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Raining on Pride’s Parade: More Companies Bolt from June’s Revelry

May 2, 2025/in Commentary, Economy, Elections, Hot Topics, Policy, Politics, Queers and pedophiles, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

America is four weeks away from the LGBT movement’s biggest party, and companies are already RSVPing no. Thirty days out from Pride Month, the Left’s suffocating celebration of all things gay and trans, it’s obvious the cause’s long march through corporate America hasn’t just stalled, it’s in full-blown retreat. Just two years after Dylan Mulvaney’s catastrophic undoing of Bud Light, June’s over-the-top extremism — at least as a wholesale business concept — is dead. And taking plenty of influential mouthpieces with it.

For most CEOs, it’s been a year of unprecedented realignment. Dozens of major brands are following up on their commitments to drop DEI and progressive political causes with news that they’ll no longer be sponsoring some of June’s marquee events. The first warning shots were fired in March, when organizers of the San Francisco Pride Parade confessed that they were having trouble hanging on to corporate sponsors. The event director, Suzanne Ford, admitted she was “really disappointed” by the flood of businesses dropping their support — to the tune of $300,000 and counting.

“I just interpreted that companies are making decisions that at this time it’s not good to be sponsoring Pride,” Ford told SF Gate. “I think in this political environment … they thought that was a risky decision. But that’s just me reading the tea leaves. I think for a long-term sponsor not to sponsor us, they are responding to what we are.”

Among those who pulled back were big-time names like Comcast, Anheuser-Busch, and Diageo — the parent company of Guinness, Smirnoff, and other alcoholic drinks. The losses, worth more than a quarter-million dollars, blew a significant hole in the parade’s fundraising goal of $2.3 million.

And this isn’t just a California phenomenon. At major Pride events across New York City, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and other states, gun-shy businesses are running for the exits. According to The Wall Street Journal, Mastercard, PepsiCo, Nissan, Citibank, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Booz Allen Hamilton, Darcars Automotive Group, and others are opting out of the major sponsorships altogether — some, as in Anheuser-Busch’s case, after many years of generous and visible partnerships.

“It’s multilayered, and it’s all happening at the same time,” lamented Eve Keller, co-president of United States Association of Prides, a nonprofit that supports LGBT events around the country. She noted that the wave of backlash is so strong that most businesses are asking to have their names and logos removed “from official displays and apparel.” In New York City alone, a full third of corporate NYC Pride sponsors have either declined to sponsor, scaled back their donations, or are “in negotiations to return,” organizers say.

Then there are the brands that want it both ways. Target, which recently agreed to Robby Starbuck’s terms and rolled back a significant portion of its LGBT activism, is bravely returning as a platinum-level sponsor of the Big Apple’s march. But they’re in the minority, research shows. More executives have decided it’s financial suicide to team up in any meaningful way with June’s in-your-face celebration. In fact, 39% of corporate leaders plan to decrease their observance of Pride this year, according to a survey by Gravity Research. The result? A massive shortfall in funds for Pride-fests on both coasts.

Some companies blame “budgetary issues.” Six in 10 “point to President Donald Trump’s policies regarding transgenderism and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) as a driver,” Bloomberg noted. “Almost 40% of all firms raised concerns over criticism from conservatives and customers.” Frankly, Gravity Research President Luke Hartig said, “Conservative scrutiny is really the top driver of change.”

That scrutiny, which is rewriting the U.S. market as we know it, has tentacles that extend even into the pinnacles of LGBT activism. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a group that’s taken a public beating during Starbuck’s crusade, has completely lost its fundraising edge. As more and more CEOs refuse to take part in the organization’s Equality Index, their leadership is struggling to project any sense of relevance. In news that’s gone largely under the radar, HRC was forced to lay off 20% of its staff in February, The Advocate reported. This “restructuring,” as they called it, is almost certainly the result of public pressure and dwindling support.

“The board has charged [President] Kelley [Robinson] with ensuring a balanced budget in the face of a new environment that requires a reset as we ready ourselves for the challenges ahead,” an official explained. Even so, a senior staffer warned, “We aren’t going anywhere.”

They may not be going anywhere, but it will certainly be a rocky road for the foreseeable future. The Trump administration hasn’t exactly been kind to woke bastions like HRC, as it systematically exiles LGBT, DEI, and ESG activists from government and for-profit strongholds. Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, is one of many who’s watched with astonishment as the Left’s pet projects have been dismantled. “I couldn’t have asked for more,” he told “Washington Watch” guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice. “It’s been such an incredible whirlwind of pushback and executive orders on the entire DEI-grid complex. … So I think it’s been fantastic, and we’ve seen what this is doing to the federal government. But I’m hopeful over the next 100 days, we’re going to start to see this trickle through to the for-profit sector too.”

As to why so many big-name brands are high-tailing it out of the political space, Hild has some theories. “First of all, I think that they are increasingly seeing consumer fatigue with the constant shoving of the LGBTQ agenda down people’s throats. They don’t get as much credit as they used to get from the Left for doing it anyway. And they’re getting an increasing amount of heat for doing it from people who just don’t want these corporations to engage in politics at all. They find it nauseating. So I think that’s part of it.”

But, Hild acknowledges, “It’s going to take a long time” to weed out these toxic politics from American brands. “It’s sort of like if you were to take out a bunch of poison from a pond, it takes a little while for things to return back to the way [it] used to be.” Consumers should be encouraged by the corporate titans they’ve brought to their knees, he insisted. But there’s more that they could do.

“I think conservatives tend to only think of their power in terms of their wallet. In other words, if they don’t like a company or organization and what they’re doing, they’ll just [stop shopping] there. … But if you don’t tell a company why it is you stopped shopping there — and [these businesses] spend millions upon millions of dollars trying to figure out why people shop at Target or Walmart or go to a different place,” Hild explained, then you’re missing an opportunity. “When you send an email or call somebody and say, ‘I don’t appreciate this thing we saw [at] Target,’ [or] ‘We saw this [offensive ad at] Budweiser,’” it has a huge impact, he argued. Sometimes, it even goes viral. “Say something both to the company and say something on social media, because they track that kind of thing. So I would say, use your wallet and use your voice.”

Based on the reaction of Big Business, America’s grassroots army is dangerously close to perfecting both.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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Costco’s Wholesale Refusal to Cut DEI Draws Warning from 19 States

January 29, 2025/in Communism, Economy, Elections, Hot Topics/by Family Research Council

It’s a shrinking club, but there are still headstrong CEOs who refuse to bend to the anti-woke winds. None have grabbed more headlines than Costco, the big box holdout who’s clinging to DEI while a stampede of businesses run the other way. After voting down a shareholder resolution last Thursday to return to neutral, the heat is on. And if consumers won’t change the company’s mind, maybe 19 state attorneys general will.

In a surprise move, a coalition of red state law enforcers wrote to the wholesaler, warning them that under the new Trump administration and the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard, these extreme identity politics would no longer be tolerated. “Although Costco’s motto is ‘do the right thing,’” the AGs point out, “it appears the company is doing the wrong thing — clinging to DEI policies that courts and businesses have rejected as illegal. Costco should treat every person equally and based on their merit, rather than based on divisive and discriminatory DEI practices. That reflects President Trump’s executive order encouraging the Private Sector to End Illegal DEI discrimination and Preferences.”

The conservative leaders were referring to one of the president’s earliest orders on January 21, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” While the action most directly affected federal agencies, there was a lengthy section in the document intended for the private sector, where the administration “encourages” CEOs like Costco’s Ron Vachris to ditch DEI and instead embrace “individual initiative, excellence, and hard work.”

Not so subtly, the AGs note that other businesses have faced lawsuits or are under investigation for refusing to roll back woke internal policies. “For the good of its employees, investors, and customers,” the 19 conservatives concluded, “Costco should ‘do the right thing’ by following the law and repealing its DEI policies. Within 30 days, please either notify us that Costco has repealed its DEI policies or explain why Costco has refused to do so. We look forward to your response.” It was signed by the Republican attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

Days earlier, the Costco board had publicly doubled down, declaring that its commitment to “respect and inclusion is appropriate and necessary.” They join the stubborn woke — a collection of companies that refuse to heed consumers’ warnings like Apple and Delta, United, American, and Southwest Airlines.

And they do so at their own peril, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird insisted. “It’s time to ditch DEI,” she argued. “While other companies right the ship and abandon their illegal, woke policies, Costco has doubled down. I’m putting Costco on notice to do the right thing and eliminate discriminatory DEI,” the Iowan urged in a statement. “No American should be denied an opportunity because they don’t fit the woke mold.”

Interestingly enough, Costco hasn’t been a public target of conservative activist Robby Starbuck’s, who’s generated the most concessions from major U.S. chains like Target, Walmart, and McDonald’s. In an interview with Yahoo! Finance, the corporate giant killer cut the wholesaler a tiny bit of slack.

“It’s a very nuanced thing here, actually,” Starbuck said, “because Costco is not quite in the same box [as other brands like Target]. So Costco doesn’t have extremely radical DEI, but they do have DEI policies that I believe are going to be a major legal liability.” Which is why, he clarified, “We did not approach Costco.”

Instead, the Free Enterprise Project, an arm of the National Center for Public Policy Research, offered an anti-DEI resolution that was voted down by 98% of the shareholders after the board frantically lobbied people to vote no. Starbuck isn’t surprised by that. “If you ever have a shareholder proposal, no matter whether you like it or you hate it,” leaders are going to urge their shareholders to vote against it because they don’t want to cede authority. “[If] these people are going to decide for you something that you believe should be an executive decision, you’re always going to say, ‘Please vote against this because this should be under our authority, our control.’”

Stefan Padfield, the executive director of the project that offered the resolution, isn’t deterred. “Fortunately, the truth about DEI is being exposed as never before, and it is only a matter of time until DEI’s inherent shareholder-value-destroying nature forces even managers like those at Costco to get back to neutral and focus on creating value by providing great products and services rather than engaging in neo-Marxist and neo-racist social engineering projects,” he insisted.

