This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Betsy DeVos, the education secretary in waiting who has emerged as Donald Trump’s most controversial cabinet nominee, is likely to be confirmed in a dramatic vote on Tuesday. But opponents of the Republican megadonor insist the fight has only just begun.

Democrats mounted a marathon 24-hour takeover of the Senate floor that was still continuing on Tuesday morning, marking a show of overnight resistance against Trump’s divisive choice to head the Department of Education. With the chamber currently split 50-50, mostly along party lines, on DeVos’s nomination, Vice-President Mike Pence is expected to cast a rare tie-breaking vote in her favor on Tuesday after two Republicans came out against her confirmation last week.

The protest from Democrats, who are seeking just one more Republican defection to sink the DeVos nomination, capped off a grassroots push that snowballed in recent weeks from minor opposition to a full-blown public campaign. Tens of thousands of constituents inundated their senators with phone calls to express concerns about DeVos, a longtime conservative activist who has aggressively advocated for privatizing education through school vouchers.

And while the unusual uproar seemed unlikely to prevail, the drama surrounding DeVos signaled a tough road ahead as she prepares to assume the mantle of shaping America’s education policy for at least the next four years.

Trump's cabinet Confirmed

James Mattis (Defense), John Kelly (Homeland Security), Rex Tillerson (State), Elaine Chao (Transportation), Nikki Haley (United Nations), Betsy DeVos (Education), Jeff Sessions (Attorney General), Tom Price (Health and Human Services), Steve Mnuchin (Treasury), David Shulkin (Veterans Affairs), Scott Pruitt (Environmental Protection Agency), Wilbur Ross (Commerce), Ryan Zinke (Interior), Rick Perry (Energy), Ben Carson (Housing and Urban Development), Sonny Perdue (Agriculture), Alexander Acosta (Labor) Awaiting Senate approval

Linda McMahon (Small Business Association), Mick Mulvaney (Office of Management and Budget director), Robert Lighthizer (US trade representative) Withdrawn

Andrew Puzder (Labor) Not yet announced

Council of Economic Advisers chair



“One thing is very clear: if she is confirmed, she would enter the job as the most controversial and embattled secretary in the history of this department,” Patty Murray, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate health, education, labor and pensions (Help) committee, said Monday in remarks on the Senate floor. “She would start her job with no credibility inside the agency she is supposed to lead.

“With no influence in Congress. As the punchline in late-night comedy shows – and without the confidence of the American people,” Murray added.

Democrats have stonewalled many of Trump’s cabinet nominees, boycotting committee votes and using procedural tools to delay votes on the president’s picks for influential agencies, such as the departments of Health and Human Services and the Treasury.

But few have galvanized opponents with the same furor as DeVos, whose turbulent confirmation hearing last month raised doubts over her ability to serve at the helm of the body that is responsible for everything from student loans and education access to school standards and accountability.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, dubbed DeVos as “the least qualified nominee in a historically unqualified cabinet”.

“Cabinet secretaries can’t be expected to know everything. But this is different,” Schumer said in remarks on the Senate floor on Monday.

“The nominee for secretary of education doesn’t know some of the most basic facts about education policy.”

DeVos, a champion of charter schools who never attended public school, was introduced as a “change agent” from outside the education establishment during her contentious Senate confirmation hearing last month.

As a political activist and philanthropist, DeVos has spent decades lobbying to expand charter schools and voucher programs, which allow public funds to pay tuition at private and religious schools.

Her family spent millions advancing Pence’s voucher program in Indiana. On Fox News on Sunday, Pence called it a “high honor” to cast the deciding vote in her confirmation.

Yet DeVos has never held public office or worked as an educator. She never attended public school nor did she send her children to public schools. Opponents say her lack of experience is unprecedented.

In one exchange at her confirmation hearing, Senator Al Franken of Minnesota asked DeVos whether test scores should measure a student’s proficiency or their growth over time – an argument at the center of the education reform debate. DeVos appeared unfamiliar with the distinction.

“It surprises me that you don’t know this issue,” Franken said.

DeVos also declined in the hearing to take a position on whether guns should be allowed in schools, warning of the need to protect students against “potential grizzlies” in rural areas.

Clips of such moments instantly went viral and were played on loop during newscasts in the subsequent days.

Grover J Whitehurst, who served in the Department of Education under George W Bush, likened the hearing to “sharks and blood in the water”.

“She brought that on herself,” said Whitehurst, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “She exposed herself to attacks simply because of the weakness of her answers to questions.”

In another exchange, DeVos appeared confused about a federal civil rights law protecting students with disabilities and suggested it was an issue best left to individual states.

New Hampshire senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat whose son has cerebral palsy, asked DeVos if she understood it was already federal law. “I may have confused it,” DeVos conceded.

She also would not commit to upholding guidance issued by the Obama administration to combat sexual assault on campus.

Ed Partu, a spokesman for Friends of Betsy DeVos, a group of “friends and allies” dedicated to defending the Michigan billionaire during the confirmation process, said she could have been “more articulate” during the hearing.



But he attributed her performance to lack of experience as a political outsider while “fending off attacks from a dozen hostile, grandstanding senators whose only goal was to embarrass her”.

The aftermath nonetheless proved to be a turning point for DeVos’s opponents and prime fodder to late-night television, with Saturday Night Live lampooning DeVos in a skit mocking the daily White House press briefings.

CREDO Action, a progressive activist group, saw a petition it had launched against DeVos “explode” following the hearing, now with nearly 1.5m signatures. Signatories also went on to make more than 90,000 phone calls to senators in both parties.

Complaints from constituents were vital in persuading Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, the two Republican senators who currently stand to vote against DeVos. They emphasized that school choice was not an option in rural states such as theirs.

Republicans were otherwise unanimous in their support for DeVos, who along with her family has donated heavily to the party and its candidates. During the 2014 and 2016 election cycles alone, the DeVos family contributed at least $818,000 to 20 of the incumbent 52 Republican senators. That figure, compiled by the Washington Post, included more than a quarter of a million dollars toward five members of the committee tasked with considering her nomination.

During the 2014 and 2016 election cycles, DeVos and her relatives gave at least $818,000 to 20 current Republican senators, including more than $250,000 to five members of the Help committee, according to a Washington Post analysis of Federal Election Commission records.

Catherine Brown, the vice-president for education policy at the Center for American Progress, said DeVos’s nomination broke through among a controversial array of cabinet nominees because of how tangible the role is when compared with other cabinet posts.

“Education is an issue many people care about because it touches their kids and their communities,” she said.

Even if DeVos is confirmed, Brown added, a message had been sent as she sets out for the job.

“She’s hopefully gotten a very strong signal during this confirmation process that the main viewpoint she’s espoused and spent most of her time and education investing in – private school vouchers – is not popular and does not have the support of parents and teachers across the country,” Brown said.

Whitehurst said it will be incumbent upon DeVos if she is confirmed to “rebuild trust and goodwill” amongst parents and schools, in part by bringing in high-level leaders who express “an interest in public schooling”.

“That will be necessary if she’s not to be a bone of contention over the next four years.”