Notoriously Woke Target Announces DEI Rollback Just Days After Trump’s Inauguration

Target was once one of the most notorious examples of corporate wokeness among major American companies, but now the retail chain appears to be course correcting.

The company announced on Friday that its “three-year diversity, equity and inclusion goals” are coming to a close, as are its “Racial Equity Action and Change” initiatives.

Target will also withdraw from the “Corporate Equality Index” pushed by the Human Rights Campaign, a notorious LGBT lobbying entity, and will stop all other “external diversity-focused surveys.”

“Throughout 2025, we’ll be accelerating action in key areas and implementing changes with the goal of driving growth and staying in step with the evolving external landscape,” the statement from Target said. “We will continue to monitor and adjust as needed.”

Robby Starbuck, a conservative activist who has been instrumental in exposing woke practices at major corporations, celebrated the decision from Target on social media.

MASSIVE news: Target is ending many of their woke policies. I can now exclusively tell you what’s changing and how it happened.

Recently executives @Target found out I was doing a story on wokeness there. When we learned they were prepared to make changes, we shifted our focus… pic.twitter.com/4R7tGIn5Fk

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) January 24, 2025

Target has over 415,000 employees and a market cap of $65 billion, meaning that these changes affect quite a few people and outside businesses.

“This won’t just create a healthier environment for employees who will have a neutral workplace without feeling that divisive issues are being injected but it will also extend to their many suppliers who will no longer feel pressure to endorse these policies,” he wrote.

According to Starbuck, conservatives have now ended woke policies at companies with a total market cap of almost $4 trillion, not to mention millions of combined employees.

“Our campaigns are now so effective that we’re getting the biggest companies on earth to change their policies without me even posting a story outlining their woke policies,” Starbuck added.

Perhaps best of all, Target will “not market Pride merchandise to kids going forward,” according to Starbuck, who said a representative of the company confirmed that decision to him in a phone call.

“Companies can clearly see that America wants normalcy back,” Starbuck said.

“The era of wokeness is dying right in front of our eyes. The landscape of corporate America is quickly shifting to sanity and neutrality. We are the trend, not the anomaly.”

To be clear, some of these diversity policies are simply repackaged under other business units or given new names, and this could be happening to some extent at Target.

But the fact that even a previously woke firm like Target, which once earned a conservative boycott for absurd ideological actions like selling the aforementioned LGBT merchandise for kids, is bowing to outside pressure against wokeness is rather telling.

Especially after the election and inauguration of President Donald Trump, countless firms seem to be noticing the shift in public sentiment and the change in political winds, and they are scrapping their diversity programs accordingly.

They know that the very same woke ideologies popular five years ago are now deeply unpopular among both the people and the authorities, and they are rushing to course correct.

The momentum is on our side. Time to keep pushing.

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