The Dictatorship
I helped announce a Target boycott last year. Now I’m announcing it’s not over.
Earlier this week, an Atlanta pastor of a mega church held a press conference—some might even call it a commercial for Target—announcing that the boycott against the retail giant had ended. But the National Target Boycott is a grassroots movement that the Rev. Jamal Bryant did not start and that he has no authority to end.
On Jan. 30, 2025, I and two other Minnesota organizers — Monique Cullars-Doty of Black Lives Matter Minnesota and Jaylani Hussein of CAIR Minnesota — stood outside Target’s corporate headquarters in Minneapolis to announce a nationwide boycott to begin on February 1, the first day of Black History Month.
For many of us in Minneapolis, the company’s swift capitulation to Trump was stunning.
During the first week of Donald Trump’s second term, his administration launched sweeping attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across government and corporate America. Our call to action followed a shocking decision by Target’s leadership days later to roll back key DEI commitments it had made.
For many of us in Minneapolis, the company’s swift capitulation to Trump was stunning.
Minneapolis is where police murdered George Floyd in 2020 and sparked a global reckoning on racial justice. In the months that followed, Target pledged $2.1 billion toward advancing racial equity: $2 billion in spending with Black-owned businesses by 2025 and more than $100 million in investments and resources supporting Black communities and Black talent. Those commitments helped rebuild trust between the company and communities that had long supported it.
Then, almost overnight, Target reversed course. Why should we end the boycott now when Target hasn’t changed any of the policies that caused us to launch the boycott?
Before then, the company had already donated $1 million to the Trump–Vance inauguration committee. For many consumers, the message was unmistakable: when forced to choose between its public commitments to racial justice and bending to arpolitical pressure from the Trump administration, Target chose the latter.
Our concerns did not stop there. Late last year, as federal immigration enforcement operations intensified across Minnesota, immigration agents were seen staging activities in Target parking lots and entering stores during enforcement actions. Target’s leadership remained largely silent, reinforcing the perception that the company was willing to look the other way as federal agents targeted communities that make up a significant percentage of its workforce and customer base.
As federal immigration enforcement operations intensified across Minnesota, immigration agents were seen staging activities in Target parking lots and entering stores during enforcement actions.
When NPR reported on anti-ICE protesters picketing a Target store in January, the company noted that the company’s incoming CEO Michael Fiddelke had signed onto an open letter with the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce and the CEOs of 60 Minnesota businesses calling for “an immediate deescalation of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions.” After videos of federal agents tackling and detaining two Target employees inside a local storethe company only said it “does not have cooperative agreements with ICE or any other immigration enforcement agency.”
In a city where Nicole Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed by federal immigration agents, that statement from Target does nothing.
What began outside Target’s headquarters quickly grew into a nationwide movement. Over the past year, organizers, faith leaders, civil rights advocates, and everyday consumers have worked tirelessly to hold Target accountable. The boycott gained national attention, and it has certainly had an impact.
Target has faced months of declining store trafficdecreased sales and revenue, and significant drops in its stock price since our boycott began. Billions of dollars in market value have been wiped out. The company ultimately replaced its longtime CEO amid mounting pressure and weak financial performance, and the new CEO has acknowledged that the boycott has hurt Target’s sales.
Just as importantly, Target’s reputation as a socially conscious company—one it spent years cultivating—has taken a significant hit among the very communities that once trusted it most.
Yet, instead of addressing the root causes of the backlash, Target’s leadership has responded with a series of tone-deaf gestures. The company has focused on remodeling stores, introducing new brands, and urging its employees to smile in hopes of reversing declining sales.
But the problem facing Target is not cosmetic. It’s moral.
Shoppers who’ve stayed away for almost 13 months want the company to restore the diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments it abandoned and to honor the $2.1 billion racial equity pledge it made following George Floyd’s murder. Target’s outgoing CEO wrote in July that Target would fulfill its $2 billion commitment to Black businesses by the end of 2025. But even Bryant said in August that he hadn’t seen evidence that was true. It’s March now, and we haven’t been shown any evidence either.
Until that happens, trust will remain broken.
Across the country, countless people have vowed they will never shop at Target again. That is not a decision people make lightly. Target has long been woven into the fabric of communities across America. But when a corporation abandons its commitments to equity at the very moment those values are under political attack, the people have every right to respond.
