A 2022 tweet, a 2026 boycott, and a 47/100 score
On August 22, 2026, a viral post from @jackunheard told shoppers to boycott Walgreens for refusing to delete an old company tweet. The quote was not a new Pride campaign. It was Walgreens' October 7, 2022 video claiming a COVID-19 booster while pregnant is "not only smart, but safe." Our Radar captured the boycott call at 54K views and 2,712 likes the day it hit Boycott Tracker. That is a checkout-adjacent story. It is also not a blank slate. The live BuyWokeFree score for Walgreens Boots is already 47/100 — woke, not a zero, and not a 90.
We do not invent a score because X is angry. We score the multi-year record: DEI infrastructure, Pride sponsorship, HRC participation, political giving, ESG scorecarding, and CEO-level pledges. Walgreens spent a decade stacking those boxes. Then it deleted pages. Then private equity took it private. Then a four-year-old COVID post became this week's pharmacy pile-on. Read only the boycott tweet and you miss the score. Read only the 2025 DEI scrub and you miss why the chain still sits above the grocery-pharmacy alternatives.
What 47/100 actually means
Walgreens Boots is a published brand on our index. The 47 is a middle rating on purpose. The company spent years collecting perfect Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index scores, running a dedicated DEI team, and publishing annual diversity reports. In 2018 it told customers they could choose restrooms aligned with gender identity. Those receipts still count.
The other half of the ledger is the retreat. In late January 2025, Walgreens Boots Alliance removed six DEI-related pages from its corporate and careers sites — including the main diversity page that used to brag about awards — as documented by BuildRemote. A spokesperson later told HR Brew the company is focused on "convenient, accessible care" and hiring people "from the communities we serve." That is inclusion language with the three-letter acronym sanded off. HR Brew also noted healthcare names including Walgreens and CVS Health were among Fortune 100 firms that quietly rebranded or deleted public DEI copy after the 2024 election.
On the LGBT scorecard that used to define this chain, HRC's 2026 employer listing still shows Walgreen Co. at 100 — and flags the number as unverified because the company did not submit a 2026 survey. That is the same year Fortune 500 CEI participation collapsed 65 percent, from 377 companies in 2025 to 131. Skipping the survey is not ripping out the policies. It is also not sitting for the test and taking home another perfect 100, which is exactly what CVS did.
Private equity did not wipe the slate
On August 28, 2025, Sycamore Partners closed a roughly $10 billion take-private of Walgreens Boots Alliance and split the business. The U.S. drugstore is now private. That matters for disclosure. It does not automatically matter for culture. Walgreens' March 2026 FY25 Impact Report — its first as a newly private firm — still talks about an "inclusive culture," an ESG Governance Committee, National HIV Testing Day events, and clinical-trial recruitment that brags 44 percent of patients come from groups historically underrepresented in research. Process changed. Substance did not vanish.
Do not confuse the U.S. chain with UK Boots after the split. Boots Group still runs a live Pride 2026 retail page and still names Stonewall's Global Diversity Champions programme. That is sister-history, not a U.S. checkout fact. Shoppers are standing in a store that deleted its DEI landing page, skipped the 2026 HRC survey, and still publishes belonging language in its impact report.
This is not Walgreens' first boycott week
Pharmacy politics cut both directions. In March 2023, after Walgreens told 21 Republican attorneys general it would not dispense the abortion pill mifepristone in their states, California canceled a $54 million contract and progressive activists called for a boycott, as CBS News reported. Three years later, the loudest boycott tape on our Radar is coming from the right over a 2022 COVID post the company will not delete. Same chain. Opposite mob. Same 47/100 score in the middle.
Operational stress is real and separate. Store Closure Watch has tracked 145 recorded U.S. Walgreens closures in 2026 as of August 22. Closures are not a woke score. They are why a pharmacy boycott lands: when the nearest store is already disappearing, a viral "Boycott" post only has to move the shoppers who still have a choice.
The pharmacy aisle is a score ladder
If you walk out of Walgreens, you walk into other scored brands.
- CVS Health scores 50/100 — three points worse. It rebranded DEI as "Inclusion and Belonging," deleted a supplier-diversity page in February 2025, and, according to the Free Enterprise Project, dropped off HRC's corporate-partner list. It still sat for the 2026 CEI and earned another perfect 100. In May 2026, the Texas attorney general warned CVS that race- and sex-based supplier preferences could violate anti-discrimination law. Rebrand is not repeal.
- Publix scores 42/100 — five points cleaner, with pharmacies inside the grocery store. It never joined the HRC CEI arms race. HRC lists it at an unverified 0 for 2026 because it did not submit. Its culture page talks about a "diverse, inclusive, and merit-based workforce" without the DEI acronym, ERGs, or supplier-diversity targets.
- All Family Pharmacy scores 5/100 — the closest published independent. It is a Boca Raton online pharmacy, not a 12,000-store footprint. If the prescription can move, that is the actual alternative.
Target still scores 71/100 if you are filling a cart, not just a script. It ended REACH and stopped CEI submissions in January 2025 and still carries a multi-year Pride-and-DEI record a drugstore scrub does not erase. Beauty conglomerates are louder: L'Oréal sits at 90/100 in content review after naming a new North America Chief DEI Officer effective August 5, 2026. Neutrogena, the other beauty-aisle boycott of the week, is not in our database yet. We will not invent a number for Kenvue either.
What the score says to do
A boycott over a 2022 COVID tweet is a preference, not a scoring event by itself. The scoring event already happened: years of perfect HRC participation, a documented January 2025 page purge, an unverified 2026 CEI leftover, a $10 billion take-private, and an impact report that still sells inclusion. That is why Walgreens is 47 and not 10. It is also why it is not CVS at 50 or L'Oréal at 90.
If you want non-woke healthcare brands or a cleaner retail basket, start with the numbers we already publish. Publix at 42 is the national grocery-pharmacy step-down. All Family Pharmacy at 5 is the independent. Walgreens at 47 is the chain that deleted the landing page and kept enough of the machine that a four-year-old tweet still feels on-brand to its critics. Read the scorecard. Then move the prescription.