by Suzanne Bowdey, Washington Stand
Three years ago, if you’d asked the smartest conservatives in the room what it would take to change corporate America, nobody would’ve guessed six beer cans. But looking back, one of the best things that’s ever happened in this century will also go down as one of the worst business decisions ever made. When Bud Light plastered Dylan Mylvaney’s face on a pack of cold ones, a switch flipped in this country — sparking a grassroots revolution that’s still turning woke brands on its head. And while it’s gratifying to see the power shift from cocky CEOs to the people, what’s even better is seeing the bully behind it all crumble.
Life hasn’t exactly been kind to the peddlers of wokeness since 2023. But no one’s taken a bigger hit than the organization that masterminded this extremism to begin with — the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). America’s largest and loudest LGBT activist group, once feared by corporate boardrooms and executives alike, now finds itself in the uncomfortable and unusual position of intimidating no one. Gone are the days when businesses raced to contort their internal policies to the radical demands of HRC’s Corporate Equality Index. Now, the old shine of a 100% score, of being perfectly aligned with the most outspoken pro-trans, pro-gay agenda in the world, is more damaging than desirable.
This year, in a sign of HRC’s growing irrelevance, the 2026 index lost a whopping 65% of its Fortune 500 participants, dropping from 377 companies in 2025 to just 131. The rankings, which started back in 2002, have been the best indicator of a business’s political leanings for two decades. These days, to get within striking distance of a perfect score, employers have to agree to wild concessions like covering the cost of gender-transition procedures for staff and their families, publicly advocating for pro-LGBTQ legislation, forcing employees to undergo multiple ideological trainings, opening restrooms to both sexes, introducing a pronoun sharing guide, recruiting employees based on sexual orientation and gender identity (not merit and experience), and more.