McDonald's is the world's largest restaurant chain by revenue and the second largest by number of locations, serving tens of millions of customers a day across more than 100 countries from a base of about 43,500 restaurants. The Chicago based company sells burgers, chicken, fries, breakfast, and coffee through a heavily franchised system, and its golden arches are among the most recognized brand symbols on earth. One quirk of that model: McDonald's makes much of its money as a landlord, owning the land and buildings under many of its restaurants and collecting rent from franchisees on top of royalties, which is why analysts often describe it as a real estate company with a burger business attached.[18] Few companies are as woven into American daily life, which is exactly why its politics draw so much attention.
When a sitting presidential campaign turned one of its restaurants into a stage in October 2024, McDonald's answered with a line that doubles as its entire political posture: "We are not red or blue, we are golden."[1] The company says it does not endorse candidates, and it has worked hard to keep that reputation. The documented record is more textured than the slogan: a political action committee that has tilted Republican in recent candidate giving, a January 2025 retreat from diversity goals that conservative activists had targeted, and a few million dollars a year in federal lobbying. None of it adds up to a campaign, but it is more than nothing.
- McDonald's answered Trump's 2024 fryer visit: "we are not red or blue, we are golden."
- The employee-funded PAC tilted about 66 percent Republican in 2024 candidate giving.
- McDonald's makes much of its money through real estate, not from burgers.
- In January 2025 it scaled back DEI goals amid conservative pressure.
- It spent $1 million fighting California's fast-food wage and joint-employer law.
We Are Not Red or Blue, We Are Golden
The defining political moment of McDonald's recent history was one it did not plan. After Vice President Kamala Harris repeatedly cited an early job at McDonald's on the campaign trail, and after a public dispute over whether that job happened, Donald Trump staged a visit to a franchise in Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania, in October 2024, donning an apron and working the fry station before taking questions through the drive-thru window.[2] The location was independently owned, and McDonald's was quick to note it operates on a franchise model under which owner-operators can host candidates without corporate sign-off.[3]
The company's response is the clearest statement of its stated political identity. In an internal message to employees, McDonald's wrote that it had approached the request "through the lens of one of our core values: we open our doors to everyone," that it "does not endorse candidates for elected office," and that "we are not red or blue, we are golden."[1] It added that it had invited Harris and her running mate to visit a restaurant as well.[1] The company's public stance is studied neutrality: a brand that wants to be claimed by everyone and owned by no party.
Following the PAC Money
McDonald's maintains a federal political action committee, the McDonald's Corporation Political Action Committee, funded by voluntary contributions from eligible employees rather than from corporate treasury money, which federal law bars from candidate giving.[4] In the 2023 to 2024 election cycle, the PAC raised roughly $577,000 and made the bulk of its candidate contributions to Republicans.[5] OpenSecrets records the PAC's contributions to federal candidates that cycle splitting about 66 percent to Republicans and 34 percent to Democrats.[6] That is a meaningful Republican tilt in the PAC's candidate giving, consistent with a longer pattern: in the 2022 cycle, OpenSecrets found roughly two thirds of McDonald's affiliated contributions to congressional and federal candidates went to Republicans.[7]
The picture gets more complicated depending on which slice is measured, which is why the subset matters. During the 2024 campaign, a widely circulated analysis reported that more than 80 percent of a narrow cut of McDonald's linked donations in 2023 had gone to Democratic politicians, a figure tied to the Harris controversy and drawn from a specific subset of individual-candidate giving rather than the PAC's full candidate slate.[8] Read against the broader OpenSecrets candidate totals, the durable signal is an employee-funded PAC that tilts Republican in its overall candidate contributions, with enough Democratic giving mixed in that no one could call it a partisan machine.
