Free Republic

I have some genuine questions and I have no malice against Ron DeSantis or his supporters but a few things trouble me about him! He has the tacit support of the Bushes. I know they want anyone but Trump but as one Freeper put it: Will he blow kisses back? What does having their support mean? Does it mean Karl Rove becomes an advisor? Campaign cash, staff and what not? Think about it. It's not just some throw away endorsement by them it comes with serious muscle, donors, etc. He's also visiting Texas instead of CPAC. Will he be hanging...

Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is ripping President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan as unfair, politically motivated and “100% illegal.” “The president has no authority to just wave a magic wand and suddenly forgive billions and billions of dollars in student loan debt,” she told Fox News late Monday. “Congress has the power of the purse, not the president.” ... “It is totally unfair to all of those who have not taken out student loans,” she said. “And for those students who faithfully have been paying their student loans down, how does that work for them?” Ms. DeVos also said...

Betsy DeVos, who served as the U.S. Secretary of Education under former President Donald Trump, has called for the abolishment of the Department of Education. Speaking at the “Moms for Liberty” summit, DeVos said the federal government should be removed from education, leaving it to state and local governments. “I personally think the Department of Education should not exist,” said DeVos, prompting a loud standing ovation from members of the audience, according to Florida Phoenix. Though DeVos acknowledged the good that teachers serve, including those in attendance at the summit, she blasted teachers unions as a “K-12 cartel.” The summit...

Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos says that the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was the final straw for her in standing by former President Trump, confirming that she was open to using the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. DeVos, who writes in a new book about turning in her resignation letter to Trump the day after the Capitol insurrection, blames the former president’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election for blocking her efforts to pass her last piece of school choice agenda legislation through Congress.

On Tuesday, trial in United States v. Sussmann began. Michael Sussmann’s theory of defense has major factual holes.The Hillary Clinton campaign did not want its attorney, Michael Sussmann, to share the Alfa Bank data with the FBI, jurors were told yesterday during the defense’s opening arguments in the special counsel’s criminal case against Sussmann. But the information known to date, as well as the modus operandi of the Spygate players throughout the years they peddled the Russia-collusion hoax, render this argument laughable. On Tuesday, trial in United States v. Sussmann began in earnest following a day of jury selection. At...

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos resigned Thursday night, blaming President Donald Trump for rhetoric that fueled the invasion of the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump suppporters. DeVos is the second member of Trump’s cabinet to quit because of the riot Wednesday. Earlier Thursday, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said she would resign. Chao is the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who refused to endorse Trump’s efforts to have Congress block the confirmation of Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential vote in the Electoral College. A number of other Trump administration officials have quit since Wednesday.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos submitted her resignation to President Trump on Thursday night, saying the Capitol riot was an inflection point for her

WASHINGTON — Erik Prince, the security contractor with close ties to the Trump administration, has in recent years helped recruit former American and British spies for secretive intelligence-gathering operations that included infiltrating Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda, according to interviews and documents. One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers’ unions in the nation. Mr. Seddon directed an undercover operative to secretly...

Universities in the United States reported $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed gifts and contracts from foreign sources as a result of an investigation by the Department of Education. Federal law requires universities to disclose substantial foreign gifts and contracts to the Department of Education (DOE) twice a year. Many have for years failed to do so, while others have underreported. After the department opened an investigation into the matter in 2019, 60 schools that had never complied with the law disclosed $350 million in previously unreported foreign funds, according to a report (pdf) released by the DOE on Oct. 20....

In a speech at Hillsdale College, Sec. DeVos conveyed that in American education, the fight has just begun to restore choice and freedom to every family. As most of the nation is transfixed on the looming presidential election, Sec. of Education Betsy DeVos remains laser-focused on the job at hand. “Education is the means by which we secure the God-given blessings of liberty,” DeVos told a gathering of more than 250 at Hillsdale College, in her home state of Michigan. Whether she has three months at her post, or the possibility of another four years, will be determined in the...

The Department of Education announced Wednesday that the Improving Free Inquiry, Transparency, and Accountability at Colleges and Universities final rule will “ensure that public institutions of higher education uphold fundamental rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and that private institutions of higher education adhere to their own policies regarding freedom of speech, including academic freedom.”...

