President Trump on Tuesday said he had expanded a ban on racial sensitivity training to federal contractors.
His administration had instructed federal agencies to end such training earlier this month.
Trump said on Twitter on Tuesday that he had expanded the ban on "efforts to indoctrinate government employees with divisive and harmful sex and race-based ideologies" to contractors doing business with the federal government and those receiving grant funds.
"Americans should be taught to take PRIDE in our Great Country, and if you don't there's nothing in it for you!" he tweeted.
...with our Country, the United States Military, Government Contractors, and Grantees. Americans should be taught to take PRIDE in our Great Country, and if you don’t, there’s nothing in it for you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2020
Last week, Trump announced efforts to promote "patriotic education" and railed against students learning about systemic racism.
He signed an executive order that requires contracts to now include a provision that says contractors with the federal government will not have "workplace training that inculcates in its employees any form of race or sex stereotyping or any form of race or sex scapegoating" or face the cancellation of contracts.
"Instructors and materials teaching that men and members of certain races, as well as our most venerable institutions, are inherently sexist and racist are appearing in workplace diversity trainings across the country, even in components of the Federal Government and among Federal contractors," the order says.
The trainings cited include references to white privilege and systemic racism.
After the instructions were sent to government agencies this month, M.E. Hart, an attorney who has run hundreds of diversity training sessions for businesses and the federal government, told The Washington Post: "If we are going to live up to this nation's promise — 'we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal' — we have to see each other as human beings, and we have to do whatever it takes, including taking whatever classes make that possible. These classes have been very powerful in allowing people to do that, and we need them more than ever. There's danger here."
Read the text of the order below ( as released by the White House):
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