"Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' revised federal guidelines on how sexual assault allegations should be handled on college and K-12 campuses are the target of a federal lawsuit..."

"... filed Thursday claiming that the changes would 'inflict significant harm' on victims and 'dramatically undermine' their civil rights. The suit, filed [by the American Civil Liberties Union] on behalf of four advocacy groups for people who have been sexually assaulted, including Know Your IX and Girls for Gender Equity, is the first that seeks to block the Education Department's new provisions before they go into effect on Aug. 14. The rules championed by DeVos effectively bolster the rights of due process for those accused of sexual assault and harassment, allowing for live hearings and cross-examinations."

Yahoo News reports.

"Over the past few years, many women’s social media feeds have morphed from photos of kids and pets into endless posts by friends peddling everything under the sun..."

"... makeup, skin care, candles, essential oils, hormone gel patches, leggings, tote bags, juice powders, nontoxic cleaning products, whitening toothpaste, vitamins, nail decals, nutritional shakes and gardening towers. Women and multilevel marketing (MLM) companies have gone together since Tupperware and Mary Kay launched in the middle of the 20th century as ways for housewives to make money and get products to women in rural areas. Now, with social media, women who sell for MLMs have a whole new way.... The structure of MLMs is to blame for many of those 'Let’s catch up!'... 'I thought I had made a genuine connection with a mom I met online in a mom group,' said Erin Heger of Kansas. But after Heger declined this mom’s offer to become a Beachbody coach, the woman stopped talking to her. 'It really hurt,' Heger said. 'I even invited her and her kiddo to my son’s first birthday party. I felt like an idiot for thinking we were actually friends.'"

From "How MLMs are hurting female friendships" (WaPo).

The top-rated comment is a real kick in the head for WaPo (how did they miss this?):

No reference to current Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, whose husband Dick DeVos is the son of Richard DeVos, founder of Amway, the greatest MLM scam of all time, and to which fortune Betsy and Dick enjoy a life of ease and privilege?

"I’m a Democrat and a Feminist. And I Support Betsy DeVos’s Title IX Reforms."

Writes Lara Bazelon, the director of the criminal juvenile justice and the racial justice clinics at the University of San Francisco School of Law in a NYT op-ed. She is concerned about due process and "racial dynamics."

[In the law school clinic I direct,] we see what the Harvard Law School professor Janet Halley described in a 2015 law review article: “The general social disadvantage that black men continue to carry in our culture can make it easier for everyone in the adjudicative process to put the blame on them.” ...

We have long over-sexualized, over-criminalized and disproportionately punished black men. It should come as no surprise that, in a setting in which protections for the accused are greatly diminished, this shameful legacy persists.

“I’ve assisted multiple men of color, a Dreamer, a homeless man and two trans students,” Professor Halley told me. “How can the left care about these people when the frame is mass incarceration, immigration or trans-positivity and actively reject fairness protections for them under Title IX?”...

I know my allies on the left will criticize my position....

"The Trump administration will encourage the nation’s school superintendents and college presidents to adopt race-blind admissions standards..."

"... abandoning an Obama administration policy that called on universities to consider race as a factor in diversifying their campuses," the NYT reports.

The Trump administration is moving against any use of race as a measurement of diversity in education. And the retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy at the end of this month will leave the court without its swing vote on affirmative action and allow President Trump to nominate a justice opposed to a policy that for decades has tried to integrate elite educational institutions.

A highly anticipated case is pitting Harvard against Asian-American students who say one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions has systematically excluded some Asian-American applicants to maintain slots for students of other races. That case is clearly aimed at the Supreme Court.

“The whole issue of using race in education is being looked at with a new eye in light of the fact that it’s not just white students being discriminated against, but Asians and others as well,” said Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity. “As the demographics of the country change, it becomes more and more problematic.”...

