The list of corporations quitting the racial and sexual extortion rackets known as diversity, equity, and inclusion continues to grow. It now includes Ford Motor Company, Harley-Davidson, Lowe’s, Brown-Forman, which makes Jack Daniels, John Deere, Molson-Coors, and Tractor Supply. But academia and the Biden-Harris administration refuse to budge.

For these parts of the non-corporate world, it’s still 2020, and the sins of white supremacy, systemic racism, heteronormativity, ableism, climate change, and settler colonialism must still be expiated.

The administration, in fact, is doubling down. For example, far from hanging its head in shame about leaving two astronauts stuck in space and having to ask X owner Elon Musk’s SpaceX to retrieve them, Biden-Harris officials are now conditioning further funding for NASA on more “diversity statements.”

Advancing DEI has been a priority for the administration since day one. Its first act was an executive order expanding DEI bureaucracies within each department or agency and ordering them to conduct a DEI assessment within 200 days of the order’s issuance. It was akin to the realization of author Ibram X. Kendi’s dream of a totalitarian “Department of Antiracism.”

The executive order made clear that the administration’s actions were a response to the Black Lives Matter riots that had roiled the country for the previous seven months.

“Our country faces converging economic, health, and climate crises that have exposed and exacerbated inequities, while a historic movement for justice has highlighted the unbearable human costs of systemic racism,” it said.

This is why the administration is now ordering NASA to include DEI litmus tests when requesting funding.

“Some NASA science research opportunities are piloting the addition of a required inclusion plan to help sustain positive, inclusive working environments on proposal teams and support the full participation and contribution of team members,” NASA told Fox News Digital.

Fox quoted NASA’s Amanda L. Nahm, a program officer in the Planetary Science Division, who said proposals without the “inclusion” part would be rejected as “non-compliant proposals.”

As for academia, look no further than George Mason University, the Virginia public university that actually plays on a reputation for being conservative. When pressed about creeping wokeness at the school, especially in the office of its president, Gregory Washington, its defenders said the law school and the economic faculty remain conservative.

GMU, however, is providing resources for the first-ever drag queen show to be held at the Scalia Law School’s plaza—named, of all people, after the famed conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. 

The drag queen show, to be hosted on Mason Square Plaza on Oct. 25 by the student group Outlaw, is being supported by GMU’s Health Services, University Life, and LGBTQ Resource Center (that is to say, Virginia’s taxpayers). Outlaw brags it will be the first drag queen performance at the law school.

What drag queen shows, or even a group named Outlaw, has to do with the study of law remains a mystery—as is the reason why the Washington Capitals hockey team agreed to be the drag queen show’s sponsor.

But of course, we don’t really need to wonder about the motivations at work here. We should know by now that the purpose of bringing drag queen shows everywhere, even law schools where everyone may not be thrilled with the performance, is to push all to accept the reigning leftist orthodoxy.

At the corporate level, however, those in charge of creating shareholder value must be more mindful of the new adage: go woke, go broke.

Thus, Axios tells us that “Ford is the latest major company to pull back on DEI efforts under pressure from conservative critics.”

The news service quoted CEO Jim Farley as telling Ford workers in a letter that the legendary Detroit automaker will no longer participate with the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index.

HRC is a misnamed organization that serves as an extortion racket to bully terrified CEOs into accepting its equally misnamed index. They either agree to sign up for the full LGBTQ agenda, including, especially, the transgender part, or else.

Also saying adios to the CEI recently are Harley-Davidson, Lowe’s, and Brown-Forman distillers, the outlet reported. It noted that “Tractor Supply and John Deere have announced that they’ll end or scale back once-heralded DEI programs.”

Molson Coors is also dropping the CEI, according to National Review.

We can’t expect the George Soros-funded HRC to give up without a fight, of course. Just last week it issued a statement accusing Ford of abandoning “its commitment to hundreds of thousands of employees.”

Then HRC went back to what it knows best: Using scare tactics.

“The Human Rights Campaign could not be more disappointed to see Ford Motor Company shirking its responsibility to its employees, consumers, and shareholders. By failing to support women leaders, employees of color, and LGBTQ+ employees, Ford Motor Company is abandoning its financial duty to recruit and keep top talent from across the full talent pool. In making their purchasing decisions, consumers should take note that Ford Motor Company has abandoned its commitment to our communities,” it said.

But Ford knows better than HRC what its shareholders and stakeholders need. If what the corporate world thinks the people want is truer to reality, the politicians will feel the pressure soon enough.