In a surprising turn, a bipartisan majority of the Senate voted to overturn Betsy DeVos’s rule to restrict debt relief to students who were bilked by colleges that defrauded them. The House already rebuked DeVos and passed the legislation. The bill will go to Trump, who may veto it or sign it. Will he protect Betsy DeVos or the students who were cheated? The Republicans who voted with Democrats were moved by the plight of veterans who were bilked.

WASHINGTON — In a bipartisan rebuke, the Senate voted Wednesday to overturn a major Trump administration rule that would sharply limit debt relief for students misled by schools that lured them in with false claims about their graduates’ career and earning prospects.

In a 53-42 vote that included 10 Republicans, the Senate easily struck down a revised Education Department rule finalized in September by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The House passed a companion resolution in January. The legislation will now go to President Trump, who will decide whether to uphold the rule with a veto or side with Congress over his own education secretary.

He has told Senate Republicans he is “neutral” on repealing the rule, though he has yet to comment on his veto intentions.

Ms. DeVos’s rule was one of several efforts to rewrite Obama-era debt relief measures, which allow students who attended schools that committed serious fraud to request that their loan debts be forgiven. Ms. DeVos’s changes raised the bar for borrowers’ relief claims, requiring applicants to individually prove that a school knowingly misled them and that they were financially harmed by the deception. It also set a three-year deadline on claims….

Democrats emphasized the harm from the rule to veterans bilked out of G.I. Bill benefits, a critical move that brought on Republicans.

Ms. DeVos’s changes “made it extremely difficult for these students to get any relief,” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the minority whip, who led the effort in the Senate, said on Wednesday. “The students are up in arms over it, and I’m joining them.”

A policy statement issued by the Trump administration in February defended Ms. DeVos’s rule as a change that “restores due process, the rule of law, and student choice,” and said that the president’s advisers “would recommend that he veto” attempts to overturn it.

The Senate action poses a political quandary for Mr. Trump. He has pressed the Education Department for a proposal to match sweeping college debt plans proposed by Democratic presidential candidates. And veterans, who backed the Senate measure, have been key political supporters….

So far, the Education Department has approved 51,000 loan-relief applications — nearly all of them during the Obama administration — and eliminated some $535 million in debt. About 170,000 applications still await a decision.

Ms. DeVos had denounced the debt-relief system as a “free money” giveaway, and sought repeatedly to curtail it. Her first attempt was blocked in 2018, after a federal judge ruled that the Education Department broke privacy laws by illegally obtaining information from the Social Security Administration on individual borrowers’ earnings.

Ironic, isn’t it, that Secretary DeVos, a billionaire who has never known debt, has no sympathy whatever for veterans, war widows, poor people, or young people who were lured by fake universities to pursue worthless degrees. Compassion and empathy are not her strong points.