On that, he and Starbuck agree. “I think Costco’s executives are just sort of learning about exactly what their DEI programs do and kind of getting familiar with the legal landscape. I don’t think we’ve heard the last of the Costco story.” Since last week’s shareholder vote, Starbuck says he has reached out to their executives. “Personally, I have engaged,” he said, adding that he would keep the details of those conversations off the record for now. “I have made sure they have all the information,” he explained. “And I think it’s something that they’re going to have to look very deeply at themselves and see if they think that they want to test the waters.”

At the end of the day, Starbuck pointed out, it’s up to management to decide how they want to run their business. “If you see the evidence that this is not making you money or that this is wasting you money, you should get away from it. And that’s why it’s been an easy sell to so many CEOs, because they understand that this has done nothing but bring division. It has cost them money. It’s just been an absolute black hole since the very beginning. It was not what they thought it was going to be. They thought this was going to be about equality. Most of them didn’t even know what ‘equity’ was. And when you actually show them everything their companies are doing, most of them can’t believe it. They think it’s absurd.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

The Anti-Woke Wave Hits Wall Street, Tripling Shareholder Resolutions

January 14, 2025/in Communism, Economy, Elections, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Socialism/by Family Research Council

In another sign that the anti-woke movement is only gaining steam, even conservative shareholders are getting off the sidelines and into the fight. While Americans stick it to the Bud Lights and Targets of the world, investors are building a small army of activists to dismantle these radical politics from within. And according to Axios, they’ve been surprisingly effective.

Since 2020, the number of anti-DEI shareholder proposals has tripled, a surge that’s putting even more pressure on CEOs to back off their political agendas. Companies like Apple, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and Boeing were some of the major targets of the 13 resolutions brought before Russell 3000 firms last year, research from Conference Board shows. But unlike the wave of grassroots pushback that’s swallowed big brands since Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney fiasco in April of 2023, this is a movement that’s been bubbling under the surface for decades.

While Robby Starbuck has gotten the lion’s share of the attention for bringing Fortune 500 businesses to their knees, there’ve been a number of conservative foot soldiers working day in and day out for decades to stem the tide of extreme politics on Wall Street. Justin Danhof, one of the earliest pioneers of shareholder activism on the Right, jokes that “13 years ago, we could have filled a room on ESG with me standing in a restroom yelling at myself in a mirror.” Even a few years ago, he said, “it might have been the size of a locker room.” And now, he shakes his head in disbelief, “We’re filling rooms on this issue.”

Look, Justin said, “I was lonely for a very long time. But I’m not lonely anymore. There are so many great Americans — so many great warriors — that understand that ESG and DEI through corporate America is a threat to your everyday life, and you are now standing up and fighting back.”

No longer an “outlier,” Danhof tells The Washington Stand that “the growing number of shareholder proposals promoting excellence and meritocracy are an important part of the equation in driving corporate change, because they open up the door for honest dialogue. It helps create a balanced conversation as opposed to the nearly monolithic demand for DEI heretofore.” He thought back to the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, when there was “a rush to implement DEI everywhere and all at once in corporate America. Many of these initiatives were poorly planned and implemented. Under investor scrutiny, the case for DEI often collapses.” As it’s doing on a broad scale now.

Scott Shepherd, another expert who’s been in the trenches of shareholder warfare before acronyms like ESG and DEI were even mainstream, loves what he’s seeing from the grassroots. After so many decades of being taken for granted, everyday Americans are forcing “a stampede” of retail behemoths like Walmart, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, Coors, McDonald’s, and so many others to overhaul their entire strategy. But this return to political neutrality can — and should — be part of a broader strategy. Boycotts are good, Shepherd told the crowd at Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand Summit late last year, “but it’s not enough. You’ve got to get in the fight if you own shares. … If you are getting a pension, you’ve got to make sure that pension is following fiduciary duty, not voting according to ESG [and DEI].”

What he means is that this is a multi-front war. We’re seeing individual consumers push back with their wallets and voices on social media platforms — and their impact cannot be overstated. But we’ve also seen a powerful legislative response coming from state leaders and treasurers divesting from the nefarious asset managers like BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard. And last, but certainly not least, there’s this spike in activity that we’re seeing from shareholders, who are taking on companies from the inside with targeted resolutions. Together, they’re creating a perfect storm that’s squeezing CEOs until they surrender.

Just last Thursday, the market was stunned when Larry Fink’s BlackRock, the mastermind of woke investment, decided to officially pull out of the United Nations’ Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) coalition. Fink, who’s been bloodied more than most in the ongoing backlash against DEI and ESG, stunned a lot of people by walking away from this project, given his obsession with climate initiatives.

“This should be music to the ears of every consumer in the entire country,” Will Hild, the executive director of Consumer’s Research, declared to The Daily Wire. “It’s a good thing for consumers because it’s going to help alleviate some of the inflationary effects of ESG and net zero.”

Of course, Fink — like so many executives — sees the writing on the wall of a Trump administration that openly embraces fossil fuels. Still, Hild contended, “This is a huge win for consumers and a decent start for BlackRock rolling back their destructive influence on our economy.” But, he cautioned, there’s a long way to go.

That sentiment is certainly echoed by the movement’s longest champions. Stefan Padfield, executive director of the Free Enterprise Project at the National Center for Public Policy Research, underscored the need for conservatives to stay in the game. He talked about a call he had just last week with “a major, major player.” And when they approached him about changing the business’s woke stance, the guy “basically laughed. … He thought this was a joke.” As he explained to The Washington Stand, “You’ve got the actual radical activists, [who] are all in on this sort of neo-racist, neo-Marxist agenda. And they would happily sacrifice the share price if it puts them on the ‘right side of history.’ Everything’s political. All you can do is get rid of them, because they’re not going to stop what they’re doing.” And that, he acknowledged, takes time.

“We’ve seen the Robby Starbuck phenomenon. He’s had some great wins,” Stefan pointed out. “All he’s doing is showing people the actual DEI programs, the actual documents [from their own corporations]. … And he’s talked about how he’s gone to at least some executives and shown them this stuff, and they were surprised. And when they saw how bad it was, they just said, ‘Yes, we’re going to get rid of it.’” Obviously, Padfield explained, “That’s a huge problem. I mean, it’s great that they’re responding appropriately, but the fact that they didn’t know [what they were promoting], that’s a big deal.”

With Donald Trump days away from retaking the White House, there’s plenty of reason for optimism, Padfield stressed. Remember, he said, “It’s taken a while for the actual damages to percolate up. We’ve had an administration that has basically run cover for this stuff — if not flat out just like forced it down the throats of all of society. So there’ve been no repercussions on that. And in fact, companies were rewarded for doing this stuff.” That’s about to change.

In the meantime, he encouraged people to lean into the successes conservatives are having — including the ones that go largely unnoticed. One of the reasons there were just 13 anti-DEI resolutions, Padfield agreed, is because so many of these victories are happening in negotiations behind closed doors. Just last week, Free Enterprise Project celebrated AT&T’s decision to stop pressing suppliers to comply with their woke policies. Because the phone giant agreed to respect their vendors’ civil liberties, the group withdrew their shareholder proposal on the subject. Who knows how many other victories have been decided before investors catch wind?

For now, Padfield said, “It’s fantastic to celebrate the wins, but it’s taken a long time.” It’s really just “the flip side” of “of what the Left has done, right? I mean, they had their own long march.”

But now? Stephen Soukup, author of “The Dictatorship of Woke Capital,” is “optimistic. “When my book came out,” he recalled, “I did probably 100, 150 podcasts and radio interviews, and I would have to explain at each and every interview what ESG was. It didn’t matter who the host was, how famous they were, how prominent they were, how well they understood politics. Nobody knew what ESG was. Now everybody knows what ESG is. Now everybody knows what DEI is, [and they know] what the issues we’re facing are. And I think that’s important.”

Looking over at Danhof during the summit, he smiled. “My job early in the movement was to drag Justin out of the bathroom, where he was yelling at himself, and raise awareness about this issue. And I think that that’s one of the things that we’ve done remarkably successfully, is raise awareness about what a small group of elites is doing to our corporate culture, doing to our capital markets, and thereby doing to our entire society.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

Walmart’s Retreat on DEI This Thanksgiving Is Just Gravy

November 27, 2024/in Communism, Economy, Elections, Hot Topics, Marxism, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Regulation, Religion, Social Issues, Socialism/by Family Research Council

Turkeys aren’t the only things on the chopping block this week — so is woke policy. Americans, who are already celebrating a return to sanity after the elections, have to be equally ecstatic that after 19 months, conservatives are savoring another massive corporate surrender. In what Robby Starbuck calls “the biggest win yet,” the country’s number one employer, Walmart, is abandoning DEI in what may be the smartest holiday marketing decision so far.

For shoppers looking for an alternative to Target’s racks of chest-binding lunacy, it’s been disappointing to see how their largest competitor has become just as compromised on everything from Pride merch to abortion travel coverage. Now, in a shocking sea change, the brand is ditching its radical activism for market-friendly neutrality — just in time for the Christmas shopping season.

A jubilant Starbuck, who’d been in conversations with Walmart executives behind the scenes, said in a video announcing the change that he didn’t even know where to start, because, in his mind, “This is different than everything else we’ve done.” And maybe the most impactful. For weeks, the consumer activist was teasing the fact that he’d been investigating an enormous company. “Now I can reveal it was Walmart. But,” he emphasized, “something incredible happened.”

When headquarters realized Starbuck was looking under the retailer’s hood, they reached out to him. “This was critical and honestly turned out pretty fantastic for everybody involved in my opinion,” he explained. “We were able to have frank conversations with Walmart. And as I’ve said for a long time, I don’t ask companies to take on my political views. I am simply advocating for corporate neutrality. … [T]his is the future,” Starbuck insisted of the grassroots movement. And the iconic blue-and-yellow brand must agree, because “after various productive conversations, I am very proud to report to you guys that Walmart has decided on making some changes.”

