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First, they attacked America. Then adoption. Parental rights. Now, girls’ sports.

Honestly, with such a busy schedule of political extremism, it’s a mystery how Nike has time to sell anything. But then, that’s the problem — they aren’t.

The once-iconic brand is in an economic tailspin, bleeding more than $200 billion in market value and losing its coveted spot in the S&P 100.

The news, which comes on the heels of an eye-popping 1,000 layoffs in the spring, spells major headaches for the brand that took a blowtorch to its profitability years ago when it launched its phony social justice warrior act.

Nike’s Far-Left Agenda

Millions of customers called it quits on Nike after its endorsement of anti-American Colin Kaepernick, who, along with disrespecting our national anthem, persuaded the company to shelve its idea of patriotic shoes.

Since then, Nike’s far-left agenda has taken different forms — from a doomed Dylan Mulvaney partnership to its defence of China’s slave labor program. Now, the company seems intent on being the official sponsor of team transgenderism, refusing to back away from radical LGBT advocacy that’s at odds with 80% of America.

And its roots in the movement run deep. In a conscious decision to trade their brand’s popularity for toxic activism, executives started sticking their necks out years ago in areas that were racing to put the brakes on gender mutilation procedures for children. In places like Alabama, where lawmakers tried to stop kids from rushing into transgender hormones and surgery, Nike led the corporate march to put the scalpel back in doctors’ hands. Fortunately, they failed.

When the brand wasn’t pushing children into a life of misery, sterilisation, and gender confusion, it was crisscrossing the country to kill women’s sports in legislation. That drumbeat continues at Nike today, despite the obvious problems it creates for one of the biggest manufacturers of athletic gear. After all, it doesn’t take a retail genius to understand that telling half of your market that you don’t care about their competitive success isn’t a smart revenue strategy.

The Cost of Going Woke

Now, with stocks down a whopping 80%, activists like Jerry Bowyer are asking whether it’s wise “for a consumer brand to place itself in the middle of a controversy that directly affects one of its most important customer groups: women and girls who compete in sports.” While the Trump administration investigates Nike for its woke hiring policies, Bowyer Research thinks investors have “every reason to ask whether additional political controversy creates more risk than value.”

In a shareholder proposal to Nike, Bowyer warned, “Investors are right to be concerned about what further brand politicisation could do to company performance.” Pointing to its cozy relationship with the controversial Human Rights Campaign and The Trevor Project, the organisation cautioned about the broader brand risk.

Enlisting the help of Sophia Lorey, a former Family Research Council intern, collegiate athlete, and current outreach director for California Family Council, conservatives pushed back on Nike’s corporate support for trans ideology. In a speech at the company’s annual shareholder meeting, Lorey highlighted the importance of Title IX in the door for girls to play sports.

“As a company,” she noted, “Nike has historically embraced the growth of women’s athletics. From its successful ‘Play Like a Girl’ campaign to its current ‘Get Her in the Game’ initiative, Nike has positioned itself as a champion for women and girls on the field of play. Unfortunately,” Lorey pivoted, “Nike’s verified [100% score] on the 2026 Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index casts serious doubts on the company’s stated commitment to women and girls. Perhaps more vocally than any group in the country, the Human Rights Campaign openly lobbies for the eradication of any meaningful distinction between male and female in culture, medicine, and the law.”

That perfect score, she continued, “means the company likely pays for permanent and harmful cross-sex hormones, irreversible puberty blockers, and surgical procedures for dependent children under its health care plan. Major corporations like Walmart and Charles Schwab have created carve-outs to extreme policies like these that cause untold damage to children — an increasing number of whom deeply regret the path they were put on by their own parents and medical professionals who should have known better.” But, Lorey underscored, “Walmart and Schwab aren’t the only companies to cut ties with the radical HRC. In the past year, the HRC experienced a 65% drop in participation among Fortune 500 companies. Nike should join them.”

The reality, she emphasised, is that our country stands “at a cultural crossroads.” “Will you continue to participate in the destructive lie of gender ideology that permanently harms children? Will you kowtow to a radical group whose primary goal will result in the elimination of women’s sports? Will you keep on supporting policies that sideline girls like me in our own sports?” Lorey asked. “Or will you take the truly courageous step to follow through on your promises to women and girls? The choice is yours.”

In blind allegiance to a movement that’s literally bankrupting it, Nike ultimately chose to oppose the proposal, Bowyer lamented, “rather than address the concerns behind it.”

What Really Killed Nike

Stephen Soukup, author of “The Dictatorship of Woke Capital,” told The Washington Stand that Nike’s story is a little more complex than most people are making it out to be. This is “an interesting case,” he insisted. “Conservative market-watchers will tell you that it’s yet another case of ‘go woke, go broke.’ Nike got woke, and now it’s being dropped from the S&P 100, while its share price has collapsed by nearly 80%. Other, more traditional analysis, suggests that Nike’s collapse is less about politics and more secular: it’s tied to general deterioration in market conditions, greater competition, and a collapse in foreign sales (namely to China). For my part, I think the truth lies somewhere in between,” he explained to TWS.

“It’s important, I think, to remember that Nike didn’t set out to become woke. Rather, it set out to be ‘street’ — to appeal to its core demographic group, young urban males and young non-urban males who want to emulate an urban lifestyle. When it hired Colin Kaepernick as a spokesperson,” Soukup pointed out, “Nike wasn’t exactly associating itself with his politics. It was associating with his image: young, black, tough, dismissive of authority (police especially). The company saw him as a ‘rebel,’ not an ideological operative. And guess what? It worked. For some time after the Kaepernick campaign, Nike owned the young male market.”

But then a funny thing happened on the way to sportswear domination, Soukup said. “Nike’s executives forgot who they were and what they were doing. They took their critics’ disapproval seriously and fought back by proving them right. Instead of Kaepernick, they threw their weight behind avowedly political athletes like Megan Rapinoe and overtly political causes. The final straw was the company’s sports bra partnership with trans activist Dylan Mulvaney, whose ‘need’ for a sports bra is dubious at best.”

Young Men Walked Away

The sales and preference data tell an interesting story, Soukup notes. “Sandler’s ‘Taking Stock With Teens’ survey (semi-annual, 6,000–10,000+ high schoolers per wave, running since 2001) tracks footwear/apparel mindshare by gender. The male-specific trend lines confirm that Nike’s business troubles coincided with its collapse in support from young men, which, in turn, coincided with its turn from ‘rebellion’ to ‘wokeism.’ Nike’s young-male mindshare peaked around fall 2022, then declined for three straight years, bottoming out and just starting a marginal recovery in fall 2025. There is no way to prove causation here, but the correlation is still striking,” he observed. “Nike didn’t set out to get woke, but it did, in time. And that likely undermined what it did set out to do.”

For his part, Bowyer concedes, there was a time when Nike could excuse these policies “behind the (admittedly threadbare) excuse of being culturally in vogue. That time is not today,” he warned, “and the scrutiny Nike’s facing is only becoming more real.”

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Republished with thanks to The Washington Stand. Image via Wikimedia Commons.