Aug 15, 2025
well this fucking sucks. if you didnt already get off meta-run social medias, maybe you should
seen from United States
seen from Georgia
seen from China
seen from United Kingdom
seen from India
seen from Georgia
seen from Norway
seen from Russia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Netherlands
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Kazakhstan
seen from Canada
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Türkiye
seen from China
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from China
well this fucking sucks. if you didnt already get off meta-run social medias, maybe you should
They're the fourth big corporation to be targeted by Robby Starbuck. Starbuck said that "They must have been tipped off by us going through
Elsie Carson-Holt at LGBTQ:
Jack Daniel’s has joined a growing number of brands that have cut their commitments to diversity, after conservative influencer Robby Starbuck threatened to make the company his next target. Last week, it was Harley Davidson, and before them it was Tractor Supply Co. and John Deere. Starbuck’s method of rallying his online followers to deluge companies social media with complaints about their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and donations to social justice organizations has proven effective.
Jack Daniel’s, the whiskey company, is the latest. On August 21, Starbuck posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) “Big news: The next company we were set to expose was Jack Daniels,” but that the company had ended several initiatives and partnerships.
Starbuck said, “They must have been tipped off by us going through employee LinkedIn pages” and that the company had “just preemptively announced” changes to DEI programs. Starbuck had obtained an email from Brown Forman (Jack Daniel’s parent company) saying that “the world has evolved” since launching a DEI campaign in 2019. The company said that since January, it had been evolving the current program to a “strategic framework,” which includes ending its partnership with the Human Rights Campaign and its Corporate Equality Index (CEI), which tracks how large employers treat their LGBTQ+ employees through various policies.
Jack Daniel’s is the latest company to shamefully cave into right-wing faux outrage artist Robby Starbuck’s bad-faith campaign against DEI and LGBTQ+ initiatives in workplaces by ending their participation in Human Rights Campaign’s CEI program and diversity initiatives.
Robby Starbuck talking at the SHRM conference is dumb as all hell.
Okay, this is probably way too adult-specific and niche, but it's in my professional wheelhouse.
Robby Starbuck has been invited to talk at the Society for Human Resources Managers "#SHRMBlueprint" conference later this year. For context and a quick guide on how this is gonna go, the conference was a DEI conference until recently when SHRM decided to change the name because of "the difficult landscape around DEI today".
Fucking cowards.
Anyway.
Fuck Robby Starbuck.
He's not an HR professional, practitioner, or researcher. He's a right-wing influencer who kicks up a fuss and sues people to weasel his way into paying work (he recently sued meta and settled it with him ending up directly employed by Meta to "help address AI bias"). He, famously, has been both anti-Trans and Anti-DEI practices.
What he says is directly contrary to literal mountains of methodical research about how the programs he attacks for ideological reasons improve employee performance, productivity, and retention. They also serve as draws for more varied and broader talent pools, allowing companies to pick more and more qualified candidates. He has no business being on that stage because he has no credibility on the topic, other than being a right-wing influencer who actively campaigned against COVID precautions and LGBTQ people. At best he's a publicity stunt, like Van Jones, except his platform and message go directly against the body of research with nothing other than "Feminists, ESG, and Queer people are coming for your kids."
Walmart is rolling back its diversity, equity and inclusion policies, joining a growing list of major corporations that have done the same a
By: Anne D’Innocenzio
Published: Nov 26, 2025
NEW YORK (AP) — Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, is rolling back its diversity, equity and inclusion policies, joining a growing list of major corporations that have done the same after coming under attack by conservative activists.
The changes, confirmed by Walmart on Monday, are sweeping and include everything from not renewing a five-year commitment for an equity racial center set up in 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd, to pulling out of a prominent gay rights index. And when it comes to race or gender, Walmart won’t be giving priority treatment to suppliers.
Walmart’s moves underscore the increasing pressure faced by corporate America as it continues to navigate the fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in June 2023 ending affirmative action in college admissions. Emboldened by that decision, conservative groups have filed lawsuits making similar arguments about corporations, targeting workplace initiatives such as diversity programs and hiring practices that prioritize historically marginalized groups.
Separately, conservative political commentator and activist Robby Starbuck has been going after corporate DEI policies, calling out individual companies on the social media platform X. Several of those companies have subsequently announced that they are pulling back their initiatives, including Ford, Harley-Davidson, Lowe’s and Tractor Supply.
But Walmart, which employs 1.6 million workers in the U.S., is the largest one to do so.
“This is the biggest win yet for our movement to end wokeness in corporate America,” Starbuck wrote on X, adding that he had been in conversation with Walmart.
Walmart confirmed to The Associated Press that it will better monitor its third-party marketplace items to make sure they don’t feature sexual and transgender products aimed at minors. That would include chest binders intended for youth who are going through a gender change, the company said.
The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer will also be reviewing grants to Pride events to make sure it is not financially supporting sexualized content that may be unsuitable for kids. For example, the company wants to makes sure a family pavilion is not next to a drag show at a Pride event, the company said.
Additionally, Walmart will no longer consider race and gender as a litmus test to improve diversity when it offers supplier contracts. The company said it didn’t have quotas and will not do so going forward. It won’t be gathering demographic data when determining financing eligibility for those grants.
