Education Secretary Betsy DeVos indicated discrimination in schools on the basis of sexual orientation is "unsettled" law and a matter for Congress and the courts to address -- not her department.
 
After declining last month to say how she would handle allegations of private school discrimination under a federally-funded school voucher program, DeVos was pressed Tuesday on the topic by Democrats at a Senate hearing. President Donald Trump's budget proposal sets aside funds to create a school choice program, but provides few details about how it would be run.
The education secretary repeatedly said that any school "receiving federal funding is required to follow federal law," but said federal law is unclear on protections for LGBTQ students.
A rundown of Betsy DeVos' most controversial quotes
A rundown of Betsy DeVos' most controversial quotes
"On areas where the law is unsettled, this department is not going to be issuing decrees," DeVos said. "That is a matter for Congress and the courts to settle."

State Department distances itself from Trump, creating an alternate U.S. foreign policy
 
But as the briefing wore on, the sheer disconnect between what Nauert was explaining as State Department policy and what the White House and Trump have said was striking.
 
The pattern became more evident when reporters tried several times to understand how the State Department viewed Trump’s tweet storm against U.S. ally Qatar. Trump said that the crisis between Qatar and its Persian Gulf neighbors was evidence that his meetings with Arab states last month in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, were “paying off,” and he called out Qatar for financing terrorism.
 
Those tweets seemed to directly contradict Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s call on all parties to work together to resolve their differences and his offer to help mediate the crisis. Interestingly, Nauert’s prepared answers from her briefing book expressed support for Qatar, not for Trump’s tweets.
 
“We recognize that Qatar has made some great efforts to stop financing of terror groups … more work needs to be done,” she said. “Our relationship with Qatar is strong.”
 
Nauert also revealed that the United Arab Emirates only informed the U.S. government of the decision by four Gulf allies to sever ties with Qatar “immediately prior” to the decision being announced, which detracts from Trump’s assertion that this is good news for U.S. leadership in the region.
 
Nauert attempted to square that circle by saying that the meetings in Riyadh produced progress in cooperation among regional actors in the fight against terrorism. One reporter bluntly pointed out that a major rift with Qatar only two weeks after Trump’s visit is actually evidence that the trip had the exact opposite effect.

US investigators believe Russian hackers breached Qatar's state news agency and planted a fake news report that contributed to a crisis among the US' closest Gulf allies, according to US officials briefed on the investigation.

The FBI recently sent a team of investigators to Doha to help the Qatari government investigate the alleged hacking incident, Qatari and US government officials say.
Intelligence gathered by the US security agencies indicates that Russian hackers were behind the intrusion first reported by the Qatari government two weeks ago, US officials say.

The Qatari government has said a May 23 news report on its Qatar News Agency attributed false remarks to the nation's ruler that appeared friendly to Iran and Israel and questioned whether President Donald Trump would last in office.

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told CNN the FBI has confirmed the hack and the planting of fake news.
"Whatever has been thrown as an accusation is all based on misinformation and we think that the entire crisis being based on misinformation," the foreign minister told CNN's Becky Anderson.