Corporate Activism Archives

Tag Archive for: Corporate Activism

Meet the Companies Helping to Trans Kids and Hide It from Parents

June 7, 2025/in Education, Healthcare, Hot Topics, Marxism, News, Policy, Politics, Queers and pedophiles, Science, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

It’s been a while since Americans could actually sit back and enjoy June. Now, instead of bumping into rainbows in every aisle and choking on the colored logos of every conceivable brand, there’s some freedom from the suffocating fumes of Pride Month. In these last two years, the march to pull companies back to neutral has outperformed everyone’s expectations. But in this process of rolling back decades of corporate wokeism, one thing is clear: this isn’t over. No matter how much success conservatives have, not everyone will go quietly. When it comes to LGBT activism, some businesses are playing for keeps.

While most of this week’s coverage seems to be about who isn’t joining the parade, there’s a proud contingent of CEOs who have no intentions of backing off their radicalism. To those who would shrug and say, “It’s just a few splashy logos. What’s the big deal?” the reality is much more sinister. This isn’t about slapping a few Progress flags outside headquarters or queering the Sesame Street puppets. It’s about financing a dangerous enterprise to keep children in bondage and parents in the dark.

The corporate darling of this year’s celebration, The Trevor Group, isn’t just another rah-rah LGBT crusader. Billed as a youth suicide prevention organization, one look under the hood shows that this group is anything but uncontroversial. And yet, sponsors are lining up to finance the group — to the tune of millions of dollars. The heavy-hitters, who are giving upwards of six-figure donations, are mostly familiar names: Macy’s, Petco, Abercrombie & Fitch, Pure Vida, Guess Watches, Kohl’s, Lululemon, MAC Cosmetics, and a collection of lesser-known brands.

A lot of these businesses will ring a bell, simply because they’ve been stubbornly clinging to their LGBT alliances through months of nationwide backlash (along with headstrong lefties at Levi’s, Converse, and Nike). Interestingly, the brands that are listed as year-round Trevor Project partners also happen to rank the highest on the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index. With a few exceptions, almost every company that submitted their information to HRC earned a perfect score — meaning they’re completely on board with transgender insurance coverage and benefits, gender-neutral restrooms and dress codes, and preferred pronoun usage, as well as LGBTQ hiring quotas, non-discrimination standards, sensitivity trainings, recruitment efforts, community outreach, philanthropic support, and lobbying on local, state, and federal issues. In other words, the hardest of the hard core:

$1 million: Abercrombie (100%), Lululemon, Macy’s (100%)
$500,000: AT&T (100%), Deloitte (100%)
$250,000: Coca-Cola (100%), GenDigital (100%), Gilead (100%), Harry’s, Hot Topic Foundation, Jingle Jam, Sephora (100%), MAC Cosmetics, Procter & Gamble, Rare Beauty, The Game Company
$100,000: David Yurman, Delta Airlines, Delta Dental, Dolce Vita, FedEx (85%), Forever 21, H&M, Humble Bundle, Kate Spade, Kohl’s (100%), Lemonade, Makeship, Maybelline, National Education Association (NEA), Native, NFL, OPI, Pair of Thieves, Petco (95%), Saks Fifth Avenue, United Airlines (100%), Wells Fargo (100%), Williams-Sonoma (90%), XBox

And while The Trevor Project claims to be harmlessly dedicated to “advocacy, education, and crisis support for LGBTQ+ young people,” it’s the nature of that advocacy and education that should disturb Americans. For starters, this is a group that, just three years ago, was exposed for stealthily grooming children online. A suspicious mom, whose daughter struggled with gender dysphoria, logged onto the organization’s TrevorSpace chat room to see what kind of advice she was getting — and was horrified at the graphic and disturbing nature of the site.