Walmart also said it wouldn’t renew a racial equity center that was established through a five-year, $100 million philanthropic commitment from the company with a mandate to, according to its website, “address the root causes of gaps in outcomes experienced by Black and African American people in education, health, finance and criminal justice systems.”
And it would stop participating in the Human Rights Campaign’s annual benchmark index that measures workplace inclusion for LGBTQ+ employees.
“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,” the company said in a statement.
The changes come soon after an election win by former President Donald Trump, who has criticized DEI initiatives and surrounded himself with conservatives who hold similar views, including his former adviser Stephen Miller, who leads a group called America First Legal that has challenged corporate DEI policies. Trump named Miller to be the deputy chief of policy in his new administration.
A Walmart spokesperson said some of its policy changes have been in progress for a while. For example, it has been moving away from using the word DEI in job titles and communications and started to use the word “belonging.” It also started making changes to its supplier program in the aftermath of the Supreme Court affirmative action ruling.
Some have been urging companies to stick with their DEI policies. Last month, a group of Democrats in Congress appealed to the leaders of the Fortune 1000, saying that DEI efforts give everyone a fair chance at achieving the American dream.
--
==
Excellent news. As the big ones go, so too will the smaller ones.
It's so weird that "don't discriminate based on skin color," "don't discriminate based on sex," and "don't give kids porn" are being called "conservative" values. Five minutes ago, these were obvious and uncontroversial liberal values.
What this is, is secularism. That your beliefs are for you and not me. You don't get to impose your beliefs onto others. If you subscribe to the beliefs of the woke cult, that's fine and your business. But you don't get to force others to believe them, pretend to believe them, or make them comply with them. Any more than a Xian can force others to pray, or a Muslim can demand ham and bacon be removed from the company cafeteria.
Which means that within the context of a company, the company itself has and pushes no particular beliefs. Because it leaves people the hell alone.
Ultimate Fighting Championship UFC fighter Sean Strickland has said he will be selling his Harley-Davidson amid a right-wing led boycott.
Chantelle Billson at PinkNews:
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) star Sean Strickland has said he will be selling his Harley-Davidson, as a right-wing-led boycott over the company’s “woke” initiatives continues. The motorbike company has been a partner of the UFC since 2007. On 22 July, music-video director Robby Starbuck accused the brand of promoting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts – a programme that most companies abide by. Strickland has now weighed in, claiming that he will sell his beloved bike, and in a video posted to his X/Twitter account he explained why.
Strickland begins by saying he loves Harley and has ridden them most of his life, but added: “If you love America you won’t want a Harley,” claiming that the chief executive, Jochen Zeitz, was a “woke zealot” who wrote “the book on wokeism” and wanted to change who people are. He goes on to brand Zeitz an “industry plant” put in place to “ruin, control and manipulate Harley”. The video ends with Strickland saying: “I’m getting rid of this Harley as soon as possible.”
Cry more, Sean Strickland. You are a vile bigot.
Will the journalist who interviewed him when he was “stunning and brave” interview him now that he is just brave?
Beck gained notoriety in 2013 when he spoke with CNN’s Anderson Cooper about transitioning to a woman.
A retired Navy SEAL who became famous nearly 10 years ago after coming out as transgender announced he is detransitioning and called on Americans to “wake up” about how transgender health services are hurting children.
“Everything you see on CNN with my face, do not even believe a word of it,” Chris Beck, formerly known as Kristin Beck, told conservative influencer Robby Starbuck in an interview published earlier this month. “Everything that happened to me for the last ten years destroyed my life. I destroyed my life. I’m not a victim. I did this to myself, but I had help.”
“I take full responsibility,” he continued. “I went on CNN and everything else, and that’s why I’m here right now, I’m trying to correct that.”
Beck gained notoriety in 2013 when he spoke with CNN’s Anderson Cooper about transitioning to a woman.
“I was used … I was very naive, I was in a really bad way, and I got taken advantage of. I got propagandized. I got used badly by a lot of people who had knowledge way beyond me. They knew what they were doing. I didn’t,” he said during the interview.
Beck served in the US Navy for 20 years, including on SEAL Team Six. He was deployed 13 times and received more than 50 medals and ribbons for his service.
Beck said he’s speaking out about transgenderism to protect children in the current political climate, where there are gender clinics “over all of America.”
“There are thousands of gender clinics being put up over all of America,” he said. “As soon as [kids] go in and say, ‘I’m a tomboy or this makes me feel comfortable’ and then a psychologist says, ‘oh, you’re transgender’. And then the next day you’re on hormones – the same hormones they are using for medical castration for pedophiles. Now they are giving this to healthy 13-year-olds.”
Parents speak out about the ‘rush’ to reassign the gender of their kids
“Does this seem right,” he asked. “This is why I am trying to tell America to wake up.”
Beck said that when he began transitioning, it took just an hour-long meeting at Veterans Affairs to be offered hormones.
“I walked into a psychologist’s office [and] in one day I have a letter in my hand saying I was transgender. I was authorized for hormones. I was authorized all this other stuff,” Beck said.
