House Democrats Rebuke DeVos Over Racial Policies

"Such actions not only threaten to exacerbate existing structures of racism in the education system and broader society, but also infringe on an ideal the Department regularly invokes -- free speech," wrote Education and Labor Committee chairman Bobby Scott and Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici, chair of the panel's civil rights and human services subcommittee. "It is also inappropriate for the department to wield its oversight powers to limit free and open discourse, even if leadership at the department does not agree with that discourse," wrote Scott, of Virginia, and Bonamici, of Oregon.