In addition to being completely qualified, having never taught or even worked in education, education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos is also apparently a plagiarizer.
The Washington Post noticed some striking similarities between some of Devos's written responses to questions from Senate Democrats and the rhetoric of the Obama administration.
In answering a set of questions from Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on how she would address bullying of LGBT students, DeVos wrote: “Every child deserves to attend school in a safe, supportive environment where they can learn, thrive, and grow.”
That sentence is almost identical to language used by Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division under President Barack Obama, in a news release announcing the administration’s controversial guidance to schools on how to accommodate transgender students.
“Every child deserves to attend school in a safe, supportive environment that allows them to thrive and grow,” Gupta said in the May 2016 release.
Yes, an unqualified white woman plagiarized an eminently qualified woman of color, and that's just one example among others. DeVos also reportedly lifted passages directly from federal statutes and Education Department materials according to the Washington Post.
I'd like to believe DeVos's comments are sincere, but there's just no evidence to support that belief. Every child does deserve to attend school in a safe and supportive environment, but given her family's record of supporting anti-LGBT religious causes, it seems more likely to me that she lifted passages from the Obama administration in effort to tell Senate Democrats what they want to hear.
All Democrats voted against her confirmation in committee this morning.