August 8, 2025 • 45 mins
On this episode of "The Federalist Radio Hour," Executive Director of Consumers' Research Will Hild joins Federalist Senior Elections Correspondent Matt Kittle to analyze corporations' efforts to cover up their embrace of radical LGBT and racial quota policies and discuss the movement to expose and push back on that wokeness.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experience shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
(00:39):
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Will Hild, Executive director of Consumers Research,
America's oldest consumer protection agency. Here is the question that
we begin with today. Has the woke movement in corporate
America fizzled out? Or are the diversity equity inclusion corporate
(01:03):
cultists simply rebranding going underground. Well, welcome to this edition
of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Great to be with you, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah. Absolutely, I guess that really is the question. We've
seen a little sea change, if you will, from corporate America,
at least publicly public facing. A number of companies have decided,
at least they have said that they're going to abandon
their woke policies DEI and others like that. But what
(01:39):
are you seeing as you keep an eye on this
as a watchdog.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah, I think what's typifying the space right now is
certainly a retreat from the high water mark of wokeness
and DEI that we saw probably two to four years ago.
But if you look at what's actually happening at a
lot of these companies, they're trying to just go underground
and maintain a lot of the same activities that they
(02:06):
were doing. Now there's sort of a generous interpretation of
that activity in an ungenerous one. I lean towards the
ungenerous one, but you might I might assume that given
the fact that I'm in the business of fighting it.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
But I'll give both views.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
One is that you know, politics has, you know, wavered
back and forth to extremes from the corporate perspective over
the last you know, ten years, and you're never more
than one election away from being in a lot of
trouble with either party for either doing DEI or not
doing d EI. We've seen letters go out from Democrats,
(02:42):
particularly the Black Caucus in Congress, basically attacking companies as
soon as they see any kind of retreat from DI
and so from the corporate perspective, they're sort of stuck
trying to make both sides happy in a way that's
not really going to work, because one side wants race
discrimination and quotas and explicit carve outs for particular identity
(03:05):
groups and is willing to use state power to punish
companies that won't do that, and one side wants us
to follow roughly a color blind meritocracy and is willing
to punish companies with state power that refused to do that.
The more I guess less generous view is that what's
going on is a lot of these companies are really
(03:28):
in the tank for, or they have staffed up with
people that are in the tank for, treating the corporation
as a political project, and that's really all they wake
up in the morning to go do. It's not really
about serving consumers, it's not really about making money for shareholders.
What they really want to do every morning is turn
whatever corporation they work for into more and more of
(03:49):
a political utility for the Democratic Party and the progressive left.
And until those people are removed, I really don't think
we will fully solve the problem. We can certainly curtail
that activities, we can certainly make it harder for them
to operate.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
But ultimately, until people.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Go to work wanting to go to work and wanting
to serve consumers and serve shareholders and ultimately just make money,
that's the problem is not really going to go away,
because they will be waiting for their opportunities to push
a political agenda with their roles.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
I think what you define as the less generous version
of these ideas is actually quite generous. I mean, what
have we seen over the last several years in this
country but kind of the leftist takeover of institutions, including
Corporate America in these human resources department, marketing departments and
(04:44):
all of that, and it has cost them dearly willed.
They're losing lawsuit after lawsuit, and understandably so because what
they're engaging in is nothing nothing short of discrimination.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
You're one hundred percent correct.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
I think that's why I mentioned I lean towards the
ungenerous view that really they're not motivated by a desire
to sort of navigate the current political conflicts. Really, what
they're motivated by is a way to get away with
as much racial discrimination as they can, and frankly, are
willing to pay the price even at some high levels
(05:21):
when they get caught, and yet we don't see them
fully changing lanes. I'd give some concrete examples. One of
the things that we see them a lot of these
companies doing is simply changing the terms that they use.
And you know, everyone saw this coming, even the Trump
administration knew this was going to happen. But as the
term DEI has become synonymous with what it is, which
is racial and sex based discrimination, they have changed the
(05:43):
things like Department of Belonging. We did a woke alert
a few weeks ago, from months ago, excuse me, they
basically talked about five different companies that do that. One
of those companies actually threaten to assume me if if
I talked about them anymore, and that was that was
just to be clear Nationwide Insurance, and I will continue
to talk about them because they have a long track
(06:04):
record of engaging in that kind of discrimination. And they
can threaten me all they like, but they're still going
to hear about it. So it's a situation where clearly
they have you know, the people at the top, or
some of the people at the top, may just want
this all to go away, but they have been infiltrated,
and they have allowed themselves to be infiltrated with people
(06:25):
who actively seek to do this for its own sake,
and a lot of these companies are just going to
have to get ruthless with rooting those people out or
it's going to cost them. And I think one of
the great developments we've seen in the Trump administration has
not just been the executive orders pushing back on DEI,
but the choosing of personnel that I hope and I
believe will really.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Go after these companies.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
What we've seen from Harmeat Dylan running the Civil Rights
Division at Department of Justice.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Is very heartening.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
You know, we're early on in her tenure, so there,
you know, I don't they can't point to examples of
lawsuits quite yet, but at least her rhetoric and the
way that she's framing the issue is very promising and
very optimistic for these companies paying a price for breaking
federal and state labor law.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I love to see.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
There have been a number of attorneys generals, Republican state
attorney generals who have been pushing back on some of
this stuff that said there could always be doing more
because a lot of these corporations are breaking not just
federal law, but state law. And so seeing the Republican
ags continue to engage in this space during the Trump
administration in ways that they were doing during the Biden
(07:33):
administration when they didn't have the cover of the federal government,
I think is something that we really hope to see
and as conservative as we want to continue to push
for because we don't want to get to this situation
where we just think, well, har meet Scott It she's great,
and she is great, but she cannot be suing the
literally hundreds, if not thousands of companies that were engaging
(07:53):
in this kind of behavior.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And it's going to take a long.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Steady process of punishing these companies for that where this
stuff is really rooted out.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
If I may ask, where does the what's the litigation
status with nationwide right now?
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Well, you know they they called and threatened, and I
told them I would take a look at it, and
as soon as I did even more research, I found
just a panoply of evidence things like supplier diversity programs
where they had set internal incentives like literal financial incentives
for people to achieve certain racial makeups of their suppliers,
and that is not my words, that's not my assertions.
(08:29):
That is on that is on an official document they
sent the state of California to brag about all the
things they were doing to increase diversity in order to
get the business of that state. So, you know, I
don't know what I Theoretically, I think the you know,
statue limitations on defamation is is pretty long.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
So in theory they could be putting together a lawsuit.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
I doubt it, though, because I've got the receipts and
they're going to be facing a lot of counter examples
of all the many ways they do they did engage
in forms of discrimination, So I don't think I don't
think they I think they like to talk tough. And
that's a lesson, by the way, for a lot of
citizen journalists. I know we have a lot of people
who listen to this show who might have seen things themselves.
(09:09):
One you can always reach out to us. My My
email is whild at Consumers Research dot org, and we
love to help whistleblowers. We blew the door off of
state farm insurance a number of years ago for pushing
transgender ideology on children. So if you have something like that,
feel free to bring it to us, and we will
vet it and then we can be the front of it.
But also just in general, these corporations talk a lot
(09:30):
tougher than they are and they think that by you know,
having some big shot corporate attorney call, they'll back you off.
But in a lot of cases, you know, if you've
got the truth on your side, you know, reach out
because we can certainly make make that a very tough
proposition for them to go after you.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Well, I think they're attorneys. They're big shot attorneys. Fully
understand that discovery goes both ways, right bingo.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
And that's a that's a great point.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
I you know, I basically said, listen, if you want
to assume me, that's fine. I'm going to get into all
those emails, and I have a feeling that you you know,
you're not going to like what we find, just based
on what was publicly available with me. One of the
things that Nationwide was bragging about was that they had
affinity groups internally, mentorship programs specifically for women and women
of color that were meant to increase the number of
(10:14):
those groups in leadership. So you cannot have it's a
matter of black letter law. You cannot have training programs
and mentorship programs and development programs that are specifically carved
out for specific identity groups in race and sex, and
they were bragging about that and how successful it had been.
So imagine, if that's what they're publicly talking about in
the media, what are their emails going to show when
(10:37):
we crack those open. So I don't think I'm not
you know, if they want to take on that fight,
I will gladly fight it. But I don't I don't
expect to get any any legal documents or complaints from
them anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
So are you saying that Nationwide isn't on everyone's side?