Target chose a side. So did we.
The power of this movement comes from the people who built it—especially Black consumers and women, who drive a significant share of household purchasing decisions in this country.
Gone are the days when corporations can cherry-pick a handful of leaders and tell the rest of us who speaks for our communities.
We the people decide.
The boycott will not end until the people who built it say it is over.
Until that day comes, consumers across this country will continue to do what we have done for more than a year: organize, speak out, and vote with our dollars.
Because in the end, corporations may have enormous power—but so do the people who sustain them.
The Target boycott isn’t over. In fact, it’s time to double down.
Nekima Levy Armstrong is an award-winning civil rights lawyer, scholar-activist, and past president of the Minneapolis NAACP.
The Dictatorship
Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* In South Carolina’s gubernatorial raceDonald Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Pam Evette last month. Last week, however, ahead of this week’s primary runoff election in the race, the president published an online item telling voters that “you can’t go wrong” with either Evette or state Attorney General Alan Wilson.
If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because Trump has done this before. Around this time two years ago, for example, he endorsed both Republicans running in a congressional primary in Arizona. And two years before that, he endorsed two leading contenders in a Senate primary in Missouri.
Only the president can say for sure why he ended up endorsing Evette and Wilson in the South Carolina race, though it’s worth emphasizing for context that GOP primary voters have already ignored his direction into two gubernatorial primaries this month, and it stands to reason that he hoped to avoid a third.
* We’re one day away from a variety of notable racesincluding but not limited to South Carolina’s gubernatorial race. There are also some congressional primaries in a handful of statesincluding Maryland, New York and Utah.
* In took a while, but the ballots have been tallied under Maine’s ranked-choice systemand we now know that Democrat Hannah Pingree, the former state House speaker, will face off against Republican Bobby Charles, who worked at the State Department during the Bush-Cheney era.
* As for Maine’s closely watched congressional racestate Auditor Matt Dunlap won the Democratic nomination in the battleground 2nd District, defeating state Sen. Joe Baldacci, who enjoyed the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Dunlap will run in the fall against a familiar figure: former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who had moved to Florida a few years ago, but who returned to run for Congress.
* In California’s congressional special electiontwo Democratic candidates — state Sen. Aisha Wahab and Melissa Hernandez, a Bay Area Rapid Transit director — have advanced to an Aug. 18 special general election. The winner will fill the vacancy left by disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April.
* In a new commercial shared first with MS NOWDemocrat James Talarico has launched his campaign’s first multimillion-dollar ad buy in Texas’ gubernatorial race. In the 30-second spot, Talarico focuses on affordability and the cost of living. The state lawmaker will face scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the fall.
* And in New Jersey, Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.who has been missing from Capitol Hill since early March, will reportedly return to work on June 30according to a statement from his spokesperson. Neither Kean nor his office have offered any public information about why he has been away.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
The Dictatorship
Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls
After President Donald Trump’s pick for governor in Iowa lost in the Republican primary earlier this month, the president argued that he “would have endorsed the other person” if he had “the proper information.”
Trump is taking no chances in the South Carolina gubernatorial primary. Over the weekend he rescinded his exclusive endorsement of Pamela Evette, the lieutenant governor, announcing instead that he would support both Evette and her runoff opponent, Alan Wilson, the state’s attorney general.
The move put Evette’s political future in jeopardy: Even before Trump’s dual endorsement, she trailed in limited public polling and was seen by political observers in South Carolina as a weak candidate with little to show besides the president’s coveted endorsement.
“Her chief distinction from Alan Wilson was that Trump endorsed her,” said Dr. Dubose Kapeluck, a professor of political science at the Citadel Military College of South Carolina.
Trump’s dual endorsement “was a kiss of death,” he told MS NOW.
Evette, who moved to South Carolina from Ohio to found a successful payroll and HR company in 2000, has been lieutenant governor since 2019, serving under Gov. Henry McMaster, who is term-limited.
In office, she has pursued meaningful but little-celebrated policies, like a key tort reform bill, according to Gil Gatch, a Republican member of the South Carolina state House and an Evette supporter.
But voters could be forgiven for knowing little about Evette besides the fact that Trump endorsed her, which he did just days before the June 9 primary. Visitors to her campaign website are greeted with a full-screen message labeling Evette as “Trump-endorsed.” The first line in her X bio states the same. Pro-Evette television ads are quick to tout the endorsement.
