat in Congress

You would think the long-time chair of the U.S. House of Representatives committee focused on education would be a steadfast champion of America’s students. But Representative Virginia Foxx — a 10-term Republican from North Carolina who is currently trailing Democrat Chuck Hubbard by 99 votes in the state’s 5th District and is in danger of losing her seat — hasn’t always seemed to put students first.

And I don’t just mean the rather hostile letter that Foxx sent this year to Greensboro, NC, 4th grader Christian Mango, who dared to write Foxx, as part of a school assignment, sharing his essay citing the potential benefits of electric vehicles. Foxx, a former college president, wrote back, “Ask your teacher to explain propaganda to you…. My guess is that your teacher will not be able to give you a good educational experience by helping you. Because they are too interested in indoctrinating you. How sad.”

Also very sad, to me at least, is that Virginia Foxx, 83, has long been the undisputed Capitol Hill champion of for-profit colleges, the predatory industry responsible for ruining the lives of so many students who have enrolled seeking a better life. Foxx, who was forced by House GOP rules to give up the education chair last year and is now chair of the House Rules Committee, has also been consistently one of the largest recipients of campaign cash from the for-profit college industry. Her total annual haul from industry executives never seemed to exceed around $100,000, but that, and perhaps the fellowship of industry executives, has seemed to be enough to make Foxx a pugilistic attack dog when people dared to bring up the deceptive practices, high prices, low graduation rates, poor job outcomes, and overwhelming student debt burdens at many for-profit schools.

But it has seemed that Virginia Foxx doesn’t need much prompting to go on the attack generally. Her, let’s say, impatience is well-known among folks who have gotten in her way on Capitol Hill and elsewhere.

Ask folks who have dared to hitch a ride on the Capitol’s sometimes members-only elevators, or even Rep. Byron Donalds  (R-FL) (now Florida’s governor-elect) when his group got in the way of the elevator door; Foxx shouted at them, “Move move move move…. get away from the damned elevator! Go find a place to talk.”

Ask the poor  pedestrians who reportedly just narrowly escaped Foxx’s vehicle after they dared enter a crosswalk when she was turning right on red.

Ask the reporter who dared asked House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) about his role in trying to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory and got told by an angry Foxx, “Shut up!”

I personally witnessed Foxx bark at a young man, pictured below to her left, because as she grabbed a seat at the Charlotte airport, she didn’t like the placement of his bag on the floor. (He quickly moved it to the other side.)

“I am really, really focused on not wasting time,” Foxx has explained. And if you’re now wondering where she got her Southern charm, note that the former Virginia Ann Palmieri was born, and lived until age 6, in busy New York City, before moving with her family to more sedate Linville Falls in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains.

But this website has long been focused less on manners than on corruption and abuses in higher education, so let’s discuss Virginia Foxx’s record there.

For more than a decade, Foxx led the charge in Congress opposing a rule, called gainful employment, pursued by the Obama and Biden administrations (and cancelled by the first Trump administration), to hold for-profit schools, and non-profit career training programs, accountable if they consistently leave students with debt they cannot afford to repay.

Once, in attacking the rule, Foxx paraphrased a well-known quote about the Holocaust. She scolded a group of officials of non-profit schools that they should have actively opposed the rule, and she invoked the words of  German theologian Martin Niemöller about his fellow countrymen who repeatedly failed to oppose Nazi abuses — “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist.” Foxx’s version: “They came for the for-profits, and I didn’t speak up.” (Asked if Foxx was suggesting that the Obama regulations were comparable to the Holocaust, her spokeswoman said, “Of course not.”)

Foxx hasn’t seemed to be bothered by the numerous reports of people —veterans, single moms, and others, including in her home state — deceived, abused, overcharged, and left in debt by predatory colleges.

Foxx has seemed particularly determined to defend Arthur Keiser, a politically active Floridian donor who converted his largest for-profit school into a non-profit on absurd terms that allowed him to gain all the regulatory and reputational advantages of non-profit status while still earning millions annually off the school.

At an April 2021 hearing, after the Democrats had taken back the House and Foxx was demoted from Education and Labor chair to the committee’s ranking member, Foxx tried to run interference, proclaiming that there was nothing to see here with respect to the conversions of Keiser and other for-profit schools. The issue, Foxx asserted, was unimportant, because it affected a very small number of colleges and involved only “the possibility of a narrow type of fraud.” “Whooppee!” she scoffed. Foxx attacked a 2021 Government Accountability Office report, requested by committee chair Bobby Scott (D-VA), on the issue of conversions and argued that the committee lacked jurisdiction. Democrats, she charged, were “chasing phantoms,” had a “socialist” agenda, and wanted to “eliminate” for-profit education.

When I tried to argue in 2019 testimony before the House oversight committee, that Republicans should naturally be opposed to the massive waste, fraud, and abuse in the for-profit college industry, I saw some Republicans on the panel, perhaps new to the issue, seeming to nod in agreement. Foxx, who did not serve on the committee, suddenly showed up, took a seat on the dais, and started arguing in favor of the industry.

Foxx has aggressively sought funding from the industry, including, in 2020, apparently pressuring the head of CECU to push his industry’s executives to ratchet up their campaign giving to the GOP. CECU’s CEO at the time was former Republican congressman Steve Gunderson (WI), who reported Foxx’s urgent plea in an email we obtained.

In 2022, we exposed that Foxx, at the start of a “District Work Period,” during which House members normally go home to meet with constituents, instead was in the Miami area, at the for-profit Miami Media School, attending an event to raise money for her campaign from Florida for-profit college operators, including Keiser.

Democrat Hubbard, who lost to Foxx in 2024 by 19 percentage points, has claimed victory in the 2026 race, but Foxx has declined to concede, noting that there provisional ballots left to be counted, and could potentially seek a recount under her state’s laws.

If you find yourself in Virginia Foxx’s path as she heads toward a recount, watch out.