The biggest, conservatives would agree, is that the company will no longer be participating in the Human Rights Campaign’s outrageous Corporate Equality Index, further frustrating the largest driver of the LGBT agenda in American brands. “I have to give their executives major credit,” Starbuck underscored, “because this will send shockwaves throughout corporate America.” Other changes the company pledged to make:

“Monitor the Walmart marketplace to identify and remove inappropriate sexual and / or transgender products marketed to children.
Review all funding of Pride, and other events, to avoid funding inappropriate sexualized content targeting kids.
Discontinue the Racial Equity Center which was established in 2020 as a special five-year initiative.
Evaluate supplier diversity programs and ensure they do not provide preferential treatment and benefits to suppliers based on diversity. We don’t have quotas and won’t going forward. Financing eligibility will no longer be predicated on providing certain demographic data.
End the use of ‘Latinx’ in official communications.
Cancel racial equity training through the Racial Equity Institute.
Stop the use of DEI as a term while ensuring a respectful and supportive environment.”

Walmart joins a long list of companies who are publicly rejecting the agenda that’s tanked the stocks and profits of unrepentant brands like Bud Light, Nike, and Disney. Sam Walton’s stores now join a consumer activist trophy wall that includes Tractor Supply, John Deere, Harley Davidson, Polaris, Indian Motorcycle, Lowe’s, Ford, Coors, Black & Decker, Jack Daniels, DeWalt tools, Craftsman, Caterpillar, Boeing, and Toyota. Together, these companies represent an eye-popping $2 trillion dollars in market value.

Asked to explain the abrupt reversal, Walmart told Fox Business, ”[We are] willing to change alongside our associates and customers who represent all of America.” Striking a remarkably contrite tone, they added, “We’ve been on a journey and know we aren’t perfect, but every decision comes from a place of wanting to foster a sense of belonging, to open doors to opportunities for all our associates, customers and suppliers and to be a Walmart for everyone.”

Stephen Soukup, author of “The Dictatorship of Woke Capital” and vice president at The Political Forum, believes “what’s happening with Walmart is a big deal. And not just because it is the largest retailer in the world,” he told The Washington Stand. “I think Walmart’s decision confirms that American business stands poised on the precipice of a ‘preference cascade.’”

He’s referring to a concept that was invented by economics about 40 years ago to explain “how totalitarian regimes go from seemingly stable and in control to toppled and wiped out in a matter of days or weeks. In brief, everyone lies about their preferences in public for fear of being singled out for retribution by the regime or their peers. In time, however, the lies give way to reality. A spark of some sort alerts individuals to the fact that they are not alone, that everyone shares their hatred of the regime but has also been hiding it,” he explained.

And once that “signals to the masses that the false social support is teetering — once one person, then two people, then three people express publicly what they have long felt privately — the entire social structure collapses upon itself. One leads to two, which leads to three, which leads to a ‘cascade’ of thousands upon thousands.” In this instance, “The DEI regime — largely started and enforced by groups like the Human Rights Campaign — has been stifling for businesses, which nevertheless played along for fear of being singled out. … And so, a return to standard traditional business practices is something that’s really going to benefit shareholders,” Soukup told guest host Joseph Backholm on Tuesday’s “Washington Watch.”

Remember, Starbuck emphasized, “This won’t just have a massive effect for their employees who will have a neutral workplace without feeling that divisive issues are being injected but it will also extend to their many suppliers.”

This will all come as a relief to former Walmart CEO Bill Simon, who five years ago, lamented the liberal changes the company had made since he departed a decade ago. “Our view was always, ‘Let’s just run a business,’” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins in 2019. “We’ll sell to anybody. We’ll try to stay out of the public eye on issues that can be confrontational.” Fast-forward to the last five years, when everything — including the marketplace — is polarized. It’s astonishing, he said on “Washington Watch,” to see the progression of corporations.

Even then, Simon thought it was only a matter of time before the next shoe would drop. “I think there’s going to have to be some kind of reckoning because businesses,” he predicted, “particularly one that trades in public markets on the stock exchange, has to be available to everybody and can’t exclude one political ideology just because [of] the ideology of the people who are currently running that business.”

In this instance, the mere threat of consumer backlash was enough to force Walmart to wave the white flag. And it’s because, as Starbuck celebrated, “We are a force to be reckoned with. … [T]he paradigm has changed. We are powerful and growing every single day.” And, he added, “We will not stop until we have eliminated wokeness in corporate America.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

Poll: Do Americans Really Care about where Companies Stand Politically?

August 15, 2024/in Courts & Law, Culture War, Economy, Elections, Healthcare, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Regulation, Religion, Science, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

A recent Gallup poll revealed only 38% percent of American adults “want businesses to take a stance on current events.” The remaining majority, however, would prefer corporations to stay quiet on their beliefs.

After several years of political madness, society has witnessed waves of boycotts from the Left and the Right. For instance, many conservatives and Christians have chosen to stray from doing business with organizations such as Bud Light, Target, Starbucks, and others, that unabashedly promote LGBT ideology. The same is true on the opposite side of the spectrum, as pro-Palestinian groups that support Hamas have chosen to boycott organizations with Israeli ties.

But notably, the poll, which measured the opinions of 5,835 people, found that “nearly all age groups, genders, races, and partisan groups” were represented in those who felt corporations should keep their political views to themselves. The groups that most strongly felt otherwise included Democrats, black adults, and those who promote LGBT ideology.

The question is: why is this the case? Is it possible consumers are tired of having to pick and choose where they buy a cup of coffee? Or could it simply be that the American people don’t want to associate everyday shopping with a particular worldview? To help give possible explanations to these questions, Family Research Council’s Director of the Center for Biblical Worldview David Closson commented to The Washington Stand.

“We live in incredibly hyper-politicized times,” he stated. “For the last several years, it seems that politics has exploded onto the headlines, and one can’t navigate through the public square without being forced to confront the latest cultural or social issue.” As such, Closson noted he’s “not at all surprised that Americans are expressing to pollsters the fact that they are utterly exhausted” to be faced with politics 24/7.

According to Closson, there are times when political engagement within an everyday shopping experience is justified. For instance, “The backlash against Bud Light and Target for their aggressive LGBT activism” had a purpose. Considering that many of the leftist companies faced severe drops in sales, it’s now obvious that the boycotts “sent a warning shot across the bow to many corporations that tens of millions of Christians were tired of having a moral agenda shoved down their throat that was not congruent with their biblical worldview.”

In the broad analysis, it stands to reason that Christians aren’t the only ones to be “getting tired of the constant, frantic political news cycle” that’s seemingly impossible “to extricate ourselves from.” However, arguably, Christians do face a unique dilemma when it comes to the political stance of an organization. As Closson emphasized, “Fundamentally, Christians are called to be good stewards” — a call applicable to both our time and resources.

However, from Closson’s perspective, “Christians should be good stewards with everything God has entrusted us with, which would include our consumer habits.” He continued, “When Target was putting chest-binders in swimsuits for those who identify as transgender on the very front display rack, I do believe Christians have an obligation not to support companies that so flagrantly and blatantly disregard traditional biblical ethic.”

Ultimately, in a fallen world, Christians will never be truly free of businesses that reflect anti-biblical beliefs. But that doesn’t mean, as Closson contended, that we should “worry about every little detail” and rob ourselves of joy. “Some of these large companies do our homework for us by virtue signaling and seemingly taking every step possible to let us know where they stand on the moral issues of our day.” And “when an organization, company, or business tells you what they believe on certain hot button issues, it’s appropriate for Christians to take them at their word.”

Closson concluded that when it comes to these matters, “Wisdom is needed.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

John Deere Listens to De-tractors, Bails on DEI and Pride Parades

July 20, 2024/in Culture War, Economy, Elections, Hot Topics, Must Read, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

Americans are having a literal field day calling woke companies on the carpet this summer. Their latest conquest — a corporation that arguably never should have been in this mess — is agricultural icon John Deere. Three weeks after their rural relatives at Tractor Supply Co. did a complete U-turn, disavowing their LGBT activism in a public apology, the famous green and yellow logo has not only felt the heat, it’s seen the light.

You can almost smell the fear in executive board rooms now that conservatives have started pulling back the curtain on the advocacy that a surprising number of heartland CEOs are quietly engaging in. Robby Starbuck, who almost singlehandedly brought Tractor Supply to heel, started digging into the tractor manufacturer’s corporate policies and was stunned to find a deep root of DEI, leftist campaign donations, and climate and trans activism.

According to Starbuck, employees were blunt about the business’s priorities under CEO John May. “I’ve never worked at a company that values DEI more than John Deere,” one admitted. Their shared experiences spanned from “listening to the ‘Experience of the LGBTQ+ community across generations” to “[P]ride photoshoots at the office.” One of the most disturbing measures of the business’s abandonment of its consumer base was the 95% it scored on the Human Rights Campaign’s 2024 pro-trans Equality Index. As if that weren’t enough, the brand went so far as to declare in a recent annual report that “DEI is the only global behavioral performance metric upon which all salaried employees are evaluated.”

No more. Three weeks after Starbuck went public with his findings, May’s failure to read the room has come home to roost. The CEO, who’s been at the helm since 2019 and presided over the brand’s sudden downturn, has at least partially come to his senses. In an X post Wednesday, John Deere wrote, “Our customers’ trust and confidence in us are of the utmost importance to everyone at John Deere. We fully intend to earn it every day and in every way we can.”

Based on “ongoing conversations,” the business explains, “we have committed to the following:

“We will no longer participate in or support external social or cultural awareness parades, festivals, or events.
Business Resource Groups will exclusively be focused on professional development, networking, mentoring, and supporting talent recruitment efforts.
Auditing all company-mandated training materials and policies to ensure the absence of socially motivated messages, while being in compliance with federal, state, and local laws.
Reaffirming within the business that the existence of diversity quotas and pronoun identification have never been and are not company policy.”
We fundamentally believe that a diverse workforce enables us to best meet our customers’ needs and because of that we will continue to track and advance the diversity of our organization.”

