Holly MatkinWashington, DC – President Donald Trump has cancelled the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) scheduled training aimed at teaching federal employees “how to view racism as a public health crisis.”
President Trump had already issued an executive order earlier in September, ordering federal agencies to “cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars” to fund critical race theory trainings, National Review reported.
Trainings that reference “white privilege” were also banned by the order, according to the New York Post.
The President referred to the trainings as “divisive, un-America propaganda,” and directed the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to issue guidance on implementation of his executive order.
“It has come to the President’s attention that Executive Branch agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to date ‘training’ government workers to believe divisive, anti-American propaganda,” OMB Director Russell Vought wrote in a memo addressing the executive order, according to Real Clear Politics.
“For example, according to press reports, employees across the Executive Branch have been required to attend trainings where they are told that ‘virtually all White people contribute to racism’ or where they are required to say that they ‘benefit from racism,’” Vought noted.
The OMB director said that such trainings “engenders division and resentment within the federal workforce,” Real Clear Politics reported.
“We cannot accept our employees receiving training that seeks to undercut our core values as Americans and drive division within our workforce,” Vought added.
The memo, which was sent out to all federal agencies, directed them to identify any areas where funding had been allocated for trainings involving white privilege or critical race theory, including any trainings that implied that “any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil” or that the U.S. “is an inherently racist or evil country,” according to Real Clear Politics.
“The President has a proven track 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 wrote. “The divisive, false, and demeaning propaganda of the critical race theory movement is contrary to all we stand for as Americans and should have no place in the Federal government.”
But the CDC shrugged off President Trump’s directive and forged ahead with its plan to address the nation’s “white supremacist ideology” through a 13-week critical race theory training program for its employees, the National Review reported.
Civil rights activist and physician Camara Phyllis Jones was slated to help conduct the “Naming, Measuring, and Addressing the Impacts of Racism on the Health and Well-Being of the Nation and the World” presentation.
The series focused on teaching federal employees to “examine the mechanisms of systemic racism” and how to “identify three levels of racism,” according to National Review.
Institutional racism, sexism, and “other systems of structured inequality” were also areas of focus, as well as how racism has become “a public health crisis,” according to training documents.
According to the CDC’s training plan, “systemic racism” has led police to view “Black men as inherently threatening,” which has resulted in unjustifiable “police killing of unarmed Black and Brown men and women,” National Review reported.
Sessions also focused on debunking the “myth of meritocracy,” that tells people they will “make it” if they work hard.
According to the training modules, CDC employees should work to target “societal barriers to achieving health equity” in order to fight back against “the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color,” the National Review reported.
Taking action and pushing for legislation and policy changes were also focal points of the series.
But the CDC’s training program was brought to a screeching halt on Tuesday.
“Glad to report, per @POTUS’s directive, this training is being cancelled immediately,” OMB Director Russell Vought tweeted.
The CDC did not respond to requests for comment on the issue, according to the New York Post.
