By Suzanne Bowdey

Americans are having a literal field day calling woke companies on the carpet this summer. Their latest conquest — a corporation that arguably never should have been in this mess — is agricultural icon John Deere. Three weeks after their rural relatives at Tractor Supply Co. did a complete U-turn, disavowing their LGBT activism in a public apology, the famous green and yellow logo has not only felt the heat, it’s seen the light. 

You can almost smell the fear in executive board rooms now that conservatives have started pulling back the curtain on the advocacy that a surprising number of heartland CEOs are quietly engaging in. Robby Starbuck, who almost singlehandedly brought Tractor Supply to heel, started digging into the tractor manufacturer’s corporate policies and was stunned to find a deep root of DEI, leftist campaign donations, and climate and trans activism. 

According to Starbuck, employees were blunt about the business’s priorities under CEO John May. “I’ve never worked at a company that values DEI more than John Deere,” one admitted. Their shared experiences spanned from “listening to the ‘Experience of the LGBTQ+ community across generations” to “[P]ride photoshoots at the office.” One of the most disturbing measures of the business’s abandonment of its consumer base was the 95% it scored on the Human Rights Campaign’s 2024 pro-trans Equality Index. As if that weren’t enough, the brand went so far as to declare in a recent annual report that “DEI is the only global behavioral performance metric upon which all salaried employees are evaluated.” 

No more. Three weeks after Starbuck went public with his findings, May’s failure to read the room has come home to roost. The CEO, who’s been at the helm since 2019 and presided over the brand’s sudden downturn, has at least partially come to his senses. In an X post Wednesday, John Deere wrote, “Our customers’ trust and confidence in us are of the utmost importance to everyone at John Deere. We fully intend to earn it every day and in every way we can.”

Based on “ongoing conversations,” the business explains, “we have committed to the following:

• "We will no longer participate in or support external social or cultural awareness parades, festivals, or events.
• Business Resource Groups will exclusively be focused on professional development, networking, mentoring, and supporting talent recruitment efforts.
• Auditing all company-mandated training materials and policies to ensure the absence of socially motivated messages, while being in compliance with federal, state, and local laws.
• Reaffirming within the business that the existence of diversity quotas and pronoun identification have never been and are not company policy.”
• We fundamentally believe that a diverse workforce enables us to best meet our customers’ needs and because of that we will continue to track and advance the diversity of our organization.“

Starbuck celebrated the victory but argued the company could go further. "Customers want to hear that DEI policies are entirely gone.” That said, he went on, even this “shows that we’re a powerful force to be reckoned with. … This is another massive win.” The pushback is working, he reiterated. “You just need to report the truth to people about what’s happening in corporate America. We have over 1,000 different whistleblowers coming from many different companies. Woke corporate executives all fear that their company is next to be exposed.”

He’s right about that. Ever since shoppers’ shellacking of Target and Bud Light, executives have had a collective panic attack about their radical extra curriculars. As recently as this week, Jim Fielding, a former CEO of Claire’s and a former president of Disney stores, admitted to The Wall Street Journal, “I’m very nervous. Who’s next?” 

Adding to the Left’s headaches, this year’s Pride Month was a disaster for the Left, who watched companies flee the tradition in droves — desperate to put some distance between themselves and their LGBT alliances. Then came Tractor Supply’s sweeping mea culpa, the most thorough repudiation of internal wokeness the country has ever seen. “Wall Street is on notice,” Starbuck insisted. “Corporate America is afraid of YOU. Every woke company is wondering if they’re next.” 

The full power of the American consumer is on display — and even the media isn’t disputing it. “Your favorite brand no longer cares about being woke,” Vox declared. In fact, this grassroots revolution is such a formidable force, so persistently potent, that Starbuck believes some companies “will drop their programs without us ever doing a story.”

For conservatives who’ve been in these trenches for years, like Strive’s Justin Danhof, this is an especially gratifying moment. The brainchild of presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, Strive is the anti-ESG answer to the woke asset management of firms like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. “When people invest their money in a company, they should be able to have confidence that the people who run it are making decisions that are what’s best for the value of the company,” Danhof told The Washington Stand. “That’s basic common sense. And to the extent that Strive is helping to convince executives to care about shareholders rather than stakeholders, then I think we’re making progress.”

Here’s hoping. Until then, everyone should heed Robby’s advice: “You really do NOT want to make customers angry. [It’s] just a terrible idea.”

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