Starbuck celebrated the victory but argued the company could go further. “Customers want to hear that DEI policies are entirely gone.” That said, he went on, even this “shows that we’re a powerful force to be reckoned with. … This is another massive win.” The pushback is working, he reiterated. “You just need to report the truth to people about what’s happening in corporate America. We have over 1,000 different whistleblowers coming from many different companies. Woke corporate executives all fear that their company is next to be exposed.”

He’s right about that. Ever since shoppers’ shellacking of Target and Bud Light, executives have had a collective panic attack about their radical extra curriculars. As recently as this week, Jim Fielding, a former CEO of Claire’s and a former president of Disney stores, admitted to The Wall Street Journal, “I’m very nervous. Who’s next?”

Adding to the Left’s headaches, this year’s Pride Month was a disaster for the Left, who watched companies flee the tradition in droves — desperate to put some distance between themselves and their LGBT alliances. Then came Tractor Supply’s sweeping mea culpa, the most thorough repudiation of internal wokeness the country has ever seen. “Wall Street is on notice,” Starbuck insisted. “Corporate America is afraid of YOU. Every woke company is wondering if they’re next.”

The full power of the American consumer is on display — and even the media isn’t disputing it. “Your favorite brand no longer cares about being woke,” Vox declared. In fact, this grassroots revolution is such a formidable force, so persistently potent, that Starbuck believes some companies “will drop their programs without us ever doing a story.”

For conservatives who’ve been in these trenches for years, like Strive’s Justin Danhof, this is an especially gratifying moment. The brainchild of presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, Strive is the anti-ESG answer to the woke asset management of firms like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. “When people invest their money in a company, they should be able to have confidence that the people who run it are making decisions that are what’s best for the value of the company,” Danhof told The Washington Stand. “That’s basic common sense. And to the extent that Strive is helping to convince executives to care about shareholders rather than stakeholders, then I think we’re making progress.”

Here’s hoping. Until then, everyone should heed Robby’s advice: “You really do NOT want to make customers angry. [It’s] just a terrible idea.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

Tractor Supply Puts Pride Out to Pasture, Handing Americans Their Biggest Win Yet

July 1, 2024/in Culture War, Economy, Elections, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Science, Social Issues/by Family Research Council

Most Americans couldn’t dream up a better way to cap off the Left’s 2024 Pride fail than another big-name company running for the exits. While major league sports and other businesses quietly dumped the June tradition, Tractor Supply Co. opted for a full-scale reversal, complete with a public apology for their activism. In a statement that read like a death knell for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the rural retailer joined the bumper crop of brands on the sidelines — putting another exclamation point on this year’s epic pushback.

Fresh off a stint at another hotbed of wokeness, Macy’s, CEO Hal Lawton, who’s only been at the helm since 2020, took the Tennessee-based company in a radical new direction, embracing everything from transgenderism to DEI — decisions that earned him a perfect score on HRC’s 2022 Equality Index (and a 95% last year), honors on Bloomberg’s Gender Equality Index for 2022 and 2023 and Newsweek’s Greatest Workplaces for Diversity in 2023. And while the adulation of the Left might have been music to Lawton’s ears, it became a battle cry for his heartland consumers.

Journalist and film director Robby Starbuck fanned those flames, exposing Tractor Supply’s not-so-secret identity as a card-carrying member of the radical Left. For the better part of this summer, he reported on the details of Lawton’s partnerships, sparking grassroots outrage so intense that the company announced a complete course-correction.

In a blockbuster statement Thursday, Tractor Supply didn’t skirt the issue, admitting bluntly, “We work hard to live up to our Mission and Values every day and represent the values of the communities and customers we serve. We have heard from customers that we have disappointed them. We have taken this feedback to heart. Going forward,” they vow, “we will ensure our activities and giving tie directly to our business.”

They list five monumental concessions, including promises to:

“No longer submit data to the Human Rights Campaign
Refocus our Team Member Engagement Groups on mentoring, networking and supporting the business
Further focus on rural America priorities including ag education, animal welfare, veteran causes and being a good neighbor and stop sponsoring nonbusiness activities like pride festivals and voting campaigns
Eliminate DEI roles and retire our current DEI goals while still ensuring a respectful environment [and]
Withdraw our carbon emission goals and focus on our land and water conservation efforts.”

“We will continue to listen to our customers and Team Members. Your trust and confidence in us are of the utmost importance, and we don’t take that lightly. As we look forward to celebrating our nation’s independence, we also celebrate our more than 50,000 team members across 2,250 stores. Rural communities are the backbone of our nation and what make America great. We are honored to be a part of them. We are always here and ready to serve you and your family with our legendary service for the life you love. See you in the stores.”

The sound you hear is millions of conservatives’ jaws dropping. Had Tractor Supply agreed to even one of these policy changes, it would have been headline news. But to virtually wipe the slate clean of every vestige of LGBT activism, climate change, and then flat-out ditch DEI is a political transformation the likes of which Americans have never seen. Not only that but the company’s contrition felt sincere — and more importantly, backed by concrete steps to prove it.

“This is a massive victory for sanity and the single biggest boycott win of our lifetime,” Starbuck tweeted. To HRC, who denounced the move in a desperate attempt to hang on to their corporate leverage, he warned, “This is the beginning, not the end. … You call me an extremist but you know what I find extreme? Expecting every company on earth to force your political + social beliefs on the entire planet. That seems sort of extreme. All my side is asking for is sanity. Let stores just be stores again. No politics, no far left social values push, just good products & service. No one is asking for discrimination, just normalcy and to not have your politics shoved down their throat.”

At this rate, the people who’ll be most relieved when Pride Month is over are the organizers.

Perhaps most telling, Tractor Supply wasn’t afraid to list its disassociation from HRC first — a level of open defiance that would have been unthinkable five years ago. And yet, like so many businesses, Lawton has realized the only force to truly fear is consumers.

As All-American swimmer and women’s advocate Riley Gaines pointed out, Lawton had plenty of incentive to roll back his extremism. “It only took @TractorSupply losing $2 billion before they decided to stick to selling farm equipment rather than engaging in activism. I believe this is the strongest ‘apology’ statement we’ve seen from a corporation so far. Props to them for listening & responding to their base.”

Donald Trump Jr. applauded Tractor Supply’s disavowal of the Left, writing, “This is great. … It takes courage to admit when you’ve gone [astray] & it’s time more companies acknowledge they are there to serve their actual customers & those communities & not the woke causes of people who would never set foot in your stores. Well Done!”

For conservatives who’ve been fighting wokeism before it was a word, this is a powerful moment — even a historic one. Stephen Soukup, author of “The Dictatorship of Woke Capital,” can’t believe what he’s seeing. “Political neutrality is extremely difficult to achieve. … The reason,” he explains, “… is because of the politicization of basically everything in society, right? Health care is now political. Investments are political. Everything has been overtly made into a political issue. … [And] when everything is political, it pits us against each other. … And that’s something that we have to try and prevent against.”

Ever since the Bud Light and Target fiascos last year, Soukup told The Washington Stand, “Corporations have become aware that there is a distinction between ‘stakeholders’ and stakeholders. As the scare quotes imply, the first is a group of people who have no real skin in the game and are using the company solely to make a political point. The second, by contrast, are people who have a genuine interest in the company and its well-being — customers, employees, shareholders, etc. Catering to the former at the expense of the latter has proven to be a disastrous business strategy and, as a result, is rightly being abandoned by corporate leaders who understand what their fiduciary duties are.”

After this explosion of pushback, he feels the ground shifting. “… I’m so much more optimistic now than I was three or four years ago about how effective we can be in halting this ideological, political takeover of business and capital markets,” Soukup insisted.

But on the ideological battlefield, revolutions don’t happen all at once, Family Research Council’s Joseph Backholm pointed out. “You have to move one step at a time. You conquer a bridge, a hill, then a town. You keep piling up small victories, until eventually you realize a significant amount of territory has been conquered.”

Well, a significant amount of territory has been conquered here, and Americans who took a stand by taking their money elsewhere deserve all the credit in the world. The Goliaths are falling in a battle no conservative imagined winning. So pick up your slings, and let’s go. There are giants to slay.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

Pride Month Goes Out with a Whimper

June 25, 2024/in Culture War, Elections, Hot Topics, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Science, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

It’s been a long time since Americans could sit back and actually enjoy the month of June. It was always an insufferable four weeks, breathing in the rainbow-saturated air that fell heaviest across our favorite sports, stores, shows, and social media. But the most remarkable thing about this year’s Pride Month may be just how unremarkable it was. Sure, there were still parades, over-the-top political pronouncements, and colorful flags billowing from too many government buildings, but the characteristic dread and fatigue from Pride is gone — replaced by a quiet confidence that maybe, just maybe, we’ve been heard.

For the conservatives in the movement fighting this battle the longest, 2024 didn’t just feel different. It was different. Heading into these final days of June, the biggest story across the mainstream media isn’t who’s celebrating Pride, but where did it go? The Associated Press, NBC News, Vox, and others have talked to countless experts, who all have the same thing to say: Executives are too worried about rocking the consumer boat.

“They’ve been rattled,” Drexel University Marketing Professor Daniel Korschun insists of CEOs and other industry heads. “There’s been a definite scaling back in both big and small ways,” Joanna Schwartz, another professor at Georgia College & State University, agreed. “I had expected some brand caution, but this year seems [to be] a near full-scale retreat.”

For people whose livelihoods are actually tied to the LGBT activism that June represents, “bad” doesn’t begin to describe the year they’re having. For Tim Bennett, co-founder of a firm called Tribury that specializes in reaching gay- and trans-identifying audiences, business has been a bust. A lot fewer clients are “reaching out for Pride Month collaborations,” Bennett admitted to Vox. “In speaking with my peers,” he said, “most of us are experiencing the same pullback or wait-and-see approach.” Brand sponsorships are especially low.