Speaker 3 (10:52):
They're not on our side. In fact, if you go
to not on Ourside dot com you can see the
full write up that we did on all the things
that they're doing to push awoke a Jen And you know,
while we're on the topic, you know, since since we've
already kind of cracked cracked up with a file on them,
one of the interesting things that I found on them
was that they sponsor a children's hospital in Ohio that's
got that that bears their brand the same way you
(11:14):
might you know, put like Capital one on Capital one
Arena or something like that. What's amazing is the CEO
is the chair of that hospital, so he is directly
in the same way that he is you know, directs
the insurance company, he's also really in the top leadership
of that children's hospital. And what I what we found
is that startlingly, they have a program called the Thrive
(11:36):
program that provided gender affirming care so to speak, for
children under the age of eighteen that included injecting them
with cross sex hormones. So in other words, injecting men
with testosterone and us injecting women with testosterone and men
with with estrogen. And I'm sure a number of others
obviously don't engage in sexual mutilation of minors, so I
(11:59):
wouldn't know all the exact technical details, but in other words,
cross sex hormones to to you know, begin the process
of puberty blocking and changing someone over.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
To the opposite sex.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Obviously that's not even theoretically possible, but you know the
way they talk about it, and so you know, not
only did I find that they were engaging in programs
that encourage racial discrimination and they were incentivizing it, they
were also directly tied to and funding the the cross
sex hormone injections into minors, which is now illegal in
(12:31):
Ohio law. This dated from before the law was passed,
and I'm waiting to get an update from the Do
No Harm you assume me to stop the harm database
that tracks all this. We'll see if they've been following
Ohio law. But it was it was pretty startling to
see a company so so cocky that they're going to
threaten to assume me, But then the facts are just
could not be more against them on every area of wokeness.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, a major ensurer operating aildren's hospital with the same
sort of DEI principles. It operates the insurance side. What
could possibly go wrong? Of course, And I guess you
(13:14):
brought that up before, and that is it is a
new era, and I think corporations recognize that with the
Trump administration, the Executive Order and an aggressive Civil Rights
Division in the Department of Justice that is willing to
do this. Are you seeing accountability and how will that
(13:35):
resonate going into the next several years.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Yeah, it does look like we're starting to see accountability.
I think the dj already announced that they have several
hospitals under investigation for this. They haven't named them for
obvious privacy reasons, but it does seem like they're taking
it seriously. And it's great to see the Trump administration,
the President specifically, but also the administration in general, using
(13:59):
a all fronts approach war on the mutilation of miners.
And what I mean by that is, you know, Trump
has directed the Federal Trade Commission to also crack down
on the advertising of what quote unquote gender affirming care
can accomplish, because it's been much basically lied about to
miners and to adults about what is possible. You cannot
(14:20):
change your sex. That's you know, every DNA of every
cell in your body is coded male or female, and
there's nothing anything medical science can do to change that.
And that's not the way this stuff was being advertised.
So using the laws that we have against misleading marketing
deceptive marketing practices, I think is an absolutely appropriate approach.
(14:43):
And I don't know that not to speak ill of
prior presidents, but I don't know of any other president
on the conservative side that viewed things that way. They
would see things as a discrete issue, either an SEC
issue or a DOJ issue, or a civil rights issue.
But when you're dealing with something as evil as the
mutilation and and abuse of minors. Every single agency has
(15:03):
a role that can touch on it, has a role
to play. You shouldn't just try to limit it. And
it's been really heartening to see the Trump administration take
a whole house approach to pushing back on this.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
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Speaker 1 (15:51):
Indeed, and what we're seeing from the left and leftist
run corporations, is you know, in this particular arena, in
in general, is you know, supporting of massive mental illness?
That is ongoing, and I think the research continues to
(16:11):
show more and more and more how dangerous, how perilous
all of this is. You do have the Woke Tracker,
the Woke Alert, and I think I think this is
a very interesting You kind of touched upon it before.
Within that one of your latest updates, you note that
(16:32):
many corporations are putting progressive activists and their dangerous agendas
ahead of customers. They'll only succeed if we look the
other way. The Voke Alert obviously you're searching for this
kind of stuff all the time, but you're also getting
tips and information from the public about it all. One
(16:52):
of your latest vocal alerts talks about TJ Max, which
owns popular retour tail stores like TJ Max, Home Goods,
Mars and others, and also Carmaker Kia are the two
corporate sponsors of the Rainbow Library, which injects woke ideology
into K twelve classrooms with non academic picture books, pushing
(17:15):
concepts like transgenderism onto kids as young as five years old.
This is absolutely amazing. Let's talk a little bit about
that on the Woke Alert and others that you're bringing
to the public's attention.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Yes, certainly.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Well in that particular case, it was startling to find
that these corporations felt it was appropriate to be engaging
at all in the ideological brainwashing of kids as young
as five. I'm sorry to say that these are not
the only Kia and TJ Max are not the only
cases we've seen. I mentioned alluded to earlier before that
we were given information from a whistleblower in I think
(17:51):
twenty twenty two or twenty twenty three that showed that
State Farm had asked its agents to donate books targeting
kids as young as five with transgendeology. Kids literally books
literally with the title of a kid's book about being
transgender or a kid's book about being non binary, and
the plan there was to donate them to public libraries,
(18:12):
into public schools and get them in the hands of children.
Is something in alignment with something called the Gender Cool Project,
which is sort of the precursor to the Trevor Project,
which has kind of become the more more common, more
famous way to to try to inductriate kids with this
insane LGBTQ agenda. And that's one of the reasons why
(18:34):
it's so important for people to sign up for our
WOC alerts because these companies, especially on something like this,
do respond Kia or TJ Max.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
I can't remember one of them immediately.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Dropped the dropped off the sponsorship as soon as as
soon as they were hit, and I think the other
one may have already retracted as well. I have to
go back and check. But you know, to take a
step back and make sort of a meta level point
about why it's so important to get engaged. I think
that for a long time, consumers had a sense of
(19:05):
disempowerment or fatalism around what was going on in the marketplace,
and that there was nothing they could do about it,
and that if these big corporations made a decision, then well,
the smartest people in the room have decided it's to
their benefit and there's nothing we can really say about that.
And a couple of problems with that one. I think
the idea of a free market. You know, that's great
that we generally speaking don't want the heavy hand of
(19:26):
government to get involved in picking winners and losers. But
that isn't to say that conservatives themselves shouldn't be as
vociferous as possible and as vehement as possible and as
pugilistic as possible in pushing back against these corporations. That
is exactly what a market is, and that is why
the Left took over a lot of these corporations, is
they weren't afraid to cajole and threaten and pester these
(19:49):
companies into doing what they wanted. And the side that
wants to just be left alone will always lose to
the side that wants to win. And so we have
to be aggressive in you know, not in a violent
way or in a criminal way, but we have to
use both our wallet and our voice to push back
against these corporations if we want them to return to
something you know, we're roughly resembling normalcy or truth in
(20:12):
the way that they're operating. The other thing that's important
to remember is that whenever corporations are focusing on these things,
they are taking their time and attention and money away
from serving you, the consumer. So it's not just a
matter of they're doing something obnoxious you don't like culturally,
like if they you know, like if your neighbor, you know,
painted his house a weird color, right, it is it
(20:34):
is materially diletarious to consumers when corporations engage in wokery
because if you can, if you've ever been around any
kind of woke person in corporate America for more than
ten minutes, you realize these people have no intention of
focusing on making better products or lowering prices or innovating
new things in the marketplace. There's sole reason, dature, there's
(20:55):
sole reason for being is to turn the corporation into
a politic utility, and that will always, always, always be
a threat to the consumer. So our woke alerts you
can sign up at Consumers Research dot RG. You just
sign up with your cell phone number. We text you
at max once a week, sometimes you know less than that,
so this isn't You're not going to get spammed or
(21:16):
something like that. But we always include the both the
company being targeted why of course, but also a way
to contact the company and push back, whether that's our
phone or email or both or on social media, because
you know, it's very important to use our wallet to
change our buying patterns and hurt the companies that are
that are betraying our values monetarily, but it's also important
(21:36):
to communicate why we're doing it so they can connect
the decrease in sales to the reasons why they're having problems.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Our guest today is Will Hild, Executive director of Consumers
Research America. Consumers Research America as old as consumer Protection Agency,
and the question we're asking today has the woke movement
in corporate America fizzled out? Or are the diversity, equity
inclusion corporate cultist simply rebranding. It's a little bit of both,
(22:07):
and we turn our attention to the power of the consumer.
You folks have been in this business for what almost
one hundred years now, as the oldest consumer protection agency,
you know that trend lines are certainly different. This is
a whole different thing though, than new coke old coke.
(22:28):
You know, this is new. It's different than rebranding a
popular brand or a new slogan. As you said, this
is about entrenched political interest from the left. A lot
of times, the Marxist left in trying to reshape corporate America,
reshape the buying habits of consumers. At the same time,
(22:52):
the consumer has revolted against this sort of stuff. I mean,
I think about bud Light as perhaps the perfect example
of the consumers saying Nope, nope, not interested in that,
and we're going to take it out on you. How
much has the market moved this issue in the direction
(23:14):
that we've we've seen against DEI and these other leftist
woke programs.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Yeah, I think you've seen monumental shift from its high
water mark probably in twenty twenty one or twenty twenty,
twenty twenty one, that that at that point, I mean,
at some level, the consumer had more to fear from
from the companies that were serving them than than vice versa.
