Tag: political correctness

ESG And DEI Are Down But Not Out, Analysts Say

Despite recent eulogies for the environmental, social and governance (ESG) movement, as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, many insiders say the funeral is premature.

“Their demise is inevitable, and it has been accelerated,” David Bahnsen, chief investment officer of the Bahnsen Group and formerly an asset manager at Morgan Stanley, told The Epoch Times.

However, “they are not over,” he said.

The ESG movement began two decades ago with a U.N. initiative, sketched out in a 2004 position paper called Who Cares Wins, to get private companies in line with the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Those goals included, among other things, climate action and gender and racial equity, and they aligned with corporate trends such as “conscious capitalism” and “stakeholder capitalism,” which redirected companies from merely serving owners to serving employees, the community, and the environment.

Institutional asset managers gave the ESG movement critical leverage over companies because they collectively own about 80 percent of the shares in S&P 500 companies. Immediately upon its introduction, ESG was endorsed by 23 financial institutions collectively representing more than $6 trillion in assets at the time.

Most major banks, asset managers, and insurance companies quickly joined U.N.-sponsored climate clubs, including the Net Zero Banking Alliance, the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, and the Net Zero Insurance Alliance. This was followed by a proliferation of ESG rating agencies, consultants, accountants, and others dedicated to measuring companies’ compliance with ESG criteria.

Twenty years later, the winds appear to have shifted. In 2024, half of the Net Zero Insurance Alliance members quit, while the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative suspended its activities in January after several of its largest members, including BlackRock, left the group.

A 2024 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) order that required listed companies to produce audited reports of their CO2 emissions and their plans to reduce them, faced numerous court challenges and was recently shelved. And on the social justice front, a parade of companies recently announced that they are downsizing their diversity programs.

“ESG is on death watch,” Daniel Cameron, CEO of the 1792 Exchange, an analytics nonprofit, told The Epoch Times. “You saw a lot of iconic brands last year walk away from DEI in particular.”

Companies stepping back from diversity programs include Amazon, Google, Target, Meta, Walmart, Boeing, Molson Coors, Lowe’s, Ford, Toyota, Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniels, Caterpillar, John Deere, McDonald’s, Nissan, Stanley Black & Decker, and Tractor Supply.

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Education Department Cuts $600 Million From Ideological Training Programs for Teachers

The U.S. Education Department on Monday said it has canceled $600 million in grants for educator training programs that promote “divisive ideologies.”

The grants had been awarded to teacher preparation programs that trained future educators in what the department said were “inappropriate and unnecessary topics,” such as critical race theory, which promotes the fundamental framework view that racism is embedded in all institutions and aspects of society; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); and social justice activism. Some of the defunded programs also included race-based teacher recruitment and staffing strategies, according to the department.

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A Tale of Two Parties: Kids Edition

“All progressive social experiments require children to make sacrifices, whether it’s abortion, gender ideology, race-based DEI education, or shutting down schools for COVID-19. The voiceless and most vulnerable are always made to pay the price.” 

That’s a quote from the book “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion” by Allie Beth Stuckey. While I haven’t read the book, our editor, Chris Queen has and loved it, and he happened to send me that quote last month. I’d planned to write an article about it, but I never got around to it. 

Still, the words have lingered in my mind ever since. Because they’re true. I don’t need to explain to you that the entire Democrat platform, especially over the last four or five years, has largely centered around experimenting on children, whether they’re injecting them with hormones, teaching them racism, or preventing them from even being born at all. 

Here’s one of countless examples: In November, I wrote about how one of the founders of La Leche League International (LLLI), one of the largest and oldest parenting organizations in the world, resigned from the board — along with other members of leadership — because they were “ridiculed and abused” and compared to Nazis when they questioned the desire to allow “breastfeeding men” into women’s meetings. 

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Air Traffic Control Whistleblowers: DEI Hiring Practices Led to DC Crash

In the weeks since the tragic midair collision at Reagan National Airport, mounting concerns about the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) hiring practices have come under scrutiny. The tragic accident on January 29, involving an American Airlines plane and a U.S. Army helicopter, claimed the lives of all 67 individuals aboard. 

Democrats had a hissy fit after President Donald Trump weighed in on the issue in a press conference after the crash, during which he vehemently criticized the policies of the Obama and Biden administrations, which, he noted, prioritized DEI measures over safety. Naturally, the  left wanted Trump to be the target of blame—not the DEI policies they’ve become strong advocates for.

According to current and former air traffic control whistleblowers, the FAA’s focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives resulted in a decrease in the hiring of qualified personnel—likely contributing to the crash. These diversity initiatives were introduced during the Obama administration, reversed under Trump, but were inevitably reinstated under the Biden administration, bringing back the same policies that critics argue undermined the agency’s ability to prioritize competence over diversity.

