Annual shareholder meetings of public corporations are hotbeds of ideological activism against societal norms and traditions—but are the tables turning?
This is an article about two brave women. But first . . .
For years annual shareholder meetings of major public corporations have been seen by left-of-center ideologues as opportunities to make Fortune 500 companies rally behind sweeping agendas that support abortion rights, gay marriage, DEI, green energy, election ID, foreign policy (especially “BDS” efforts to punish Israel), and “trans” rights, among many other issues. The preferred tool for these efforts is the shareholder resolution, and the standard process employs PR campaigns, outside pressure organizations—especially those wielding issue “scorecards” such as Human Rights Campaign (HRC), home of the controversial “Corporate Equality Index” (CEI), and the Southern Poverty Law Center—and partisan proxy voting middlemen to assemble a majority of a corporation’s shareholders (owners!) to vote in favor of resolutions which can be nitpicking, hyperbolic, and, with rare exception, veering leftwards.
Enter the rare exception: The left’s tactics have now been learned by traditional conservatives, and are being deployed against trans policies, providing courageous detransitioners powerful platforms to reveal the devastation of the pharmaceutical and medical assaults they endured because of gender confusion.
On this score, two important, recent actions are worth sharing—this information provided by Bowyer Research, a leader in the fight to push back against the left’s near monopoly on shareholder activism.
The first pertains to Home Depot’s annual shareholder meeting (it took place this May 21st), which considered Resolution #12, promoted by Inspire Investing. This action sought to apply transparency to the retail giant’s trans policies, claiming its resolution was “a straightforward exercise in risk management and fiduciary responsibility” that merely requested “management to analyze and disclose the full picture so shareholders can make informed judgments. In an era of rapid medical, legal, and cultural change, transparency protects the brand, the workforce, and long-term returns.”
The resolution declares that “Home Depot now stands at a pivotal moment: with its own historical ties to the HRC and an unverified 2026 CEI score signaling a lack of clarity around transition-related healthcare benefits, the company must join” other firms that no longer genuflect (a “prudent corporate pivot” to a leftist compliance). Inspire Investing’s objective through the resolution was to have Home Depot’s management “prepare an independent report on company policies and charitable ties related to gender transition care and to explain any related reputational, legal, and financial risks.”
And now, the first brave lady. Chloe Cole is a detransitioner who declared on X that “Home Depot funds child sex changes through their employee health plan.” She spoke at the May 21st shareholder meeting by video. At a time when detransitioners are vilified by leftist activist organizations and cast as conservative props, it takes a courageous person to publicly speak about the plight.
Here is Chloe Cole’s statement on behalf of Resolution 12:
My name is Chloe Cole. I am a detransitioner and advocate for the medical safeguarding of children who have been harmed by the medicalization of gender distress.
I'm here because I know what happens when big institutions like Home Depot value outside corporate pressure and ratings over the safety and wellbeing of children and their families.
This proposal is NOT about politics. For me, the impact is personal, because I have to live with the consequences every single day.
I was a twelve-year-old girl when I was led to believe that my pain and confusion during puberty meant that I needed to be somebody else. My doctors decided that the only treatment was irreversible drugs and a scalpel to healthy organs.
But no child can fully understand what it means to give up a healthy body or never fully mature into adulthood. Before I was old enough to vote, marry, sign a contract, or understand lifelong consequences, I was put on puberty blockers and testosterone in middle school, and eventually underwent the surgical removal of my breasts at 15.
That wasn't compassion, the adults around me failed me. And doctors like mine continue to push thousands of children into that failure every year.
Home Depot does not have to become part of it.
Shareholders deserve to know whether this company is subsidizing, endorsing, or being pressured into supporting medical interventions that many doctors, parents, and former patients now recognize as dangerous for children and teenagers. Based on publicly available information from the Human Rights Campaign last year, Home Depot's healthcare plan seems to include transgender medical interventions for covered dependents, including children.
The landscape is shifting. States across the country, including Georgia, where Home Depot is headquartered, have banned the use of these procedures on children. Medical authorities in over 6 countries, including our own Department of Health and Human Services, are pulling back because both the data and personal testimonies have clearly shown the consequences of attempting sex-changes on children. Former patients like me are speaking out and winning lawsuits because we know what happens when institutions refuse to face what they've helped to enable, and the parents of the next generation are fighting to ensure it never happens again. Millions of American families trust Home Depot with their homes. It's that legacy that makes it imperative to act now before the name "Home Depot" is permanently attached to the sterilization and mutilation of children.