I mean that was sort of the point at which
you know, banks were debanking at an incredible clip. If
(23:43):
you said the wrong thing, you know, companies would make
a big show of saying that they didn't want to
serve you anymore. You had companies like Patagonia saying that
they didn't want to, you know, fulfill orders for petroleum
companies or fossil fuel companies, which is hilarious because ninety
percent how to go to get products or are made
with fossil fuels. So you had these weird situations where
(24:05):
it was almost as if like Corporate America felt that
they were in charge of their customers and not the
other way around. And that's another reason to really push
back as vehemently as possible on this phenomenon, because we
just can't live like that. That's not America was not
founded on the idea that people could start companies and
then and then use them to lord over, uh, the
(24:27):
individual and decide how they're going to run their lives,
especially giving them fact, you know, just to take banking
for example, how heavily subsidized that industry is. I mean,
that's ridiculous. They're effectively like a privatized post office. The
idea that they would be in charge of getting to
decide who they they want a bank and who they
don't think is worthy of having a bank account is
just absurd. I think I think they've definitely come off
(24:48):
that position. They're now downplaying you know, they were bragging about,
you know, debanking some people because they you know, had
you were guilty of wrong think or whatever. Now when
I'm into bates or discussions with banking professionals, they constantly
tell me that, oh, the phenomenon wasn't you know, it
was never really that bad, and a lot of cases
that were misunderstandings and that kind of thing. And you know,
(25:11):
I'm sure there were some misarion understandings, but it's insane
to think that there wasn't a real phenomenon as we
saw with like Nigel Faras, a guy who could very
well be the Prime Minister of England at a future date,
was debanked in England. Now, obviously that's a different country,
but you know, it doesn't really matter when you saw
Corporate America pushing this. That was part of what was
(25:31):
so stunning about it is that they were all sort
of acting in lockstep. And when you see someone cancel
like Soay for example, Alex Jones, they would get kicked
off of like four or five major platforms within a day,
you know, within twenty four hours. There's no doubt when
you see that level of concerted effort that there's something
going on behind the scenes that's not just individual companies
making a decision. There's a concerted effort to push a
(25:53):
political agenda. And you know, there's questions of whether that's
even legal, but it certainly isn't the kind of thing
that we should be supporting or allowing in a country
that's sensibly you know, free and one where we want
companies to support our freedoms, not punish them.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Well, you mentioned the hypocrisy of this too, Patagonia. There
are so many other examples, of course, where it's do
as I say, not as I do. Of course, the
same sort of corporate the woke culture corporations that are
talking about inclusion are taking their their products, are able
(26:31):
to sell their products at the rate they're selling them
thanks to slave labor, you know, overseas somewhere. And so
I think Americans get that, they understand that, And so
I guess, have you done any research, any studies on
how much this cult of DEI and ESG how much
(26:56):
it's cost these companies, because you know, you can be
threatened with lawsuits, and they're threatened with lawsuits all the time.
They can deal with the current administration, which you know,
the next administration, as you mentioned before, is subject to change,
but one thing they can't get away from is consumer sentiment.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yeah, that's that's a great question.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
You know, in total, you would need to add up
so many different factors to figure out how much DEI
has cost these companies, not only the effect on consumer behavior,
but hiring people based on race and sex as opposed
to skill and competency is a great way to get
people that aren't very skilled or competent and so it's
undoubtedly hurt them in terms of performance as well, where
(27:40):
they've put people mediocrits who don't belong there because they
were trying to reach some sort of racial and sex
based being counting, So you'd have to add that in
as well to the overall costs. And then of course,
as these lawsuits percolate, there's going to be I believe,
some probably pretty large judgments coming down. And we've already
seen some company capitulate and you know try to you know,
(28:04):
settle in. Some of those settlements aren't are public, so
it's hard to get a firm grasp on what it
has cost Corporate America to engage in this kind of
obnoxious behavior. And I don't think the number, even for
activities that have already occurred over the last four or
five years, I don't think the consequences of that have
been fully accounted for, you are fully seen yet. So
I think we're going to continue to see this for
(28:26):
a long time.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
So all of that said, and maybe it's this is
a difficult question as well to answer with the numbers,
with the monetary side of it, but how much have
these kinds of policies, particularly environmental Social and Governance ESG
policies cost the American investor over the years.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
And see that's that's also a wonderful question that I
think more work needs to be done on. And you know,
you look at the point of ESG, especially the E
Porsche and the environmental portion, was to restrict access to
capital through financing and insurance policies to disfavored industries. And
(29:12):
so there has been an effect on investment in fossil
fuel exploration and recovery over the last ten years, in
new mining over the last ten years. And you know,
commodities are cyclical. It takes years for a new project
to come online and start delivering product to the marketplace.
So if you've underinvested in the cycle, you're going to
(29:34):
be paying the price for that in higher prices in
the market, and that's going to feed into inflation for
you know, at least a decade, maybe longer, depending on
what types of things were we're talking about. So again
it's hard to even put a number on it, because
as the thing became more disfavored, you know, companies like
black Rock and State Treed and vanguard banks like JP
(29:57):
Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo and city, who are in
aging in it, who are part of things like the
Glasgow Financial Alliance for net zero and the net zero
Bankers Alliance and the net zero Asset Managers. They've left
all those and they've pretended that we were just it
was all a bunch of marketing. We were really doing
that much. We never really had much of effect on
the market. Well that's because they're getting sued by nineteen
state ags for anti trust activities in the coal market.
(30:19):
So now it's to their advantage to downplay how much
of an effect that they were having. But if you
look back at their quotes back at the heyday, at
the height of their power, that is not what they
were talking about. So again I apologize. I know it's
not very satisfying to hear sort of vague notions, but
this effort was so monumental and so far reaching it's
(30:40):
hard to truly put a number because you have to
figure out what would have happened had they not engaged
in this kind of cartel like activity. And so unfortunately,
both shareholders and consumers are like are going to be
paying a price for these activity even if they ended today,
which they haven't. Black Rock, for example, is still engaging
in all kinds of radical extremist behavior in corporate America.
(31:02):
But even if they ended today, they we would still
feel the effects of the underinvestment in a lot of
these disfavored industries, from ag to mining to fossil fuels
for a very long time, and.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
I will I will not.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
There are some to go back to your previous question,
there are some anecdotes I can mention in terms of
give people a sense of magnitude. I mean, most people
are going to know about the Budweiser example, where they
fell from the America's number one beer to I think,
you know, two, or third or maybe fourth place. I
think they've wobbled around a little bit since then, but
they haven't come back to the top. And I know
that target after the huge controversy over having the quote
(31:35):
unquote tuck bathing suits for kids, pushing transgender ideology with
their products right in the front of the stores, saw
massive declines. I think I heard as high as thirty
percent in some areas of the country in foot traffic
and sales. And you've seen that company try to course correct.
They've completely eliminated their DEI program. From what I understand
(31:58):
at least publicly, that's what they're stating, and they've changed
a lot of their marketing materials. I don't think they
engage in pride month really at all throughout most of
the country.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
There might be some areas that are.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Particular, particularly woke geographically, where they still do in a
small way, but you don't see them pushing this absolute
nonsense into all of all of America, where it's incredibly
offensive and obnoxious. So that's a company that saw a
huge decline in sales over a prolonged period of time
and is working to try and course.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Correct, which is laudable.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
I mean, obviously they should have done it in the
first place, but we also have to allow people to
come back and do what they should have been doing
and say that's that's good. Now, we need every now
now we need one all of your colleagues to do
it in corporate America as well. So I think target well,
not Perfect, is a model for a company that that
is trying to fix itself.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yeah, Major League Baseball immediately comes to mind. And what
we have seen from not just Major League Baseball, certainly
the NBA, the nfls to have gotten some lessons, some
very important lessons from consumers, from viewers over the years.
