Within hours of taking office, Donald Trump became the face of the anti-DEI movement in the U.S. But his executive orders and actions outlawing DEI from all federal operations and taking aim at the private sector, landed on fertile ground.
For years, key individuals and groups have worked relentlessly to advance a point of view that argues programs meant to improve racial, gender, and LGBTQ+ representation inside companies are in fact their own form of prejudice against white employees and men.
These crusaders have used lawsuits, shareholder proposals, and media campaigns to make their voices heard and attract followers, with some gaining widespread online recognition and others toiling inside obscure advocacy groups.
Here’s a quick guide to who’s who in the push against corporate DEI. Our list does not include activists who work solely with schools and colleges, or the many state attorneys general who have publicly warned private companies about their DEI initiatives.
People
Edward Blum
Tools: Litigation
Targets: Corporate DEI programs, affirmative action
Over the past three decades, Blum has filed more than 50 lawsuits, many of which could have been called anti-DEI before that movement had a name. Blum, 73, a legal strategist, has advocated for individuals who feel they were the victim of discrimination by an employer or school that supports racial diversity policies. Eight complaints that Blum has backed have made it all the way to the Supreme Court, including the landmark Students For Fair Admissions case, which, in 2023, overturned laws supporting the use of affirmative action in college admissions. He leads the American Alliance for Equal Rights and the American Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment (more on both below.) In 2023, Blum told the New York Times: “I believe that an individual’s race and ethnicity should not be used to help them or harm them in their life’s endeavors.”
Name: Stephen Miller
Tools: Litigation
Targets: DEI programs in government and the private sector
Miller is a former Senate staffer turned Trump speechwriter and political operative who now serves as the president’s deputy chief of staff and Homeland Security adviser. He also founded America First Legal (more on that below), a conservative group that has taken on both public and private sector organizations for their DEI programs. For most of his careers, Miller, 39, was best known for his fervent anti-immigration positions. Weeks before Trump’s January inauguration, he reportedly met with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and discussed Meta’s former pro-DEI culture. The Meta team also reportedly previewed its dramatic DEI reversals with Miller’s White House team before publicly announcing them. (Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Robby Starbuck
Tools: Social media campaigns, direct engagement with corporate leaders
Targets: Tractor Supply, Ford, Harley Davidson, John Deere, others
An ex-music video director turned conservative activist, the 35-year-old Starbuck has more than 700,000 followers on X.com alone, and uses his platform to identify large corporations with DEI programs, relying on employees to act as “whistleblowers.” He pushes companies to dismantle their identity-based employee resource groups, stop emphasizing diversity in their supply chain, remove any expectations or policies that reward diverse hiring, and stop funding certain LGBTQ+-focused events. When companies don’t comply, Starbuck alerts his followers and calls for a boycott. Starbuck says he usually holds meetings with his target companies before publicly outing them as “woke,” and claims to have sparked DEI rollbacks at several Fortune 500 brands, including Tractor Supply, Ford, John Deere, and Walmart. Some companies have said that they were already considering reversing their DEI commitments before Starbuck contacted them.
Conservative think tanks and activist groups
American Alliance for Equal Rights
Tools: Litigation
Targets: Fearless Fund, SEC, Nasdaq
Edward Blum’s (see above) Alliance for Equal Rights made its biggest splash suing the Fearless Fund, an Atlanta-based venture capital firm focused on supporting entrepreneurs of color, over a grant program it ran for Black women. Last year, a court found that Fearless Fund likely violated the Civil Rights Act by only opening the grant program to one racial group. In a settlement, both parties agreed to have the case dismissed and the Fearless Fund ended its program. The AAER has also filed cases against programs run by Southwest Airlines and McDonald’s.
Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment
Tools: Litigation
Targets: SEC, State of California
Also led by Edward Blum, the Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment opposes diversity quotas set for corporate boards. In 2022, it won a court battle with the State of California over an assembly bill that sought to mandate that public companies have a minimum of two or three directors from underrepresented groups on their boards, depending on the board’s size. In December, the Alliance also won its legal battle with the SEC over a similar rule enacted by the Nasdaq stock exchange regarding the boards of Nasdaq-listed companies.