On lobbying, McDonald's reported about $2.95 million in federal lobbying expenditures in 2024, money spent the way most large food companies spend it, on the regulatory issues that touch their business: labor and wage rules, food and agriculture policy, taxes, and trade.[5] The company reported no federal outside or independent expenditure spending in the 2024 cycle, according to OpenSecrets and FEC data.[5]
Like many large corporations, McDonald's paused its PAC giving after the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, stating it would not contribute in 2021 to lawmakers who voted against certifying the 2020 election results.[19] Before the pause, the McDonald's PAC had given to several members who later objected to certification, and the company resumed political giving in the cycles that followed.[19]
The DEI Retreat
In January 2025, McDonald's publicly scaled back its diversity, equity, and inclusion program, joining a wave that had swept Walmart, Lowe's, Ford, John Deere, and Harley-Davidson through 2024; news outlets noted it was among the first major companies to announce such a rollback in the new year.[9] In an open letter to franchisees, employees, and suppliers, McDonald's said it would retire its practice of setting "aspirational representation goals" for diverse leadership, sunset a supplier pledge that asked vendors to commit to DEI targets, pause participation in external diversity surveys, and rename its diversity team the "Global Inclusion Team."[10] The company cited the U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 decision ending affirmative action in college admissions as the reason for reassessing its approach.[10]
McDonald's framed the changes as a refinement rather than a reversal, noting it had achieved gender pay equity across all levels and met a target to direct 25 percent of supply-chain spending to diverse-owned suppliers.[11] The company's diversity push had itself begun in 2021, after a series of sexual-harassment lawsuits and a discrimination suit brought by a group of Black former franchisees.[12] The 2025 rollback drew a response from both directions: conservative activists who had pressured corporations over DEI counted it as a win, while a progressive group, The People's Union USA, organized a boycott in protest.[13]
Labor and Wage Politics
The most consistently partisan terrain for McDonald's is labor policy, where the company and its franchisees have spent heavily to shape minimum wage and employment rules. McDonald's has been the symbolic target of the union-backed Fight for $15 movement since it began in 2012, and the company has long resisted mandated wage increases and rules that would make franchisors legally responsible for franchisees' employees.[20]
That fight came to a head in California. In 2023, McDonald's was one of several major chains, alongside In-N-Out, Chipotle, Chick-fil-A, Starbucks, and Yum Brands, that each contributed $1 million to Save Local Restaurants, a coalition opposing the state's FAST Act, which would have created a council empowered to set fast-food wages as high as $22 an hour and imposed a joint-employer standard.[21] The industry gathered enough signatures to force a referendum, then negotiated a compromise: Assembly Bill 1228 repealed the joint-employer provision that worried franchisors and instead set a $20 fast-food minimum wage that took effect in April 2024.[22] The joint-employer question, who is on the hook when a franchise location breaks labor law, is one of the sharpest partisan dividing lines in employment policy, and McDonald's has been on the side that wants franchisors shielded.[21]
What the Company Sells and How
McDonald's operates an overwhelmingly franchised model: the parent company collects rents and royalties from thousands of independently owned restaurants and operates a minority of locations itself. Its menu centers on burgers, chicken, fries, breakfast items, and beverages, with a loyalty program that counted over 175 million 90-day active users across 60 markets by the end of 2024.[14] The franchise structure is also why the company can credibly distance itself from any one restaurant's political theater: most of what happens under the arches happens in stores it does not directly run.