But you know, it's like we said, what this conversation
(33:10):
is all about. It's a lot of claims, a lot
of public facing, kinds of pronounced changes, but plenty of
these corporate players have just taken their stuff underground. We've
certainly seen that at universities and another area that I'm
(33:31):
sure you're tracking as well, and we've written a lot
of stories about this at the federalists, but the American
Bar Association and state bars I know recently writing a
piece about the Wisconsin State Bar Association and there are
others like it that settled a lawsuit at the federal
level because the document showed that they were discriminating in
(33:57):
their programs, particularly in their training. But in many ways,
the American Bar Association and legal groups legal coalitions like
it have been leading this and have supplied attorneys to
fight for the DEI movement and continue to do so
in America today.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
Yes, I'm glad you brought that up, because this is
an area that, while a little disheartening once you realize
how deep the rabbit hole goes, is pretty enlightening. Because
you had a lot of corporate attorneys and corporate law
firms basically telling companies, Especially before the Harvard and Missions ruling,
where it made it clear that racial discrimination of any
(34:39):
kind was not allowable in higher add admissions, you had
a lot of corporate attorneys telling corporations that it was
okay to engage in discrimination as long as it was
to benefit some historically underprivileged group. And so the legal
community bears a huge burden for how this happened and
(35:00):
to this day continues to fight for it, which is
sort of odd because it was the lawyers who fought
so hard to get so much of the civil rights
agenda passed in the sixties, arguing the opposite direction, that
people should be treated purely based on merit or skills
or comprehension or whatever the relevant metric is you're testing
for at the time, not based on race or sex
(35:24):
or identity groupings. And so you're right. One of the
things that's really startling is, you know, a lot of
states have been banning DEI activities in their higher ed
universities and basically saying that all this stuff is illegal,
can't do anymore, can't you use any money for it.
But a lot of them also have old statutes on
(35:45):
the books that say, you know, notwithstanding anything we've told
you higher ed university system, you can do whatever you
need to do in order to maintain your accreditation, because
they didn't want them accidentally getting a foul of their
creditors because of some minute.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
You know, hey, we've got.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Code that says your library can only be you know,
twenty feet high, and the creditor says it needs to
be twenty.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Five feet high. I'm just making up nonsense, but you
get the idea.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
They didn't want them to get hung up on a
technicality because maintaining accreditation for university is so important.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
What has happened since those bands.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Have been put in place, though, is university administrators from
across the country who want to continue to engage in
racial discrimination and obnoxious wokery that's been banned. Is they've
run to the accreditors and said, please, please, please start
requiring the very things that these states have banned. And
I'll give you a concrete example. The American Bar Association
(36:37):
two to three years ago announced that moving forward to
maintain accreditation with them, and they are the only they
have a total monopoly on law school accreditation. To maintain
accreditation with them. They were going to start requiring racial
bias training be provided to every law student in the country,
and this is something that has been completely debunked scientifically.
(36:57):
It does nothing but actually make racial stereotyping worse. People
who go through implicit racial bias training report higher levels
of stereotyping, stereotyping views of of other races. And yet
this is something that the woke people are obsessed with.
It's a bit of a cottage industry for them, and
they run to the creditors, run to the one increditor particular,
(37:18):
a BA, and required it. And so it really, frankly
this in the same way that COVID undermined faith in
the entire public health system and the medical system in general.
I think that as this comes out, how much of
this was done by lawyers who knew that this stuff
violated federal law, violated people's civil rights. I think you
will have a similar effect on legal industry. And that's
(37:41):
sad to say. I am a lawyer and we didn't
have a lot of room.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
To work with.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
To be been with, we're not exactly high on most
people's lists in terms of trusted industries. And yet, uh,
you know, lawyers have led the way in pushing a
lot of this incredibly obnoxious illegal activity.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Isn't at the core of all of this, this DEI movement,
ESG movement, you know, the gen reflecting at the altar
of the LGBTQ and whatever letter and marks they're adding
to this on a daily basis. Isn't this really at
its core all about arrogance and elitism? These I just
(38:20):
see over the course of the last few decades in
this country, over the last generation, certainly and probably more,
that these folks really believed that Americans in general are
just too stupid to understand and they had to be
(38:41):
the leaders on this front.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
What do you think, well, I mean, I certainly think
that underlying the entire worldview of wokeness is that as
a deep disdain for the average American and especially the
middle class American and especially the middle America American. So
you know, people who don't live is part of the
ACCELA corridor from DC to New York, or don't live
(39:04):
in California or LA in particular. There is there is
clearly a deep seated resentment that motivates a good portion
of this. In addition to that, I think that the ESG.
Let me give a little bit of a white pill
here of an optimistic note. The reason that they decided
to construct this ESG framework was because much of their
(39:26):
agenda was rejected at the ballot.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Box over and over and over, both at the state
and the federal level.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Sure, and so they basically this es SHE was their
plan B to force this through financial basically leveraging the
market share of major financial players, whether that be in
the asset manager's market or the banking industry or the
large insurers. Basically to restrict the access to capital and
(39:51):
to leverage assets that asset managers held as stewards, not
as owners, but as stewarts, to push an agenda that
Americans consistent rejected. And so while that is nefarious and
evil and has had horrible effects on this country, it
is somewhat heartening that it's because we rejected it democratically
that they had to resort to this plan B. And
(40:14):
so I think that also underlines the ESG framework is
the idea that listen, people are never going to accept
this politically. We're just going to have to force it
down their throats. And that isn't to say that that
means they will lose. I mean, we have to push
back on ESG. It was a smart move on their part,
but it wasn't a situation where they won right out
(40:35):
of the gate. They actually lost right out of the gate.
And this was their this was their countermove, and I
think it's telling. The chronology of events really plays this out.
Even really where ESG got supercharged was in about the
midpoint of the first Trump administration.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
And if it was.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Just corporations just doing whichever way the wind was blowing politically,
what you'd expect is actually corporates being more conservative during
that period of time. But where Larry Fink and you know,
Glasgow Financial Ance FORER at zero was really getting founded
and going was during a period of time which Trump
(41:12):
was in the White House. So I think it really
speaks to that this is there, This is the real motivation,
this is their real intent. This is not something they're
necessarily being forced to do, but they want to do it.
They want to push this, and so we're going to
have to you know, create disincentive shops, so to speak,
for that kind of active.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
So final question for you, where does it suggest we're
going from here? Will Americans continue to reject this, and
they may. I mean a lot of voting, of course
in this country takes place at the register. We know that,
not just the ballot box. But will they grow tired
of having to fight because the left never stops fighting?
(41:54):
We know that.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Yeah, I think that's a great question. And one of
my great fears in the victory of Trump in the
election is that it would lead to people becoming complacent
and believing that just having the White House was enough
to put this to bed. As I mentioned before, so
much of this was put in place during the first
Trump administration. So if just having a Republican in the
(42:18):
White House kept this from happening, it wouldn't have happened
and we wouldn't be here today. We have to, like
just like I mentioned, with the Trump administration, using a
whole house approach to push back against the transgender ideology,
especially as it pertains to mutilating and abusing minors. Conservatives
of every stripe across the entire country have to have
(42:40):
a whole house approach in our own lives and pushing
back into this, And I know that's not our natural inclination.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
We're the group that likes to be left alone.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
That were the group that likes to not meddle in
other people's affairs, But unfortunately they are in the business
of meddling. And if we do not prevent that from happening,
we will be right back under their boot. We will
be right back under the debanking and the cancelation and
the constant.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Attacks on our way of life.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
We have to not only push back, but we have
to push back in such a way that we create
structures in the future that would prevent this from ever
happening again. Some of that is legal, like you know,
lawsuits coming from the Department of Justice civil rights, or
more importantly, making sure your state attorney general is being
encouraged and resourced to enforce civil rights at the state level.
(43:27):
That's a big deal. Making sure that there is dual
enforcement of civil rights against discrimination is probably one of
the biggest structures we could put into place to make
sure that, no matter if there's a Democrat or a
Republican in the White House, this kind of stuff doesn't
re emerge. But also being mindful consumers and pushing back
using our wallet, which we were inclined to do as
(43:49):
conservatives because we understand that bottom lines matter. But also,
and this is the part we kind of have to
get outside of our comfort zone more often about is
using our voice, sending emails, speaking to company managers when
we go into a store and saying, listen, I like
to shop at Home Depot, but I don't like that
you have a DEI program. I like to shop at Starbucks,
but I don't like you. Guys are constantly, you know,
(44:09):
virtue signaling around race. So that kind of stuff I
can tell you does trickle up. You might think I'm
just one person. You know, I'm talking to a store
manager who cares. No one's ever going to listen to
me in mass. When it's done at scale, that stuff, absolutely,
I can say, with metaphysical certainty, reaches the upper echelons
of corporate America and they do hear you. They may
(44:29):
not agree with you, they may not like it, okay,
but they will change their behaviors. We've seen it with
some of the big corporations we talked about before, and
we will see it in the future as long as
we stay engaged.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Really is a battle for the soul of America on
a multi front battlefield. Thanks to my guest today, Will Hilt,
executive director of Consumers Research, America's oldest consumer protection agency.
You've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the Federalist Assume
(45:00):
with more. Until then, stay lovers of freedom and anxious
for the fray.
Speaker 4 (45:11):
I heard the fame, voice, the reason, and then it
faded away.
