You actually can fire people based on their political beliefs, because believe it or not, political affiliation is not a protected class under current US federal law (maybe some state law though). There are only 7 current federally protected classes: age, race, sex, religion, marital status, disability, and sexual orientation. That's why Republicans have been announcing they want to make political affiliation a protected class soon, because I guess that's the next big battleground, is employers start to hire/fire based on politics.

I take your points, but I guarantee you this isn't a decision about politics by Amazon, but purely a maximisation of revenue decision. Whole Foods employees interact with customers face to face, every day, all across the US, from blue states to red states. They know that their customers in some places consider BLM to be a political organisation, one that they don't support, and that goes for proud boys, KKK, whatever. The point is, you don't want to antagonise any customers coming in through the door, and corporate is aware that people are awfully sensitive these days and ready to kick off over any tiny thing, so to ensure no customer gets offended and takes their business elsewhere, and to ensure a policy which can be applied nationally for all states where Whole Foods exists, it's just easier to say they won't allow anything which their customers could potentially consider political.

That's all this is, it's not the political dog whistle some are making it out to be. This is just corporations wanting to remain neutral and take money from every customer, not just liberal ones. Hence I agree with this policy, it's not coming from a bad place and it's not an absurd request either.

And yes, as you said, not allowing someone to wear a religious article of clothing is a lawsuit waiting to happen, which will be a slam dunk, but this isn't the same.