11 Jun 2025 Target Praised By Shareholders For Backing Away From DEI

Washington, D.C. — Target Corporation was intended to be a target today for shareholder activists with the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP), but when an FEP representative presents a shareholder proposal at today’s annual shareholder meeting, he will instead praise the retail giant and encourage his fellow shareholders to defend the company.

Today FEP will present a shareholder proposal (Item 4) requesting that Target assess how its affirmative action initiatives impact Target’s risks related to actual and perceived discrimination on the basis of protected categories under civil rights law.

David Almasi

In light of recent events, however, FEP’s representative will not ask shareholders to support the proposal. David Almasi, Chief Operating Officer and Vice President of the National Center for Public Policy Research, will instead commend Target for the steps it has recently taken to reverse course on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI).

In January, shortly after President Trump took office, Target released a statement announcing that it would be walking away from several leftist initiatives including its DEI goals and its participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index.

After this announcement, leftist activists organized a boycott against Target, but a recent report revealed that “an orchestrated campaign to stoke tensions over Target’s rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives deployed fake accounts to flood social media with manufactured outrage.”

TaChelle Lawson

“If you’re a leader who still thinks bending to these… activists will buy you peace, think again,” said TaChelle Lawson, an ambassador with the National Center’s Project 21 black leadership network, in a post on LinkedIn. “You’re not buying peace; you’re buying a front-row seat to the destruction of your brand, your performance and your credibility. You’re fueling a fire they have no intention of putting out because chaos is their platform and confusion is their competitive edge.”

At today’s meeting, Almasi will encourage shareholders to stay the course, and to defend the company against those who wish to continue to divide people on the basis of race, sex and other external characteristics.

About

The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 60,000 active recent contributors.

FEP, the original and premier opponent of the woke takeover of American corporate life, aims to push corporations to respect their fiduciary obligations and to stay out of political and social engineering. More information about this proposal can be found in FEP’s mobile and web app, ProxyNavigator.

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