E.P.A. Retreats From Plans to End the Energy Star Program
Originally published November 1, 2025
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DEI Starbucks: A Breakpoint Between Better Business and Business Ends
November 2, 2026Starbucks’ recent resolution of the lawsuit brought by the Florida Attorney General only scratches the surface of the business risks created by subordinating core operations to ideological priorities. Florida employees and applicants reported “feeling excluded or humiliated because they were White,” alleging that the company had effectively converted hiring and recruiting into a process that favored preferred demographic groups. The settlement, under which Starbucks agreed to forgo race- and sex-based goals, quotas, and preferences companywide, underscores that such practices carry both legal exposure and internal costs, even when the company does not admit liability. The deeper question is why these commitments became central in the first place. In Greenfield, Massachusetts, Last Ditch Bar and Arts Venue supplies a clear, small-scale illustration of the consequences. Last Ditch built its model around ideological priorities, one notable being an expansive open-door policy intended to accommodate a particular activist customer base. When financial pressures led the owners to make a limited operational adjustment- a one night a week deal to help the business make more money. Like a late Starbucks open-door policy. The bar advocated and accommodated everyone. What happened? The “advocate community,” the business’ main customer base, only tore the business apart. All …
New Heritage Report Highlights Risks of Corporate Alignment With the Human Rights Campaign
October 30, 2026Last week, The Heritage Foundation released a very important report detailing the risks companies face from affiliating with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and its Corporate Equality Index (CEI). The report provides valuable insight into the scope of HRC’s influence on corporate America and the organizations pushing back against it. Any institution concerned about the growing influence of modern gender ideology should familiarize itself with these findings. In short, the CEI pressures companies to incorporate gender ideology into nearly every aspect of corporate governance, including employee healthcare benefits, charitable giving, and marketing. Its influence likely contributed to the controversial Bud Light and Target marketing decisions in 2023. Fortune 500 CEI participation dropped 65% this year, a catastrophic decline. However, according to Inspire Investing and the 1792 Exchange, there are still 242 publicly traded companies with a Verified 100 on the 2026 CEI, indicating coverage of transgender medical interventions for minors. Furthermore, 40 companies remain corporate partners of the HRC, including T-Mobile. This raises questions about T-Mobile’s pledge last year to the Federal Communications Commission that its approach to external organizations is “driven by [its] desire to advance [its] core business objectives.” Another corporate partner is Dell Technologies, which receives more …
Corporate America’s Gender Ideology Ally Has A 99% Democratic Endorsement Record
October 28, 2026As Americans prepare to vote in November’s midterm elections, one of the Democratic Party’s most reliable political allies is mobilizing millions of voters and spending millions of dollars to influence the results. That organization is the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which also happens to maintain close ties with some of America’s largest corporations, many of which publicly affiliate with and sponsor the organization. HRC bills itself as the nation’s largest advocacy organization dedicated to advancing LGBTQ equality. But a new analysis by 1792 Exchange reveals just how overwhelmingly partisan its political activities have become. After examining HRC’s online archive of press releases, 1792 Exchange documented 1,408 political endorsements covering 970 unique candidates between 2010 and October 2026. Of those 970 candidates, 964 were Democrats, two were Republicans, three were nonpartisan candidates and one was an independent. In other words, more than 99% of the unique candidates identified in HRC’s archived endorsements were Democrats. This record raises questions for companies that financially support HRC or affiliate with its infamous Corporate Equality Index under the banner of supporting nondiscrimination policies, particularly when they do not extend comparable affiliation with or support of conservative organizations. And HRC’s political operation is not slowing down …
Major companies abandon SPLC’s ‘hate groups’ screening tool in corporate giving programs
October 28, 2026October marked one year of 1792 Exchange’s work to show corporate America the risks associated with using the SPLC’s “hate list” and how its designations have been used to discriminate against conservative and Christian organizations in corporate charitable giving programs. BlackRock, Salesforce, Mastercard, Texas Instruments, AT&T, Nvidia, Microsoft, American Express, and DoorDash are among the corporations that have scrapped the SPLC “hate groups” filter, the 1792 Exchange announced on Oct. 22. Alongside the Heritage Foundation and Alliance Defending Freedom, the 1792 Exchange, a nonprofit organization formed to steer “woke” corporate governance policies back toward ideological neutrality, is leading the coalition’s efforts to end corporate reliance on the SPLC’s black book of purported bigots. As extensively reported by the Daily Signal, many employers systematically — and thus may unintentionally — blacklist conservative nonprofit organizations from their employee gift-matching programs through a third-party corporate generosity platform that installs the SPLC filter. As a result, even mainstream conservative groups, including Christian charities, are blocked from appearing on these middleman charitable giving dashboards because the nonprofit organizations have been flagged by the SPLC’s “Hate Watch” staff. For example, the parental rights group Defending Education is tagged under the SPLC’s “white supremacy” section for opposing …
Berkeley set out to defend DEI — and found no financial upside
October 24, 2026A new study meant to reassure corporations about diversity, equity, and inclusion programs has delivered an awkward finding for DEI advocates: Keeping the programs produced no measurable financial advantage over abandoning them. Researchers at the University of California in Berkeley compared S&P 500 companies that maintained DEI after President Trump’s January 2025 executive order with companies that scaled back their commitments. Firms that kept their programs performed about as well in stock returns and revenue as those that retreated. The authors and sympathetic news coverage emphasized the other half of that result: Companies could keep DEI without suffering a significant financial penalty. CBS News framed the finding that way, as did a subsequent Forbes analysis. But the conclusion cuts both ways. If companies paid no price for keeping DEI, they also paid no price for dropping it. For investors, that raises a straightforward question: Where is the financial return from DEI? The full article can be read in The Blaze.