Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Secretary of Education, resigned Thursday, the second appointed cabinet member behind Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. Both resigned following the rioting at the Capitol.
DeVos directly blamed Trump for inciting the rioting.
“We should be highlighting and celebrating your Administration’s many accomplishments on behalf of the American people,” DeVos wrote in a letter to the president. “Instead we are left to clean up the mess caused by violent protesters overrunning the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the people’s business. That behavior was unconscionable for our country. There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me.”
DeVos touted her own accomplishments in her resignation letter, saying that she “returned proper power to the states, communities, educators, and parents.” She also was proud of aligning with Trump’s efforts to return millions of students to classrooms in the midst of the pandemic, suggesting that this was in spite of “union bosses who control so much of the traditional system.”
The American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten had two words in her response to the resignation — “Good riddance.”
The National Education Association’s President Becky Pringle said DeVos’s resignation only 13 days early does nothing to erase the harm done to the country’s students, families, and educators.