#White House cancels CDC’s ‘critical race theory’ training after Trump ban

Enlarge Image

President Trump participates in a roundtable discussion with supporters from the Latinos for Trump Coalition in Las Vegas.
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

The White House on Tuesday said it’s canceling a training course at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that appeared to flout President Trump’s recent ban on programs that use “critical race theory.”

“Glad to report, per @POTUS’s directive, this training is being cancelled immediately,” White House budget director Russ Vought wrote on Twitter.

Christopher Rufo of the Discovery Institute published documents on Monday from what he said was a 13-week CDC series called “Naming, Measuring, and Addressing the Impacts of Racism on the Health and Well-Being of the Nation and the World.”

The trainings taught how to view “racism as a public health crisis” and said “systemic racism” causes “police killings of unarmed Black and Brown men and women” and “the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color.”

Rufo, who was influential in publicizing other federal uses of the academic theory, which applies a focus on race rather than individuals to social issues and history, said the CDC course was “textbook critical race theory.”

Trump’s ban on critical race theory trainings also forbade references to “white privilege.”

The ban was implemented through a memo written by Vought. “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,” the memo said.

The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post.

Some Democrats have pushed in the opposite direction. “Squad” member Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) recently called on the government to declare racism a public health crisis.

A bill written by Pressley would establish within the CDC “at least 3 regional centers of excellence… in antiracism for the purpose of developing new knowledge in the science and practice of antiracism in health.” The bill also would establish a CDC Law Enforcement Violence Prevention Program.

New York Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jerry Nadler, Yvette Clarke and Brian Higgins are co-sponsors of that legislation.