Rob Smith, who sells gender-neutral clothing, told the AP that he’s seen a 25% drop in the number of stores carrying his line just over the last several months. That jives with what Alysse Dalessandro has experienced as an LGBTQ content creator. She went from 35 clients who hired her as a model for their Pride Month campaigns in 2022 to nine in 2023 — and just five this year. Even The Trevor Project, an extreme trans-affirming youth nonprofit, conceded to Marketing Brew that it’s seen “a decline in corporate giving in the last couple of years.”

Maybe this is just a “natural progression,” some have tried to spin it. If “transgender and queer people are regarded as part of the norm, there’s no point in making a big statement,” Barbara Kahn, of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, argued.

But in a country where corporate America is routinely blackmailed by LGBT pressure groups, any hint of moderating that message would be seen as betrayal. Stephen Soukup, an expert in woke capital, who’s tracked the progression of corporate activism for decades, pointed out that for the last 15 years, businesses have tried “very hard to please one specific [activist] group, the Human Rights Campaign, which is an LGBTQ interest group.” And every year, [HRC] puts out its Corporate Equality Index — and every year, corporations are expected to do different types of things … in order to receive a 100% rating.”

Lately, that’s included everything from offering health care coverage for gender reassignment surgery to giving a certain amount of dollars and time to LGBT advocacy. If HRC doesn’t like the level of support they receive from a business, then, as “Outstanding” podcast host Joseph Backholm pointed out, they’re “going to try to destroy your reputation and make it hard for you to do business. So the companies feel an obligation.”

Frankly, Joseph argued, “I see this as a kind of extortion, where unless you do the things the [activists] want you to do, they are going to affirmatively try to harm you. Because in the marketplace, of course, your reputation is a big part of what your brand is.” He compared it to a gangster showing up at a store, “tapping their nightstick on their palms saying, ‘You know, it’s a great business you have here. It’d be terrible if something happened to it.’”

The difference now is, American consumers have managed to collectively hurt brands’ bottom lines more than HRC’s ostracization ever could. After Dylan Mulvaney’s beer cans and Target’s “tuck-friendly” swimwear, the backlash was so explosive and so sustained that companies had no choice but to recalibrate. These were billion-dollar mistakes that sent plenty of boardrooms into desperate PR tailspins — and everyone else on a year-long soul search.

This whole grassroots sea change that’s taken hold in sports, business, and other industries has been an astounding thing for longtime conservatives to witness, especially those like Soukup, who’ve been fighting the corporate beast virtually alone for the better part of two decades. “There’s definitely been a retreat,” he agreed. “When I sat down to write the book ‘The Dictatorship of Woke Capitol’ four years ago this summer,” he admits, “I was pretty pessimistic. I didn’t think that there was a whole lot we could do to push back against ESG, to push back against the broader stakeholder movement, to push back against all of this politicization of American corporations. … Even after the book came out, the following spring, I did interview after interview [and] I was asked, ‘What do you think is going to happen?’ I was still pretty dour. I [was] still pretty pessimistic about what our prospects were to get … capital markets back to neutral.”

Now, he looks around at this nationwide movement to roll back LGBT activism and can hardly believe it. “Over the past three years, there’s been really an explosion in the pushback. And there are a lot of people who’ve been involved in this, a lot of people who deserve a lot of credit for this.”

It was almost like a great awakening for everyday Americans, who finally got fed up and realized the amount of power they wield. “We’ve seen a lot of people say, ‘You know what? This is not right. This is not the way that American capitalism is supposed to function. This is not the way American democracy is supposed to function. And it’s important for us to get this right, because if we don’t, then we lose everything.’ … I’m so much more optimistic now than I was three or four years ago about how effective we can be in halting this ideological, political takeover of business and capital markets.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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Biden Campaign Plans to Appear at 200+ Pride Events in June

June 12, 2024/in Culture War, Elections, Featured, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Science, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign plans to appear at more than 200 LGBTQ Pride events and launch a media blitz at LGBTQ voters during the month of June, campaign spokespersons told NBC News recently. This announcement comes months after the Biden campaign declared in January it would make the abortion issue “front and center.”

The campaign plans Pride appearances in 23 states, including all battleground states, featuring not only campaign surrogates but top figures as well. Vice President Kamala Harris greeted 150 LGBT activists in Los Angeles last weekend. First Lady Jill Biden made an unannounced stop at a Pride festival in Pittsburgh.

The Biden campaign will “culminate the so-called celebration of Pride with a huge fundraiser in New York City” on June 28, where President Biden “plans to be the keynote speaker,” narrated David Closson, director of Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview, on “Washington Watch” Friday. “You’d better believe it will be the president himself waving that rainbow flag.”

Closson said he was “not at all surprised” at the Biden campaign’s decision, even though it was a “pretty significant” investment. “President Biden has really presided over the most aggressive pro-LGBTQ administration that we’ve ever seen,” he explained, championing the Equality Act, pushing the “so-called Respect for Marriage Act that codified gay marriage” over the finish line and rewriting Title IX, “the legislation that’s supposed to protect women and girls.”

Under the Biden administration’s leadership, the culture wars are “no longer just about the LGBT movement seeking affirmation,” Family Research Council Action President Jody Hice agreed. “Those in the movement are trying to force their supporters and even their opponents … to bow their knee, and they want to demonize anyone who refuses.”

The Biden campaign’s “plan to aggressively campaign at Pride events” comes as “Big Business has scaled back on its public support of all things LGBT,” observed Hice. “Many companies and businesses are not nearly as all-in [on Pride Month] as they have been in years past. No doubt this is due in large part to the backlash over Bud Light and Target.” But, as corporate America withdraws from this unpopular position, the Biden campaign “is really making an aggressive push” on LGBTQ Pride, Closson noted.

Hice also noticed “quite a difference, a contrast in how the Biden and the Trump campaigns are messaging on LGBT issues,” both in the priority they give to the issue and on the position they take. Whereas the Biden campaign is emphasizing Pride events, the Trump campaign is focusing on crime, the economy, and immigration, said Closson. “This is not an issue they’re really running heavily on.”

However, Closson continued, “when they’ve had opportunity,” the Trump campaign has “highlighted the importance of religious freedom, whereas the Biden campaign really is kind of all-in on this whole gamut of LGBT issues.” He added that “we don’t have to guess what the second Trump administration would look like because we have a four-year record [reflecting what the] Trump administration did on issues related to religious liberty.”

Closson highlighted the Trump State Department’s leadership on the international religious freedom ministerial, an executive order protecting religious freedom, the Department of Health and Human Services designating clergy as essential workers and protecting the conscience rights of doctors, and the Justice Department intervening to support religious liberty for everyone from private citizens like Jack Phillips to churches seeking the freedom to assemble together. “When it comes to religious liberty,” Closson concluded, “the contrast between the Biden administration and the first Trump administration is actually quite stark.”

This policy difference between the presumed nominees for America’s two major political parties is “why Christians really need to be paying attention” to the Biden campaign’s emphasis on Pride events, urged Hice. “This is not simply an issue of sexual preference or whatever. This goes far beyond that to impact your church, my church, our religious liberties, the doctors, where they work … [even] teachers at school.” Closson agreed. “Elections really do have consequences.”

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

Target Retreats from LGBT Merch after Year-Long Profit Bloodbath

May 14, 2024/in Culture War, Economy, Elections, Hot Topics, News, Science, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

This year’s Pride Month is shaping up to be a much more humble affair at Target. In an extremely gratifying twist, the company that bragged their transgender line is “great for our brand” has changed its mind after a year-long stock market bruising. It’s the latest evidence that the wildfire of consumer activism is not only spreading but forcing the kind of change most people never thought possible.

If you asked conservatives two years ago, stopping the woke at major brands would’ve been a victory. But reversing the woke? That’s a tectonic shift in the power structure of Big Business. For once, CEOs — who for years have thrown their radical agenda in the face of shoppers — are feeling enough pain in their profit margins to stop and ask if appeasing the far-Left is worth it.

Target’s CEO Brian Cornell, who flaunted the stores’ chest binders and tucking swimming suits for kids as “progress,” finally counted the cost of his social extremism late last summer. By the end of a dismal August, he didn’t apologize, but he did admit that it was time for some soul searching. As his first and second quarter earnings tanked, he hinted at changes ahead. “As we navigate an ever-changing operating and social environment, we’re applying what we’ve learned to ensure we’re staying close to our guests and their expectations of Target.”

What Cornell learned, Americans will be pleased to know, is that trans activism is the fastest road to financial insolvency. After thumbing his nose at Christmas shoppers with shelves full of LGBT pandering, the full weight of consumer outrage started to sink in. Like his counterparts at Anheuser-Busch, Nike, Disney, Planet Fitness, RipCurl, and Doritos, he sent shoppers running for the exits.

But the activism has obviously gotten to an unsustainable point for his business, forcing Target to announce what would have been unthinkable a year and a half ago: a significant reduction in Pride products. On its website Thursday, the company wanted people to know that this summer’s LGBT merchandise will not only be limited but designed with adults — not children — in mind.

“We’re offering a collection of products including adult apparel and home and food and beverage items, curated based on consumer feedback,” the notice read. “The collection will be available on Target.com and in select stores, based on historical sales performance.” Of the company’s 2,000 stores nationwide, only some will carry the items that landed them in hot water last year.

Naturally, the company’s course-correction didn’t thrill the corporate hostage-takers in the LGBT movement, who immediately blasted Target’s decision to put profitability first. Kelley Robinson, president of the extreme Human Rights Campaign, said Cornell’s move was a disappointing betrayal of their progressive values. “Pride merchandise means something,” she insisted. “LGBTQ+ people are in every zip code in this country, and we aren’t going anywhere.”

