Flouting orders from President Donald Trump, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reportedly tried moving forward with training on “critical race theory,” which focuses on things like “white privilege,” “microaggressions,” and “institutionalized racism.”
Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought announced Tuesday morning, however, that the White House cancelled the sessions “immediately.”
The training in question also taught participants how to view “racism as a public health crisis” and promoted the belief that “systemic racism” causes “police killings of unarmed black and brown men and women,” according to the New York Post.
Details about the 13-week series, titled “Naming, Measuring, and Addressing the Impacts of Racism on the Health and Well-Being of the Nation and the World,” were revealed Monday by Christopher Rufo of the Discovery Institute.
Rufo described the training as “textbook critical race theory.”
On Monday afternoon, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) called on Congress “to ban federal dollars from being spent on critical race theory,” which he described as “divisive, race-based propaganda.”
“Bottom line is: no taxpayer money ought to be spent on pushing this kind of Marxist-influenced nonsense that is racially divisive,” he explained last week. “If you didn’t know any better, if you read this stuff, you’d think it was put out by some white nationalist. It’s unbelievable.”
He told Fox News he believes Trump’s efforts to halt the training are “absolutely appropriate.”
It is not only an issue within the CDC, according to documents obtained by Rufo.
In July, he was given access to information that purportedly reveal the “diversity training” to which employees of the U.S. Department of the Treasury have been subject. Rufo called the series — “Difficult Conversations About Race” — “deeply disturbing” and “an affront to equality.”
The training claims, among other things, that “virtually all white people contribute to racism” and requires all participants to pledge “allyship amid the George Floyd tragedy,” referring to the unarmed black man who died in May at the hands of a now-former Minneapolis police officer.
Trump’s ban on “critical race theory” seminars within federal institutions also barred references to “white privilege,” the memo states.
“The president and his administration are fully committed to the fair and equal treatment of all individuals in the United States,” reads the memo from Vought. “The president has a proven rack record of standing for those whose voice has long been ignored and who have failed to benefit from all our country has to offer, and he intends to continue to support all Americans, regardless of race, religion, or creed.”
Vought ended by arguing “critical race theory” is “contrary to all we stand for as Americans and should have no place in the federal government.”