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Berkeley set out to defend DEI — and found no financial upside

The Blaze
3 weeks ago


A new study meant to reassure corporations about diversity, equity, and inclusion programs has delivered an awkward finding for DEI advocates: Keeping the programs produced no measurable financial advantage over abandoning them.

Researchers at the University of California in Berkeley compared S&P 500 companies that maintained DEI after President Trump’s January 2025 executive order with companies that scaled back their commitments. Firms that kept their programs performed about as well in stock returns and revenue as those that retreated.

Whether a company favors DEI or rejects it, executives cannot assume that a politically popular label will protect conduct that violates anti-discrimination law.

The authors and sympathetic news coverage emphasized the other half of that result: Companies could keep DEI without suffering a significant financial penalty. CBS News framed the finding that way, as did a subsequent Forbes analysis. But the conclusion cuts both ways. If companies paid no price for keeping DEI, they also paid no price for dropping it.

For investors, that raises a straightforward question: Where is the financial return from DEI?

The researchers found no statistically significant revenue or stock market advantage from maintaining the programs during the period they examined. Their paper reports an estimated effect on revenue close to zero. That does not prove every DEI initiative is worthless. It does mean this study offers no measurable payoff for the policies its authors defend.

DEI advocates have spent years insisting that diversity improves the bottom line. McKinsey’s influential reports linked leadership diversity with financial outperformance. But a 2024 reanalysis of its findings failed to reproduce statistically significant relationships using U.S. public-company data. A 2025 review found the broader empirical case considerably less certain than the confident corporate sales pitches suggest.

Companies that believe particular DEI practices improve performance should identify those practices and produce evidence that their gains are real and repeatable. The obligation to prove the promised return belongs to the people making the promise.

Even a demonstrated financial benefit would not settle whether a practice is ethical or lawful. The moral defense of DEI deserves scrutiny too. A corporate policy that uses race or sex to distribute opportunity may generate its own grievances, regardless of the language used to promote it.

Employment discrimination complaints have hardly disappeared. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received 88,201 new charges in fiscal year 2025, roughly level with the previous year and substantially above 2021. Those figures alone cannot tell us how many complaints involved DEI. They do underscore why employers should examine the legal consequences of their hiring and promotion rules.

The Berkeley paper also reveals an unmistakable political perspective. It refers to the Trump administration as a “regime,” discusses what its authors regard as “democratic erosion,” and describes the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and George Floyd collectively as “murders.” It suggests that organized corporate resistance can hinder the consolidation of executive power.

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Paras Griffin/Getty Images

Those judgments do not, by themselves, invalidate the statistical analysis. They do help explain the argument the authors want their findings to support: Corporations should feel free to maintain DEI as an expression of political and moral commitment, even without a measurable financial gain.

But companies face risks beyond the market response measured in the study. Public controversy can damage a brand, and legal enforcement can carry a steep price.

Consider Cracker Barrel’s 2025 rebranding backlash. Critics connected its logo redesign to broader complaints about the company’s “woke” direction. By mid-September, its shares had fallen nearly 16% since the August announcement, customer traffic had weakened, and the company had reversed course. A logo controversy is not a controlled test of DEI policy. It is a reminder that political and cultural backlash can have financial consequences.

The federal government has supplied a more direct warning. In April, IBM agreed to pay more than $17 million to resolve Justice Department allegations involving discriminatory employment practices and federal contracting. Deloitte settled for $21.5 million in August, and Accenture agreed to pay $25 million in September to resolve similar allegations. The settlements resolved government claims without findings of liability, but the costs were real.

The Justice Department also issued guidance outlining its view of unlawful discriminatory practices tied to federal funding. Whether a company favors DEI or rejects it, executives cannot assume that a politically popular label will protect conduct that violates anti-discrimination law.

The Berkeley study shows that companies maintaining DEI suffered no detectable financial penalty in the period examined. It also fails to establish a financial reward. Advocates who want shareholders, employees, and customers to support these programs still owe them a case grounded in performance, ethics, and law. That case cannot rest on assurances that DEI is harmless.