The company’s PR team rushed to reassure Robinson and other activists, saying in a statement, “Target is committed to supporting the LGBTQIA+ community during Pride Month and year-round,” headquarters wrote. “Most importantly, we want to create a welcoming and supportive environment for our LGBTQIA+ team members, which reflects our culture of care for the over 400,000 people who work at Target.”

So while Americans can (and should) celebrate the difference they’re making with their money, the work isn’t over. This muted approach to Pride is still an effort to play both sides. As Family Research Council President Tony Perkins told The Washington Stand, “CEO Brian Cornell is discovering that customers do ‘expect more’ now that many consumers are spending less at Target because of its LGBTQ fixation. By avoiding Target, consumers are getting the woke corporation’s attention, but not necessarily their behavior. They should continue spending elsewhere until their behavior meets consumers’ expectations.”

FRC’s Meg Kilgannon also chimed in, pointing out that Pride Month’s celebration of “unnatural lifestyles, proclivities, and identities has become more and more obnoxious over time.” The idea that Target is “setting a limit on Pride merchandising and marketing is remarkable for a corporate America too willing to bend the knee to HRC’s fake business scores,” she agreed. “As American shoppers endure rising prices and lower wages, retail stores suffer — not only from Bidenomics — but their own ridiculous investments in social justice and culture war issues that have nothing to do with profits and everything to do with virtue signaling to shape public opinion.”

“I haven’t shopped in Target recently and don’t plan to,” Kilgannon said. “But it is nice to think that the June rainbow radicals might be dialing things back. If people stop shopping in June, or at least stop spending money in stores and with businesses with rainbow logos and beyond, more retailers will get the message.”

Others, like expert Stephen Soukup, author of “The Dictatorship of Woke Capital,” urge people not to be duped by Target’s “half-measures.” “They seem unlikely to make anyone happy,” he told TWS, “while almost certainly frustrating observers and activists on all sides of the issue. Target says, for example, that it is carefully assessing which stores will have LGBTQ merchandise this year,” he pointed out. “That’s irrelevant in the digital age. Wherever the displays are, they will be videoed and uploaded to social media, causing every bit of outrage and frustration they have caused in previous years,” Soukup said.

“Likewise,” he explained, “it’s important to remember that Target took a hit on its Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index score last year, simply because it responded to customer anger at its displays. The company will almost certainly get nicked again this year for supposedly capitulating to anti-LGBTQ sentiment by limiting its Pride Month offerings.” Ultimately, Soukup predicted, “Both outcomes are likely to aggravate Target’s shareholders. It took several months last year for the company’s stock price to recover from its Pride Month-induced freefall, and a repeat of that disaster may well cause larger and more activist investors to question management’s competence and foresight.”

Regardless, there’s no denying that Americans are moving the needle on corporate extremism. As Perkins said on Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) “Truth Be Told” podcast before he was elected speaker, “This is not a gray area” for most people. Even non-believers understand the difference between males and females. “And I actually think this is why we’re seeing such significant pushback across the nation…” When Americans are silent, he warned, “we are playing right along with the deception that is destroying the lives of many young people.”

At the end of the day, he acknowledged, “What we have is not our own. … God has entrusted you with the resources to buy food, clothing, the necessities of life. Do you think He would really want you sending that to an entity that uses the profits … [to attack] the biblical truth that he expects us to live by? So it really comes down to a stewardship issue. It’s not about boycotting. [It’s about using money] in a way that would honor God. … And I’ll have to be very, very clear. I do not think being caught in a Target store is honoring God.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

Majority of Americans Disapprove of Disney’s LGBT Agenda

May 8, 2024/in Culture War, Economy, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Social Issues/by Family Research Council

Once the go-to brand for children’s entertainment, Disney’s popularity is cratering as the House of Mouse continues promoting the LGBT agenda. According to the latest Rasmussen Reports national survey, 71% of American adults agree that Disney “should return to wholesome programming and allow parents to decide when their children are taught about sexuality.”

Rasmussen cited Disney executive Karey Burke, president of Disney’s General Entertainment Content, who bragged on a conference call in 2022 about being “a mother of two queer children … one transgender child and one pansexual child …” Burke also boasted that Disney has introduced “many, many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories.” According to Rasmussen, over half (54%) of American adults believe such programming and content is “inappropriate” for children under the age of 12.

Additionally, the brand’s popularity is underwater. Only 46% of Americans polled hold a favorable view of Disney, while 45% do not. This is down from Disney’s 51% favorability rating late last year. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the majority of Disney’s support comes from Democrats. Almost two thirds (63%) of Democrats hold a favorable view of the media giant, compared to only 33% of Republicans and 36% of Independent voters.

Half of Democrats approve of programming featuring “many, many, many LGBTQIA characters” for children under the age of 12, compared to only 21% of Republicans and 24% of Independent voters. Rasmussen also noted, “More men (57%) than women (51%) believe stories featuring gay characters are not appropriate for children under 12, and men are also more likely than women to agree that Disney should go back to wholesome programming.”

Joseph Backholm, senior fellow for Biblical Worldview at Family Research Council, commented to The Washington Stand, “Teaching values in media isn’t a new idea. … The innovation Disney has made in recent years is to teach a new morality.” He continued, “Disney sincerely believes teaching children to love sensuality and embrace self-created identities rooted in our self-perceptions is a moral good that leads to happiness and human flourishing. The moral problem is that they are wrong. The business problem is that hundreds of millions of Americans disagree with them.”

Backholm added, “What Disney sees as foundational moral truths, many Americans see as deception and perversion. The pushback this survey reveals is not to the idea of moral lessons in movies, but to the specific moral lessons Disney has prioritized.”

Over the past several years, Disney has become increasingly political, throwing its weight behind the LGBT agenda. In 2022, top Disney executives voiced criticism of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act, which would, among other things, prohibit teachers from discussing “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” with children in kindergarten through third grade. Disney’s then-CEO Bob Chapek originally maintained that the company would not publicly criticize the legislation but reversed course under pressure from LGBT lobbyists both within Disney and outside it. From there, LGBT content in Disney productions increased, including the first ever depiction of same-sex activity in a Pixar film.

In leaked video conferences Disney organized for employees during the Parental Rights in Education Act controversy, executives openly discussed promoting LGBT content to children. Executive Producer Latoya Raveneau expressed her gratitude that Disney’s leadership “has been so welcoming to like, my like, not-at-all secret gay agenda.” Referring to the Disney Channel show she produces, Raveneau added, “I don’t have to be afraid to — like, let’s have these two characters kiss in the background. Wherever I could, I was basically adding queerness to the show. If you see anything queer in the show — nobody would stop me and nobody was trying to stop me.”

Another executive, Diversity and Inclusion Manager Vivian Ware, boasted of eliminating “gendered” language from live shows at Disney theme parks, doing away with terms such as “ladies and gentlemen” or “boys and girls,” in order to create “that magical moment” for children who supposedly identify as transgender, non-binary, etc.

Last year, the Catholic League and Meath Television Media released a documentary entitled “Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom,” exposing what Catholic League President Bill Donohue called the company’s program of “sexual engineering” of children. “They want to go after the little kids,” Donohue said. “As I pointed out in the movie, they just got off their tricycle. And now they’re trying to sexually engineer them.” The documentary, which features interviews with former Disney employees as well as individuals like neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, also addressed Disney’s increasingly vocal stances on political issues and its friendliness with the Chinese Communist Party.

Also last year, after increasing LGBT and progressive content in its productions, Disney faced a $5.5 billion budget cut, resulting in up to 4,000 jobs being eliminated. The company’s market capitalization dropped to a nine-year low and streaming service Disney+ fell nearly one million subscribers short of projected goals. In financial documents, Disney admitted that its LGBT promotion may cost the company money, but indicated no intention of changing its position. More recently, Disney’s stock has fallen by nearly 10% despite Disney+ making a profit for the first time since it was launched in late 2019.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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Nike Stocks Still Tanking a Year after Mulvaney Partnership

April 17, 2024/in Culture War, Economy, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Science, Social Issues/by Family Research Council

A lot has happened since Dylan Mulvaney pranced around his yard in a Nike sports bra last April. Days after his face appeared on Bud Light cans — the controversy that launched a thousand boycotts — the sight of him doing jumping jacks in women’s workout gear was almost worst. And a stock chart that looks like a downhill ski slope proves it. Months after the country protested with a bonfire of bra burning, the only swoosh Nike hears now is the sound of profits gushing.

While Bud Light hogged most of the spotlight with its historic collapse, the devastation of Nike’s trans advocacy is real. By August of last year, the brand of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods was experiencing what experts called “its biggest losing streak since 1980.” With catastrophic losses — upwards of $13 billion dollars in market value — consumer outrage was packing a serious punch.

Angry women led the charge, lashing out at the company as an insult to females everywhere. “The ad feels like a parody of what women are. … That Nike would do this feels like a kick in the teeth,” one posted. Others blasted the brand for making a “mockery out of women,” vowing never to buy another thing from a company that chose a man “over all the hardworking women who workout regularly in your activewear.” It’s “absolutely disgusting.” Most people just couldn’t understand the marketing logic. “Why doesn’t Nike pay a real women to promote a product that is solely for women?” they wanted to know.

Almost a year later, the pressure hasn’t let up. Market analysts have been shocked by the company’s inability to rebound, a nosedive they wrongly assumed was temporary. According to Yahoo Finance, Nike’s stock is down 11.3% since the beginning of the year, and it’s trading “26.1% below its 52-week high.” And while experts are blaming everything from weak overseas demand to slowing sales and pricing challenges, their theories miss the most important reality: shoppers won’t put up with social extremism anymore. LGBT activism, the kind flaunted by Mulvaney and embraced by tone-deaf board rooms, continues to be the kiss of death to corporate profitability.