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USAID’s Troubling Ties to the Woke Nonprofits That Called the Shots in the Biden Administration

The U.S. Agency for International Development wasn’t just spending your hard-earned tax dollars on transgender operas overseas—USAID also has troubling connections with the leftist pressure groups that infiltrated and advised the Biden administration.

My book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” exposes the woke activist groups that fed staff into the administrative state and pushed woke policies on the bureaucracy.

As President Donald Trump released information about USAID’s corruption, I started to notice a few familiar names from my research.

The American people should understand just how connected the woke enterprise is to the federal bureaucracy, and USAID provides a powerful example of those ties.

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DoD’s Med School (USUHS) Defies SECDEF And POTUS

On 20 January 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing” that clearly stated:

“terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI, DEIA, and “environmental justice” offices and positions (including but not limited to “Chief Diversity Officer” positions); all “equity action plans,” “equity” actions, initiatives, or programs, “equity-related” grants or contracts; and all DEI or DEIA performance requirements for employees, contractors, or grantees.”1

On 27 January 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order “Restores Merit and Lethality to America’s Armed Forces” that clearly stated:

“This Order also abolishes any remnant of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy within the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security.”2

The same week, SECDEF Pete Hegseth posted the following on X:

““The President’s guidance (lawful orders) is clear: No more DEI at @DeptofDefense. The Pentagon will comply, immediately. No exceptions, name-changes, or delays,” Hegseth posted on X” 3

USUHS (acronym for Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences) is a DoD funded medical school in Bethesda, MD that trains doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals for the US armed services. It also operates a federally funded and resourced Master of Public Health Program (MPH)

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Democrat DEI Brain Rot Is A LOT Worse Than You Think…

Democrat Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky suggested in a Congressional hearing that the word ‘Manufacturing’ is sexist.

Yes, really.

Because it begins with ‘man’ it is somehow holding back women from going into the manufacturing industry.

Schakowsky, the ranking Democrat member on the House Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee, for some unfathomable reason, posited that only around 13 percent of people in manufacturing are female because the word itself just “sounds like a guy.”

The word originates from the Latin manu which means ‘hands’ and factum which means ‘made by’.

Yeah, made by hand. Anyone’s hand. Male or female. 

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Culture Shift: Google Calendar Removes Pride, Black History Month, Other DEI Dates

Google Calendar has erased so called ‘cultural’ dates including Pride, Black History Month, Indigenous People Month, and Hispanic Heritage, and will only display official public holidays and national observances going forward.

Over 500 million people who use Google Calendar will no longer see the DEI dates popping up with a spokesman for the company explaining that “maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable.”

In other words, there are too many made up woke ‘holiday’ dates to keep up with.

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End of an Era: Boy Scouts of America Officially Changed its Name on its 115th Anniversary in Latest Woke Push for ‘Inclusivity’

The once-iconic Boy Scouts of America has officially changed its name on its 115th anniversary.

This renaming, effective Saturday, marks a sad day for traditional American values, as the organization succumbs to the pressures of political correctness and gender ideology, while also attempting to distance itself from its troubled past marred by a torrent of sexual abuse claims and subsequent bankruptcy.

The Gateway Pundit reported that the organization was nearly bankrupt after a series of woke decisions, including changing its policies to allow gay leaders and allowing girls to join. Those decisions had a major impact on the organization’s bottom line.

In May 2024, the Boy Scouts of America announced that they would change their name to “Scouting America,” with the change taking effect on February 8, 2025, coinciding with the organization’s 115th anniversary.

President and CEO Roger A. Krone said at the time, “Though our name will be new, our mission remains unchanged: we are committed to teaching young people to be Prepared. For Life. This will be a simple but very important evolution as we seek to ensure that everyone feels welcome in Scouting.”

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Department of Education Cuts $15 Million in DEI Grants at Three Universities

Although Democrats are melting down over Elon Musk and President Trump’s attempts to downsize the federal government and ending woke DEI programs, throwing tantrums will not stop what’s coming.

Just days after taking office, President Trump signed a Memorandum placing all federal Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) employees on administrative leave, pending the termination of these programs under Trump’s “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing and Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions” Executive Order.

President Trump has also made it clear that the Department of Education (DOE) is set for major changes, if not complete closure.

The Gateway Pundit reported that Democrats, angry that an agency with an abysmal record for student achievement may actually have to face questions about its failures, attempted to barge their way into the DOE building in their latest publicity stunt.

Despite their petulant mewings, on Friday, the DOE announced it had canceled $15 million in federal grants that were used to fund diversity programs at three universities in order to align with the President’s Executive Order.

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