Is Betsy DeVos Confirmed? Democrats Try To Stop Trump's Education Secretary Cabinet Pick

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., criticized the nomination of Betsy DeVos for education secretary as the worst possible choice and urged Republicans to reject her for the Cabinet as Democrats seized the Senate floor for 24 hours.

A vote is scheduled for midday Tuesday and could result in the first time the vice president has been called on to break a tie over a Cabinet nomination.

Warren urged Republicans to reject President Donald Trump’s pick to head the Department of Education and said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., Trump’s choice for attorney general, should not be allowed to vote because it presents a “massive conflict of interest.”

“It is difficult to imagine a worse choice,” Warren said of DeVos, a major GOP donor who favors school vouchers and has no background in public education.

During her confirmation hearing, DeVost seemed to misunderstand the central debate in education policy, implied the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was not federal law and indicated some schools need guns to fend of grizzly bears.

Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine already have said they would vote against the nomination. If Sessions were denied a vote, the nomination would go down 50-49 since every Senate Democrat is expected to vote no. With Sessions voting, the score would be 50-50 and Vice President Mike Pence would cast the tiebreaker.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has labeled DeVos the “least qualified nominee in a historically unqualified Cabinet.”

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., called DeVos nomination “a slap in the face.”

Hundreds of educators, parents and students planned a Capitol Hill demonstration Monday evening to coincide with the Democrats’ Senate talkathon.

Former Obama ethics adviser Norman Eisen and Richard Painter, former chief ethics lawyer for George W. Bush, said in an op-ed piece in the Hill that DeVos should be denied the Cabinet post because of an unresolved ethics mess involving her financial holdings and inaccurate information presented to the Senate about her involvement in outside organizations.

“DeVos’ failure to meet even minimum standards leaves us with no choice but to speak out,” the two said, citing her investment in Neurocore, “a biotech company that claims to have ‘helped thousands of children’ with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.” The company is linked to an investment company owned by DeVos and her husband, the son of Amway co-founder Richard DeVos.

“As owners of the Windquest Group, Betsy and Dick DeVos are the primary backers of Neurocare. The fact that Neurocare will continue to be held and promoted by her and her spouse’s investment management company on its website is startling since doing so effectively acts as an endorsement by the secretary of education once she takes office,” Eisen and Painter said.

DeVos was defended in a New York Post op-ed by Eva Moscowitz, founder of Success Academy Charter Schools.

"She has been a strong supporter of parent choice as the most effective way to improve opportunities for children trapped in decades-old failing schools," Moskowitz said.