McDonald’s ends numerous far-left policies in response to leading anti-‘woke’ activist

CV NEWS FEED // McDonald’s will end a litany of its far-left policies, including diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, following the efforts of conservative filmmaker and leading anti-“woke” activist Robby Starbuck.

“We’ve got a new company flipping their position on DEI and that company is McDonald’s,” Starbuck said in a video posted to X (formerly Twitter) Monday afternoon.

Starbuck, who has recently built a reputation as a preeminent voice against divisive leftist company policies, explained that he had personally reached out to McDonald’s Senior Marketing Director Guillaume Huin on X.

“Friday, I sent them … a detailed message about DEI,” the filmmaker said in the video.

Starbuck then indicated that Monday – just three days after he contacted Huin – McDonald’s responded with a message detailing a list of changes the corporation was making to its controversial policies.

In an X post accompanying the video, Starbuck wrote that McDonald’s now plans to “END their diversity ‘goals’ for how many of each race they hire.”

“Many (myself included) have referred to these types of ‘goals’ as quotas because these ‘goals’ often operate as quotas that discriminate against white job applicants,” the activist explained.

Starbuck also wrote that McDonald’s will “no longer participate in” the Corporate Equality Index, a heavily scrutinized scoring system operated by the pro-LGBTQ activist group the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

He noted that this system, from which McDonald’s is now withdrawing, “forces the trans agenda into the workplace in exchange for a perfect score.”

McDonald’s “also won’t participate in other 3rd party surveys,” Starbuck wrote. 

The fast food giant is also “ENDING the DEI pledge for their supply chain,” Starbuck continued. “That means no diversity quotas or ‘goals’ will exist for how they choose or prioritize suppliers. Focus will now be on merit.”

“Imagine that, a merit-based system,” Starbuck said in his video. “This is what every company needs to be doing. The days of favoring one group of people over another based on ‘diversity’ need to be gone.”

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However, Starbuck did indicate that he was “not particularly a fan” of one of the company’s new commitments, namely its promise to “evolve how they refer to their diversity team, which will now be the global inclusion team.”

“I think it’s ridiculous,” he said in the video. “We don’t need these teams, okay? It is a job. It is a workplace. You go there to work. People don’t need a team assigned at corporate to making sure everybody feels included.”

Starbuck noted on X: “As our first corporate flip of 2025 I just want to say, HAPPY NEW YEAR!” 

McDonald’s is the latest of a host of large corporations to either scale back or completely end their “woke” far-left policies over the past several months, in part due to Starbuck’s advocacy. 

Other companies to recently backtrack on DEI include the likes of whiskey giant Jack Daniel’s, iconic motorcycle brand Harley-Davidson, hardware conglomerate Stanley Black & Decker, car manufacturers Ford and Nissan, and Walmart, the country’s largest private employer – among many others.

Public sentiment against what is widely known as “woke capitalism” spiked in mid-2023 when consumers organized a massive and successful boycott of Bud Light after the beer company partnered with controversial “transgender” influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

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The Bud Light boycott resulted in a significant decrease in revenue for the brand. WIthin months, it lost its status as the most popular beer in the country, a distinction it had held for the previous two decades.

Starbuck also wrote in his Monday X post: “Our campaigns are so effective that we’re getting the biggest companies on earth to change their policies without me even posting a story exposing their woke policies first.”

“Companies can see that America wants sanity back,” he continued. “The era of wokeness is dying right in front of our eyes. The landscape of corporate America is quickly shifting to sanity and neutrality. We are the trend, not the anomaly anymore. We’re winning and one by one we WILL bring sanity back to corporate America.”

“We’re a force to be reckoned with and we won’t stop until wokeness is extinct,” Starbuck stressed.

McDonald’s is by far the largest restaurant chain in the U.S. as measured by sales. A 2024 research report by Technomic found that it accounted for $53.1 billion of sales in the United States the previous year.