She sent the screenshots to National Review, a “Pandora’s box” of “sexually perverse content, aggressive gender re-assignment referrals, adults encouraging minors to hide their transitions from their parents, and many troubled kids in need of psychological counseling. Like most moms, she said she’d turned to The Trevor Project in “desperation.” “‘I thought my child was going to kill herself,’” she admitted. “In TrevorSpace,” NRO explains, “she got a bird’s-eye view of the progressive non-profit giant that is claiming to save young lives but is really driving them further into existential rabbit holes, depravity, and potential danger.”

At one point, “Rachel then dove into an abyss of concerning sexual conversation. Some transgender-identifying adults confessed in detail their [fantasies and deviances].” In some cases, “users under 18 spoke with adult users about their sexual preferences, including BDSM, polyamory, and others.”

Equally as disturbing, The Trevor Project has its hooks in countless K-12 classrooms across the country with its so-called “resources for educators and school officials, including the Is Your School LGBTQ-Affirming? checklist and Creating Safer Spaces in Schools for LGBTQ Young People, which can help determine whether a school is adequately supporting LGBTQ+ students.” The website “also offers several educational guides for adults working with LGBTQ+ young people, including the Guide to Being an Ally to Transgender and Nonbinary Youth, How to Support Bisexual Youth, and Preventing Suicide.”

“We’ve increased our efforts in public education,” the project’s website brags — and that’s exactly what parents should be afraid of. The group’s resources include a Model School Policy Booklet that it distributes to “ally” teachers, counselors, and volunteers across the country. Among other things, it urges educators to hide information about students’ sexual orientation or gender identity from parents:

“Information about a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity should be treated as confidential and not disclosed to parents, guardians, or third parties without the student’s permission. In the case of parents who have exhibited rejecting behaviors, great sensitivity needs to be taken in what information is communicated with parents.”

“While parents and guardians need to be informed and actively involved in decisions regarding the student’s welfare, the school mental health professional should ensure that the parents’ actions are in the best interest of the student (e.g., when a student is LGBTQ and living in an unaffirming household).”

“In the case of parents who have exhibited rejecting behaviors, great sensitivity needs to be taken in what information is communicated with parents. Additionally, when referring students to out-of-school resources, it is important to connect LGBTQ students with LGBTQ-affirming local health and mental health service providers. Affirming service providers are those that adhere to best practices guidelines regarding working with LGBTQ clients as specified by their professional association (e.g., apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/guidelines.aspx).”

These are the kind of anti-parent zealots Macy’s, Abercrombie, Petco, and others are donating your June dollars to. Sometimes it’s 10% of the purchase price. Other times it’s the change you round up. But whatever the amount, it’s fueling a team of ideologues intent on destroying America’s children — and keeping it a secret while they do.

Don’t get me wrong. This country should be jubilant about all it’s accomplished. Robby Starbuck and other activists who’ve been fighting this war before most people knew we were in one deserve medals. But the biggest mistake any of us can make is believing we’ve won. Because a single dollar in the wrong hands is a weapon. And the pain, thousands of parents and their young patients will tell you, lasts a lifetime.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

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

Like what you’re reading? Donate to The Washington Stand! From now until June 30, your gift will be doubled to fuel bold, biblically-based reporting.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

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.

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘It Should Not Be for Sale in America’: Pro-Life Coalition Asks Trump Admin. to Restrict Abortion Drug

New EPPC Study Confirms Previous Findings of Abortion Drug Dangers

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.

McDonald’s Walks Away from Super-Sized Wokeness

January 8, 2025/in Culture War, Economy, Elections, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Regulation, Socialism, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

The calendar may have changed, but 2025 is picking up right where last year left off in the battle against corporate wokeness. In the biggest shocker since Walmart, fast-food icon McDonald’s announced that after years of force-feeding DEI to shareholders and customers, political neutrality is back on the menu.

