'The Tea Party to the 10th power': Trumpworld bets big on critical race theory - POLITICO

A man holds up a sign against critical race theory during a protest in Reno, Nev., on May 25.

And some of them have begun working with members of Congress to bar the military from holding diversity trainings and to withhold federal funds from schools and colleges that promote anything that can be packaged as critical race theory.

“This is the Tea Party to the 10th power,” Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser who has zeroed in on local school board fights over critical race theory, said in an interview.

Concerns about critical race theory, which examines how race and racism permeates society, have been percolating for months in what activists describe as a sincere grassroots phenomenon led by parents.

(Critical race theory, for example, does not imply white students should feel guilty about past civil rights issues and is not taught in many of the schools where lawmakers are seeking to ban it).

Earlier this month, Republicans at the North Carolina GOP’s annual convention jumped to their feet with enthusiastic applause when Trump called for a ban on critical race theory from the local school level to the federal government.

Jessica Anderson, executive director of the Heritage Foundation’s advocacy arm, said critical race theory is one of the top two issues her group is working on alongside efforts to tighten voting laws?

A former Office of Management and Budget official in the Trump administration, Anderson’s Heritage Action for America put out a pamphlet on Monday calling critical race theory a “destructive” ideology and urging voters to call on their lawmakers to support anti-critical race theory bills introduced by Reps.

In addition to Heritage Action, a new group called Citizens for Renewing America, an outfit started by Russ Vought, Trump’s former Office of Management and Budget director, has rushed in to bolster anti-critical race theory efforts.

As OMB director, Vought drafted a September memo warning federal agencies that Trump wanted them to “cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions." More recently, Citizens for Renewing America has circulated a 33-page document titled “An A to Z Guide on How to Stop Critical Race Theory and Reclaim Your Local School Board.”.

In Washington, Heritage Action is pursuing a long shot strategy to try to shoehorn anti-critical race theory language into must-pass legislation such as the annual defense spending bill.

A new Morning Consult/POLITICO survey, for example, found that while the majority (54 percent) of Republicans believed critical race theory was negatively impacting society, a plurality of Democrats (48 percent) and Independents (46 percent) said they didn’t have a sense of any impact

Few of the organizations working to oppose critical race theory, including Heritage Action and Citizens for Renewing America, disclose their donors

Anderson, for one, said Heritage Action had “huge donor interest in this.” Other donors have started new groups of their own — including some who revved up the budding Tea Party movement a decade ago

And 1776 Project PAC, which was founded to support local school board candidates against critical race theory in schools, has raised over $135,000 from 1,600 donors in less than a month, said its founder Ryan Girdusky, a 34-year-old former political operative who created the PAC after listening to complaints from friends with kids