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President Trump’s out-of-the-box pick to lead the Education Department survived another hurdle, overcoming an attempted Democratic filibuster in a rare pre-dawn vote Friday. A final vote is slated for Monday. Democrats have made Betsy DeVos, the pick, one of their chief targets as they try to score a scalp from among Mr. Trump’s Cabinet nominees, saying the wealthy philanthropist doesn’t have the experience or dedication to public schools to run the federal department. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer called her “one of the worst nominees that has ever been brought before this body for a Cabinet position.”

Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Education, overcame a key Senate hurdle early Friday morning, clearing the path for her expected confirmation. Senators voted 52-48 to advance DeVos’s nomination. No Democrats voted yes. The vote, which came during a rare Friday session, sets up lawmakers to take a final vote early next week. Vice President Pence is expected to have to break a 50-50 tie, the first time a vice president will cast the deciding vote on a Cabinet nomination. Senate rules require an extra 30 hours of debate before senators can confirm DeVos. If Democrats refuse...

Yesterday, Ed Morrissey gave an excellent review of the tenuous position Betsy DeVos is in when we come to a vote on her confirmation as the next head of the Department of Education. What might have been another close, but doable vote in the Senate has been placed in jeopardy by the decision of Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to vote against DeVos, leaving us with the possibility that Vice President Mike Pence might have to break the tie. (This, I believe, would be a first in American history for cabinet appointments.)So how did these two arrive at...

Washington (CNN)Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska both said Wednesday they would not vote to support Betsy DeVos, President Donald Trump's choice for education secretary. The two women are the first sitting Republican senators to publicly say they wouldn't back one of Trump's Cabinet nominees.The stunning decision from a pair of veteran Republican lawmakers puts DeVos in a tenuous position as her final vote before the Senate nears, but top Republican aides are confident she will be confirmed.

Murray Votes No on Advancing Betsy DeVos Nomination

That leaves McConnell and Senate majority whip John Cornyn with some heavy lifting to do. They either need to convince Collins and/or Murkowski to get back on board with DeVos, or make sure no one else disembarks before Pence can cast the 101st vote and keep Sessions in the Senate long enough to pull off this high-wire act. Stay tuned.

At the end of his just-ended conversation with VP Pence, Rush informed him and the audience that Susan Collins has said she will vote against Betsy DeVos for Education secretary. Rush also reporting a second Pub senator [Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski] would vote against her.

Two Republican senators — Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — said Tuesday they are not yet committed to voting for Michigan billionaire Betsy DeVos for U.S. education secretary on the Senate floor. It was the first time that any Republican senators said they might not vote for President Trump’s nominee, the most polarizing education secretary nominee in the department’s history.

<p>WASHINGTON – A Senate committee has approved President Donald Trump’s nominee Betsy DeVos for education secretary, even as two GOP senators expressed some reservations.</p> <p>After a heated debate Tuesday morning, senators on the Health, Education, Pensions and Labor Committee have voted 12-11 along partisan lines to support DeVos’ nomination, sending it to the full Senate for action.</p>

Donald Trump promised to drain the swamp in Washington. This task is especially urgent in that large, malodorous part of the swamp known as Education. The Education Establishment makes everything murky and unproductive by an endless spew of jargon, incoherent theories, goofy methods, phony research, and new names for failed ideas. Finally, no two Americans can talk constructively about anything in education. It's as if they are talking across vast linguistic and cultural barriers, not over coffee at Starbucks. Education is now the fog-shrouded domain of dumbing down. Pervasive murkiness is a big part of the reason why so much...

Democrats are blocking the confirmation of Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education nominee Betsy Devos by forcing her to answer 837 written, follow-up questions from her Senate confirmation hearing. “Mrs. Devos’ Senate opponents are grasping for straws,” Sen. Lamar Alexander said of the decision in a post for Medium. “We didn’t have time to question her, they say, even though she met with each one of them in their offices, and her hearing lasted nearly an hour and a half longer than either of President Obama’s education secretaries.” Alexander notes that while answering followup questions is customary practice for nominees,...

The hometown newspaper for failed vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine is raising questions about his comments to Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos at her confirmation hearing last week.In an editorial published Sunday, The Richmond Times-Dispatch accused the Senator from Virginia of sexism in his line of questioning for DeVos during the Jan. 17 confirmation hearing.From the Times-Dispatch: Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine raked Betsy DeVos over the coals during the recent hearing over her nomination to head the Education Department. That’s fine: Asking tough questions is exactly what a good senator should do. …But one of Kaine’s questions in particular seemed out...

Betsy DeVos has already been the subject of much media scrutiny as a result of her nomination to be the next U.S. secretary of education. But the most significant test will come on Jan. 11, when the U.S. Senate will hold its confirmation hearing. Critics have repeatedly missed the mark about the record of Michigan charter schools that DeVos’ high-profile policy advocacy has helped to shape. Meanwhile, supporters of school choice have speculated about what she could and should do in a federal cabinet role to advance educational choice and opportunity. The prospects are especially tempting for school choice advocates...

Speaking at an event organized to oppose President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda in Washington, D.C. Thursday, American Federation of Teachers President Elizabeth “Liz” Davis said that Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, is more frightening than the Ku Klux Klan. “Of course, you know that there are some scarier things that are coming up … one of them is Betsy DeVos,” Davis said. “That frightens me more than the Klan, because Betsy DeVos is a multi-mega millionaire who has managed to buy her way to a position of influence that could actually change the face of what we know...

At its heart, this nomination is about something much larger than Betsy DeVos. This is “a proxy war. And it just happens to be coming to a head in the U.S. Senate,” according to Andy Smarick, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He’s right. This is a story about a changing America. And, in a sense, what could happen to public schools and teachers’ unions might ironically parallel the plight of the coal miners and factory workers who voted for Donald Trump. *snip* Here’s the thing to know about Donald Trump’s cabinet and staff picks: They are about...

In politics they say that no good deed goes unpunished. That is never truer than on the issue of school choice.  President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be the Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos, has committed an unpardonable sin. Yes, she has tried to help millions of disadvantaged families have the ability to send their kids to better schools. This is of course reprehensible behavior on her part that must not be rewarded. Oh, and there is one more thing, she has spent millions of dollars of her own money in order to try to help these kids be able to...

The DemonRats have become UNHINGED. Total disrespect and disdain for Betsy DeVos, especially Al Franken. DISGUSTING RATS!

For-profit combat pilots fly Emirati Air Tractors

The Senate is expected to hold hearings next week on Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education. As soon as he announced his choice on November 23, anti-school choice activists attacked her. The ACLU immediately went on the offensive warning that “private and parochial schools” would benefit. Such a condition it said, “perverts the bedrock American value of separation of church and state.” There is a reason the ACLU never mentioned the “bedrock American value” of religious liberty. When it was founded in 1920, it listed every right incorporated in the First Amendment as one of its...

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts says Besty DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to run the Department of Education, has a "radical political philosophy" and a thin resume for the job. "There is no precedent for an Education Department Secretary nominee with your lack of experience in public education," Warren wrote in a lengthy letter sent to DeVos on Monday morning. DeVos hasn't held top policy-making positions in the past, unlike other picks for the position by past presidents. Warren said that DeVos has "virtually no experience" in handling student debt, developing standards for school accountability, or improving schools - the...