Left media spent the weekend crowing. As reported by The Guardian on August 14, 2026, UC Berkeley’s Jacob Grumbach studied S&P 500 abnormal returns after Trump’s January executive orders and found firms that kept DEI—or voted down anti-DEI proposals—did about as well as firms that pulled back. In the short window after the orders, some keepers even looked better on tape. Named in the coverage: Costco, Apple, and Delta Air Lines.
Headline writers translated that into a simple morality play: go woke, don’t go broke. Our job at BuyWokeFree is narrower and meaner. Stock performance is not a culture-neutral product. We score brands on ESG theater, DEI machinery, Pride sponsorship, HRC-style equality indexes, political giving patterns, and leadership pledges. On that ledger, the “thrived while keeping DEI” roster still fails the woke-free shopper test—hard.
What the study actually measured
Grumbach, an associate professor at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, used abnormal returns—how a stock moved versus what models expected—not same-store sales, not brand trust among half the country, not whether you want identity politics baked into your phone, warehouse membership, or boarding pass. As reported in the Guardian cycle, keepers performed no worse financially than pullbacks in the window he studied. That is a market-microstructure claim. It is not a consumer mandate to stop caring about corporate ideology.
Markets price cash flows and narratives on short horizons. They do not score whether a company still runs a Global D&I apparatus, a Pride capsule collection, or a perfect multi-year equality-index streak. We do. Pair the study with our live scores and the “thrived” talking point loses its shopping advice.
Apple: perfect 100, still the poster child
Apple scores 100/100 on the BWF Woke Scale—extremely woke. ESG reporting, aggressive DEI defense (including shareholder rejection of anti-DEI proposals at high percentages in prior cycles), annual Pride collections, a multi-decade perfect HRC CEI run, heavy left-leaning political contributions, and CEO Action–style leadership pledges. Guardians of the “kept DEI and thrived” narrative love naming Apple because the stock is a fortress. That is exactly the point: a fortress stock can still be a terrible culture fit for customers who refuse to subsidize corporate activism.
If your only metric is whether the share price survived an executive order, Apple “wins.” If your metric is whether the brand acts like a neutral toolmaker, Apple is still a perfect 100 with us. Browse more scored tech under Non-Woke Consumer Electronics Brands—and notice how few giants clear a low bar.
Costco: “thrived” at 45 is not woke-free
Costco Wholesale scores 45/100—woke, not extremely woke, and not a free pass. Coverage has long framed Costco as a DEI holdout relative to big-box peers; our profile still flags calculated culture signaling, from high-profile supplier controversies to institutional instincts that lean toward the activist center-left. A 45 beats a 90. It does not beat a 0. “Kept DEI and the stock held up” is not the same sentence as “shop here if you want zero ideology tax.”
Warehouse-club comparisons on this site already show how relative rankings shift when peers roll back harder than Costco does. Relative is not absolute. Absolute is the score on the product page.
Delta: 52 and still in the middle of the culture fight
Delta Air Lines scores 52/100—woke. Carbon mega-pledges, DEI infrastructure with executive diversity roles and identity resource groups, strong HRC-style equality scoring historically, and a CEO who publicly entered election-law politics in Georgia. The Grumbach write-ups list Delta among keepers that did fine on abnormal returns. Fine. Passengers still buy seats from a brand that institutionalized the whole DEI stack. If you fly for points and schedules, price that in. If you fly for alignment, 52 is not the refuge the press headline implies.
The cosmetic-rollback foil the study conveniently skips
While progressive feeds ran “kept DEI thrived,” another August data point still sits in plain sight: 61 of the S&P 100 dropped explicit board diversity criteria since 2023 (ESGAUGE via Bloomberg/Fortune, August 11, 2026 cycle). Rooney-Rule-style provisions collapsed from roughly 58% to 12% in a year. CEO-succession diversity language that once sat at six companies was stripped by everyone but Microsoft in that reporting wave—and Microsoft still scores 100/100 with us.
Starbucks dumped director and CEO-succession diversity language and still scores 100/100. Amazon hit the board-criteria dump lists and still scores 100/100. Deleting a proxy sentence is not the same as quitting CEI maximalism, Pride merchandising, or political machine giving. Cosmetic rollback plus unchanged BWF scores is the receipt progressive stock studies never put next to the chart.
Nike footnote: process wins are not culture wins
Weekend news also kept recycling Nike at 75/100: a Missouri court dismissed the EEOC’s subpoena-enforcement fight after compliance, as updated in HR Dive’s August 14 cycle. Document fight ends; the underlying investigation question was not declared closed in that coverage. Process versus substance is the same pattern as abnormal-returns versus woke score. Courts and markets can clear a temporary hurdle while the brand’s ideological product remains expensive for half the country.
How to shop the “thrived” list without getting played
- Ignore the morality play. Abnormal returns after an EO are not a loyalty oath.
- Read the number. Apple 100, Delta 52, Costco 45—three different heights on the same tower.
- Separate pullback theater from product neutrality. Board-language deletions at 100-score giants are PR hygiene until CEI, sponsorships, and pledges move.
- Prefer zero and near-zero alternatives in every category we map—sodas, shoes, groceries, software—not “the least bad keeper named in a Guardian exclusive.”
- Use internal maps. Start at Non-Woke Retail Brands and consumer electronics, then open each brand profile before you renew a membership or upgrade a phone.
Bottom line
As reported, Grumbach’s short-horizon S&P 500 work undercuts a cartoon version of “go woke go broke” as an automatic same-week stock death sentence. It does not undercut the BuyWokeFree database. Apple remains a perfect 100. Costco remains a 45 holdout, not a sanctuary. Delta remains a 52 middle-weight culture player. When activists say “thrived,” answer with the scorecard: market tape is not woke-free. Vote with the cart, the app store, and the boarding group—using numbers, not weekend op-ed charts.