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Disney shareholders rejected an investor proposal to withdraw participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s corporate equity index, which rates workplaces on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer equality. Disney is among the highest-profile employers to revise some of its diversity and inclusion practices as the Trump administration cracks down on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, practices across the federal government and in the private sector. Walt Disney was among 765 companies to receive a perfect score in its 2025 ranking, acknowledging its efforts to protect against workplace discrimination, to provide inclusive benefits and to offer training to achieve an inclusive culture. The shareholder proposal argues that Disney’s involvement in such divisive political issues has alienated segments of the audience, and damaged the company’s stock price. It urges investors to support the proposal, which it says provides an opportunity for Disney “to move back to neutral.” Disney urged investors to reject the proposal, saying its board already provides oversight of workforce equity matters. Only 1% of shareholders voted to support this measure, according to the preliminary tally announced Thursday. Other companies, including automaker Ford Motor, motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson and home improvement retailer Lowe’s, have ended their participation in the annual ranking of companies with LGBTQ-friendly work environments. A number of U.S. companies have retreated from DEI in recent months, as the Trump administration stepped up threats to companies and institutions that engage in those efforts. Even Disney changed its executive compensation criteria, replacing the objective of increasing diversity and inclusion with a factor called “talent strategy,” which evaluates how well leaders advance the company’s overall values. In other matters, Disney’s investors returned all 10 members to its board of directors and retained PricewaterhouseCoopers as the company’s independent public accountant. Investors voted for a non-binding resolution, supporting executive compensation. Shareholders rejected a proposal to publish a report, disclosing how its retirement plan investments protect the plan’s beneficiaries from investments in high-carbon companies. Investors voted against a proposal that called on Disney to issue a report, evaluating how it evaluates the risks related to discriminating against ad buyers or sellers based on their political or religious views. Disney’s investors also rejected a proposal that called on the company to adopt politically neutral ad policies. The proposal took issue with the company’s participation in the now-defunct Global Alliance for Responsible Media, which was formed to protect brands from harmful content. Elon Musk’s social media platform X later sued the nonprofit, which alleged companies had conspired to organize a massive boycott. (Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday calling for the dismantling of the U.S. Education Department, advancing a campaign promise to take apart an agency thats been a longtime target of conservatives. Trump has derided the Education Department as wasteful and polluted by liberal ideology. However, completing its dismantling is most likely impossible without an act of Congress, which created the department in 1979. Republicans said they will introduce legislation to achieve that, while Democrats have quickly lined up to oppose the idea. The order says the education secretary will, to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities.” It offers no detail on how that work will be carried out or where it will be targeted, though the White House said the agency will retain certain critical functions. Trump said his administration will close the department beyond its “core necessities,” preserving its responsibilities for Title I funding for low-income schools, Pell grants and money for children with disabilities. The White House said earlier Thursday the department will continue to manage federal student loans, but the order appears to say the opposite. It says the Education Department doesn’t have the staff to oversee its $1.6 trillion loan portfolio and must return bank functions to an entity equipped to serve America’s students. At a signing ceremony, Trump blamed the department for Americas lagging academic performance and said states will do a better job. Its doing us no good,” he said. Already, Trump’s Republican administration has been gutting the agency. Its workforce is being slashed in half, and there have been deep cuts to the Office for Civil Rights and the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on the nations academic progress. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said she will remove red tape and empower states to decide whats best for their schools. But she promised to continue essential services and work with states and Congress “to ensure a lawful and orderly transition. Part of her job will be exploring which agencies can take on the Education Department’s various roles, she said. The Department of Justice already has a civil rights office, and I think that there is an opportunity to discuss with Attorney General Bondi about locating some of our civil rights work there, McMahon told reporters after the signing. The measure was celebrated by groups that have long called for an end to the department. “For decades, it has funneled billions of taxpayer dollars into a failing system one that prioritizes leftist indoctrination over academic excellence, all while student achievement stagnates and America falls further behind,” said Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation. Advocates for public schools said eliminating the department would leave children behind in a fundamentally unequal education system. This is a dark day for the millions of American children who depend on federal funding for a quality education, including those in poor and rural communities with parents who voted for Trump, NAACP President Derrick Johnson said. Opponents are already gearing up for legal challenges, including Democracy Forward, a public interest litigation group. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the order a tyrannical power grab and one of the most destructive and devastating steps Donald Trump has ever taken. Margaret Spellings, who served as education secretary under Republican President George W. Bush, questioned whether whether the department will be able to accomplish its remaining missions, and whether it will ultimately improve schools. Will it distract us from the ability to focus urgently on student achievement, or will people be figuring out how to run the train?” she asked. Spellings said schools have always been run by local and state officials, and rejected the idea that the Education Department and federal government have been holding them back. Currently, much of the agencys work revolves around managing money both its extensive student loan portfolio and a range of aid programs for colleges and school districts, like school meals and support for homeless students. The agency also is key in overseeing civil rights enforcement. The Trump administration has not addressed the fate of other department operations, like its support for for technical education and adult learning, grants for rural schools and after-school programs, and a federal work-study program that provides employment to students with financial need. States and districts already control local schools, including curriculum, but some conservatives have pushed to cut strings attached to federal money and provide it to states as block grants to be used at their discretion. Block granting has raised questions about vital funding sources including Title I, the largest source of federal money to Americas K-12 schools. Families of children with disabilities have despaired over what could come of the federal department’s work protecting their rights. Federal funding makes up a relatively small portion of public school budgets roughly 14%. The money often supports supplemental programs for vulnerable students, such as the McKinney-Vento program for homeless students or Title I for low-income schools. Republicans have talked about closing the Education Department for decades, saying it wastes money and inserts the federal government into decisions that should fall to states and schools. The idea has gained popularity recently as conservative parents groups demand more authority over their childrens schooling. In his platform, Trump promised to close the department and send it back to the states, where it belongs. Trump has cast the department as a hotbed of radicals, zealots and Marxists who overextend their reach through guidance and regulation. Even as Trump moves to dismantle the department, he has leaned on it to promote elements of his agenda. He has used investigative powers of the Office for Civil Rights and the threat of withdrawing federal education money to target schools and colleges that run afoul of his orders on transgender athletes participating in women’s sports, pro-Palestinian activism and diversity programs. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a Democrat on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, dismissed Trump’s claim that he’s returning education to the states. She said he is actually trying to exert ever more control over local schools and dictate what they can and cannot teach. Even some of Tumps allies have questioned his power to close the agency without action from Congress, and there are doubts about its political popularity. The House considered an amendment to close the agency in 2023, but 60 Republicans joined Democrats in opposing it. By COLLIN BINKLEY and CHRIS MEGERIAN Associated Press Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim contributed to this report
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E-Commerce
One more reminder about our upcoming online event: On Thursday, March 27, at 1 p.m. ET, my colleague Max Ufberg and I will host The AI Tools We Love Right Nowand Whats Next, exclusively for Fast Company Premium subscribers. Well discuss the AI-assisted productivity tools that are actually helping us get our jobs done, and where wed like to see the whole category go. Fast Company Premium subscribers can RSVP here. And if you arent yet a subscriber, heres where you can become one. Hope to see you there! Its the Worlds Most Innovative Companies week at Fast Company. Our annual ranking of organizations across 58 industries is live on our site, and bursting with bright ideas that are changing business, society, and, well, life. I hope youll take a look. My primary contribution to this massive undertaking was writing a cover story about our No. 1 company, Waymo. The feature looks at how the self-driving pioneers robotaxi service went from an unlikely skunkworks project at Google to a commercial service now serving 200,000 riders a week, and what might be next. Read it, and youll hear from Waymos co-CEOs, Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov, along with others inside and outside the company. But along with all the fresh interviews I did, I revisited one I conducted in September 2013. Thats when I sat down with Google cofounder and then-CEO Larry Page for a Time magazine story. The piece focused on the companys moonshot strategy of assigning itself improbably ambitious projectsespecially a division it had started, Calico, that was charged with investigating ways to extend the human life span. (Its still at it.) At the time, Waymo wasnt yet Waymo. Announced less than three years earlier, the effort was a mysterious research project within the Google X lab. The company was secretive enough about the whole thing that when I took a brief highway trip in one of its self-driving cars near the Googleplex in Mountain View, it was with the understanding that my Time article wouldnt detail my impressions. (Almost a dozen years later, I can finally spill my guts: I thought it was incredible.) I knew that story should touch on Googles autonomy project, and that speaking about it with Page was a rare opportunity. Even then, he granted as few press interviews as his PR team would let him get away with. My contacts at the company warned me that he might fall silent or even walk