Leadership and Finances
McDonald's is a public company traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker MCD, and a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500. For fiscal year 2024, the company reported consolidated revenues of $25.9 billion, net income of $8.2 billion, and diluted earnings per share of $11.39, and it returned $7.7 billion to shareholders through dividends and buybacks.[15] Chairman and CEO Chris Kempczinski received total 2024 compensation of about $18.2 million according to the company's proxy statement, which the company disclosed as roughly 1,014 times its median employee's pay.[16] That ratio is unusually high in part because of how McDonald's franchised system defines its median worker: the company identified its median employee as a restaurant worker in Poland who earned $17,492 in 2024.[17]
Where to Find Them
McDonald's operated 43,477 restaurants worldwide at year-end 2024, more than 13,000 of them in the United States, with about 95 percent independently franchised. Consumers can find locations, order, and join the rewards program through the company's website at mcdonalds.com and its mobile app.[14]
Footnotes
[1] Brian Flood, Fox Business, "McDonald's agrees to Trump fast-fry but won't back a 2024 presidential candidate: 'Not red or blue,'" October 22, 2024. https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/mcdonalds-agrees-trump-fast-fry-wont-back-2024-presidential-candidate-not-red-blue
[2] Michelle L. Price and Marc Levy, Associated Press, "Trump works fast-food fryer," October 21, 2024. https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2024/oct/21/trump-works-fast-food-fryer/
[3] CNN Business, "McDonald's didn't give Trump permission to serve fries. It didn't need to," October 21, 2024. https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/21/business/mcdonalds-trump-visit-statement
[4] McDonald's Corp PAC Profile, OpenSecrets, accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/mcdonald-s-corp/C00063164/summary/2024
[5] McDonald's Corp Profile: Summary, OpenSecrets, accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/mcdonald-s-corp/summary?id=D000000373
[6] McDonald's Corp PAC Contributions to Federal Candidates, OpenSecrets, accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/mcdonald-s-corp/C00063164/candidate-recipients/2024
[7] AOL/GOBankingRates, "Who Does McDonald's Give Political Donations To?," October 2022. https://www.aol.com/finance/does-mcdonald-political-donations-152311737.html
[8] Yahoo News/The Telegraph, "Revealed: McDonald's gives 80pc of political donations to Democrats," October 23, 2024. https://www.yahoo.com/news/revealed-mcdonald-gives-80pc-political-184229080.html
[9] Dee-Ann Durbin, Associated Press/PBS NewsHour, "McDonald's joins other companies in rolling back diversity goals," January 6, 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/mcdonalds-joins-other-companies-in-rolling-back-diversity-goals
[10] Today/NBC News, "McDonald's is the latest company to roll back DEI goals," January 7, 2025. https://www.today.com/food/news/mcdonalds-dei-practices-rcna186553
[11] CNN Business, "McDonald's is ending some of its DEI practices," January 6, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/06/business/mcdonalds-dei/index.html
[12] NBC News, "McDonald's is the latest company to roll back diversity goals," January 6, 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/mcdonalds-latest-company-roll-back-diversity-goals-rcna186481
[13] NBC News, "Group calls for boycott of McDonald's for scaling back its DEI initiatives," 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/mc-donalds-boycott-dei-economic-blackout-rcna214733
[14] McDonald's Corporation, Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Results, February 10, 2025. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mcdonalds-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2024-results-302371484.html
[15] McDonald's Corporation, SEC 10-K Filing for Fiscal Year 2024, filed February 25, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/63908/000006390825000012/mcd-20241231.htm
[16] Christopher Kempczinski compensation, AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch, accessed June 14, 2026. https://aflcio.org/paywatch/MCD
[17] Restaurant Dive, "Here's what 7 major restaurants pay their CEOs and their store-level workers," April 15, 2025. https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/starbucks-mcdonalds-ceo-pay-worker-wages/745064/
[18] McDonald's Corporation, SEC 10-K Filing for Fiscal Year 2024 (franchise and real estate revenue structure), filed February 25, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/63908/000006390825000012/mcd-20241231.htm
[19] Jonathan Maze, Restaurant Business, "McDonald's says it is pausing its political donations," January 13, 2021. https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/mcdonalds-says-it-pausing-its-political-donations
[20] Global News/Associated Press, "Protests target McDonald's restaurants for pay increase, union," 2016. https://globalnews.ca/news/2638056/protests-target-mcdonalds-restaurants-for-pay-increase-union/
[21] Danielle Wiener-Bronner, CNN Business, "McDonald's, In-N-Out, and Chipotle are spending millions to block raises for their workers," January 25, 2023. https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/25/business/california-fast-food-law-workers/index.html
[22] CNBC, "A fight between fast-food chains and unions in California is over, for now," September 15, 2023. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/15/california-fast-food-minimum-wage-deal-what-to-know.html
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