For activists, the news is even more astonishing since the Golden Arches had a perfect 100% score on LGBT activism from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) just last year. But, like so many boardrooms before it, McDonald’s decided to surrender before Robby Starbuck even declared war. In a letter made public Monday, the hamburger chain announced to their owner/operators, employees, and suppliers that this new year meant turning a new leaf on diversity. Although they declare their steadfast commitment to “inclusion,” Chairman and CEO Chris Kempczinski, along with McDonald’s top leaders, spent the final half of the letter explaining that they’ve identified practices that they intend to “modify,” including:

The retirement of “aspirational representation goals” (i.e. diversity quotas in hiring)
The “pausing” of “external surveys” like HRC’s radical Corporate Equality Index
The end of its “Supply Chain’s Mutual Commitment to DEI pledge.”

While some of this may have been in the works, the changes were hastened by activist Robby Starbuck, who’d contacted the company on Friday and warned the marketing director that he was about to expose McDonald’s woke policies. And while there are things Starbuck wishes the company had worded differently or committed to, he acknowledges that this chain “wasn’t one of the worst to begin with.” But, he emphasized, McDonald’s was “on our list of companies, and there are many companies that we aim to change.”

“Companies need to stay out of divisive issues unless it’s related directly to the regulation of their business,” Starbuck insisted in a video on X. “They should not be involved in politics. We don’t want to know what Macy’s thinks about trans rights, okay? And do you know what? If they want to speak up and talk about it, we don’t want to spend our money there,” he said. “We have a right as customers to know how the money is being spent later. And then we can decide if we want to give our money to that company. And in many cases, now we are waking up and saying, ‘No, we don’t want to give our money to this company that hates our values and everything we believe in.’”

McDonald’s joins a ballooning list of big-name brands like Walmart, Tractor Supply, John Deere, Harley Davidson, Polaris, Indian Motorcycle, Lowe’s, Ford, Coors, Black & Decker, Jack Daniels, DeWalt tools, Craftsman, Caterpillar, Boeing, Toyota, and Nissan, who’ve all made the shift to the better business practices Americans demand.

“We’ve now changed policy at companies worth well over $2.3 [t]rillion dollars,” Starbuck declared, “with many millions of employees who have better workplace environments as a result. Our campaigns are so effective that we’re getting the biggest companies on earth to change their policies without me even posting a story exposing their woke policies first. Companies can see that America wants sanity back. The era of wokeness is dying right in front of our eyes. The landscape of corporate America is quickly shifting to sanity and neutrality. We are the trend, not the anomaly anymore. We’re winning,” he insists, “and one by one we WILL bring sanity back to corporate America.”

In the minds of many people, including Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, this is a pivotal moment. “I do believe,” he explained on “Washington Watch” Tuesday, “that there is an open door right now.” Christians, he urged, need to be “talking truth, speaking the truth, talking about the gospel of Jesus Christ, confessing the Lord Jesus Christ, putting these things out there in the public domain, and having that discussion. This is not a time to hold back. It’s not a time to be timid. It’s time to be compassionate, kind, [and] civil in our conversation. But we need to exercise these freedoms so that we can strengthen them and keep them.”

No one knows how long commonsense Americans will have the momentum. “It could be a very short window,” Perkins acknowledged, “but we need to take it, utilize it, and make the most of it.” It’s ironic, he pointed out, because we’re living in the best of times and the worst of times. He talked about the violence, the murder and crime rates, and so many other problems the country is facing. All of that, the FRC president believes, “fed into this election. People have had enough of it.”

And right now, “People are so desperate that they’re open to moving away from the woke ideology — the leftist ideas of silencing. And this is a moment to bring truth to the table, have frank conversations, because we know the truth can bring us to a place of consensus, but also [to a place of] resolution [in] some of these issues that are facing our local communities. So again, I just can’t encourage people enough to take this moment to respectfully [and] redemptively as Ephesians 6 says, [speak] the truth in love.”

As he underscored, “We’re not trying to win a debate here. We’re trying to win hearts and minds — and we’re trying to set people free with the truth. But this is the time to have those conversations. This is that door of opportunity that I believe has been opened to our country, and to the church in particular, in the wake of the events that have occurred.”

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.