out in mid-conversation. When the day came, Page turned out to be both engaging andas far as I could tellengaged. But his handlers didnt exaggerate his dislike of talking to the press. My interview turned out to be among the last he gave. After creating Alphabet as a new holding company optimized for managing moonshots and handing Googles reins over to Sundar Pichai, he pretty much retired from public life altogether. What he thinks about Waymos present momentum, Im not sure. Back in 2013, however, Page told me quite a bit about the origins and goals of Googles self-driving initiative, explaining that it stemmed from his own interest in the technology, which had been percolating since the mid-1990s. He stressedagain and againthat he was in a hurry to see autonomous cars become an everyday reality. He might even have been happiest if someone had pulled off the feat before Google was in a place to give it a try. I was at Stanford as a grad student when I became interested in that, he told me. Nothing really changed between [then] and when we started working on it. I’m sure computers got better, and sensors got better, but there’s no reason why people couldnt have been working on it 10 years earlier, for real. Now, it should be noted that Googles self-driving project didnt spring out of nowhere: Its founder, Sebastian Thrun, current co-CEO Dolgov, and others involved with the effort over the years contributed to Stanfords entries in a series of Grand Challenges put on by the U.S. Department of Defenses DARPA lab from 2004 to 2007. But those competitions were races among experimental autonomous vehicles conducted in the desert and other isolated environments. By moving quickly to test its self-driving cars on public roads, Google really did give the technology an abrupt shove toward reality. Ten years earlier, it would’ve been harder, Page allowed. It would’ve cost twice as much as it does now. But that’s not a major cost. I’m sad that it didnt get done earlier. My key insight is that there are just such opportunities out there to do things faster and do things that matter to people. What’s limiting those things getting done is people wanting to pursue them, and being organized about it, and understanding the opportunities. According to Page, one of his primary roles as CEO was to identify moonshots such as teaching a car to drive itselfthough he added that he considered his indispensability to this process as a limiting factor. A bunch of these things we’re working on have come from me, he said. It actually kind of worries me, because I wish that we had a more scalable process to do that. That’s a big part of what [Google] X is doing, to both think about more possible ideas and also have a deep technological understanding of what’s possible. Still, the question remained: Why Google? The company had made its bones and its fortune with its namesake search engine. Its most successful follow-ups, such as Gmail, were in closely related areas. Even the Google+ social network, which was in the process of flopping when Page and I spoke, wasnt far removed from the companys comfort zone. But on paper, it wasnt obvious why a search company might be poised to disrupt the transportation industry in the most fundamental way imaginable. Page did point out that some of Googles existing skills and intellectual property could be applied to the autonomy challenge: We have a lot of technologies for 3D modeling of the world that we developed, to really make Street View work and to make all of Google Maps work. Mostly, though, he argued that wildly disparate moonshots might be easier to get right than products requiring thoughtful integratio with existing Google mainstays. More than anything else, it was his and cofounder Sergey Brins willingness to connect dots that other corporate leaders didnt see that made something like self-driving cars make sense within the company. What I’m saying is we have people who can apply [their expertise] to a variety of projects, he said. And I find that to be more scalable than some of what you might think of as our core businesses. During our interview, Page noted that in some industries, it takes 20 years to go from idea to something real, bringing up the time span as a problem to be solved rather than an unavoidable fact. Rather than investing his full attention to steering Waymo and other new initiatives through to completion, he ended up stepping down as Alphabet CEO in 2019. He remains on the companys board but is also launching an unaffiliated AI startup, The Informations Jessica Lessin and Erin Woo report. Still available in only a few cities, Waymo is following the 20-year trajectory that Page found so frustrating. Yet it may remain the Alphabet moonshot with the biggest shot at changing the world. Its a testament to his vision that its journey continues well after he moved on. Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if youre reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. Im also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company A new Cybertruck recall is the umpteenth chapter in Teslas history of design issuesTeslas woes dont and wont stop, as the Cybertruck once again highlights its poor quality and design. Read More Do school phone bans actually work? Not really, a new study saysResearchers found no improvement in student well-being or academic performance at schools that restrict cellphone use. Read More Dinosaur time is the viral new way to eat your greensTired of smoothies and salads? One TikTokers chaotic spinach hack is both unhinged and strangely effective. Read More Google buys Wiz: How the cybersecurity startup went from $0 to $32 billion in just over 5 yearsGoogles acquisition of the cloud security unicorn marks its largest deal everand a historic milestone for Israels tech scene. Read More Nvidias Vera Rubin represents a big bet on real-time AI reasoningThe companys new chips are built to meet generative AIs growing demand for real-time reasoning capabilities. Read More The rise of the AI managerAs AI agents become high-performing digital teammates, the professionals who learn to lead them will define the future of work. Read More
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