In a rare move on Capitol Hill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell scheduled an unusually early vote this morning at 6:30 a.m. to advance billionaire Betsy DeVos’s nomination for education secretary to the full Senate. The early morning straight-party cloture vote dealt with a key Senate hurdle required to advance DeVos’s nomination to the Senate floor. The full Senate is slated to vote as early as Monday. DeVos is facing escalating opposition from lawmakers and education advocates. DeVos is a longtime backer of charter schools and vouchers for private and religious schools. She and her husband have also invested in a student debt collection agency that does business with the Education Department. On Thursday, parents and teachers flooded the Senate phone system calling lawmakers to demand they oppose her confirmation. Around 1 p.m., Nevada Republican Senator Dean Heller tweeted, “We are experiencing heavy call volumes in all our offices. Staff is answering as many as possible. Please continue calling to get through.” This week, two Republican lawmakers—Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski—announced plans to vote against DeVos, leaving Senate Republicans one vote short of confirming her. If the Senate vote is 50-50, Vice President Mike Pence would then cast the deciding vote—an event that has never happened to any other presidential nominee in history. If only one more Republican senator decides to vote against her, DeVos’s confirmation will be rejected. This means the full Senate will not move forward with Jeff Sessions’s attorney general confirmation vote, because if he is confirmed, he will no longer be a senator, which would mean one less vote for DeVos.