Jaguar Rebranded: The Woke War against Normal

November 22, 2024/in Economy, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Queers and pedophiles, Socialism, Techno-Fascism/by Family Research Council

Marketing campaigns are, it is generally recognized, an attempt to sell a particular product or service. This can be done in any number of ways, from presenting a product as enticing to showcasing the necessity of a product to using humor or star power to generate appeal. In almost all cases, however, it is advisable to feature the product itself in one’s marketing campaigns. World-renowned automobile manufacturer Jaguar has, as of late, opted to disregard this latter standard — or, indeed, any of the aforementioned standards — and debuted a new marketing campaign comprised solely of the bizarre.

In addition to unveiling a new logo — which noticeably does not feature the company’s iconic, eponymous, pouncing big cat — Jaguar launched a new ad this week. The ad featured a host of androgynous individuals clad in brightly-colored outfits of a design so strange that the denizens of the Capitol in “The Hunger Games” appear commonplace and well-adjusted.

The ad features an Asian man wearing a yellow tank top and matching vinyl tutu, a black man (I am presuming that it is a man, anyway) sporting an afro that seems to be missing an entire quarter of itself and wearing a skintight red bodysuit with furry boots that look as though they could have been designed by Dr. Seuss in delirium, a black woman with a shaved head wearing a dress that resembles badly-arranged tissue paper sticking out of the top of a gift bag, a man who looks alarmingly similar to actress Tilda Swinton and is clothed in a garish orange dress seemingly made of rubber, and a whole cast of other bizarre figures of unsettling appearance and uncertain gender. The ad also features large pink rocks, upside-down rooms, and the brightest yellow elevator doors one could envision. What the ad does not feature is a Jaguar.

It wasn’t always this way, of course. Jaguar was once reputed for making the coolest cars ever, and everyone knew it. James Bond drove a Jaguar (2002’s “Die Another Day” and 2015’s “Spectre” are prime examples); a Jaguar made a memorable appearance in the “Fast and Furious” franchise; and pop stars from Jay Z to Lana Del Rey have featured the car in their glamorous music videos.

In 2015, less than 10 years ago, Jaguar launched an ad campaign headlined by English movie stars Ben Kinglsey, Mark Strong, and Tom Hiddleston, all three of whom are known for playing villains. As Strong and Hiddleston race to a luxurious mansion, Strong behind the wheel of a Jaguar and Hiddleston being outpaced in a helicopter, the trio of actors discuss the English heritage of the Jaguar and why Brits make such excellent movie villains. As Strong and Hiddleston arrive at the mansion, Kingsley, having freshly donned a sleek bow tie and dinner jacket, intones, “Oh, yes. It’s good to be bad.”

That ad campaign understood who the buyer is and what he’s looking for. Nobody buys a Jaguar because it’s affordable or convenient or fuel efficient. People buy Jaguars because they’re cool, sleek, seductive, and powerful. Movie villains, especially the sort portrayed by the likes of Kingsley, Strong, and Hiddleston, exude the very elegance, power, and affluence that Jaguar was once synonymous with. Besides, watching three big-name actors race helicopters and luxury cars to a veritable palace laden with high-tech security measures is simply cool.

In another series of ads, Hiddleston compared the revving of a Jaguar’s engine to the authority of an English movie villain’s voice and the car’s advanced technology to the sort of gadgetry that one would expect from a Bond film. In an age where patriotism and national pride are practically verboten, especially in Europe, it seems almost shocking to think that Jaguar’s ads even included a monologue from William Shakespeare’s “Richard II,” praising the English nation and the men who made her.

The simple fact is that Jaguar used to be cool. Whatever the company’s new logo and ad campaign may be — bizarre, indecipherable, amorphous, woke — they are not cool. Woke is the opposite of cool. Cool sells, woke doesn’t. Countless corporate titans have evidently learned their lessons when it comes to handling the poison known as woke. Bud Light, Tractor Supply, John Deere, Lowe’s, Rip Curl, and numerous other brands and retailers have discovered that vociferously promoting LGBT ideology is a death sentence for corporate profits. Jaguar may simply be late to the game, but the car manufacturer will also learn this lesson.

