Joe Biden Takes Aim At Trump Administration’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for the upcoming presidential election, continues to take aim at incumbent President Donald Trump and his administration on social media. His latest target was U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who Biden condemned via Twitter on Wednesday for her lack of a background in public education.

“Four years of Betsy DeVos is more than enough,” Biden tweeted. “We need a Secretary of Education who is actually a public school educator.”

DeVos’ background has long been an issue for Democrats, who largely came out against her nomination in 2017. After the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions approved her nomination on a party-line vote, it was sent to the floor of the Senate.

She was eventually confirmed by a 51-50 margin after Vice President Mike Pence served as the tie-breaking vote; it was the first time in U.S. history that a cabinet nominee’s confirmation was decided by a vice-presidential tiebreaker.

All Democrats and independents, as well as Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska had voted against DeVos’ nomination.

More recently, DeVos has championed the White House’s stance that schools across the country should reopen in the fall in spite of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the currently surging case numbers of coronavirus infection nationwide. During a Tuesday interview with Tucker Carlson, she called out adults not in favor of sending children back to school for “fearmongering.”

“Kids have got to continue learning and schools have got to open up,” she said. “There has got to be a concerted effort to address the needs of all kids, and adults who are fearmongering and making excuses simply have to stop doing it and turn their attention to what is right for students and for their families.”

She further stated that her department is seriously considering withholding federal funding from school districts that don’t attempt to reopen with in-person classes this fall, in keeping with a stance the president shared this week.

As reported previously by The Inquisitr, Trump tweeted about potentially cutting funding and asserted that Democrats want to keep schools closed because they believe their opening would be bad for the party politically.

The president further argued that keeping children out of school would pose greater health risks to them than anything related to COVID-19.

For his part, Biden has consistently criticized Trump for not taking the proper steps to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. On July 6, he hit the president on Twitter for not increasing access to testing amid surging case numbers.