Post by Admin on Sept 18, 2020 22:26:31 GMT
A month ago, Christopher Rufo reported that a major U.S. nuclear lab—the Sandia National Laboratories—had forced all its white male executives to attend a “white men’s caucus” to educate them on their “white privilege.”
He discovered that this is just one among numerous cases of U.S. government institutions forcing critical race theory-based training on employees.
In this episode, we sit down with Rufo to discuss this ideology and why he has declared a “one-man war against ‘critical race theory’ in the federal government.”
In the memo issued earlier this month, Vought wrote that “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.” He cited unspecified press reports that “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.’”
The memo stated that OMB would soon issue “more detailed guidance on implementing the President's directive” but in the meantime directed all federal agencies to start identifying all contracts for trainings related to topics such as “critical race theory” or “white privilege” as well as anything suggesting that either the United States or any race is “inherently racist or evil” and to look for “all available avenues within the law” to cancel such contracts.
A spokesperson for OMB has since declined multiple requests from Yahoo News for more information on both the implementation of this directive and what prompted it. However, it didn’t take long for some paying attention over the holiday weekend to connect the dots between the vague yet alarmist language in the memo and and recent reports on Fox News and other conservative outlets warning of the dangers of such trainings, all of which appeared to be based on the claims of a conservative activist named Christopher Rufo.
Just three days before Vought issued the memo, Rufo, who’d previously declared “a one-man war against 'critical race theory' in the federal government,” appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show to make a direct appeal to the most powerful member of Carlson’s massive TV audience.
“I call on the president … to immediately issue an executive order abolishing critical race theory trainings from the federal government,” said Rufo, declaring that such programs posed “an existential threat to the United States.”
The message appears to have gotten through. Fox News reported the following day that, “in response to Rufo's claims, a senior administration official told Fox News that the administration was doing everything they could to stop those types of trainings for federal employees.”
The programs Rufo targeted are intended to improve communication, defuse tensions and promote equal opportunities among co-workers of different races and ethnicities, and are analogous or identical to, similar programs that have been a staple of corporate human relations departments for decades.
The memo from Vought emerged roughly 24 hours later. Trump spent Saturday morning retweeting and responding to a deluge of tweets from conservative media and other supporters praising the move, including one that featured a clip from Rufo’s Tucker Carlson appearance with the message: “Critical race theory is the greatest threat to western civilization and it’s made its way into the US federal government, the military, and the justice system.”
“Not any more!” Trump replied.
It’s unclear whether Rufo has had any direct communication with the White House or other administration officials — though this was among a number of questions asked by Yahoo News for this story, which both Rufo and a spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget declined to answer. Publicly, though, neither has made much of an effort to deny that Rufo provided the inspiration for the president’s decision.
Rufo has proudly claimed credit for the President’s decision, as well as a number of other government actions which he attributes to his “investigations” of racial sensitivity training for federal employees. He’s also apparently taken it upon himself to make sure Trump’s directive is enforced, tweeting on Monday “I want to issue a warning to every federal department in the United States: if you violate the president's order on critical race theory, I will find you, expose you, and shut you down.”
He discovered that this is just one among numerous cases of U.S. government institutions forcing critical race theory-based training on employees.
In this episode, we sit down with Rufo to discuss this ideology and why he has declared a “one-man war against ‘critical race theory’ in the federal government.”
In the memo issued earlier this month, Vought wrote that “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.” He cited unspecified press reports that “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.’”
The memo stated that OMB would soon issue “more detailed guidance on implementing the President's directive” but in the meantime directed all federal agencies to start identifying all contracts for trainings related to topics such as “critical race theory” or “white privilege” as well as anything suggesting that either the United States or any race is “inherently racist or evil” and to look for “all available avenues within the law” to cancel such contracts.
A spokesperson for OMB has since declined multiple requests from Yahoo News for more information on both the implementation of this directive and what prompted it. However, it didn’t take long for some paying attention over the holiday weekend to connect the dots between the vague yet alarmist language in the memo and and recent reports on Fox News and other conservative outlets warning of the dangers of such trainings, all of which appeared to be based on the claims of a conservative activist named Christopher Rufo.
Just three days before Vought issued the memo, Rufo, who’d previously declared “a one-man war against 'critical race theory' in the federal government,” appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show to make a direct appeal to the most powerful member of Carlson’s massive TV audience.
“I call on the president … to immediately issue an executive order abolishing critical race theory trainings from the federal government,” said Rufo, declaring that such programs posed “an existential threat to the United States.”
The message appears to have gotten through. Fox News reported the following day that, “in response to Rufo's claims, a senior administration official told Fox News that the administration was doing everything they could to stop those types of trainings for federal employees.”
The programs Rufo targeted are intended to improve communication, defuse tensions and promote equal opportunities among co-workers of different races and ethnicities, and are analogous or identical to, similar programs that have been a staple of corporate human relations departments for decades.
The memo from Vought emerged roughly 24 hours later. Trump spent Saturday morning retweeting and responding to a deluge of tweets from conservative media and other supporters praising the move, including one that featured a clip from Rufo’s Tucker Carlson appearance with the message: “Critical race theory is the greatest threat to western civilization and it’s made its way into the US federal government, the military, and the justice system.”
“Not any more!” Trump replied.
It’s unclear whether Rufo has had any direct communication with the White House or other administration officials — though this was among a number of questions asked by Yahoo News for this story, which both Rufo and a spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget declined to answer. Publicly, though, neither has made much of an effort to deny that Rufo provided the inspiration for the president’s decision.
Rufo has proudly claimed credit for the President’s decision, as well as a number of other government actions which he attributes to his “investigations” of racial sensitivity training for federal employees. He’s also apparently taken it upon himself to make sure Trump’s directive is enforced, tweeting on Monday “I want to issue a warning to every federal department in the United States: if you violate the president's order on critical race theory, I will find you, expose you, and shut you down.”