Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is suddenly a big fan of the deep state. In a message to Education Department career employees, DeVos noted that most of them would be staying on into a Biden administration, and gave them a charge: “Resist.”
“Let me leave you with this plea: Resist,” DeVos said. “Be the resistance against forces that will derail you from doing what’s right for students. In everything you do, please put students first—always.”
To DeVos, “what’s right for students” is privatized education, at Christian schools where possible, with those schools having the right to discriminate against LGBTQ kids. In higher education, it’s expanded protections for alleged rapists and fewer protections for victims, as well as weaker oversight of for-profit colleges and universities.
That’s what she’s asking the career employees of the Education Department to “resist” on behalf of.
In between DeVos stepping down—whether that happens before or on Inauguration Day—and a new education secretary being confirmed, the acting education secretary will be Phil Rosenfelt, a career employee who performed the same role in 2017.