A long line of woke CEOs can testify to that — including Anheuser-Busch, Target, Disney, Planet Fitness, RipCurl, and Doritos (although the latter two took the bold step of apologizing and course-correcting). Nike, on the other hand, only dug in — a decision that forced them to lay off 1,600 people in February, with a second round of cuts expected in May.

Nike boss John Donahoe has called the company’s downturn “a painful reality and not one that I take lightly.” “We are currently not performing at our best, and I ultimately hold myself and my leadership team accountable,” he said, leaving out any mention of the poor decisions that put Nike in this position in the first place.

Unfortunately, the company has a long and frustrating history of political activism. Millions of customers called it quits on Nike after their endorsement of anti-American quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who, along with disrespecting our national anthem, persuaded the company to shelve its patriotic shoes. They were the first sports retailer to fan the flames of racial tension during the George Floyd riots, voicing support for controversial groups like Black Lives Matter. They’ve fought against religious freedom in adoption bills, girls sports and privacy, even launched a special trans line of clothing called Be True.

Most egregiously, Nike was one of the few brands openly using slave labor to stitch their iconic shoes together. A 2020 expose from The Washington Post talked about the Uyghurs who were spared China’s concentration camps only to hunch over tables sewing Nike’s logo on an endless line of shoes — up to seven million pairs a year.

“Everyone knows they didn’t come here of their own free will,” a Chinese woman told reporter Anna Fifield at the time. “They were brought here … because they didn’t have an option. The government sent them here.” It’s how the Chinese government is “exporting the punitive culture and ethos of Xinjiang’s ‘reeducation camps’ to factories across China,” one expert told the Post.

Incredibly, when a bipartisan bill threatened to outlaw the use of slave labor for American companies, ending our country’s role in these human rights atrocities, Nike fought to kill it. Company spokesmen denied that, responding to The New York Times allegations that they were only in “constructive conversations” with lawmakers. But even today, three years after Joe Biden signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, the Canadian government is investigating complaints that Nike is still using slave laborers in Xinjiang, which they consider a “crime against humanity.”

Now, a year into their Dylan Mulvaney fiasco, the Oregon-based headquarters is reaping the whirlwind. Instead of taking their foot off the gas of an agenda Americans have so clearly rejected, Nike is stubbornly leaning into the radicalism that’s bankrupting other brands. At a time when almost 300 companies are backing off their LGBT advocacy, Nike scored a perfect 100% on the Human Rights Campaign’s Equality Index this year (quite a feat considering HRC’s steep transgender benchmarks).

If Nike wants to enrage consumers at a time of record pushback, that’s their business. But better advice might come from their peers, who believe a smarter company slogan would be: Just don’t.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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Americans Chip Away at Corporate Wokeness with Doritos Win [Video]

March 9, 2024/in Culture War, Economy, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics/by Family Research Council

It took Frito-Lay 63 years to build a $13 billion dollar empire. This week, 50 seconds almost destroyed it. That’s how close the brand came to corporate annihilation after its Doritos team posted a short video with a trans influencer that makes Dylan Mulvaney look like a youth pastor. Turns out, 24-year-old Samantha Hudson isn’t just a man pretending to be a woman, he’s a sick pervert with dreams of sexually abusing children. Congratulations, Bud Light. You’re officially out of the brand basement.

To everyone’s shock, Hudson, who appeared on “Crunch Talk” on behalf of Doritos Spain, has a disgusting history of social media tweets that fantasize about everything from nymphomania to child sexual abuse. “I want to do thuggish things to get into a 12-year-old girl’s [expletive],” he wrote. In another post, he talks about being in the middle of a street in his underwear “in front of a super beautiful 8-year-old girl.” With surprising cruelty, he vilifies victims of abuse, writing, “I hate women who are victims of sexual assault and go to self help centers to overcome their trauma. Annoying sl—s.”

As if that weren’t enough, Hudson describes himself as a Marxist “anti-capitalist,” who fights for “the abolition of … the traditional monogamous nuclear family” — which apparently makes him perfect spokesperson material.

Of course, once people started digging up his vile statements, Hudson apologized, claiming they were “pure provocation and in very bad taste.” “… [H]onestly I don’t know what to say,” he said. “I don’t remember having written such barbarities. … I thought that ‘dark humor’ was funny.” But it was too late. Americans across every platform were horrified, outraged, and to Frito-Lay’s terror, motivated. From journalists to former Trump officials, people called for “the Bud Light treatment.” Who hires an admitted pedophile to be the face of their product, everyone wondered? And what lazy marketing team doesn’t do a background check?

“This person is a million times worse than Dylan Mulvaney,” Ian Miles Cheong argued. The country seemed to agree — making #BoycottDoritos trend on X within hours of the story breaking.

Then something incredible happened. Before the wave of consumer anger hit land, Frito-Lay didn’t just take the video down — they fired Hudson. “We have ended the relationship,” a spokesperson told Rolling Stone. “We strongly condemn words or actions that promote violence or sexism of any kind.”

It was an astonishing turn for the company, even more astonishing given the timetable. Less than 48 hours after the video went viral, Frito-Lay — whose parent company PepsiCo has a perfect 100% score from the Human Rights Campaign on trans advocacy — dropped Hudson like a hot potato. Even Rip Curl, who faced the world’s wrath last month for featuring a trans “hero” in its surfer series, took five days to apologize — a record for regret.

That’s how dangerous it’s become for brands to cross consumers with a woke agenda. In the 11 months since Mulvaney-gate at Bud Light — a gamble that’s now cost them an eye-popping $1.4 billion in revenue — the entire landscape of corporate activism has changed. CEOs who were tripping over themselves to embrace the LGBT fringe are desperate to avoid the pushback that broke Anheuser-Busch, Target, Disney, and others.

As Family Research Council’s Joseph Backholm pointed out to The Washington Stand, this situation is different than other endorsement deals “involving so-called trans influencers,” since Hudson has quite a different, depraved past. “But it’s good to see that gender identity is no longer providing immunity to do and say terrible things,” he observed. “Wokeness has long insisted those labeled ‘oppressed’ can get away with doing things other people should not do. We need a world where people are judged consistently by their choices more than the group they identify with. Yes, Frito-Lay is probably doing a financial calculation here as well, but this is still a refreshing act of moral sanity.”

For corporate America, it’s quite a sea change. After years of punching above their weight class, Big Business faces a terrifying reality: consumers are punching back. And victories like this one will only inspire them to flex those muscles more.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

Hallmark Leans into LGBT Content, Vows More ‘Inclusion’ in 2024

December 15, 2023/in Culture War, Economy, Hot Topics, News, Politics, Religion, Science, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

It’s been Christmas since July on the Hallmark Channel, but viewers got their first taste of the network’s woke holiday programming Saturday. With the debut of “Christmas on Cherry Lane,” management made it abundantly clear that the “heart of TV” will continue to push the LGBT envelope — despite America’s towering wave of pushback. Unlike other companies who’ve reckoned with the shifting consumer tides, Hallmark has no plans to change course. And their refusal to read the room could cost them.

Television’s home for clean, predictable, and endearing romance had already faced an internal revolt in 2020 with the departure of longtime CEO Bill Abbott. Frustrated by the company’s decision to take Hallmark in a more progressive direction, Abbott left to form Great American Family — a booming entertainment alternative that’s been TV’s “fastest growing network” in 2023. With total viewers up 150%, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that Hallmark has its hands full keeping its share of the market.

But instead of returning to the family-friendly formula that made Crown Media the titan of tinsel, Hallmark has decided to go even further down the rabbit hole, embracing an agenda that most American consumers have flatly rejected. According to the company’s executive vice president of programming, Lisa Hamilton Daly, 2024 will be the most “diverse” yet.

In an interview with The Wrap December 8, Daly explained how the writers’ strike complicated things for their annual Countdown to Christmas. “We started preparing for [the strike] last October,” she told reporter Loree Seitz. “I don’t think we understood how long the actors would be on strike, but I was aware that we’d have a writers’ strike, so we started to push our partners to deliver stuff a little early (and) for a large number of our shows, we were able to produce early.”

That foresight spared the company a lot of turmoil (they produced 42 original movies), but it also prompted their teams to get a head-start on the 2024 line-up. Most of next year’s projects, Daly explained, have already been decided. And big changes are afoot.

“Inclusivity” will be a “core goal” going forward, Seitz gleaned from their conversation. “We really want people to be able to see themselves in our movies, and we know that people seeing themselves means that there’s a wider range of people who really are excited when we tell their stories,” Daly explained. Those include more “queer-forward” movies like “Christmas on Cherry Lane” and the lesbian romance “Friends & Family Christmas,” airing December 17.

Ali Liebert, who identifies as lesbian and stars in “Friends & Family Christmas,” is one of the budding producers Hallmark is counting on to bring the company more LGBTQ representation. “As I move forward as a producer and hopefully director,” Liebert said, “I’m focusing on — really taking the opportunity to create queer content.”

The network has also tapped into a growing bench of LGBT-identifying actors and actresses, including the first non-binary star to appear on camera. “The opportunity to play Suzette in ‘The Secrets of Bella Vista,’” Donia Kash explained, “taught my hard shell of a heart that I am moving through this particular world that easily expresses love and the importance of family on the screen,” Kash stated. “To allow the queer community see themselves thriving out there in this world.”

George Krissa, who was the lead in Hallmark’s first gay feature film, “A Holiday Sitter,” last Christmas, cheered the growing slate of LGBT content. “If you watch the Countdown to Christmas this year, there’s LGBTQ folks all over the place,” he said of the 2023 line-up. Even in storylines not centered around same-sex attraction, actors like Jonathan Bennett, applaud Hallmark for giving them an opportunity to be “authentically queer.” “To be a part of this movement that is making sure that people watching these amazing Christmas movies feel like they’re represented on-screen … is so important.”

“Next year, Hamilton Daly said, Hallmark fans can expect a renewed dedication to even greater diversity in the network’s programming. But no matter the cast or storyline, she said, the thread that connects all of its projects will continue to be love,” Seitz wrote.