America First Legal
Tools: Litigation, EEOC complaints, amicus briefs
Targets: Disney, Target, Nike, American Airlines, Williams Sonoma, IBM, others
Stephen Miller founded America First Legal in 2021 to fight “against lawless executive actions and the Radical Left,” according to its website. In that short period, the activist group has put several major U.S. companies in its crosshairs, including giants like Nike, Target, and Disney. In a high-profile case against the government, an AFL lawsuit forced the Biden administration to change a program that provided aid to Black farmers. Other cases have been criticized as frivolous, according to the New York Times. America First Legal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Do No Harm
Tools: Litigation
Targets: Pfizer, various medical colleges
Mostly focused on destroying DEI efforts at medical school programs, Do No Harm has also sued states for diversity rules governing medical boards. Most notably, it sued Pfizer for a fellowship program designed to improve the number of Black, Latino, and Indigenous applicants to the pharmaceutical giant. That case was settled last week. Pfizer opened its fellowship to applicants of any racial background in 2023. In a statement, the company told Fortune: "Pfizer is an equal opportunity employer and is proud of its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, including as demonstrated by the Breakthrough Fellowship Program."
Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR)
Tools: Litigation, open letters
Targets: Schools, employee training programs
Founded by Bion Bartning, a former American Express executive, with support from journalist Bari Weiss and Melissa Chen, a former conservative commentator turned geopolitical risk consultant. FAIR takes issue with organizations and schools that support identity-based employee resource groups and what it calls “propaganda,” such as racial sensitivity training. For example, in 2022, a teacher-artist at New York theatre training nonprofit New 42 partnered with FAIR to sue his employer when he took diversity training and was invited to join a “white-identifying breakout room.” FAIR recently published an open letter to Kaplan, the education and test prep company, over a diversity scholarship program that offers a greater subsidy to applicants from marginalized backgrounds. FAIR says it is a non-partisan group, according to a spokesperson. “Our position is that when schools support physical separation of employees or students based on skin color or ethnicity, it creates a racially hostile environment.”
Heritage Foundation
Tools: Political lobbying, shareholder proposals
Targets: DEI in the public sector
One of the most influential conservative think tanks in the U.S., the Heritage Foundation is behind the controversial Project 2025 initiative, which laid out several political goals, including enacting mass deportation, significantly limiting abortion access, and outlawing discussion of gender identity at schools and libraries. Ending DEI in government agencies was also among its many policy recommendations. (The Trump administration has denied that Project 2025 was a blueprint for its policies.) The Heritage Foundation also supports various anti-DEI bills and publicly attacks publicly-funded museums engaged in anti-colonial programming. It recently launched a project expanding its efforts to influence U.S. corporations, sending a shareholder proposal to IBM over DEI in its hiring practices as part of that push. “Americans have woken up to the reality that their pensions, savings, and investments are being used to push corporate agendas that don’t align with their values. A growing number of forward-thinking companies have already rolled back their DEI policies, and the sooner the rest follow suit, the better,” John Backiel, vice president of finance and accounting at The Heritage Foundation, said in a statement. IBM did not reply to a request for comment.
National Center for Public Policy Research
Tools: Litigation, shareholder proposals
Targets: Costco, Apple, Levi’s, Goldman Sachs, and others
The conservative advocacy group and think tank has been around for four decades, espousing what it sees as free market values. It’s also on the advisory board of Project 2025 (see Heritage Foundation, above.) The NCPPR first took up shareholder activism in 2007, but it ramped up those efforts during the pandemic, when several companies adopted DEI policies. Through its Free Enterprise Project, the think tank has run campaigns against Costco, AT&T, Dell, Salesforce, and other major companies. “We're not anti-diversity,” says Ethan Peck, director of the Free Enterprise Project. “We're anti-diversity, equity and inclusion. It’s very, very different.”
National Legal and Policy Center
Tools: Shareholder proposals
Targets: McDonald’s, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, others
Founded in 1991, this think tank supports conservative causes like reduced government, while its Corporate Integrity Program uses shareholder activism and open letters to call out companies that it believes are pursuing progressive agendas around issues like DEI and sustainability (the latter of which it calls “anti-energy advocacy.”) The group has submitted anti-DEI shareholder proposals to dozens of Fortune 500 companies, including JPMorgan Chase, Salesforce, American Express, Merck, Coca-Cola, and McDonald’s. A spokesperson for the NLPC told Fortune that the organization believes companies should avoid polarizing political positions, explaining: “We believe corporate public companies need to be serving and appealing and reaching with their products, with their services, with whatever they're trying to sell, to the broadest possible audience.”