James Bond speeding along the cliffs of the Amalfi coast with a truckload of armed and uniformed villains in hot pursuit is cool. Bruce Wayne leaving his Gotham City penthouse and racing through the streets to reach the Batcave is cool. Jason Bourne evading CIA goons and tearing through downtown New York City is cool. Dirty Harry chasing a crazed criminal down the California freeway is cool. A man in a dress is not cool. A morbidly obese woman is not cool. Woke is not cool. Jaguar has chosen to abandon its heritage and the image of “cool” with which the company has become almost synonymous in favor of woke.

At its core, woke is the infantile, futile attempt to subvert and alter reality without any real effort. A man declaring himself a woman can never change the incontrovertible fact of his biological makeup by donning a pair of high heels and lecturing others about his new pronouns. This is also why woke is so obnoxious, so blatant, and so “in your face.” Reality needs no filter to be understood as reality; a six-foot-tall man with a big beard and a burly chest does not need to clarify that he is a man, it is simply understood.

But a six-foot-tall man in a ballgown has to tell others that he identifies as a woman and demands to be called “she” and “her,” because his subversion or alteration of reality is so clearly contradictory to reality; he cannot just be a six-foot-tall man in a dress, which is what reality denotes to the casual observer. Woke needs filters, it must filter reality through its own series of lenses in order to present its own distorted replication of reality; it can never simply rely on reality.

Cool, on the other hand, is rooted in reality. Unlike woke, it needs no filters. One need not be lectured about the emotional science of sound to get a slight thrill when a powerful engine roars to life beneath the hood. One need not have gone through excitement management training courses in order to cheer when an athlete pulls off a seemingly impossible feat. Cool is unafraid of itself, it presents itself simply, as part of the fabric of reality. Another thing: cool sells.

Whether it’s Jaguar or some other corporation, any conglomerate that goes woke is not doing so in order to market a product. This is a common (although well-meaning) misconception among many on the Right; we assume, based on our own mindset and goodwill, that these corporations and companies mistakenly believe that they will appeal to an evolving population of consumers and increase profits. This is not correct. These companies are, with few — if any — exceptions, not hurting for money, and most have the experience and history to know how to maintain and increase profits.

They are not promoting a product, they are promoting an ideology. Retail department stores do not sell rainbow Pride flag onesies because market research shows a sudden demand for LGBT-themed apparel among two-year-olds: they do so in the hope that the moms and dads who actually shop for their two-year-olds will believe that introducing toddlers to LGBT ideology is normal — or at least popular. Children’s entertainment companies do not introduce new characters with “they/them” pronouns and same-sex partners because they believe that five- and six-year-old viewers are craving LGBT representation: they do so in an effort to introduce children to ideas that would have otherwise never occurred to them, and to invite the children to question the ideas with which they have been raised.

In the end, woke is not a marketing technique or ploy, it is an act of ideological warfare. Jaguar is not on a sudden quest to sell its cars exclusively to they/thems and androgynous ethnic minorities. No, the automobile manufacturer is trying to replace its carefully-curated cool image with woke, and is hoping that everyone will mistake the former for the latter. If Jaguar is cool and Jaguar is woke, then woke must be cool, right?

But the filters have been falling over the past few years, like scales from one’s eyes. Jaguar may find that it has arrived to the woke party a little too late. While it’s true that none of these major corporations is quite hurting for money, everybody who’s sick to their stomachs of the incessant whining, labeling, and filtering necessitated by woke may just decide to make these corporations hurt for money.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news 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.

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.

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.

RELATED ARTICLES:

There Will be ‘Negative Findings’ in Planned Parenthood Transgender Investigation: State AG

Trans-Identifying Female Boxer KO’d in 21 Seconds by Biological Male

Bruised BlackRock Slapped with Cease and Desist for Lying to Investors

April 3, 2024/in Courts & Law, Economy, Elections, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

It had been a relatively quiet 2024 for embattled BlackRock CEO Larry Fink — until about two weeks ago. Texas, in a massive blow to his woke firm, pulled the pin on an $8.5 billion dollar grenade, announcing that it was following through on its threat to drop Fink’s services where its school fund management was concerned. A firm that shuns oil and gas investments doesn’t have Texas’s best interests at heart, leaders decided. Turns out, that move — the single largest punch to BlackRock’s gut to date — was just the beginning of Fink’s spring headaches.