Dustin DeVito

Illegal alien was facing 40 YEARS in prison — until prosecutor 'botched' simple detail and let him walk

The Blaze
3 weeks ago


A Democratic prosecutor in Virginia is facing criticism after making a simple procedural mistake that allowed an illegal alien criminal to avoid charges.

Naim Arrak was facing up to 40 years in prison and a fine of $500,000 before Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney Steve Descano botched the case.

'These injustices aren't just theoretical. There are real victims who are denied justice, and there are new victims because these perpetrators get back on the streets.'

Descano appears to have missed a deadline set by the judge related to witness exclusions in the case.

Because the prosecutor's office missed the deadline, the charges will have to be dropped against Arrak.

And it's not the first time.

"There was one prominent case where the incompetence of this office cost justice to an 11-year-old boy who was being sexually assaulted by a man, and the result of aggravated sexual battery was reduced to assault and battery, a misdemeanor, and that man not only got out of prison, he went on to abduct a woman in Prince William County only a few months ago," said Sean Kennedy with Virginians for Safe Communities to WJLA-TV.

"So these injustices aren't just theoretical. There are real victims who are denied justice, and there are new victims because these perpetrators get back on the streets," he added.

Arrak was facing decades of prison time over charges related to an incident in 2025 where he fled from police and hit a fire hydrant, but he had a long criminal arrest history.

He had been arrested more than 30 times for more than 90 felony and misdemeanor charges in five counties. Some of the charges involved violent crimes that include abduction, assault of a woman, strangling, and malicious wounding.

Arrak was charged in the latest incident with unlawful possession of a firearm by an illegal immigrant.

RELATED: Outrage erupts over video of illegal alien's arrest in DC — then the horrific charges against him are revealed

Although some of the charges were dropped, Arrak is scheduled for trial in January 2027 and remains in jail.

Descano has been criticized for his lenient criminal justice policies that allegedly allowed potentially dangerous suspects back onto the streets.

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Carlos Garcia

Boomers want higher taxes to save Social Security — but is there a better way?

The Blaze
3 weeks ago


Social Security’s funding shortfall has started a serious debate among young workers and their elders, with younger workers frustrated that older Americans are asking them to pay higher taxes to protect the benefits they’ve been counting on.

A new poll highlights the divide — 89% of Americans over 65 support preserving current retirees’ benefits, even if it means raising taxes. Among adults ages 30 to 44, support falls to 57%.

“There’s a new poll about Social Security,” BlazeTV host Ron Simmons explains on “Relatable.” “U.S. Boomers, which I’m included, support tax hikes on young workers to keep current Social Security checks.”

“I can imagine that’s controversial because I know that when I was your age, if you’re younger listening to this, I would have been against increasing my taxes to take care of people that had already paid in,” he continues.


“But, you know, now that I’m a Boomer, let me tell you the way I look at it,” he adds.

“When I first started, you could get full benefits at age 65. Then they came along and changed it,” Simmons says.

“They increased the retirement age. And increasing the retirement age means that people my age and younger would pay more in for a longer period of time before we were able to get benefits,” he explains.

Simmons, who qualifies to get full benefits in the next couple of years, has paid up to $360,000 in Social Security.

“If that would have been invested at 5% interest, that would have been a value of about $900,000. So, my account, if it was like in a 401(k), would probably be sitting there with about $900,000 in it,” he explains.

“If I went out and bought an annuity, meaning an annuity is something that pays me every month until the day I die, then that annuity would be about $5,000 a month. Now, that’s less than what I’m going to get from Social Security based on the estimates that I’ve found on the website,” he continues.

“The problem is, that money wasn’t invested like it should be. What happens is, we all put money in Social Security, and then the government takes that money and does other things with it, and they leave an IOU that essentially is not earning us any interest,” he adds.

What Simmons believes should be done is give people the ability to “direct the investment of the amount that you put in there.”

“If it was invested in a balanced portfolio, a mixture of stocks and bonds, that’s going to grow at 8 or 9% a year,” he explains.

“And over your career, that’s going to create a huge account that, again, you could draw on, or they could even just buy you an annuity and pay you a certain amount every month,” he continues.

“That’s the issue,” he adds.

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BlazeTV Staff