Back in March, people shopping at Target began noticing a new line of clothing on full display on mannequins at the front of the store—LGBT clothes, clothes from a Satanic brand, and merchandise with Satanic messaging. These included clothes for small children and onesies for babies. Also included were “tuck-friendly” clothing for males who identify as females and want to have women’s swimsuits that will hide their private parts.
As more and more Americans found out about this merchandise, a boycott of Target began. Twitter joined the boycott and helped spread the message. It was also spread by rap singers Forgiato Blow and Jimmy Levy, whose song “Boycott Target” rose to the number-one spot in the iTunes hip hop chart. The opening line states: “Attention all shoppers, there’s a cleanup on every aisle. Target is targeting your kids.”
The boycott worked. Starting in March, the stock began plummeting. Target’s stock price hit its lowest level since the 2020 pandemic lockdowns. Shares hit a low of $133.42 on May 31 in early trading and dropped for eight consecutive sessions, its longest losing streak since November 2018, according to the New York Post. As of June 2, according to Newsmax, the stock showed a $12.7 billion loss.
Then there’s Bud Light. Anheuser-Busch chose to go woke last March for the NCAA March Madness tournament, using a picture of transgender Dylan Mulvaney, an actress and pro-Biden social media influencer, to help sell its fourth big-selling beer, Bud Light. They chose Mr. Mulvaney, who identifies as female, to celebrate that he had just passed a year, a personal milestone, in his transition to becoming a female; a transition that he had shared almost every day on social media.
However, this woke decision led to an amazing backlash and boycott against the brewer, which it appears they will not be able to overcome. Anheuser-Busch’s share price fell $13.63 from when the market closed at $66.57 on March 31, just a day before Mulvaney appeared on Twitter to brag about the personalized Bud Light cans and partnership.
The New York Post reported on May 13 that Bud Light sales had fallen for the sixth consecutive week and retailers had slashed prices. One store charged $3.49 for a 24-pack, it reported.
By June 2, Anheuser-Busch had lost a whopping $27 billion in market value in the wake of its partnership with Mr. Mulvaney.
Here are some of the statements sent out on Twitter about the boycott—of not just Bud Light, but all of Anheuser-Busch’s beers, including Budweiser:
- “Maybe Anheuser-Busch will get the picture…. that some people are not on board with their decisions! Why can’t beer makers…JUST MAKE BEER!”
- “I want to know how stupid you have to be to not realize who your customers are. Trying to appease maybe 1% of the populace they gave the middle finger to everyone else.”
- “As we have seen with each and every company/industry that panders to the woke brigade. The woke mob does not support or buy the products that you promote to them. All you are doing is turning away your existing supporters. Movies, music, comics, sports, food, drinks, clothing…”
According to Investor Business Daily, by May 23, the boycott had boosted the sales of the other major publicly traded global beer brands, which added $3.2 billion in market value during the same time. The biggest winner from the Bud Light situation is Molson Coors Beverage (TAP). Shares are up more than 20 percent from April 1. That’s added more than $2.2 billion in market value to the stock.
By mid-July, Costco gave Bud Light the death star. According to the Washington Examiner, Costco, the third largest wholesale retail warehouse store in the world, announced on July 13 that it will no longer be carrying Bud Light. Once all the beer is sold, it will no longer restock its shelves with the brand.
On Newsmax on May 29, stockbroker Thomas Philipson, referring to the big loss in stocks of both Target and Anheuser-Busch, stated: “This is a good lesson that companies should focus on their profits, not on politics. Whether those politics are conservative or liberal, they should stay away from them.”
ESG May Be Behind Companies’ Wokeness
In case the reader is not familiar with “Environmental, Social, and Governance” (ESG), it has become much more influential over the past few years, exercising more control over businesses and even banks—coercing them to go along with the progressive woke agenda to be able to stay in business.
ESG means that a company or business or even a bank will be judged according to how well it is adhering to woke standards of environmental guidelines concerning climate change, energy use, and other “sustainable” policies; how well the business goes along with “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) and whether their employees meet certain quotas for race, gender, ethnic backgrounds, disabilities, etc. (that’s the “social” part); and how politically involved it is in supporting the right kind of politics—progressive and liberal, of course (that’s the “governance” part).
In March 2021, Justin Haskins, editor-in-chief of the Heartland Institute, said on the Glenn Beck show that ESG has a metrics system, a numerical score, for evaluating a company based on how “green” and “socially just” it is.