Late last week, Mississippi dropped another bombshell: a cease and desist order aimed at the firm’s blatant dishonesty about its ESG (environmental, social, governance) investing. When Fink cleverly withdrew BlackRock’s name from the controversial Climate Action 100+ initiative in February, he created the appearance that the world’s largest asset management firm wasn’t putting its environmental activism over its financial responsibilities. But looks can be deceiving. According to several sources, BlackRock’s anti-fossil fuel agenda is still very much alive, a fact that Secretary of State Michael Watson made abundantly clear in his complaint.

“BlackRock has made and continues to make untrue statements of material fact, and to omit material facts to make its statements not misleading to investors and potential investors in Mississippi,” the 29-page order read. “These misrepresentations pertain to BlackRock’s provision of investment services, especially its involvement in pushing Environmental, Social, and Governance (“ESG”) factors on portfolio companies. Additionally, many of BlackRock’s acts, practices, and courses of business operate or would operate as fraud or deceit upon investors and potential investors in Mississippi.”

With this legal action, Fink could face “an administrative penalty, potentially a multi-million dollar fine,” National Review warns. As far as the Magnolia State is concerned, BlackRock is openly double-crossing investors — an allegation that certainly won’t help rehabilitate the firm’s damaged image. Fink admitted last year that his company had already lost around $4 billion in business as a result of the backlash meted out by states. If he’s not careful, another serving of boycotts could be headed his way.

BlackRock claims to care about clients’ “long-term financial prospects,” Watson writes, but “[t]hese statements are untrue … because the consideration of ESG factors does not provide an indication of better financial returns or current or future risk profiles.” That, the secretary insists, is “misleading to investors who are interested in ESG for financial (as opposed to social or political) reasons, and who are led to believe that BlackRock’s ESG funds will receive a financial benefit from BlackRock’s consideration of ESG criteria.” Not to mention, he adds, “BlackRock charges higher fees for some of its ESG funds than it does for comparable non-ESG funds.”

Interestingly, Mississippi isn’t one of the 12 states who’ve either divested from BlackRock or passed laws that make that decision likely in the near future. This action, as Wild Hild of Consumers Research explained, is unique — a “first-of-its-kind” attack on the leftist agenda driving so many of these funds. BlackRock’s CEO continues “to pretend that the only time they engage in ESG, it is with permission of the shareholders — but in reality, ESG policies have seeped into every facet of BlackRock’s asset management. They’ve been lying to their customers,” Hild added.

This doesn’t surprise The Political Forum’s Stephen Soukup, author of “The Dictatorship of Woke Capital,” who pointed out to The Washington Stand, “Larry Fink wanted to be famous. Now that he is, he’s learning that one of the perils of fame is that everyone, everywhere knows what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Among those paying the closest attention to the now-famous Fink and his massive asset management firm are elected officials, who have a clear responsibility to protect the interests of their constituents.” He believes that what we’re seeing “in Mississippi, Texas, and in other red states is the consequence of Fink’s quest for fame, wealth, and power as it collides with Republican elected officials’ quest to do their jobs to the best of their abilities.”

Publicly, the wave of 2022 backlash that led states to quit BlackRock seemed to humble Fink. Last summer, he decided to drop ESG from his lexicon because the term was too toxic. He pivoted to “energy pragmatism,” which he explained as investing in clean energy while also backing “traditional energy sources, like fossil fuels.” The firm even showed more restraint on ESG shareholder proposals, supporting just 7% of the 400 submitted according to the last annual report. “That is a marked shift,” the Washington Examiner pointed out. “BlackRock supported nearly a quarter of such proposals in the previous cycle and 47% of environmental and social proposals the cycle before that.”

