Prior to Donald Trump’s historic election win there were signs the tides were changing in America. Many major companies that embraced diversity, equity, and inclusion were beginning to take a different approach—they were returning to a more neutral corporate stance in line with what most Americans wanted to see. Harley Davidson and Tractor Supply were just two companies, for instance, that championed values completely antithetical to their respective customer bases before finally changing their tune. Much of the change we saw in corporate America came after pressure from corporate neutrality activist Robby Starbuck and his network. In 2024, he notched win after win, and 2025 is now off to a great start with the latest company that announced it's rolling back many DEI programs.
“We’re a force to be reckoned with and we won’t stop until wokeness is extinct,” Starbuck said of McDonald’s announcing it’s ditching a number of the company's DEI policies.
The announcement from McDonald’s came three days after Starbuck warned the company he would be doing a story on its woke policies.
On X, Starbuck summarized the changes the company announced:
• Hiring: They will END their diversity "goals" for how many of each race they hire. Many (myself included) have referred to these types of "goals" as quotas because these "goals" often operate as quotas that discriminate against white job applicants.
• They’ll no longer participate in the HRC’s woke Corporate Equality Index scoring system that forces the trans agenda into the workplace in exchange for a perfect score. They also won’t participate in other 3rd party surveys.
• Supplier diversity: They’re ENDING the DEI pledge for their supply chain. That means no diversity quotas or "goals" will exist for how they choose or prioritize suppliers. Focus will now be on merit.
• Their diversity team will be "evolving" this year into simply an "inclusion" team. I explain in the video how I feel about this. As our first corporate flip of 2025 I just want to say, HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Starbuck and his followers can now add McDonald's to their list of companies they've helped change corporate policy at, including: Walmart, Tractor Supply, John Deere, Harley Davidson, Polaris, Indian Motorcycle, Lowe’s, Ford, Coors, Stanley Black & Decker, Jack Daniels, DeWalt tools, Craftsman, Caterpillar, Boeing, Toyota, and Nissan.
"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," he said. "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 and one by one we WILL bring sanity back to corporate America."
BIG news: @McDonalds is ending a number of woke DEI policies today. Now let me tell you what’s changing and how it happened.
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) January 6, 2025
3 days ago I told McDonald’s that I’d be doing a story on woke policies there. Today they’ve announced the following changes:
• Hiring: They will END… pic.twitter.com/bvFglf6pxw
In an internal letter explaining the changes, McDonald's pointed to a recent Supreme Court ruling and a "shifting legal landscape" as the reason for the changes.
"Last year, we completed a comprehensive Civil Rights Audit (CRA) that looked at all aspects of inclusion across our system," the letter said. "We also engaged with shareholders to understand their expectations and assessed the overall landscape of shareholder proposals. Following the Supreme Court ruling in STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE, we also assessed the shifting legal landscape to anticipate how this ruling may impact corporations such as McDonald’s. And finally, we benchmarked our approach to other companies who are also re-evaluating their own programs."
