Back to the future: GOP pledge to abolish Education Department returns

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.