The brand partnership between Bud Light and social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney appears to have alienated both conservatives and leftists as members of the latter group criticize the brand for halfheartedly recanting support for the self-described transgender social media star.

Several reports indicate that Anheuser-Busch, the parent company of Bud Light, has hemorrhaged sales after executives partnered with Mulvaney, a man who claims to be a woman and chronicled his purported gender transition on social media. Executives for the beverage firm have offered vague apologies, downplayed the extent of the campaign, and even hired veteran Republican lobbyists in various attempts to win back disgruntled conservatives.

The superficial attempts to back away from Mulvaney, on the other hand, appear to have angered members of the LGBTQ movement, who are now demanding that Anheuser-Busch support the ideology or face another boycott effort from the other side of the political spectrum.

Jay Brown, a senior vice president at the Human Rights Campaign, wrote a letter to Anheuser-Busch last week asking the firm to release a statement explicitly supporting Mulvaney and to implement transgender inclusion training for executives. “In this moment, it is absolutely critical for Anheuser-Busch to stand in solidarity with Dylan and the trans community,” the document said, according to a report from The Hill. “However, when faced with anti-LGBTQ+ and transphobic criticism, Anheuser-Busch’s actions demonstrate a profound lack of fortitude in upholding its values of diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Stacy Lentz, a co-owner of the Stonewall Inn, widely considered the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ political movement, said in an interview with Newsweek that Anheuser-Busch had “missed an opportunity to stand by their commitment to the trans community by pandering to and giving into transphobic outcries.” She predicted that “as a brand they will be extinct in a few years if they are not fully on the side of equality,” citing the left-wing values broadly held by young Americans.

Activists hosted a demonstration two years ago outside of the Stonewall Inn during which they poured beverages distributed by Anheuser-Busch into a nearby gutter. The protests were meant to criticize donations the company provided to lawmakers who sought to limit the spread of radical gender theory. Anheuser-Busch responded to the criticism at the time by noting that the company has “received a perfect 100% score from the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index for LGBTQ Equality.”

Lentz expressed sympathy for Mulvaney and contended that the influencer, who has received several brand deals from other corporations, was “caught in the middle of a horrible firestorm.”

John Casey, a contributor with The Advocate and a public relations executive, meanwhile wrote in an opinion piece for the LGBTQ publication that Anheuser-Busch “poured alcohol all over an extremist’s fire” rather than rising “to the defense of a transgender woman” and defending “a noble campaign that sought to reflect acceptance.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP

“Maybe the worst thing the company did was leave Mulvaney all alone, twisting in the wind, abandoning any kind of defense of her. That is an utterly repugnant reflection of the brand,” he commented. “It’s not Kid Rock and Ted Nugent who should be boycotting Bud Light. It should be us.”

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) took hundreds of thousands of dollars from three drug companies at the center of the opioid epidemic in the U.S.

According to FEC financial reports cited by the New York Post, Brown raked in more than $200,000 from political action committees associated with Cardinal Health, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen since 2003. The three pharmaceutical giants paid out a $26 billion settlement to settle thousands of individual lawsuits from states and local governments. Ohio is also one of the states hardest hit by the opioid epidemic.

According to FEC filings, Brown took in a total of $144,500 in contributions to his campaign and leadership PAC, America Works PAC. He raised $85,000 from Cardinal Health, $56,500 from AmerisourceBergen, and $1,500 from McKesson. The latest donation was a $2,500 donation from Cardinal Health on September 21. The New York Post further reported that he took in $54,100 from lobbyists who worked for the three pharmaceutical distributors, including $5,600, the legal maximum, from a McKesson lobbyist in 2020 and again in 2021.

Separately, individual employees donated another $40,025. Cardinal Health Chief Information Officer Mark MacNaughton was a frequent small-dollar donor. Former Cardinal Health CEO George S. Barrett donated a total of $15,400 between 2011 and 2019, all in large amounts. Theodore Frank of McKesson donated $1,000 to his 2018 campaign. Rita Ersfeld Norton of AmerisourceBergen gave him $1,000 in 2017.

Together, Cardinal Health, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen account for 90% of the U.S. supply chains for drugs and medical supplies. But the companies have allegedly been complicit in the proliferation of opioids; the New York Post reported that for more than a decade, the three pharma giants failed to track suspicious orders or increases in opioid use among purchasers, in spite of doctors potentially criminally overprescribing the drugs.

The three companies, along with Johnson & Johnson, settled a $26 billion lawsuit with 49 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories, and thousands of municipalities in February 2022. In a joint statement in February, the three companies announced that, beginning on April 2, 2022, they would pay out more than $19.5 billion over the next 18 years: Amerisource is set to pay out $6.1 billion; Cardinal Health, $6 billion; and McKesson, $7.4 billion. The settlement dealt with 46 of the 49 states; Alabama, Oklahoma, and Washington State refused the settlement. West Virginia settled previously. The Cherokee Nation also settled separately, and the remaining Native Americans had reached an agreement in principle at the time.

The New York Post also reported that the Drug Enforcement Administration settled a $150 million payout for violating federal controlled substance laws in 2017, the largest penalty in the DEA’s history.

Ohio had an estimated 5,068 deaths from drug overdoses in 2021, the fifth-highest in the nation, according to the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System. The CDC reported 107,622 deaths from drug overdoses in 2021, the highest number on record, as The Daily Wire reported last year. The New York Times reported at the time that synthetic opioids accounted for 71,000 deaths.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP

In 2017, Brown himself called the opioid crisis “one of biggest public health emergencies in my lifetime [and] all too often addiction starts in [the] medicine cabinet.”

Brown is running for a fourth term in the Senate in 2024. But he faces an uphill battle in a state that is rapidly turning red: former President Trump won the state by eight points in 2020; Republican Senator J.D. Vance won the state by six points in 2022. So far, State Senator Matt Dolan and businessman Bernie Moreno have entered the Republican primary.