Because children deserve to be protected. Families deserve transparency. Shareholders deserve to know what is being done with their investments.
Another brave soul is Soren Aldaco. A young woman who once identified as a man, Soren spoke on behalf of another Inspire Investing effort, this directed towards financial giant American Express via a “Shareholder Proposal Requesting a Report on Coverage of Transgender Healthcare Treatments for Minors.” Holding that there is a consensus building that questions “sex trait modification procedures as an essential health benefit,” the resolution requested that American Express “conduct an evaluation and issue a report within the next year, at reasonable expense and excluding proprietary and confidential information, analyzing the legal, regulatory, political, reputational, and other relevant risks of providing transgender treatments for minors on its healthcare plans, beyond existing minimum legal requirements.”
Via video, Soren spoke on behalf of the “Proposal 4” resolution before the AMEX shareholder meeting on May 20th, sharing the harsh physical and psychological travesties resulting from her transition. Here are her complete, powerful remarks:
My name is Soren Aldaco. I’m a 23-year-old detransition woman, and I’m here to talk about what corporate health insurance did to me as a teenager.
Between 17 and 19, I was prescribed cross-sex hormones and had both healthy breasts surgically removed, all under the banner of gender-affirming care, all covered by my mother’s employer-sponsored health plan. My path to that operating table began not with gender, but with trauma.
At 11, I was sexually groomed online by adult strangers. That experience made me hate my body, particularly the parts that had been violated. When I finally brought that hatred to medical professionals, not one asked why a teenage girl might want to erase the most visible markers of her womanhood.
In fact, the therapist who I opened up to about my trauma was the one who wrote the letter for my double mastectomy.
After the surgery, blood pooled in my chest and abdomen. The surgeons who had billed tens of thousands to my corporate health insurance went silent. Lying alone under fluorescent emergency room light, I realized the procedure sold to me as liberation had become its own trauma.
I share this experience not for sympathy, but because decisions made in boardrooms have consequences in operating rooms. Every company that includes these interventions in its benefits plan is a link in the chain between a confused child and an irreversible outcome.
The so-called medical consensus that once shielded these practices is fracturing. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons now recommends delaying gender surgeries on minors, citing insufficient evidence. The AMA has affirmed that surgical interventions in minors should generally be deferred into adulthood.
And before the US Supreme Court, the ACLU’s own lead attorney conceded there is no evidence that withholding these interventions leads to suicide, dismantling the very threat used to override parental judgment for years.
My own case is now before the Supreme Court of Texas. As one of my attorneys argued, a doctor’s responsibility to do no harm does not disappear because a distressed teenager asked for something.
Walmart has already updated its plan to exclude sex reassignment surgeries for minors. Based on publicly available information, American Express has not. Its plan appears to cover puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for minor dependents of employees.
Shareholders deserve to know whether the company has evaluated the legal, ethical, and reputational risks of maintaining that coverage as the landscape shifts.
I was groomed on the internet, failed by my therapist, and gutted by surgeons who disappeared when things went wrong.
My mom went to work every day not fully realizing her benefits package was underwriting my destruction. I’m asking you to support this proposal, not as a political statement, but as basic due diligence.
Children cannot consent to decisions they cannot developmentally understand. The adults and institutions around them have to be the ones who pause.
I didn’t get that pause. I’m asking that American Express help ensure the next child does.
Thank you.
Shareholder terrain battles have serious ramifications for American civil society. Once upon a time, the mantra was “What’s good for General Motors is good for America”—and maybe that was more true than not. But in 2026, the antics of Fortune 500 business expose that what’s good for America is often not considered by DEI-fearing corporations. Men and women who disdain ideology and who yearn for a common good and a thriving civil society should take inspiration from the efforts of Inspire Investing, of Bowyer Research, of fellow organizations on the shareholder front lines, and of brave young women such as Soren Aldaco and Chloe Cole who stand as rebukes of the dangerous policies many major corporations enact to appease woke activism.
