We had been awaiting—and expecting the worst from—the Trump Department of Education's announcement that they would be making changes to administration policy toward campus rape.
Just as critics suspected, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos stood up in front of an audience at the Antonin Scalia Law School (no, really) and announced that what we need around here is to better consider the point of view of the accused rapists.
The Department of Education will change its approach to campus sexual misconduct and begin a public notice and comment process to issue new regulations, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced today. In a speech at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, DeVos decried "a system run amok," "kangaroo courts" and repeatedly emphasized the plight of the accused. "One rape is one too many ... one person denied due process is one too many," she said. Outside, protesters yelled, "Stop protecting rapists!"
Why would the Trump Administration feel the urgent need to rebalance campus scales in order to better recognize the "plight" of accused rapists? Well, there is the whole matter of Donald Trump being lifelong scum himself—but the real reason is probably simpler still.
Under Barack Obama, the Department of Education made a specific push to take campus rape more seriously, and issued very specific Title IX guidelines on how schools should respond to allegations of such violence. Because Obama Did It, the new administration took a look and decided they wanted to do Not That. The move is being spearheaded by Candice Jackson, a fervent Clinton opponent and Trump-defender appointed as a top department civil rights official by DeVos herself, who has faced criticism for being a terrible person. Jackson’s past hits have included the claim that she was discriminated against in college for being white, writing a scandal-peddling book purporting to show "The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine," orchestrating the appearance of said women at one of the 2016 presidential debates between Trump and Hillary Clinton and then listing that as an accomplishment on her resume when seeking an administration position, backing an economist who called the 1964 Civil Rights Act "monstrous" and "the source of all the rest of the ills," and a partnership with notorious crackpot Roger Stone, the man whose own similar book on the Clintons accuses the Clintons of serial murders. That’s for starters.
You put terrible people into important positions, you get predictable results. It'd be lovely if maybe the entire Republican Party wasn't now predicated on putting terrible people into important positions, but at this point it seems we're supposed to be grateful when they show up for their day jobs at all.