There haven’t been a lot of industries untouched by the anti-woke revolution in the last three years. But there is one pocket of the economy that’s been slightly less eager to roll back the radical agendas that have been swallowing companies whole these last two decades: banks. But, in a sign that no corporate entity can escape the consumer muscle flexing across America, that may be about to change.

In what everyone hopes is a genuine pivot, Truist Bank has agreed to stop submitting to the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index — a dramatic change considering the company’s string of 100% scores leading up to 2026. The move, prompted by a Heritage Foundation shareholder proposal, is the first big domino to fall in a financial sector that’s escaped largely unscathed from the grassroots movement. 

As most people know, HRC’s index, produced by the largest and loudest LGBT activist group in America, ranks businesses on how well they implement extreme policies like covering the cost of gender-transition procedures for staff and their families, publicly lobbying for pro-LGBTQ legislation, forcing employees to undergo multiple ideological trainings, opening restrooms to both sexes, introducing a pronoun sharing guide, recruiting employees based on sexual orientation and gender identity (not merit and experience), and more. A perfect score from HRC essentially means the wokest of the woke. 

But, in a seismic shift, CEOs have fled the index this year, refusing to carry the leftist political baggage that could paint a target on their backs and sink their profits. Just this year, the 2026 index lost a whopping 65% of its Fortune 500 participants, dropping from 377 companies in 2025 to just 131. 

Jerry Bowyer, a former columnist for Forbes who now serves as president and CEO of Bowyer Research, can’t underscore just how significant this concession is, especially for a major bank. “We’ve seen that from a lot of the regional banks … even from tech companies and consumer companies.” But this, he told “Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice, “is really astonishing.”

Stephen Soukup, visiting fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Free Enterprise Initiative, agreed. “I think it’s pretty clear that the Human Rights Campaign is losing what remains of its relevance in the effort to influence American corporate behavior. Truist Bank is the latest example of a major corporation to admit that its public and private positions on the HRC and its Corporate Equality Index were at odds with one another,” he told The Washington Stand. 

It’s worth noting, he continued, “that this concession came in what was an otherwise spirited engagement with Bowyer Research on behalf of its client, the Heritage Foundation. As a shareholder of Truist, Heritage filed a proxy proposal asking the bank to evaluate the business risks it creates when its values are misaligned with those of its shareholders. The bank refused to budge on many important questions, but not on its participation with the HRC” — a telling sign of the organization’s cratering influence. 

Of course, as Bowyer pointed out, the index didn’t used to be a list of wildly controversial demands on transgenderism. Back in the day, it was essentially an agreement that businesses wouldn’t discriminate against people who identify as LGBT. “But little by little, [HRC] moved the goalposts until finally it was bathroom wars, Bud Light branding, and puberty blockers for the children of employees.” Getting a 100% may have seemed like an A+ in corporate board rooms, Bowyer underscored, but to most Americans, “it’s an F-minus.”

Gradually, thanks to Robby Starbuck’s crusade and other long-suffering soldiers of the movement like Soukup, businesses that were growing uncomfortable with the over-the-top concessions they had to make to HRC started to peel off. Groups like Bowyer’s, who represent the interests of shareholders against companies “who’ve been,” as he describes it, “led around by the nose by activist groups,” started asking CEOs, “Why don’t you just stop participating altogether? You don’t have to have these outside groups who are determining your policies, who are pressuring you. Just focus on being a bank. … Focus on being a credit card company. And a lot of them are saying, ‘Okay, that’s what we’re going to do.’ Because frankly, I’m not sure they all realize what they were signing up for. … It was sold to them as a way to decrease controversy,” he pointed out. But in the last few years, what it became was “a huge magnet for controversy.” 

Equally significant, at least where Truist is concerned, is their willingness to fix the debanking problem that’s been plaguing Christians and conservatives for years. Thanks to Joe Biden’s weaponization of the federal government, major financial institutions were encouraged after January 6 to “comb through the private transactions of their customers” to look for “suspicious charges” (without warrants) of legal activities involving political and religious expression.

Observers warned that it would lead to a flood of cancellations where conservatives were concerned. They were right. What was already a growing problem of viewpoint discrimination at the nation’s banks became an epidemic. More institutions started freezing assets and locking conservatives out of accounts, citing “reputation risk” to justify their bias. 

Faith groups and leaders have been a common target. In just the past few years, Bank of America suddenly closed the accounts of reputable ministries like Indigenous Advance Ministries and Timothy Two Project International, claiming that the groups “exceeded the ‘bank’s risk tolerance.’” JP Morgan Chase piled on, canceling the account of the National Committee for Religious Freedom (NCRF), headed by former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback. “In order for their account to be reinstated,” The Washington Stand’s Dan Hart reported, “JPMorgan demanded that NCRF turn over a list of high-level donors, ‘a list of candidates it intended to support, and its criteria for political support.’”

President Trump, outraged by the injustice — and a victim of this coordinated attack himself — issued an executive order last year to crack down on debanking. “It is the policy of the United States that no American should be denied access to financial services because of their constitutionally or statutorily protected beliefs, affiliations, or political views, and to ensure that politicized or unlawful debanking is not used as a tool to inhibit such beliefs, affiliations, or political views. Banking decisions must instead be made on the basis of individualized, objective, and risk-based analyses.”

After several months of conversations, Truist agreed, offering Bowyer a link to its updated service agreement that addressed concerns about politicized debanking. “This is an issue,” he said in an organization statement, “that we’ve been engaging the company on for more than two years — and it’s a true blessing to see a prohibition on debanking based on ‘political opinions’ come as fruit of that engagement.” The message, he hopes, is “back to neutral.” 

But now isn’t the time to let up on the gas pedal. “Christians need to get in the game,” especially on the investment side, Bowyer urged. When companies started becoming left-wing operatives, “The problem wasn’t the Biden administration,” he argued, or any Democratic administration before it. “The problem is you weren’t showing up. …We complain about a process of woke capitalism that we helped create with our absence and neglect.” 

Asked if he thinks the change is sustainable in a post-Trump world, Bowyer was frank. The “vibe shift,” he argues, “started before the election of Trump. I don’t think Trump cause[d] it.” He believes the two were basically parallel tracks that combined to create this powerful climate of pushback. But, he acknowledged, “Starbucks is still going to be Starbucks. Disney is going to be Disney. I mean, they didn’t really want to talk, and they didn’t change anything. But that’s maybe three or four out of 100 companies we’ve engaged with, most of which have been extremely productive engagements,” he underscored. In his opinion, this is “the biggest reverse march through the institutions I’ve ever seen in my life. The ESG and DEI bubble is just collapsing before our eyes.”

As Soukup stressed, the momentum for change is only snowballing. “The fact that “Truist is willing to resist some efforts by its shareholders to rein in its political activity, even as it willingly defies the Human Rights Campaign” is significant. “The spell is broken. Corporate fear of the HRC is dead. Bowyer Research and the Heritage Foundation scored an important victory for shareholders, even as they keep the pressure on Truist to do better.”

The successes keep coming — beyond most consumer activists’ wildest dreams. But “to quote Churchill,” Bowyer said, “It’s not the end. It’s not the beginning of the end. But,” he smiled, “it just might be the end of the beginning.”