The NYT article is rather long, and I think it is designed to lure people into confusing the question of the legal permissibility of taking race into account and the policy judgment of whether race should be taken into account. The Supreme Court cases are about whether affirmative action is permissible (and they say that it is but only if you do it the right way, for the right reason). The executive branch decisions are about whether to encourage institutions to choose to do what they are permitted (but not required) to do.

"Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Friday scrapped a key part of government policy on campus sexual assault..."

"... saying she was giving colleges more freedom to balance the rights of accused students with the need to crack down on serious misconduct," the NYT reports.

The move, which involved rescinding two sets of guidelines several years old, was part of one of the fiercest battles in higher education today, over whether the Obama administration, in trying to get colleges to take sexual assault more seriously, had gone too far and created a system that treated the accused unfairly.

The most controversial portion of the Obama-era guidelines had demanded colleges use the lowest standard of proof, “preponderance of the evidence,” in deciding whether a student is responsible for sexual assault, a verdict that can lead to discipline and even expulsion. On Friday, the Education Department said colleges were free to abandon that standard and raise it to a higher standard known as “clear and convincing evidence.”

"Mr. Sessions, who has opposed expanding gay, lesbian and transgender rights, pushed Ms. DeVos to relent."

"After getting nowhere, he took his objections to the White House because he could not go forward without her consent. Mr. Trump sided with his attorney general... and told Ms. DeVos in a meeting in the Oval Office on Tuesday that he wanted her to drop her opposition. And Ms. DeVos, faced with the alternative of resigning or defying the president, agreed to go along. Ms. DeVos’s unease was evident in a strongly worded statement she released on Wednesday night, in which she said she considered it a 'moral obligation' for every school in America to protect all students from discrimination, bullying and harassment. She said she had directed the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to investigate all claims of such treatment 'against those who are most vulnerable in our schools,' but also argued that bathroom access was not a federal matter...."

From "Trump Rescinds Rules on Bathrooms for Transgender Students" (in the NYT).

Finding it "troubling" that Betsy DeVos has contributed to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

I'm reading "DeVos' donations spark questions about her stance on campus sexual assault" at Politico:

DeVos has not spoken publicly about the Education Department’s aggressive approach to campus sexual assault, but women’s groups and Democrats say her donations to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education send a troubling signal. FIRE has sued the administration to raise the standard of proof for victims of sexual assault in university administrative hearings contending it is unfair to the accused.

The donations are “a red flag,” said Lisa Maatz, the top policy adviser at the American Association of University Women, which advocates for strict enforcement of Title IX, the federal law that governs sex discrimination, harassment and sexual assault on college campuses. “In the absence of an actual record … I think these kinds of donations take on even greater importance, because we have to rely on her contributions to inform us on particular issues.”...

“Ms. DeVos must fully explain whether she supports the radical view that it should be more difficult for campus sexual assault victims to receive justice,” said Sen. Bob Casey, (D-Pa.), a member of the HELP Committee.

When did due process become a "radical view"?!

"Betsy DeVos is a brilliant and passionate education advocate. Under her leadership..."

"... we will reform the U.S. education system and break the bureaucracy that is holding our children back so that we can deliver world-class education and school choice to all families."

Said Trump, appointing DeVos as Secretary of Education.

ADDED: From Chad Livengood, Jonathan Oosting and Michael Gerstein in The Detroit News:

In 2000, Betsy and Dick DeVos funded an unsuccessful statewide ballot initiative to amend the state Constitution to allow tax dollars to be used for private school tuition through education vouchers. They have since advocated for school vouchers in other states.

In 2012, Dick DeVos led the charge in getting the Legislature to make Michigan a right-to-work state, eliminating work rules that made financial support of unions a condition of employment for teachers in public schools.... 

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush also praised DeVos as an “outstanding pick for Secretary of Education.” Bush said “she has a long and distinguished history championing the right of all parents to choose schools that best ensure their children’s success. Her allegiance is to families, particularly those struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder, not to an outdated public education model that has failed them from one generation to the next.”...