When former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said in July that her former Cabinet department “should not exist,” it made some waves.
The school choice advocate and Republican mega-donor has kept a relatively low profile since leaving Washington last January, mostly attending to policy developments in her home state of Michigan. Her call to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, unveiled at a meeting of the right-wing activist group Moms for Liberty, represented a return to the national spotlight — not just for DeVos, but for an idea that has hung around Republican politics for decades.