As for concerns that she may be alienating audiences with such an overt agenda, Daly seems blasé. “Every change we think about,” she told Vulture, “we center it by asking, ‘Does this stay true to the mission of a purpose-driven life of love, of emotion, of family?’ So we’re just trying to find different ways to tell stories that are still centered on those characteristics.”

But the market is changing, along with what Americans will tolerate. And yet Hallmark may not care, Family Research Council’s Joseph Backholm pointed out, because “progressivism increasingly prides itself on not being in touch with the average American. … And while the recent experiences of Bud Light, Disney, and Target indicates Hallmark will drive off customers and lose money by placing greater priority on ‘diversity,’ their worldview teaches them those customers should not be given consideration given their grave moral deficiencies. They are modern, secular puritans. Will it cost them money? Maybe,” he told The Washington Stand, “but many of them don’t care…”

In February, Daly took a swipe at their biggest rival, chalking up the public feud over Great American Family’s refusal to feature same-sex couples to Abbott’s desperation for attention. “That’s what they needed to get press,” the content maven claimed. “And we just decided, this is not our story. This is their story, and whatever they’re doing — they’re shadowboxing at this point. … We wanted to define ourselves on our own terms, and we wanted to let our programming speak for itself about where we sat in that debate.”

And it continues to. But unfortunately for Daly, what her programming is saying is that Hallmark doesn’t understand its audience. As more viewers flock to GAF, Abbott is drawing an even starker contrast with the competition. The meaning of the season is “Jesus’ birth,” Abbott insisted in an interview last week. “It’s gotten so lost in the secular world of what the real meaning of Christmas is.” His goal is to change that.

Now, with an ever-expanding talent pool (many of them popular Hallmark alums), he says, “I would put our Christmas movies up against anybody else’s. … It’s about telling great stories that inspire,” Abbott insisted. And “they may all end in a kiss, but they are different, and they are not going to be the same experience over two hours, because they’re going to incorporate the spirit of the season, which is faith and family” — two things, the CEO argues, that most of Hollywood is “denigrating.” While Hallmark veers off the path that made them a holiday staple, Abbott is vowing to “try really hard to reinforce those values.”

In their early months, Daly waved off GAF, insisting, “their ratings speak for themselves.” These days, that’s exactly what should concern her.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

Americans Put the Holiday Hurt on Disney, Target, Others as Boycotts Bleed into Christmas

November 30, 2023/in Culture War, Economy, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics/by Family Research Council

When Disney CEO Bob Iger sat down to talk with employees about his bumpy year at the helm Tuesday, he said, “I knew there were myriad challenges that I would face.” What he didn’t count on was those “myriad challenges” being millions of still-angry Americans. After management ran the brand into the ground over a popular parental rights’ law last year, nothing seems to be rehabilitating the company’s image. Even the second coming of Iger, who was behind the wheel for some of Disney’s best chapters, hasn’t brought back the magic for consumers. Now, staring down a holiday season with crashing stocks, box office losers, and even less goodwill, will Iger stop riding this polarized express?

Experts have their doubts. Stephen Soukup, who’s spent years analyzing Disney’s radical evolution, worries that as long as Iger is in charge, the right lessons won’t be learned. Still, the author of “The Dictatorship of Woke Capital” was encouraged by last week’s news that Disney was at least admitting that it was on the wrong side of public opinion when it comes to their extreme LGBT advocacy.

In its annual report to the Security and Exchange Commission, management conceded that they “face risks relating to misalignment with public and consumer tastes for entertainment, travel and consumer products, which impact demand for our entertainment offerings and products and the profitability of any of our businesses.”

“What they’re saying,” Soukup translated, “is that their values differed from what the values of their expected audience are — and that’s a big deal,” he underscored on “Washington Watch.” “For a long time, Disney has professed to be the arbiter of values. And it turns out that the American public said, ‘No thanks. We’re not interested in allowing you to tell us what we should or should not believe. We’re not interested in having you inculcate our children in what they should believe, and we’re not going to spend our hard-earned money rewarding you for trying to do so.’”

But is that enough to force them back to neutrality on an agenda that includes, among other shockers, the open “queering” of children? “It should be,” Soukup agreed. “I think Disney faces a couple of very serious problems in trying to recover from this ‘misalignment,’” he explained. “The first of these is the fact that it’s in the business of selling values. You know, storytellers from Aesop to Jesus to the Grimm Brothers all the way forward, have been in the business of using storytelling to transmit values and virtues from one generation to the next, and that’s the business that Disney [is] in. If its values and virtues do not align with the public, then it becomes a serious problem. It’s not as if they can simply say, ‘You know what? … We’re going to take politics and social policy out of our films. We’re no longer going to tell stories that have values.’ I mean, that’s the business they’re in. They have to tell stories that have morals. They tell stories that are intended to transmit values from one generation to the next. And that makes it very difficult.”

The second problem, Soukup insisted, is the guy at the top of the food chain: Iger himself. The two-time CEO, who was behind the wheel of Disney’s woke transformation from 2005 on, is the author of a lot of the extremist tendencies that got his company in hot water in the first place. And while there were some who thought Iger would find a way to rein in Disney’s activism, the last 12 months have given them zero reason for hope. “Disney is a political organization because of Bob Iger,” Soukup insisted.

“This didn’t start this year. It didn’t start in Florida. It didn’t start with Governor Ron DeSantis. As I note in my book, ‘The Dictatorship of Woke Capital,’ Bob Iger has been fighting a political battle, particularly against conservatives, for at least the last decade. He’s fought the battle in North Carolina. He’s fought the battle in Georgia. He’s fought the battle in Florida. This is something that he believes firmly in. And the fight against Governor DeSantis in Florida that made so much news over the last several months was, in fact, Bob Iger’s doing.”

“If you look at what Disney has said about when it decided to get involved,” the vice president of the Political Forum continued, “it was when Bob Iger emailed the then-current leadership and said, ‘We have to do something about this law in Florida. We can’t sit idly by and allow this to happen.’ And what Disney decided to do was fire [CEO] Bob Chapek and bring back Bob Iger. So I think Disney has two serious problems. Their business model is one of selling values. And the man who runs the company is an aggressively and overtly political player.”

And it’s not just Disney who’s thumbing their nose at shareholders. Target, Bud Light, Starbucks, Nike, and a slew of other companies made a very intentional corporate calculation to prioritize politics over profits. “In order for any of these businesses that have been punished by the public over the last year for being political, in order for any of them to make any headway in winning back their customers, they first have to get it,” Soukup emphasized. “It’s become clear, for example, that Target does not get it. That Target does not understand why its customers left it behind, why its customers got upset, why its customers started to boycott, and that they’re doubling down on the tactics that in fact alienated [people].”

While Target CEO Brian Cornell talks a good game, telling investors, “We are firmly focused on getting back to growth,” shelves of rainbow Santas and the hire of a senior-level Pride Lead say otherwise. “It was bad enough when they decided to politicize and sexualize the month of June,” Soukup said, “… but now they’re doing very much the same to Christmas. Their Christmas displays are reportedly very aggressively sexualized and very aggressively politicized. And that is a demonstration of the fact that the management of Target doesn’t understand or is unwilling to accept the verdict delivered to it by the public.” Until they do, they’re “courting the wrath of both customers and shareholders,” he insisted.

Maybe these Fortune 500 companies thought this wave of consumer activism rocking the country was a fad, that it would just blow over, and we’d all return to business as usual. But, as the latest quarterly reports for Target, Disney, and Bud Light prove, Americans’ outrage has staying power. At a time when retail sales are up, these trans-embracing giants are underwater.

“I think the public is exhausted with politics being everywhere and in everything. It’s not that Target is left-wing. It’s not that Bud Light embraced left-wing values. It’s not that Disney is liberal. They are,” Soukup said. “… But that’s not the point. The point is that people are tired of having politics shoved down their throat at every possible occasion. They’re just exhausted with the whole thing, and it’s not something that’s going to go away as long as they keep doing this. This is something that the public is going to react to negatively.”

And while these businesses can survive a good bit of public pressure, “The question is, how long does management survive?” Soukup asked. “How long do the boards and the shareholders agree to keep Bob Iger on, for example, if he doesn’t get it — if he continues to pursue the agenda that got Disney into trouble in the first place? … He may have built Disney into a giant entertainment company, and he may be the nicest man in entertainment, as everybody says. But … eventually, the Disney board and Disney shareholders are going to get tired of what he’s doing and his inability to recognize that he’s a big part of the problem.”

For now, the biggest takeaway is that Americans are finally sending a message companies can’t ignore. Sure, some CEOs will stubbornly carry on, willing to kamikaze their brands for radical causes, but there are plenty of rational executives who see the writing on the wall.

“I think it’s pretty clear that the general zeitgeist in American business is to depoliticize as much as possible at this point,” Soukup pointed out. “Sometimes that’s going to be very difficult, given positions that have been taken just in the last three, four, five years. But I think that a great many executives and managers have seen just how potent customer reaction can be.” And that’s a significant change from decades past.

“It used to be the case that nobody feared conservative consumers very much because conservative boycotts always failed. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. I think that even though these are not organized boycotts, they have been very effective — and they have certainly sent a message to the companies that have been affected and to others who might go down that same road. … To use The Godfather analogy, these guys are Luca Brasi [sleeping] with the fishes. They’re the warning to the rest of business that if you push this too far, you will end up the same way. So I think that what we’re starting to see among a great many corporate leaders is a desire simply to get out of the politics business.”

Whether Disney ever wakes up and joins them is anyone’s guess. Until then, Soukup advises, make the most of this Christmas season: “Vote with your dollars and invest with your dollars.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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Chevrolet drops first non-woke, heart-warming ad of the Christmas season. You will not make it through this with a dry eye. Be prepared to cry.❤️

pic.twitter.com/lUBE0MjVmr

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 1, 2023