After it was exposed Monday, President Trump ordered the immediate cancellation of a “critical race theory” training program planned by the Centers for Disease Control that violated his executive order.
Christopher Rufo, the director of the Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth and Poverty in Seattle, obtained leaked documents that outlined the plan to have employees “examine the mechanisms of systemic racism” and address “White supremacist ideology.”
The final session was to teach the CDC employee how to become activists, Rufo said in a thread Monday on Twitter.
On Tuesday, however, Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, announced on Twitter that Trump ordered that the program be canceled “immediately.”
BREAKING: We shut them down.
But we must go further. There must be consequences for the federal employees who brazenly violated a presidential order. If there is no action from @CDCDirector in the next 72 hours, I will begin releasing the names of those involved.
Swords up! ⚔️ pic.twitter.com/KdHxo7NxrG
— Christopher F. Rufo (@realchrisrufo) September 15, 2020
Rufo said Tuesday on Twitter, nevertheless, that there must be “consequences for the federal employees who brazenly violated a presidential order.”
“If there is no action from the CDC Director in the next 72 hours, I will begin releasing the names of those involved,” Rufo warned.
The CDC program planned to encourage employees to join an “Anti-Racism Collaborative with eight Collective Action Teams” focused on “communications,” making scientific publications “anti-racist” and influencing “policy and legislation.”
In general terms, critical race theory is a post-modern theoretical framework rooted in Marxist principles that views individuals through the lens of oppressed or oppressor based largely on their skin color.
The White House announced Sept. 4 the Trump administration is halting critical race theory training in federal agencies, calling it “anti-American propaganda.”
“This is a sickness that cannot be allowed to continue,” President Trump tweeted. “Please report any sightings so we can quickly extinguish!”
At the time, Vought wrote a memo informing agencies of Trump’s instruction to stop using controversial forms of training and to stop trainining on “critical race theory,” “white privilege” and “any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either … that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or … that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil.”
On Monday, Rufo noted the CDC’s misplaced priorities: “We are in the midst of a pandemic and the CDC is prioritizing a critical race theory training program that is in direct violation of a presidential order.”
Textbook critical race theory
The 13-week series was called “Naming, Measuring, and Addressing the Impacts of Racism on the Health and Well-Being of the Nation and the World,” Rufo said in a post on his website.
The first three sessions were focused on “racism, sexism, and other systems of structured inequality.”
The CDC teachers were then to “address institutionalized racism” to “really set things right in the garden” of a racist nation.
In sessions 6 through 9, the CDC claims “racism is a public health crisis” and that “systemic racism” leads to “police killings of unarmed Black and Brown men and women” and leads to “the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color.”
In sessions 10 and 11, the trainers were to teach CDC employees that they must “target” and destroy the values of “focus on the individual,” the “myth of meritocracy,” the “myth of American exceptionalism” and “White supremacist ideology.”
Rufo commented that the material is “textbook critical race theory.”
The final session was to teach CDC employees how to become activists.
See the prospectus for the course:
