BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has become a prime example of the so-called revolving door between Wall Street and Washington, according to Business Insider. At least three former high-ranking employees of the New York-based firm hold prominent roles in President Joe Biden’s administration.

Biden nominated Brian Deese to serve as director of the National Economic Council (NEC). He previously served as deputy director of both the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the NEC under former President Barack Obama. After his stint in the Obama administration, Deese joined BlackRock as global head of sustainable investing, according to the WSJ.

Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project, a group that monitors corporate influence in government, told Reuters in November 2020 that BlackRock’s stake in policy decisions could compel Deese to “be absent from big chunks of his job.”

Biden nominated Adewale Adeyemo to serve as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. He also worked in the Obama administration first as a senior international economics advisor in the Treasury Department and then as the former president’s deputy national security advisor for international economics. He later joined BlackRock as a senior advisor, according to WSJ. . . .

The Biden administration says that it was a mistake to promote an activist handbook that included critical race theory (CRT) in schools.

“The Department does not endorse the recommendations of this group, nor do they reflect our policy positions,” the Department of Education (DOE) said in a statement, referring to a book from the Abolitionist Teaching Network called “Guide for Racial Justice & Abolitionist Social and Emotional Learning.”

“It was an error in a lengthy document to include this citation.”

The Abolitionist Teaching Network’s Twitter account, which uses jargon that’s heavily used by CRT proponents or individuals within the “antiracist” movement, describes itself as an activist group that promotes “liberation” for “Black, Brown, and Indigenous folx, inclusive of all intersecting identities.”

The group also calls (pdf) on educators to “remove all punitive or disciplinary practices that spirit murder Black, Brown, and Indigenous children” and to “build a school culture that engages in healing and advocacy.” It doesn’t offer an explanation about how certain forms of disciplinary practices “spirit murder” the aforementioned minority groups.

The group’s handbook also states that social and emotional learning is a “covert form of policing used to punish, criminalize, and control Black, Brown, and Indigenous children and communities to adhere to White norms.”

The group doesn’t make any specific mentions of CRT on its website, but it uses many terms and ideas from the ideology—including that U.S. institutions are inherently racist. A number of Republican-led states have signed executive orders or have approved legislation prohibiting curriculum that claims the United States was founded on racist principles or that any groups—namely white people—are inherently racist.

In recent years, CRT has become somewhat of a catchall term used to describe the “antiracist” movement and training or instruction around “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Opponents of the theory say that it’s an outgrowth of the European Marxist critical theory school, which itself drew on the writings of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and others. . . . .