And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experience shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
(00:39):
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Will Hild, Executive director of Consumers Research,
America's oldest consumer protection agency. Here is the question that
we begin with today. Has the woke movement in corporate
America fizzled out? Or are the diversity equity inclusion corporate
(01:03):
cultists simply rebranding going underground. Well, welcome to this edition
of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Great to be with you, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah. Absolutely, I guess that really is the question. We've
seen a little sea change, if you will, from corporate America,
at least publicly public facing. A number of companies have decided,
at least they have said that they're going to abandon
their woke policies DEI and others like that. But what
(01:39):
are you seeing as you keep an eye on this
as a watchdog.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah, I think what's typifying the space right now is
certainly a retreat from the high water mark of wokeness
and DEI that we saw probably two to four years ago.
But if you look at what's actually happening at a
lot of these companies, they're trying to just go underground
and maintain a lot of the same activities that they
(02:06):
were doing. Now there's sort of a generous interpretation of
that activity in an ungenerous one. I lean towards the
ungenerous one, but you might I might assume that given
the fact that I'm in the business of fighting it.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
But I'll give both views.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
One is that you know, politics has, you know, wavered
back and forth to extremes from the corporate perspective over
the last you know, ten years, and you're never more
than one election away from being in a lot of
trouble with either party for either doing DEI or not
doing d EI. We've seen letters go out from Democrats,
(02:42):
particularly the Black Caucus in Congress, basically attacking companies as
soon as they see any kind of retreat from DI
and so from the corporate perspective, they're sort of stuck
trying to make both sides happy in a way that's
not really going to work, because one side wants race
discrimination and quotas and explicit carve outs for particular identity
(03:05):
groups and is willing to use state power to punish
companies that won't do that, and one side wants us
to follow roughly a color blind meritocracy and is willing
to punish companies with state power that refused to do that.
The more I guess less generous view is that what's
going on is a lot of these companies are really
(03:28):
in the tank for, or they have staffed up with
people that are in the tank for, treating the corporation
as a political project, and that's really all they wake
up in the morning to go do. It's not really
about serving consumers, it's not really about making money for shareholders.
What they really want to do every morning is turn
whatever corporation they work for into more and more of
(03:49):
a political utility for the Democratic Party and the progressive left.
And until those people are removed, I really don't think
we will fully solve the problem. We can certainly curtail
that activities, we can certainly make it harder for them
to operate.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
But ultimately, until people.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Go to work wanting to go to work and wanting
to serve consumers and serve shareholders and ultimately just make money,
that's the problem is not really going to go away,
because they will be waiting for their opportunities to push
a political agenda with their roles.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
I think what you define as the less generous version
of these ideas is actually quite generous. I mean, what
have we seen over the last several years in this
country but kind of the leftist takeover of institutions, including
Corporate America in these human resources department, marketing departments and
(04:44):
all of that, and it has cost them dearly willed.
They're losing lawsuit after lawsuit, and understandably so because what
they're engaging in is nothing nothing short of discrimination.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
You're one hundred percent correct.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
I think that's why I mentioned I lean towards the
ungenerous view that really they're not motivated by a desire
to sort of navigate the current political conflicts. Really, what
they're motivated by is a way to get away with
as much racial discrimination as they can, and frankly, are
willing to pay the price even at some high levels
(05:21):
when they get caught, and yet we don't see them
fully changing lanes. I'd give some concrete examples. One of
the things that we see them a lot of these
companies doing is simply changing the terms that they use.
And you know, everyone saw this coming, even the Trump
administration knew this was going to happen. But as the
term DEI has become synonymous with what it is, which
is racial and sex based discrimination, they have changed the
(05:43):
things like Department of Belonging. We did a woke alert
a few weeks ago, from months ago, excuse me, they
basically talked about five different companies that do that. One
of those companies actually threaten to assume me if if
I talked about them anymore, and that was that was
just to be clear Nationwide Insurance, and I will continue
to talk about them because they have a long track
(06:04):
record of engaging in that kind of discrimination. And they
can threaten me all they like, but they're still going
to hear about it. So it's a situation where clearly
they have you know, the people at the top, or
some of the people at the top, may just want
this all to go away, but they have been infiltrated,
and they have allowed themselves to be infiltrated with people
(06:25):
who actively seek to do this for its own sake,
and a lot of these companies are just going to
have to get ruthless with rooting those people out or
it's going to cost them. And I think one of
the great developments we've seen in the Trump administration has
not just been the executive orders pushing back on DEI,
but the choosing of personnel that I hope and I
believe will really.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Go after these companies.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
What we've seen from Harmeat Dylan running the Civil Rights
Division at Department of Justice.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Is very heartening.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
You know, we're early on in her tenure, so there,
you know, I don't they can't point to examples of
lawsuits quite yet, but at least her rhetoric and the
way that she's framing the issue is very promising and
very optimistic for these companies paying a price for breaking
federal and state labor law.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I love to see.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
There have been a number of attorneys generals, Republican state
attorney generals who have been pushing back on some of
this stuff that said there could always be doing more
because a lot of these corporations are breaking not just
federal law, but state law. And so seeing the Republican
ags continue to engage in this space during the Trump
administration in ways that they were doing during the Biden
(07:33):
administration when they didn't have the cover of the federal government,
I think is something that we really hope to see
and as conservative as we want to continue to push
for because we don't want to get to this situation
where we just think, well, har meet Scott It she's great,
and she is great, but she cannot be suing the
literally hundreds, if not thousands of companies that were engaging
(07:53):
in this kind of behavior.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And it's going to take a long.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Steady process of punishing these companies for that where this
stuff is really rooted out.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
If I may ask, where does the what's the litigation
status with nationwide right now?
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Well, you know they they called and threatened, and I
told them I would take a look at it, and
as soon as I did even more research, I found
just a panoply of evidence things like supplier diversity programs
where they had set internal incentives like literal financial incentives
for people to achieve certain racial makeups of their suppliers,
and that is not my words, that's not my assertions.
(08:29):
That is on that is on an official document they
sent the state of California to brag about all the
things they were doing to increase diversity in order to
get the business of that state. So, you know, I
don't know what I Theoretically, I think the you know,
statue limitations on defamation is is pretty long.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
So in theory they could be putting together a lawsuit.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
I doubt it, though, because I've got the receipts and
they're going to be facing a lot of counter examples
of all the many ways they do they did engage
in forms of discrimination, So I don't think I don't
think they I think they like to talk tough. And
that's a lesson, by the way, for a lot of
citizen journalists. I know we have a lot of people
who listen to this show who might have seen things themselves.
(09:09):
One you can always reach out to us. My My
email is whild at Consumers Research dot org, and we
love to help whistleblowers. We blew the door off of
state farm insurance a number of years ago for pushing
transgender ideology on children. So if you have something like that,
feel free to bring it to us, and we will
vet it and then we can be the front of it.
But also just in general, these corporations talk a lot
(09:30):
tougher than they are and they think that by you know,
having some big shot corporate attorney call, they'll back you off.
But in a lot of cases, you know, if you've
got the truth on your side, you know, reach out
because we can certainly make make that a very tough
proposition for them to go after you.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Well, I think they're attorneys. They're big shot attorneys. Fully
understand that discovery goes both ways, right bingo.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
And that's a that's a great point.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
I you know, I basically said, listen, if you want
to assume me, that's fine. I'm going to get into all
those emails, and I have a feeling that you you know,
you're not going to like what we find, just based
on what was publicly available with me. One of the
things that Nationwide was bragging about was that they had
affinity groups internally, mentorship programs specifically for women and women
of color that were meant to increase the number of
(10:14):
those groups in leadership. So you cannot have it's a
matter of black letter law. You cannot have training programs
and mentorship programs and development programs that are specifically carved
out for specific identity groups in race and sex, and
they were bragging about that and how successful it had been.
So imagine, if that's what they're publicly talking about in
the media, what are their emails going to show when
(10:37):
we crack those open. So I don't think I'm not
you know, if they want to take on that fight,
I will gladly fight it. But I don't I don't
expect to get any any legal documents or complaints from
them anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
So are you saying that Nationwide isn't on everyone's side?
