Another day, another grim historical first for America. Our Senate just confirmed Betsy DeVos as education secretary after a ‘historic tiebreaking vote’ from Vice President Mike Pence. Both DeVos and Pence are fans of widely discredited LGBT ‘conversion therapy,’ a damaging and inhumane bullshit practice we’ll probably see a lot more of now, along with guns in schools to protect kids from grizzly bears and jihadists.
Just two Senate Republicans voted against DeVos: Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, both of whom came out as opposed week. Lawmakers gave continuous speeches on the Senate floor late into the night, arguing that DeVos was unqualified because she knows nothing about public schools or basic laws of our country that protect the rights of students, among other reasons.
Senators Collins and Murkowski said their opposition was ‘influenced by the thousands of messages they had received urging them to reject the nomination,’ the New York Times reports.