There is a large amount of money—trillions of dollars—set aside to use to reward the “woke” high-ESG-scoring companies. Thus, companies that don’t make a lot of money selling their products (because they may have been boycotted by their upset customers like Target and Anheuser-Busch) but are very woke with a high ESG score, can still stay in business due to the awards coming to them.
Those awarding the money also state that they will only invest in certain types of businesses. So if you want that money, you must jump through the political correctness hoops to get it.
Glenn Beck asked who makes the judgment calls. Mr. Haskins told him it is the World Economic Forum (WEF) International Business Council, led by the CEO of Bank of America, Brian Monihan. They created a report in September 2020 with an elaborate ESG system that they think all the major companies in the world should adopt.
The list includes things such as percentage of employees by gender as well as how many ethnic groups are included. For example, if you don’t have the right ratio of Asians to Hispanics, you get a lower score. It also helps to have a certain percentage of employees who belong to a labor union.
Mr. Haskins gave the example of Coke: It actually lists its ESG score in its annual report. It has an ESG auditor who gives it its ratings.
ESG was started by the United Nations in 2006 when the U.N. was promoting its Agenda 21 Sustainable Development Goals, now called Agenda 2030. Those U.N. schemers were saying, how can we get businesses to go along with our agenda when we can’t get government to impose it?
Their agenda is really a communist one of total control of every aspect of our lives—“how man interacts with the environment.” They wanted to somehow get that idea into the bloodstream of the corporate universe. The way they figured out how to do that was to get investors, central banks, the IMF, the WEF, and the U.N. behind this and say, we will only support you if you agree to adopt and live by these ESG standards. If you do, then we will take care of you and make sure the money keeps flowing in your direction.
They have been building this whole ESG infrastructure for almost 15 years. No one really noticed it or knew what was happening until now. All of the major corporations that we can think of already have this system in place.
They also call it “Stakeholder Capitalism.” Glenn Beck gave examples of how it is affecting our private lives: GoFundMe yanked a fundraiser that parents were holding against critical race theory, and Home Depot cosponsored a website citing the Southern Poverty Law Center and the 1619 Project. So Home Depot is helping to fund what Beck calls the “poison” coming from the distorted American history of the 1619 Project.
Beck stated: “The insidious part of ESG is that it doesn’t just affect the company. It affects everyone in the chain of that company. So every company that drives a truck for that company, who makes a widget for that company, etc., will be adopting the EU’s ESG policy.”
And every company in the chain of command has to have a good ESG “social credit” score, just like in communist China, or they could be blacklisted and not be allowed to be part of the supply chain.
Banks and PayPal are included in the supply chain. According to the website esgagainstus.com, banks and PayPal are already using ESG to punish conservatives, as shown in the following six examples:
- The largest U.S. bank cut ties to a conservative group, canceling a Donald Trump Jr. event.
- In 2019, JP Morgan Chase closed bank accounts associated with several political activists and commentators.
- Wells Fargo suspiciously closed a bank account belonging to Lauren Witske, a 2020 Republican candidate for the Delaware Senate.
- Citibank and other large banks rolled out restrictions for gun manufacturers and retailers.
- PayPal admitted to closing accounts flagged by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
- Tina Descovich, cofounder of the conservative group Moms for Liberty, said her organization and some members have had accounts frozen by PayPal in Florida.
Europe is adopting ESG standards and making them mandatory. Even the potato farmer who supplies potatoes to McDonalds for French fries has to go along with ESG. They are already adopting it throughout the EU and adopting it through the entire chain of command, including the banks.
What Can We Do?
Glenn Beck suggests that we get our state legislators to write bills against ESG in our own local states. He was instrumental in getting one passed in Utah. Five other states have passed similar laws: Kentucky, West Virginia, Arkansas, Montana, and Florida.
According to the Daily Signal, for the year 2023, there are 12 other states that have similar bills going through their state legislators. Beck believes we need to return the power to the hands of the people. He suggests bills with the following provisions:
- No state contracts awarded to businesses for ESG
- Prohibit state pension funds being used under ESG
- Pass a fair access to financial services act that gives protection for you—the individual
- Local banks will be required to tell you about your ESG score when you are applying for a loan (right now they don’t have to tell you anything)
Beck tells us to do our part to try to turn the tide against ESG in our own states. Remember, for many companies, “going woke means going broke” and “ESG means you are no longer free!”
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