Speaker 3 (10:52):
They're not on our side. In fact, if you go
to not on Ourside dot com you can see the
full write up that we did on all the things
that they're doing to push awoke a Jen And you know,
while we're on the topic, you know, since since we've
already kind of cracked cracked up with a file on them,
one of the interesting things that I found on them
was that they sponsor a children's hospital in Ohio that's
got that that bears their brand the same way you
(11:14):
might you know, put like Capital one on Capital one
Arena or something like that. What's amazing is the CEO
is the chair of that hospital, so he is directly
in the same way that he is you know, directs
the insurance company, he's also really in the top leadership
of that children's hospital. And what I what we found
is that startlingly, they have a program called the Thrive
(11:36):
program that provided gender affirming care so to speak, for
children under the age of eighteen that included injecting them
with cross sex hormones. So in other words, injecting men
with testosterone and us injecting women with testosterone and men
with with estrogen. And I'm sure a number of others
obviously don't engage in sexual mutilation of minors, so I
(11:59):
wouldn't know all the exact technical details, but in other words,
cross sex hormones to to you know, begin the process
of puberty blocking and changing someone over.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
To the opposite sex.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Obviously that's not even theoretically possible, but you know the
way they talk about it, and so you know, not
only did I find that they were engaging in programs
that encourage racial discrimination and they were incentivizing it, they
were also directly tied to and funding the the cross
sex hormone injections into minors, which is now illegal in
(12:31):
Ohio law. This dated from before the law was passed,
and I'm waiting to get an update from the Do
No Harm you assume me to stop the harm database
that tracks all this. We'll see if they've been following
Ohio law. But it was it was pretty startling to
see a company so so cocky that they're going to
threaten to assume me, But then the facts are just
could not be more against them on every area of wokeness.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, a major ensurer operating aildren's hospital with the same
sort of DEI principles. It operates the insurance side. What
could possibly go wrong? Of course, And I guess you
(13:14):
brought that up before, and that is it is a
new era, and I think corporations recognize that with the
Trump administration, the Executive Order and an aggressive Civil Rights
Division in the Department of Justice that is willing to
do this. Are you seeing accountability and how will that
(13:35):
resonate going into the next several years.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Yeah, it does look like we're starting to see accountability.
I think the dj already announced that they have several
hospitals under investigation for this. They haven't named them for
obvious privacy reasons, but it does seem like they're taking
it seriously. And it's great to see the Trump administration,
the President specifically, but also the administration in general, using
(13:59):
a all fronts approach war on the mutilation of miners.
And what I mean by that is, you know, Trump
has directed the Federal Trade Commission to also crack down
on the advertising of what quote unquote gender affirming care
can accomplish, because it's been much basically lied about to
miners and to adults about what is possible. You cannot
(14:20):
change your sex. That's you know, every DNA of every
cell in your body is coded male or female, and
there's nothing anything medical science can do to change that.
And that's not the way this stuff was being advertised.
So using the laws that we have against misleading marketing
deceptive marketing practices, I think is an absolutely appropriate approach.
(14:43):
And I don't know that not to speak ill of
prior presidents, but I don't know of any other president
on the conservative side that viewed things that way. They
would see things as a discrete issue, either an SEC
issue or a DOJ issue, or a civil rights issue.
But when you're dealing with something as evil as the
mutilation and and abuse of minors. Every single agency has
(15:03):
a role that can touch on it, has a role
to play. You shouldn't just try to limit it. And
it's been really heartening to see the Trump administration take
a whole house approach to pushing back on this.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
Ronald Reagan was right and it's worse than we thought.
The Watch Dot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski
every day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and
the economy and how it affects your wallet. If I'm
from the government and I'm here to help, isn't bad enough.
The government spends one hundred and eighty one billion dollars
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(15:36):
see a check in the mail? Whether it's happening in
DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially.
Be informed. Check out the Watch Dot on Wall Street
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Speaker 1 (15:51):
Indeed, and what we're seeing from the left and leftist
run corporations, is you know, in this particular arena, in
in general, is you know, supporting of massive mental illness?
That is ongoing, and I think the research continues to
(16:11):
show more and more and more how dangerous, how perilous
all of this is. You do have the Woke Tracker,
the Woke Alert, and I think I think this is
a very interesting You kind of touched upon it before.
Within that one of your latest updates, you note that
(16:32):
many corporations are putting progressive activists and their dangerous agendas
ahead of customers. They'll only succeed if we look the
other way. The Voke Alert obviously you're searching for this
kind of stuff all the time, but you're also getting
tips and information from the public about it all. One
(16:52):
of your latest vocal alerts talks about TJ Max, which
owns popular retour tail stores like TJ Max, Home Goods,
Mars and others, and also Carmaker Kia are the two
corporate sponsors of the Rainbow Library, which injects woke ideology
into K twelve classrooms with non academic picture books, pushing
(17:15):
concepts like transgenderism onto kids as young as five years old.
This is absolutely amazing. Let's talk a little bit about
that on the Woke Alert and others that you're bringing
to the public's attention.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Yes, certainly.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Well in that particular case, it was startling to find
that these corporations felt it was appropriate to be engaging
at all in the ideological brainwashing of kids as young
as five. I'm sorry to say that these are not
the only Kia and TJ Max are not the only
cases we've seen. I mentioned alluded to earlier before that
we were given information from a whistleblower in I think
(17:51):
twenty twenty two or twenty twenty three that showed that
State Farm had asked its agents to donate books targeting
kids as young as five with transgendeology. Kids literally books
literally with the title of a kid's book about being
transgender or a kid's book about being non binary, and
the plan there was to donate them to public libraries,
(18:12):
into public schools and get them in the hands of children.
Is something in alignment with something called the Gender Cool Project,
which is sort of the precursor to the Trevor Project,
which has kind of become the more more common, more
famous way to to try to inductriate kids with this
insane LGBTQ agenda. And that's one of the reasons why
(18:34):
it's so important for people to sign up for our
WOC alerts because these companies, especially on something like this,
do respond Kia or TJ Max.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
I can't remember one of them immediately.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Dropped the dropped off the sponsorship as soon as as
soon as they were hit, and I think the other
one may have already retracted as well. I have to
go back and check. But you know, to take a
step back and make sort of a meta level point
about why it's so important to get engaged. I think
that for a long time, consumers had a sense of
(19:05):
disempowerment or fatalism around what was going on in the marketplace,
and that there was nothing they could do about it,
and that if these big corporations made a decision, then well,
the smartest people in the room have decided it's to
their benefit and there's nothing we can really say about that.
And a couple of problems with that one. I think
the idea of a free market. You know, that's great
that we generally speaking don't want the heavy hand of
(19:26):
government to get involved in picking winners and losers. But
that isn't to say that conservatives themselves shouldn't be as
vociferous as possible and as vehement as possible and as
pugilistic as possible in pushing back against these corporations. That
is exactly what a market is, and that is why
the Left took over a lot of these corporations, is
they weren't afraid to cajole and threaten and pester these
(19:49):
companies into doing what they wanted. And the side that
wants to just be left alone will always lose to
the side that wants to win. And so we have
to be aggressive in you know, not in a violent
way or in a criminal way, but we have to
use both our wallet and our voice to push back
against these corporations if we want them to return to
something you know, we're roughly resembling normalcy or truth in
(20:12):
the way that they're operating. The other thing that's important
to remember is that whenever corporations are focusing on these things,
they are taking their time and attention and money away
from serving you, the consumer. So it's not just a
matter of they're doing something obnoxious you don't like culturally,
like if they you know, like if your neighbor, you know,
painted his house a weird color, right, it is it
(20:34):
is materially diletarious to consumers when corporations engage in wokery
because if you can, if you've ever been around any
kind of woke person in corporate America for more than
ten minutes, you realize these people have no intention of
focusing on making better products or lowering prices or innovating
new things in the marketplace. There's sole reason, dature, there's
(20:55):
sole reason for being is to turn the corporation into
a politic utility, and that will always, always, always be
a threat to the consumer. So our woke alerts you
can sign up at Consumers Research dot RG. You just
sign up with your cell phone number. We text you
at max once a week, sometimes you know less than that,
so this isn't You're not going to get spammed or
(21:16):
something like that. But we always include the both the
company being targeted why of course, but also a way
to contact the company and push back, whether that's our
phone or email or both or on social media, because
you know, it's very important to use our wallet to
change our buying patterns and hurt the companies that are
that are betraying our values monetarily, but it's also important
(21:36):
to communicate why we're doing it so they can connect
the decrease in sales to the reasons why they're having problems.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Our guest today is Will Hild, Executive director of Consumers
Research America. Consumers Research America as old as consumer Protection Agency,
and the question we're asking today has the woke movement
in corporate America fizzled out? Or are the diversity, equity
inclusion corporate cultist simply rebranding. It's a little bit of both,
(22:07):
and we turn our attention to the power of the consumer.
You folks have been in this business for what almost
one hundred years now, as the oldest consumer protection agency,
you know that trend lines are certainly different. This is
a whole different thing though, than new coke old coke.
