EYE ON THE TARGET: Major Corporation Turns on Woke and the LGBTQ Mafia

In a shocking blow to the woke establishment and the LGBTQ mafia, Target has rejected the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement.

In a blog post titled, “Target’s Belonging at the Bullseye Strategy,” the corporation laid out a new path forward that effectively disavows the woke movement.

“We remain focused on driving our business by creating a sense of belonging for our team, guests and communities through a commitment to inclusion,” the statement began. “Belonging for all is an essential part of our team and culture, helping fuel consumer relevance and business results.”

Yet the company added, “As we start a new fiscal year, we’re continuing to shape the next chapter of Belonging at the Bullseye.”

The company announced new actions moving away from DEI and removing itself from the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. The actions include:

• Concluding our three-year diversity, equity and inclusion goals.
• Concluding our Racial Equity Action and Change (REACH) initiatives in 2025 as planned.
• Ensuring our employee resource groups are communities fully focused on development and mentorship. These communities will continue to be open to all.
• Further evaluating our corporate partnerships to ensure they are directly connected to our roadmap for growth.
• Stopping all external diversity-focused surveys, including HRC’s Corporate Equality Index.
• Evolving our “Supplier Diversity” team to “Supplier Engagement” to better reflect our inclusive global procurement process across a broad range of suppliers, including increasing our focus on small businesses.

What Does This Mean?

As I explain in my book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” the Human Rights Campaign acts as a kind of LGBTQ mafia, forcing companies to embrace gender ideology in exchange for a high rating in the Corporate Equality Index. This index carried a great deal of weight with certain investors who took part in the environmental, social, and governance movement. HRC also attempts to bully government into adopting transgender policies and silencing dissent from them.

Yet Target itself got burned by its pro-transgender policies in 2023. During June—or “Pride Month”—that year, Target prominently displayed LGBTQ merchandise, including female-style “tuck” swimsuits designed to hide male genitalia. Target’s sales slumped amid the outrage, and the company moved the displays further back in the stores.

The Human Rights Campaign rates companies using five criteria: workforce protections, inclusive benefits, internal training and inclusive culture, corporate social responsibility, and responsible citizenship. The corporate social responsibility rating requires companies to publicly support LGBTQ causes, either through partnering or funding, and the responsible citizenship rating involves HRC deducting points from a company if it fails to toe the line on gender ideology. The entire enterprise amounts to a protection racket where HRC demands companies pay up or face protests.

Target’s decision to remove itself from the index arguably marks the most consequential part of this move. The company recently had scored 100 on the 2025 index.

Many other companies—including Molson Coors (the company that produces Bud Light beer), Ford, Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniels, and Lowe’s—have also pulled out of the index. These companies seem a poorer fit for woke activism than Target, which has a brand history of favoring leftist causes.

The company framed the other moves as more an achievement of equity, rather than a rejection of the DEI movement, but if Target follows through on this policy, it will amount to a rejection of the woke movement.

“Concluding our Racial Equity Action and Change (REACH) initiatives in 2025 as planned,” seems more a claim that the woke plan was wise and has been fulfilled, rather than a rejection of DEI.

Why Is Target Doing This?

Target’s move follows President Donald Trump’s executive order “ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity.” This order declares that federal civil rights laws “protect individual Americans from discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”

The order states that this individual protection from discrimination is incompatible with DEI programs, which often elevate people from “disadvantaged groups,” at the expense of judging individuals based on merit and competence.

“Yet today, roughly 60 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, critical and influential institutions of American society, including the Federal Government, major corporations, financial institutions, the medical industry, large commercial airlines, law enforcement agencies, and institutions of higher education have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) or ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation,” the order states.

The order bans DEI and DEIA in the federal government and encourages the private sector to follow suit.

Target’s move seems an attempt to at least publicly declare that the company is following the spirit of Trump’s order.

Reason to Doubt

While Target’s move is encouraging, woke activists are seeking ways to maintain DEI while changing its public image. Even while President Joe Biden was in office last May, The Washington Post reported that the DEI industry was attempting to rebrand, to keep the woke goals of elevating certain minorities while claiming to be more merit-based.

“Amid growing legal, social and political backlash, American businesses, industry groups and employment professionals are quietly scrubbing DEI from public view—though not necessarily abandoning its practice,” the Post reported.

Target may publicly reject DEI and withdraw from the Human Rights Campaign’s index, but that doesn’t guarantee that it will disavow the woke ideology it previously adopted.

Similarly, bureaucrats in the federal government have attempted to change their job titles to hide their DEI functions.

Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., highlighted one example: a leader at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives who changed her title from “Chief Diversity Officer” to “Senior Executive.”

“The ATF defied [President Trump’s] order to place DEI workers on leave, instead giving their DEI officer a new title,” Burlison posted on X. “Enough is enough. Time to abolish the ATF!”

My book, “The Woketopus,” lays out the Left’s massive influence campaign. It features woke activist groups like the Human Rights Campaign, and explains how these groups manipulated policy in the federal government under Biden. It also explains why their influence is unlikely to end with Biden. The book may form a key resource for the new administration in seeking to root out the deep state, the bureaucrats who aim to oppose Trump from within.

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