Image CreditBreccan F. Thies / The Federalist
The number of Fortune 500 companies willing to publicly disclose their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices has dropped 65 percent in the last year, according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).
The HRC, likely the most powerful gay and “transgender” lobby in the country, typically keeps track of which companies are doing its political bidding. According to a 2026 report, only 131 Fortune 500 companies in 2026 are participating in HRC’s Corporate Equality Index — the primary measure of corporate ideological compliance for HRC.
That is down from 377 Fortune 500 companies in 2025. Part of the decrease, HRC says, is so companies can maintain federal contracts as the Trump administration has cracked down on DEI and awarding taxpayer dollars to companies that advance the ideology.
The mere fact that these corporations drew back from their public display of DEI initiatives should not elicit conservatives’ praise. After all, the index is not measuring whether these companies are still participating in DEI, but rather whether they are willing to publicly brag about their efforts.
“Year‑over‑year analysis of 2025 and 2026 submissions show that implementation of policies and practices measured by the CEI was sustained or increased, with no declines across any criterion,” the report states. At best, the organizations that are no longer participating publicly are ones that blow with the political wind, and can be expected to return to their left-wing propagandizing the moment Democrats return to power.
This reality points to the potential reason for HRC choosing to publish this data. At first glance, it may seem that the radical gender ideology movement is losing steam, but in reality, HRC’s data is a shot across the bow reminding companies that their disloyalty will not be forgotten.
When the political situation is more favorable to the left, as it had been for years, the HRC typically holds corporations hostage by intimidating them into compliance with their demands. That can typically mean DEI trainings and employment strategies, capitulations to gay and “transgender” ideology, and persistently showing proof that they are advancing far-left agendas as companies.
HRC uses its scoring system to keep corporations under its thumb, and despite the drop in Fortune 500s, 1,450 companies still participated in the group’s ideological purity test, and 534 received a score of 100. That means nearly 6 million Americans are employed by companies that got a perfect compliance score from HRC, while millions more work at companies that strive to do so.
Since the movement against DEI ideology in corporate America and academia has started to take hold, companies like Ford Motor Company, Walmart, Lowe’s, and Tractor Supply have quietly dropped their former public support of HRC’s political agenda.
It will be the responsibility of federal officials at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Justice to find out what kinds of discriminatory hiring decisions are being made in secret at America’s major corporations.
Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