And yet, none of these surface-level changes seemed to comfort Texas, where local officials warn that the firm’s anti-fossil fuel agenda will ultimately haunt the state. “BlackRock’s dominant and persistent leadership in the ESG movement immeasurably damages our state’s oil & gas economy and the very companies that generate revenues for our Permanent School Fund (PSF),” State Board of Education Chairman Aaron Kinsey argued. “Texas and the PSF have worked to grow this fund to build Texas’ schools. BlackRock’s destructive approach toward the energy companies that this state and our world depend on is incompatible with our fiduciary duty to Texans. Today represents a major step forward for the Texas PSF and our state as a whole. The PSF will not stand idly by while our financial future is attacked by Wall Street.”

Both Texas and Mississippi are committed to holding BlackRock’s feet to the fire — a move that the 1792 Exchange’s Paul Fitzpatrick applauds.

“It’s troubling to see the largest asset manager in the world, which has an army of lawyers and a fiduciary duty to customers, including state pensions for nearly all 50 states, making clearly contradictory statements,” Fitzpatrick told TWS. “To fulfill its ESG and ‘sustainable’ commitments to coalitions like the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, BlackRock pledges to use ‘all assets under management,’ not just the funds labeled ESG, to change behavior of companies to advance political goals. This doublespeak includes the use of proxy voting, whereby BlackRock uses its customers’ funds to vote for various ESG proposals. Many customers who did not opt into ESG funds would never have voted for a ‘racial equity audit’ at The Home Depot or for Exxon Mobil to pursue net zero goals, among other resolutions,” he points out.

“We hope Secretary Watson’s courage inspires other state leaders to hold all fiduciaries accountable.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

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

RELATED ARTICLES:

BlackRock Recruiter Who ‘Decides People’s Fate’ Says ‘War is Good for Business’ While Spilling Info on Asset Giant

Which Lawmaker Accepted More BlackRock Money Than Any Other Member Of Congress?

Florida Takes $2 Billion Away From BlackRock Due To Firm’s Activist Investing Standards

BlackRock, GiaxoSmithKline and the Great Reset

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.

Woke Investment Managers Pull $15.7 Trillion from Climate Activism Pact

February 21, 2024/in Economy, Energy, Environment, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

BlackRock and other U.S.-based investment management conglomerates have chosen to withdraw from a controversial initiative, Climate Action 100+ (CA100+), that pressured companies to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions” to “net-zero emissions by 2050 [or] sooner,” in pursuit of “limiting global average temperature increase” to 1.5 degrees above “pre-industrial levels.” The withdrawals follow financial and legal pressure from U.S. state officials, as well a new phase of cooperation for CA100+ that would move “from words to action.”

As of last June, more than 700 firms had joined CA100+, controlling a breathtaking $68 trillion, or nearly 2.5 times the U.S.A.’s annual GDP.

However, last week, Reuters reported that some of the world’s largest investment managers had withdrawn from CA100+. BlackRock, the world’s largest investment firm with $9 trillion assets under management (AUM), withdrew its U.S. arm, worth $6.6 trillion. State Street (4th largest with $4.1 trillion AUM), J.P. Morgan (6th largest with $3.1 trillion AUM), and PIMCO (14th largest with $1.9 trillion AUM) all withdrew entirely. However, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, Invesco, and Franklin Templeton (U.S. firms among the world’s 20 largest asset managers) are still signatories.

With the withdrawal of these four firms, CA100+ lost influence over the $15.7 trillion in assets they managed, cutting its influence by 23%.

At least in part, the withdrawals were triggered last summer, when the Steering Committee for CA100+ announced a “Phase Two” for their campaign of corporate climate activism, expected to last until 2030. “In phase two, the overarching goal is to go from words to action,” explained CA100+ Steering Committee Chairman Francois Humbert. The new phase would mean “more accountability, more transparency, more seniority.” The new guidelines would require investment managers to disclose how they vote on climate-related motions at shareholder meetings, as well as how often they lobby corporations and policymakers with their climate agenda.

