Betsy DeVos Resigns from the Trump Administration

Betsy DeVos, Education Secretary, resigns from her position as the Education Secretary in the Trump Administration.

She resigned in a letter to President Trump on Thursday, saying she would step down on Friday.

“We should be highlighting and celebrating your administration’s many accomplishments on behalf of the American people,” she wrote in the resignation letter.

“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 behaviour was unconscionable for our country,” she added. “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me.”

Ms DeVos was one of the first cabinet secretaries to condemn the violent mob on Capitol Hill.

“The peaceful transfer of power is what separates American representative democracy from banana republics,” Ms DeVos said in a statement posted to Twitter on Wednesday evening, hours after the storming of the Capitol. “The work of the people must go on.”

Ms DeVos joins a growing exodus of administration officials in the final days of the Trump administration. She is the second cabinet-level official to step down; Elaine Chao, the transportation secretary, also resigned on Thursday.

DeVos joined Trump’s cabinet at the start of his presidency in 2017 and quickly emerged as one of his most loyal supporters.

Chao, who has also been in Trump’s cabinet since 2017, made her resignation announcement in an email to colleagues. She later posted her message to Twitter, in a pinned tweet.

‘Our country experienced a traumatic and entirely avoidable event as supporters of the President stormed the Capitol building following a rally he addressed. As I’m sure is the case with many of you, it has deeply troubled me in a way that I simply cannot set aside,’ she said.

She is the first Cabinet official to quit.

Chao said she would still assist her successor, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, whom President-elect Joe Biden previously named for the role.

Her last day is Monday, January 10, she said.

Chao’s move comes a day after her husband, McConnell, went on the Senate floor and called out fellow Republicans for emboldening Trump’s farce that Congress was able to overturn the presidential election results.

Before the MAGA mob stampeded in, McConnell warned Senate Republicans they were leading the country down a ‘poisonous path,’ which would put democracy in a ‘death spiral,’ by challenging the Electoral College results.

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‘But my colleagues, nothing before us prove illegality anywhere near the massive scale, the massive scale that would have tipped the entire election,’ McConnell argued. ‘Nor can public doubt alone justify a radical break, when the doubt itself was incited without any evidence.’

Chao previously served as President George W. Bush’s Labour secretary.

Her resignation may muddle calls from top Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, for Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, which would render Trump powerless with just 13 days left of his administration.

Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger also said Pence should invoke the 25th.

Chao’s resignation follows several other Trump staffers who have stepped down, citing the president’s behaviour.

Former White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has joined the growing list of officials hastily exiting the Trump administration – quitting his diplomatic post in protest of the effort to ‘overtake the government.’

‘I can’t do it,’ said Mulvaney, who called Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, another former House Republican, to convey his views.

Mulvaney, a former House member from South Carolina who left Congress to join Trump’s team, spoke out on CNBC hours after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol after being egged on to march there by President Trump and his unsupported claims of mass election fraud.