School is our most obsolete institution, more so even than world-accommodating churches and the post office. School serves no purpose except to be the platform for satanic school union officials to bribe us into neglecting our kids, high-expense and high-mind-poison babysitting, in the age of distance education: free University Distance Learning (for no pay you can get the core education equivalent to a Bachelor's, and find an institution to "challenge" your degree requirements), Kahn Academy and LinkedIn-Lynda.com computer training. A properly designed universal self-selecting curriculum approved, not even by small local school boards at the 1-room level, but by that...

“[Betsy DeVos,] you have no plan,” tweeted Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) on Sunday afternoon. “I wouldn’t trust you to care for a house plant let alone my child.”

... Once upon a time, long, long ago, those accused of rape or sexual harassment on campus were dealt with approximately as they would have been in any other non-university context. There would have been due process, the presumption of innocence, the right for the defense to confront the accuser, the right to an unbiased judge, the right for the defendant to hire a lawyer, and other such hoary traditions of justice. The underlying principle, then, was that it was better that 10 criminals go unpunished, than one innocent person be found guilty. But in 2011, a “Dear Colleague” Title...

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos fired a shot last month in the nation’s culture wars, overhauling how colleges handle investigations of sexual assault and ending what she called Obama-era “kangaroo courts” on campus. The new Education Department rules give more protections to the accused, primarily young men who face discipline or expulsion as a result of allegations of sexual misconduct. The move set off a liberal uproar, denounced by unions representing teachers and college professors, by the National Organization for Women and by an array of Democratic senators. The Trump rules, they said, constitute a radical rollback of protections for victims...

Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said she's "frankly disgusted" by presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden's political shift when it comes to women who claim to have been the victims of sexual misconduct. In a Friday interview, DeVos told me she thought Biden was a "total hypocrite" for demanding more due process in vetting accusations than he wants to provide to others. DeVos recently announced a new and highly consequential rule change regarding sexual harassment in public schools. It came as the former vice president was defending himself from an accusation by Tara Reade, who in the early 1990s worked...

In the latest case where a male student sued his college over the unfair procedures it used to expel him, Colgate University in New York will go to trial. So ruled federal district judge Frederick Scullin on April 30. In his opinion, the plaintiff student had presented sufficient evidence of bias against him for the case to proceed. The case began in October 2016. At that time, Colgate, like all American colleges, was operating under the Title IX regulations instituted during the Obama administration. Those regulations, dictated through a mere “Dear Colleague” letter rather than formal administrative rulemaking, decreed that...

This week, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos formally announced new Title IX rules governing sexual-misconduct cases in schools. It’s difficult to understand why instances of alleged criminal sexual misconduct shouldn’t be forwarded and adjudicated by the proper authorities, where both victim and accused are subjected, like all of us, a system that determines truth, guilt, and punishment. It’s also difficult to understand why schools, which aren’t properly equipped to conduct criminal investigations, much less fair trials, should be held responsible for the actions of all their students, even when they are off campus. This, however, is the reality of Title IX....

Rep. Justin Amash is considering a third-party presidential run this year to challenge President Trump and Joe Biden, and will be making a decision “soon,” his campaign said Wednesday. The campaign for Amash, the former Republican, put out a statement Wednesday saying the Michigan independent will make a decision “soon.” “In mid-February, Justin Amash paused active campaigning for his congressional seat to carefully consider a presidential run,” his campaign said. “He has been discussing the potential campaign with his family, his friends, his team, and others, and a decision can be expected soon.” […] Amash is a libertarian-minded conservative who...

Police in Hamburg shut down the notorious al-Quds mosque, renamed the Taiba mosque in 2008, led by German-Syrian national and voluntary imam Mamoun Darkazanli. Darkazanli (a.k.a. Abu Ilyas al-Suri) has been a suspected al-Qaeda operative, primarily as a financier and logistician, in the European Union for close to two decades. Long active in al-Qaeda circles, Darkazanli first surfaced on the radar of Western intelligence agencies when he purportedly helped procure a cargo ship named “Jennifer” for Osama bin Laden as early as 1993 (Hamburger Abendblatt, October 16, 2004). Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt (BKA- Federal Criminal Police Office) admitted that it had been...