(22:28):
You know, this is new. It's different than rebranding a
popular brand or a new slogan. As you said, this
is about entrenched political interest from the left. A lot
of times, the Marxist left in trying to reshape corporate America,
reshape the buying habits of consumers. At the same time,
(22:52):
the consumer has revolted against this sort of stuff. I mean,
I think about bud Light as perhaps the perfect example
of the consumers saying Nope, nope, not interested in that,
and we're going to take it out on you. How
much has the market moved this issue in the direction
(23:14):
that we've we've seen against DEI and these other leftist
woke programs.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Yeah, I think you've seen monumental shift from its high
water mark probably in twenty twenty one or twenty twenty,
twenty twenty one, that that at that point, I mean,
at some level, the consumer had more to fear from
from the companies that were serving them than than vice versa.
I mean that was sort of the point at which
you know, banks were debanking at an incredible clip. If
(23:43):
you said the wrong thing, you know, companies would make
a big show of saying that they didn't want to
serve you anymore. You had companies like Patagonia saying that
they didn't want to, you know, fulfill orders for petroleum
companies or fossil fuel companies, which is hilarious because ninety
percent how to go to get products or are made
with fossil fuels. So you had these weird situations where
(24:05):
it was almost as if like Corporate America felt that
they were in charge of their customers and not the
other way around. And that's another reason to really push
back as vehemently as possible on this phenomenon, because we
just can't live like that. That's not America was not
founded on the idea that people could start companies and
then and then use them to lord over, uh, the
(24:27):
individual and decide how they're going to run their lives,
especially giving them fact, you know, just to take banking
for example, how heavily subsidized that industry is. I mean,
that's ridiculous. They're effectively like a privatized post office. The
idea that they would be in charge of getting to
decide who they they want a bank and who they
don't think is worthy of having a bank account is
just absurd. I think I think they've definitely come off
(24:48):
that position. They're now downplaying you know, they were bragging about,
you know, debanking some people because they you know, had
you were guilty of wrong think or whatever. Now when
I'm into bates or discussions with banking professionals, they constantly
tell me that, oh, the phenomenon wasn't you know, it
was never really that bad, and a lot of cases
that were misunderstandings and that kind of thing. And you know,
(25:11):
I'm sure there were some misarion understandings, but it's insane
to think that there wasn't a real phenomenon as we
saw with like Nigel Faras, a guy who could very
well be the Prime Minister of England at a future date,
was debanked in England. Now, obviously that's a different country,
but you know, it doesn't really matter when you saw
Corporate America pushing this. That was part of what was
(25:31):
so stunning about it is that they were all sort
of acting in lockstep. And when you see someone cancel
like Soay for example, Alex Jones, they would get kicked
off of like four or five major platforms within a day,
you know, within twenty four hours. There's no doubt when
you see that level of concerted effort that there's something
going on behind the scenes that's not just individual companies
making a decision. There's a concerted effort to push a
(25:53):
political agenda. And you know, there's questions of whether that's
even legal, but it certainly isn't the kind of thing
that we should be supporting or allowing in a country
that's sensibly you know, free and one where we want
companies to support our freedoms, not punish them.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Well, you mentioned the hypocrisy of this too, Patagonia. There
are so many other examples, of course, where it's do
as I say, not as I do. Of course, the
same sort of corporate the woke culture corporations that are
talking about inclusion are taking their their products, are able
(26:31):
to sell their products at the rate they're selling them
thanks to slave labor, you know, overseas somewhere. And so
I think Americans get that, they understand that, And so
I guess, have you done any research, any studies on
how much this cult of DEI and ESG how much
(26:56):
it's cost these companies, because you know, you can be
threatened with lawsuits, and they're threatened with lawsuits all the time.
They can deal with the current administration, which you know,
the next administration, as you mentioned before, is subject to change,
but one thing they can't get away from is consumer sentiment.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yeah, that's that's a great question.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
You know, in total, you would need to add up
so many different factors to figure out how much DEI
has cost these companies, not only the effect on consumer behavior,
but hiring people based on race and sex as opposed
to skill and competency is a great way to get
people that aren't very skilled or competent and so it's
undoubtedly hurt them in terms of performance as well, where
(27:40):
they've put people mediocrits who don't belong there because they
were trying to reach some sort of racial and sex
based being counting, So you'd have to add that in
as well to the overall costs. And then of course,
as these lawsuits percolate, there's going to be I believe,
some probably pretty large judgments coming down. And we've already
seen some company capitulate and you know try to you know,
(28:04):
settle in. Some of those settlements aren't are public, so
it's hard to get a firm grasp on what it
has cost Corporate America to engage in this kind of
obnoxious behavior. And I don't think the number, even for
activities that have already occurred over the last four or
five years, I don't think the consequences of that have
been fully accounted for, you are fully seen yet. So
I think we're going to continue to see this for
(28:26):
a long time.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
So all of that said, and maybe it's this is
a difficult question as well to answer with the numbers,
with the monetary side of it, but how much have
these kinds of policies, particularly environmental Social and Governance ESG
policies cost the American investor over the years.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
And see that's that's also a wonderful question that I
think more work needs to be done on. And you know,
you look at the point of ESG, especially the E
Porsche and the environmental portion, was to restrict access to
capital through financing and insurance policies to disfavored industries. And
(29:12):
so there has been an effect on investment in fossil
fuel exploration and recovery over the last ten years, in
new mining over the last ten years. And you know,
commodities are cyclical. It takes years for a new project
to come online and start delivering product to the marketplace.
So if you've underinvested in the cycle, you're going to
(29:34):
be paying the price for that in higher prices in
the market, and that's going to feed into inflation for
you know, at least a decade, maybe longer, depending on
what types of things were we're talking about. So again
it's hard to even put a number on it, because
as the thing became more disfavored, you know, companies like
black Rock and State Treed and vanguard banks like JP
(29:57):
Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo and city, who are in
aging in it, who are part of things like the
Glasgow Financial Alliance for net zero and the net zero
Bankers Alliance and the net zero Asset Managers. They've left
all those and they've pretended that we were just it
was all a bunch of marketing. We were really doing
that much. We never really had much of effect on
the market. Well that's because they're getting sued by nineteen
state ags for anti trust activities in the coal market.
(30:19):
So now it's to their advantage to downplay how much
of an effect that they were having. But if you
look back at their quotes back at the heyday, at
the height of their power, that is not what they
were talking about. So again I apologize. I know it's
not very satisfying to hear sort of vague notions, but
this effort was so monumental and so far reaching it's
(30:40):
hard to truly put a number because you have to
figure out what would have happened had they not engaged
in this kind of cartel like activity. And so unfortunately,
both shareholders and consumers are like are going to be
paying a price for these activity even if they ended today,
which they haven't. Black Rock, for example, is still engaging
in all kinds of radical extremist behavior in corporate America.
(31:02):
But even if they ended today, they we would still
feel the effects of the underinvestment in a lot of
these disfavored industries, from ag to mining to fossil fuels
for a very long time, and.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
I will I will not.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
There are some to go back to your previous question,
there are some anecdotes I can mention in terms of
give people a sense of magnitude. I mean, most people
are going to know about the Budweiser example, where they
fell from the America's number one beer to I think,
you know, two, or third or maybe fourth place. I
think they've wobbled around a little bit since then, but
they haven't come back to the top. And I know
that target after the huge controversy over having the quote
(31:35):
unquote tuck bathing suits for kids, pushing transgender ideology with
their products right in the front of the stores, saw
massive declines. I think I heard as high as thirty
percent in some areas of the country in foot traffic
and sales. And you've seen that company try to course correct.
They've completely eliminated their DEI program. From what I understand
(31:58):
at least publicly, that's what they're stating, and they've changed
a lot of their marketing materials. I don't think they
engage in pride month really at all throughout most of
the country.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
There might be some areas that are.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Particular, particularly woke geographically, where they still do in a
small way, but you don't see them pushing this absolute
nonsense into all of all of America, where it's incredibly
offensive and obnoxious. So that's a company that saw a
huge decline in sales over a prolonged period of time
and is working to try and course.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Correct, which is laudable.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
I mean, obviously they should have done it in the
first place, but we also have to allow people to
come back and do what they should have been doing
and say that's that's good. Now, we need every now
now we need one all of your colleagues to do
it in corporate America as well. So I think target well,
not Perfect, is a model for a company that that
is trying to fix itself.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yeah, Major League Baseball immediately comes to mind. And what
we have seen from not just Major League Baseball, certainly
the NBA, the nfls to have gotten some lessons, some
very important lessons from consumers, from viewers over the years.
