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Billionaire Republican megadonor Betsy DeVos may be in for a feisty nomination hearing, at least by the standards of education secretaries.

Don Emmert / AFP / Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump's pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, could face an unusually contentious confirmation hearing Tuesday. Historically, education secretary nominees have glided through confirmations without much opposition, even from opposite sides of the aisle. But though she's likely to be confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate, Democrats have made it clear they're planning to make an issue out of DeVos's history and have balked at a Republican move to try to limit questioning of her.

Democrats have already raised alarm that DeVos has yet to undergo a complete ethics review related to her complicated financial dealings, which was still unfinished as of Tuesday morning.

Here are some of the key issues that could come up in the hearing.

Though she's never been elected to public office, DeVos has left an outsize impression on public education in Michigan, where she has used her status as a Republican megadonor to push policies that rapidly expanded charter schools.

This is a huge asset for Republicans, who have widely praised DeVos's stance on charters and school choice — a position that aligns closely with that of Vice President-elect Mike Pence. She has called school choice “bipartisan” issue — many prominent left-wing politicians are advocates of charter schools — but Democrats are likely to take issue with DeVos's particular brand of school choice in Michigan, which hasn't come with very strict oversight once schools open and has allowed for an explosion of for-profit schools. Well over half of charters in Michigan are for-profit — more than any other state in the country.

DeVos also favors school vouchers, a more controversial form of school choice. She tried to pass a law in Michigan that would have allowed middle-class and low-income parents to use public money to send their children to private schools — a policy Trump has said he wants to implement nationwide, though only with low-income families. DeVos's efforts to pass the voucher law in Michigan failed, but she and her husband have since funded similar fights all over the country.

Democrats are likely to make DeVos's finances into one of their biggest issues. Much like her future boss, Donald Trump, her finances are a tangled web of investments. Many of those aren't public, but historically, she's invested in some companies that may be caught up in the department she is set to oversee, which could pose a major issue. Her husband, for example, was an initial investor in a large and controversial online charter school company, and she's also put money into a student loan refinancing company.

DeVos's vast wealth is also an issue for Democrats when it comes to her political donations. She has donated millions to conservative politicians and causes, including to four Republicans on the committee that is overseeing her confirmation. A controversy erupted earlier this week when the Trump team said DeVos had omitted a $125,000 contribution to an anti-union group from her financial disclosures; Republicans called it a minor error, but Democrats say it's an example of inadequate vetting.

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