House Speaker Nancy Pelosi clapped back at Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who began this week demanding that all of the nation’s schools re-open this fall in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Trump and DeVos demanded that all schools open and be “fully operational.”

Trump said that he would pressure state governors to do so, and he and DeVos made vague threats to withhold funds from schools which don’t comply.

Trump wants the country “re-opened” from its status of stay-at-home orders and business lockdown conditions quickly because he seems to think that’s crucial for his pending bid for re-election.

Many schools are planning to continue to use some amount of computer-based distance learning to keep students out of school buildings for most, if not all, of the time when school sessions restart.

That was simply not acceptable to Trump and DeVos.

“The secretary of education indicated that children should go to school, they have to take risks. Everybody takes risks. You take risks to ride a bicycle, to be an astronaut, you just have to take risk. Now we don’t want our children to take risk to go to school,” said Pelosi. “We are supposed to mitigate for any damage, we are supposed to keep them safe.” 

But by the end of the week, Trump and DeVos were backing away from their original demands.

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