DeVos Urges Education Department Employees To ‘Be The Resistance’ In Biden Administration

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 12: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos listens to U.S. President Donald Trump talk to reporters during a cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room at the White House February 12, 2019 in Washington, ... WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 12: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos listens to U.S. President Donald Trump talk to reporters during a cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room at the White House February 12, 2019 in Washington, DC. Trump said he was not happy about the compromise legislation agreed to by Republicans and Democrats that would prevent a new partial federal government shutdown but said he would accept the deal. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) MORE LESS
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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos urged career employees at the Education Department on Tuesday to “be the resistance” when President-elect Joe Biden ushers in his new administration next month.

“Let me leave you with this plea: Resist,” DeVos said, according to a recording of remarks made at a department-wide virtual meting obtained by Politico. “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.”

According to the publication, DeVos acknowledged that a majority of the agency’s career employees “will be here through the coming transition and beyond,” during the virtual meeting convened to discuss Biden’s transition. 

The secretary touted her widely criticized overhaul of Title IX rules governing sexual assault and misconduct in schools and college as one of her top accomplishments, telling Education Department employees on Tuesday that her goal “in everything we accomplished was to do what’s right for students.”

“Four years later it’s still my focus and it’s still my hope for all of you,” Devos said in her call for resistance after years spent undermining the career employees of her department and blaming bureaucrats at the agency for making it difficult to get things done.

Political appointees at the Education Department sought to investigate and punish career employees who they suspected had leaked department information to the press which President Donald Trump has repeatedly demonized as “the enemy of the people.”

Trump administration officials have also criticized career employees in some government agencies for challenging Trump’s false narratives about the coronavirus pandemic when it came to the safe reopening of schools.

The department has not said whether DeVos has plans to stay in office until Jan. 20 when Biden is inaugurated. According to Politico, however, department officials said during the meeting that they have lined up career officials to take over temporarily in roles left vacant by political appointees in the coming weeks.

Notable Replies

  1. Avatar for jw1 jw1 says:

    Fall down a flight of stairs Cruella.

  2. DeVos is an uneducated goon with fascism in her DNA. To think that she was head of the Education Department is a damned embarrassment.

  3. Utterly destructive to the very end.

  4. Corporations are students too I guess.

  5. Right Bets…just like YOU were. You put the ‘religious schools’ and the corporations that built charter schools over the STUDENTS. You screwed the STUDENTS with loans to pay the exorbitant tuition costs because you didn’t ‘believe’ in subsidizing. Your sanctimony is hard to take. Go home.

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