“I had so much going wrong in my system when I started taking those,” he added. “Some of that was paid for by the VA, and I’m sorry to the American people that I did that.”
Beck said he has been off of hormones for about seven years now.
“This is a billion-dollar industry between psychologists, between surgeries, between hormones, between chemicals, between follow-up treatments,” he continued. “There are thousands of gender clinics popping up all over our country. And each of those gender clinics is going to be pulling in probably over $50 million.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Beck and CNN on Sunday but did not immediately receive replies.
(link)
Matt Gertz at MMFA:
President Donald Trump appointed conspiracy-obsessed MAGA media favorites to the highest levels of federal law enforcement, and now those figures are coming under fire from the right-wing fever swamp for failing to confirm their bullshit. Axios reported on Sunday night that the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation had concluded that there was no evidence convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein “blackmailed powerful figures, kept a ‘client list’ or was murdered.” Those findings repudiated claims that had for years permeated the MAGA influencer ecosystem and been promoted by the stars of Fox News and the broader right-wing media.
The Trump-appointed leaders of both the FBI and DOJ had previously stoked the same conspiracy theories their agencies rejected. “As social media influencers and activists, Kash Patel (now the FBI's director) and Dan Bongino (now deputy director) were among those in MAGA world who questioned the official version of how Epstein died,” Axios noted. Moreover, Attorney General Pam Bondi had claimed in a February interview on Fox News that the purported “client list” was “sitting on my desk right now to review.” While the Epstein saga is a bit of a sideshow in the grand scheme of things, what it highlights about the underlying dynamics of the MAGA movement is deeply unsettling. It demonstrates that the Trump administration is in hock to some of the most deranged conspiracy theorists imaginable, treating them as among its closest allies and devoting substantial resources to their care and feeding. The White House brought 15 MAGA influencers in to meet with Bondi in February, sending them home with glossy binders labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1.” When those binders did not satisfy the MAGA faithful, the attorney general reportedly tasked “hundreds of FBI employees” with reviewing Epstein investigation documents for release. In May, Patel and Bongino were sent to Fox to make the case, with the fervor of the converted, that Epstein had actually killed himself. And now the FBI and DOJ have produced a memo detailing their findings and released footage taken from outside Epstein’s cell in the hours surrounding his suicide. The final result left Trump’s most zealous online allies with two options: They could finally acknowledge that they had been peddling nonsense for years — or they could insinuate that the Trump administration itself is part of the cover-up.
MAGA’s Epstein conspiracy theorists lash out at Bondi — and even Trump
In the hours after Axios’ story broke, several prominent MAGA influencers took the latter path, hammering the administration for failing to confirm their Epstein hypotheses. “This new DOJ memo admits there are countless victims of Epstein on video but no client list or evidence of other rapists they can charge. Oh it claims Epstein wasn’t using videos as blackmail,” Robby Starbuck sneered on X. “NO ONE believes this for very good reason.” Starbuck put the blame squarely on the attorney general.
“Bondi just made it all worse with this memo,” he wrote. “What a terrible, terrible idea it was to write this memo. It’s also incredibly insulting to our intelligence.” Noting her prior claim on Fox that she was in possession of Epstein’s “client list,” he commented, “Was she lying then or is she lying now?” Laura Loomer also blamed Bondi. “Blondi lied,” she posted on X, using the nickname she typically utilizes for the attorney general. “She was always lying.” Others were less specific about who was responsible for the cover-up.
“We were all told more was coming,” Jack Posobiec lamented. “That answers were out there and would be provided. Incredible how utterly mismanaged this Epstein mess has been. And it didn’t have to be.” Tim Pool suggested that the administration was protecting “the adult child rapists who were blackmailed” and floated the possibility that they were protecting “shareholder value” from “the economic fallout if say, hypothetically, Bill Gates was revealed to have been flying around with Epstein and then we got videos of him abusing underage girls.” And Mike Cernovich suggested that the buck stopped with the president. “No one is believing the Epstein coverup, @realDonaldTrump,” he wrote. “This will be part of your legacy. There’s still time to change it!”
The right-wing media ecosystem is built to manufacture and distribute conspiracy theories to an audience trained to believe them. Under the incentive structure this ecosystem creates, it makes sense that the Trump campaign relied on conspiracy theorists to bolster its position, that Patel and Bongino boosted their standing within that ecosystem by echoing such claims, and that Bondi kept claiming an Epstein reckoning was imminent. But eventually, the Trump administration trapped itself. Bondi, Patel, and Bongino were unable to produce the information that the MAGA faithful demanded, and they seem unable to convince them the information does not exist.
MAGA media influencers, who hyped up the Epstein Files, ended up with bupkis for their efforts. As a result, they are turning on each other.
See Also:
HuffPost: MAGA Members Have Mega Tizzy After DOJ And FBI Claim Epstein Files Don’t Exist
Being Liberal: MAGA World Is Now Accusing Trump’s Own DOJ of Covering Up Jeffrey Epstein’s Crimes
The Bulwark: MAGA World’s Mega Meltdown Over Latest Epstein Flop