When CA100+ upped the ante, several major U.S. investment firms promptly folded. BlackRock and State Street cited independence concerns, J.P. Morgan said it had developed “its own climate risk engagement framework,” while PIMCO claimed it “operates its own portfolio-relevant engagement activities with issuers on sustainability.”

In other words, these investment managers do not object to leveraging their fiduciary trust to pursue climate activism. All four of them are still doing climate activism on their own. They did object to the loss of independence of having an international organization micromanage their climate activism — how very American.

However, independence concerns over CA100+’s move to “Phase Two” does not fully explain the abrupt withdrawal of these investment management firms. After all, they still basically share CA100+’s goal of leveraging the investments they manage to advance their climate activism agenda. And these firms did decide to join CA100+ in the first place, knowing that it might inevitably lead to phases that required more action and accountability. Here, grasping the full picture requires viewing the scenery from more than one vantage point.

On March 30, 2023, 21 state attorneys general wrote a letter to the largest U.S.-based asset managers, expressing concern over their political activism and warning that such behavior could violate federal securities laws. The letter, led by Montana AG Austin Knudsen (R), specifically highlighted the CA100+ agenda as “potential unlawful coordination” to “push policies through the financial system that cannot be achieved at the ballot box.” It put investment managers on notice that “ongoing investigations” would “continue to evaluate” whether the firms were engaged in “potential unlawful coordination and other violations … as part of Climate Action 100+, Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative [NZAM], or the like.”

Woke asset managers have sustained considerable pressure from state governments in recent years, as the vast scale of their political activism became known. State officials have issued opinions declaring political activism with public funds illegal, published blacklists of politicized corporations the state won’t do business with, opposed woke companies’ purchases of public utility shares, and demonstrated the public support for doing so by winning subsequent elections.

Asset management firms are wilting before the ire of these state officials. Last summer, after 11 state governments pulled more than $5 billion in assets from his firm’s management, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink declared he was abandoning the acronym “ESG” (for left-wing “environmental, social, and governance causes) — but not the spirit. In December 2022, Vanguard (the world’s second largest asset manager, with approximately $7 trillion AUM) announced plans to withdraw from the NZAM after pressure from state governments.

The mini-exodus from CA100+ seems to be undertaken with the same goal in mind. The firms withdrawing from the climate pact haven’t abandoned their commitment to climate activism, but they would prefer not to become the next Bud Light in doing so. Re-asserting their “independence” from CA100+ frees them to evaluate the political or legal costs of any particular deed of climate activism and avoid provoking uncomfortable investigations or costly lawsuits. Even without changing their behavior, distancing themselves from the climate organization can help them avoid charges of “unlawful coordination” without distancing themselves from the climate agenda.

The backdrop to this performative calculus is that much left-wing corporate activism is neither essential nor profitable. In a 2022 survey of top executives, 59% of CEOs said they would “plan to pause or reconsider their organization’s ESG efforts” in response to a recession. That’s the sort of numbers you would expect from an optional extra — like a soft-serve machine in the breakroom. It might keep the workforce happy, and it might help mute outside criticism, but it doesn’t help a business achieve its core mission — to produce, move, or sell a product, or to provide certain services.

In the case of asset management firms, they provide the service of managing assets, in hopes of providing a better return for investors than they could obtain on their own. Climate activism is not relevant to the goal of asset management. In fact, climate activism can hamper an asset manager’s goal (obtaining the best return for his client) by forcing a company to adopt costly “green” policies that reduce its profitability and thus the profitability of assets invested in that company.

“Broadly, [federal securities] laws require you to act as a fiduciary, in the best interests of your clients and exercising due care and loyalty,” the attorneys general wrote the asset management firms. “Simply put, you are not the same as political or social activists and you should not be allowing the vast savings entrusted to you to be commandeered by activists to advance non-financial goals.” Asset management firms aren’t yet convinced of this argument and continue to pursue climate activism, but changes in their behavior indicate the pressure is having an effect.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.