Lowe's rolls back DEI initiatives amid MAGA backlash and fake viral quote

The home improvement chain Lowe's is scaling back its diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives following strong online backlash from conservatives surrounding influencer Robby Starbuck.

Starbuck — a former music video director from Nashville, Tennessee, who is now a conservative online activist — took responsibility for the company's change of course, writing on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday that the decision was a direct response to his plan to attack Lowe's “woke” politics.

“I informed Lowe's executives last week that I planned to disclose their 'woke' policies,” Starbuck wrote. “This morning I found an email in which they preemptively made major changes.”

According to the changes described by Starbucks and confirmed by Lowe's to Bloomberg, the retail chain is ending its participation in surveys conducted by the LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign and plans to stop sponsoring any community events that do not focus on safe and affordable housing, disaster relief and skilled trades training.

“We are now forcing multi-billion dollar companies to change their policies without even disclosing anything, all for fear that they will be the next company we expose,” Starbuck wrote on X. “We are winning, and little by little we WILL bring sanity back to corporate America.”

In an internal memo seen by Bloomberg, Lowe's did not say the decision to cut its DEI programs was related to Starbucks' planned campaign against the company. A company spokesperson said Lowe's had already begun making the changes before Starbucks contacted it.

Newsweek contacted Starbuck and Lowe's by email outside of normal business hours to seek comment.

Starbuck had previously targeted companies such as Tractor Supply, John Deere and Harley-Davidson for what he called their “woke” policies, sparking a backlash against them led by his supporters.

While criticizing Lowe's on social media, conservative users shared a fake quote from Marvin Ellison, the retail chain's CEO, saying, “If conservatives don't like our values, they should take their money to Home Depot.”

Ellison himself did not comment on the comment, but a graphic shared on social media suggested that the CEO had made the statement to CNBC.

X-user @DocNetyoutube, a self-proclaimed MAGA supporter who shared the fake quote on the social media platform, wrote that it was “a meme.”

“However, the actual quote the CEO of Lowes made was about supporting DEI, and the competition doesn't do that. So someone made a meme that is essentially correct, but not the exact quote. Just to be clear,” the user wrote.

Conservative backlash against woke companies can have damaging consequences for the companies involved, as the case of Bud Light shows. The company's sales plummeted after it partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in 2023, sparking anger among its conservative customers.

Under the program, known to conservatives as “go woke, go broke,” companies are penalized for introducing initiatives deemed too far from conservative values. They are boycotted financially so severely that they often reverse their decisions. After Bud Light lost 30 percent of its customers last year, the company apologized for being part of a discussion “that divides people.”

Lowe's is not alone in its decision to scale back its diversity programs. On August 19, Harley-Davidson wrote on X after receiving pressure from Starbucks that it had not operated a DEI function since April, no longer had hiring quotas and no longer had spending goals for supplier diversity. The company added that training for its employees would not include “any socially motivated content.”

“We are saddened by the negativity on social media over the past few weeks that seeks to divide the Harley-Davidson community,” the company wrote in a letter shared on X. “As a company, we take this issue very seriously and it is our responsibility to respond with clarity, action and facts.”

MAGA influencers and supporters celebrated the Milwaukee-based motorcycle manufacturer’s decision as a victory.

After being targeted by Starbucks' anti-DEI campaigns, Tractor Supply announced in June that it would eliminate DEI roles, drop from the Human Rights Campaign's rankings and stop providing funding to DEI groups. Last month, John Deere announced it would stop participating in “cultural awareness parades” and withdraw funding from DEI causes.