An accomplishment like tort reform, while noted on Evette’s website, “maybe could have been something that was highlighted more heavily,” Gatch told MS NOW.
The political makeup of South Carolina nearly guarantees the next governor will be whoever emerges on Tuesday between Evette and Wilson. They survived a crowded primary field on June 9, and nearly every challenger who fell short of the runoff publicly endorsed the attorney general.
“She’s just not a good candidate,” Josh Kimbrell, a state senator who failed to make the runoff and has since said he’d back Wilson, said of Evette.
“She kind of assumed this was a coronation, and that was never going to go over that well,” he added.
Even some pro-Trump voters were confused by the president’s initial endorsement of Evette, whom he called “a good friend, fighter, and WINNER” in a social media post in May.
“I have no clue why Trump would endorse Pamela Evette,” Leland Lemmons, a 30-year-old Trump supporter told MS NOW as he exited a polling site in the Greenville suburb of Easley on June 9.
“She’s served, you know, a decent time. I just haven’t seen much fruition of what she’s done in office,” he added.
In a post on Truth Social Friday announcing his dual endorsement, Trump wrote, “I can’t hurt one of them by only Endorsing the other, so, therefore, I am going to Endorse, for Governor of South Carolina, both Pam Evette and Alan Wilson!”
In a subsequent statement on X, Evette said, “I was proud to come in first as [Trump’s] endorsed candidate for Governor on June 9th. Looking forward to doing it again on June 23rd.”
After The Washington Post foreshadowed the dual endorsement last Tuesday, allies of Evette were quick to denounce the possibility.
“I would guess that’s fake news,” Suzanne Pucci, a member of Evette’s finance committee, told MS NOW of the chance Trump would also endorse Wilson. “She’s probably not real worried about it.”
Another close ally and supporter told MS NOW at the time the report was “a total, fabricated lie.”
“[Trump] is invested in Pamela Evette because she invested in him. He’s a loyal guy. That kind of stuff is important to him,” added the supporter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“With or without Trump, I think she is going to win,” they said.
On Thursday, a senior campaign aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, brushed off the idea of a dual endorsement, telling MS NOW in a statement, “Pamela Evette has earned the complete and total endorsement of President Trump. She is the only Trump-endorsed candidate in this race and we look forward to delivering a big win for the president on Tuesday.”
Roughly 24 hours later, Trump retracted the exclusive endorsement.
Will McDuffie is a reporter for MS NOW.
As last week’s G7 summit in France got underway, a reporter asked Donald Trump whether his purported deal with Iran was final. “No, it’s not final,” the president replied. Later that day — during a visit to Versaillesof all places — he signed the framework anyway.
But moments after signing his name to the memorandum of understanding, Trump offered an unsubtle hint about what he was thinking at the time. Amid applause from those around him, the American president pointed down and then up while saying“Oil down, stocks up.”
In other words, Trump’s focus had nothing to do with natural security and everything to do with the economy. What’s more, the four-word phrase was part of a larger and underappreciated pattern. The Washington Post reported:
In the more than 100 days since President Donald Trump launched a war with Iran, he has offered a shifting list of reasons for why he started the conflict. But in explaining his push for peace, he named a priority much closer to home: protecting the stock market.
“I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe,” Trump told reporters gathered in the Alpine spa town of Évian-les-Bains, France, after the Group of Seven summit.
As the summit wrapped up, the Republican similarly said“I’ve studied presidents, some good, some bad, some great. Not too many are great and some really bad. … And the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover. I didn’t want that and who knows what would have happened.”
He pushed the same point in an interview with Axios, which was released over the weekend.
“If I went further, the stock market would be much lower,” the president said. “Now think of this: I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people: I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover.”
The comments came days after Trump similarly argued“The alternative to this deal was a global recession. There are stupid people who want to see a global recession. They are just stupid people.”
Whether the president fully appreciates the implications of his own rhetoric, this string of comments doesn’t just shed light on his motivations for accepting a defeat, it also suggests he saw his failed policy in Iran as pushing the global economy toward a dangerous cliff.
In other words, based on Trump’s own comments, the war he started was poised to create an “economic catastrophe,” which he was desperate to avoid — and which led him to accept a framework that empowered Iran to get what it wanted in exchange for effectively no concessions at all.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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