But you know, it's like we said, what this conversation
(33:10):
is all about. It's a lot of claims, a lot
of public facing, kinds of pronounced changes, but plenty of
these corporate players have just taken their stuff underground. We've
certainly seen that at universities and another area that I'm
(33:31):
sure you're tracking as well, and we've written a lot
of stories about this at the federalists, but the American
Bar Association and state bars I know recently writing a
piece about the Wisconsin State Bar Association and there are
others like it that settled a lawsuit at the federal
level because the document showed that they were discriminating in
(33:57):
their programs, particularly in their training. But in many ways,
the American Bar Association and legal groups legal coalitions like
it have been leading this and have supplied attorneys to
fight for the DEI movement and continue to do so
in America today.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
Yes, I'm glad you brought that up, because this is
an area that, while a little disheartening once you realize
how deep the rabbit hole goes, is pretty enlightening. Because
you had a lot of corporate attorneys and corporate law
firms basically telling companies, Especially before the Harvard and Missions ruling,
where it made it clear that racial discrimination of any
(34:39):
kind was not allowable in higher add admissions, you had
a lot of corporate attorneys telling corporations that it was
okay to engage in discrimination as long as it was
to benefit some historically underprivileged group. And so the legal
community bears a huge burden for how this happened and
(35:00):
to this day continues to fight for it, which is
sort of odd because it was the lawyers who fought
so hard to get so much of the civil rights
agenda passed in the sixties, arguing the opposite direction, that
people should be treated purely based on merit or skills
or comprehension or whatever the relevant metric is you're testing
for at the time, not based on race or sex
(35:24):
or identity groupings. And so you're right. One of the
things that's really startling is, you know, a lot of
states have been banning DEI activities in their higher ed
universities and basically saying that all this stuff is illegal,
can't do anymore, can't you use any money for it.
But a lot of them also have old statutes on
(35:45):
the books that say, you know, notwithstanding anything we've told
you higher ed university system, you can do whatever you
need to do in order to maintain your accreditation, because
they didn't want them accidentally getting a foul of their
creditors because of some minute.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
You know, hey, we've got.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Code that says your library can only be you know,
twenty feet high, and the creditor says it needs to
be twenty.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Five feet high. I'm just making up nonsense, but you
get the idea.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
They didn't want them to get hung up on a
technicality because maintaining accreditation for university is so important.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
What has happened since those bands.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Have been put in place, though, is university administrators from
across the country who want to continue to engage in
racial discrimination and obnoxious wokery that's been banned. Is they've
run to the accreditors and said, please, please, please start
requiring the very things that these states have banned. And
I'll give you a concrete example. The American Bar Association
(36:37):
two to three years ago announced that moving forward to
maintain accreditation with them, and they are the only they
have a total monopoly on law school accreditation. To maintain
accreditation with them. They were going to start requiring racial
bias training be provided to every law student in the country,
and this is something that has been completely debunked scientifically.
(36:57):
It does nothing but actually make racial stereotyping worse. People
who go through implicit racial bias training report higher levels
of stereotyping, stereotyping views of of other races. And yet
this is something that the woke people are obsessed with.
It's a bit of a cottage industry for them, and
they run to the creditors, run to the one increditor particular,
(37:18):
a BA, and required it. And so it really, frankly
this in the same way that COVID undermined faith in
the entire public health system and the medical system in general.
I think that as this comes out, how much of
this was done by lawyers who knew that this stuff
violated federal law, violated people's civil rights. I think you
will have a similar effect on legal industry. And that's
(37:41):
sad to say. I am a lawyer and we didn't
have a lot of room.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
To work with.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
To be been with, we're not exactly high on most
people's lists in terms of trusted industries. And yet, uh,
you know, lawyers have led the way in pushing a
lot of this incredibly obnoxious illegal activity.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Isn't at the core of all of this, this DEI movement,
ESG movement, you know, the gen reflecting at the altar
of the LGBTQ and whatever letter and marks they're adding
to this on a daily basis. Isn't this really at
its core all about arrogance and elitism? These I just
(38:20):
see over the course of the last few decades in
this country, over the last generation, certainly and probably more,
that these folks really believed that Americans in general are
just too stupid to understand and they had to be
(38:41):
the leaders on this front.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
What do you think, well, I mean, I certainly think
that underlying the entire worldview of wokeness is that as
a deep disdain for the average American and especially the
middle class American and especially the middle America American. So
you know, people who don't live is part of the
ACCELA corridor from DC to New York, or don't live
(39:04):
in California or LA in particular. There is there is
clearly a deep seated resentment that motivates a good portion
of this. In addition to that, I think that the ESG.
Let me give a little bit of a white pill
here of an optimistic note. The reason that they decided
to construct this ESG framework was because much of their
(39:26):
agenda was rejected at the ballot.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Box over and over and over, both at the state
and the federal level.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Sure, and so they basically this es SHE was their
plan B to force this through financial basically leveraging the
market share of major financial players, whether that be in
the asset manager's market or the banking industry or the
large insurers. Basically to restrict the access to capital and
(39:51):
to leverage assets that asset managers held as stewards, not
as owners, but as stewarts, to push an agenda that
Americans consistent rejected. And so while that is nefarious and
evil and has had horrible effects on this country, it
is somewhat heartening that it's because we rejected it democratically
that they had to resort to this plan B. And
(40:14):
so I think that also underlines the ESG framework is
the idea that listen, people are never going to accept
this politically. We're just going to have to force it
down their throats. And that isn't to say that that
means they will lose. I mean, we have to push
back on ESG. It was a smart move on their part,
but it wasn't a situation where they won right out
(40:35):
of the gate. They actually lost right out of the gate.
And this was their this was their countermove, and I
think it's telling. The chronology of events really plays this out.
Even really where ESG got supercharged was in about the
midpoint of the first Trump administration.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
And if it was.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Just corporations just doing whichever way the wind was blowing politically,
what you'd expect is actually corporates being more conservative during
that period of time. But where Larry Fink and you know,
Glasgow Financial Ance FORER at zero was really getting founded
and going was during a period of time which Trump
(41:12):
was in the White House. So I think it really
speaks to that this is there, This is the real motivation,
this is their real intent. This is not something they're
necessarily being forced to do, but they want to do it.
They want to push this, and so we're going to
have to you know, create disincentive shops, so to speak,
for that kind of active.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
So final question for you, where does it suggest we're
going from here? Will Americans continue to reject this, and
they may. I mean a lot of voting, of course
in this country takes place at the register. We know that,
not just the ballot box. But will they grow tired
of having to fight because the left never stops fighting?
(41:54):
We know that.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Yeah, I think that's a great question. And one of
my great fears in the victory of Trump in the
election is that it would lead to people becoming complacent
and believing that just having the White House was enough
to put this to bed. As I mentioned before, so
much of this was put in place during the first
Trump administration. So if just having a Republican in the
(42:18):
White House kept this from happening, it wouldn't have happened
and we wouldn't be here today. We have to, like
just like I mentioned, with the Trump administration, using a
whole house approach to push back against the transgender ideology,
especially as it pertains to mutilating and abusing minors. Conservatives
of every stripe across the entire country have to have
(42:40):
a whole house approach in our own lives and pushing
back into this, And I know that's not our natural inclination.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
We're the group that likes to be left alone.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
That were the group that likes to not meddle in
other people's affairs, But unfortunately they are in the business
of meddling. And if we do not prevent that from happening,
we will be right back under their boot. We will
be right back under the debanking and the cancelation and
the constant.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Attacks on our way of life.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
We have to not only push back, but we have
to push back in such a way that we create
structures in the future that would prevent this from ever
happening again. Some of that is legal, like you know,
lawsuits coming from the Department of Justice civil rights, or
more importantly, making sure your state attorney general is being
encouraged and resourced to enforce civil rights at the state level.
(43:27):
That's a big deal. Making sure that there is dual
enforcement of civil rights against discrimination is probably one of
the biggest structures we could put into place to make
sure that, no matter if there's a Democrat or a
Republican in the White House, this kind of stuff doesn't
re emerge. But also being mindful consumers and pushing back
using our wallet, which we were inclined to do as
(43:49):
conservatives because we understand that bottom lines matter. But also,
and this is the part we kind of have to
get outside of our comfort zone more often about is
using our voice, sending emails, speaking to company managers when
we go into a store and saying, listen, I like
to shop at Home Depot, but I don't like that
you have a DEI program. I like to shop at Starbucks,
but I don't like you. Guys are constantly, you know,
(44:09):
virtue signaling around race. So that kind of stuff I
can tell you does trickle up. You might think I'm
just one person. You know, I'm talking to a store
manager who cares. No one's ever going to listen to
me in mass. When it's done at scale, that stuff, absolutely,
I can say, with metaphysical certainty, reaches the upper echelons
of corporate America and they do hear you. They may
(44:29):
not agree with you, they may not like it, okay,
but they will change their behaviors. We've seen it with
some of the big corporations we talked about before, and
we will see it in the future as long as
we stay engaged.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Really is a battle for the soul of America on
a multi front battlefield. Thanks to my guest today, Will Hilt,
executive director of Consumers Research, America's oldest consumer protection agency.
You've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the Federalist Assume
(45:00):
with more. Until then, stay lovers of freedom and anxious
for the fray.
Speaker 4 (45:11):
I heard the fame, voice, the reason, and then it
faded away.
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