Businesses for Democracy

Donald Trump is not preparing to lose the 2026 midterms—he is preparing to steal them. His administration has been building the machinery to do it for years, from building a narrative to deny election results if he doesn’t win, to weakening the power of Black voters in the south. We’re fighting back.

Expanded voter engagement is critical this year, but it isn’t sufficient on its own. We need to be on the offensive to stop Trump from ignoring our votes and using the chaos and confusion he created to consolidate his power. We need a broad United Front to exert not only political power but economic power.

The intensive research done on how other countries have slowed or stopped authoritarianism have taught us many things. One of those is that the administration relies heavily on the pillar of Business support in order to enact his plans to consolidate its power. They need businesses to either support them, or stand quietly on the sidelines. That means these businesses have power. If they withdraw their support—defect—they can move the administration to change course.

We are using our economic might as workers and consumers to put pressure on corporations to either intervene behind the scenes or publicly sign aMN Business for Democracy Pledge for MN based businesses (or the National Business for Democracy Pledge).

The sum of our public actions and corporate intervention gives us the best opportunity to preserve and ultimately expand our democracy.

The Pledge

We are partnering with small business and building campaigns to push big business to sign onto this pledge committing to:

• Share information with all of their employees about their rights in the democratic process and how they can vote;

• Oppose efforts that create obstacles to people voting, and organize the business community to stand with them (we know they won’t do it alone); and,

• Speak out in opposition if there are attempts to not count all of our votes, or to not seat duly elected candidates, including closing their business if this happens.

Why Target?

During the surge, we took action at Target because we were horrified that Target said nothing when ICE ripped two US citizen youth who were Target employees out of their store in Richfield, MN on January 8th. We demanded that Target take a stand to keep ICE out of their stores and off their property. They did not. Before that, many of us were already boycotting Target because they turned their back on the DEI promises made to Black employees, institutions and communities.

What Target did do was organize other businesses into a group to write an open letter calling for “deescalation.” While the letter was not nearly as strong as we would have liked, it was a significant break away from their usual silence and away from standing with Trump. Between the courage of MN neighbors and the break by corporations, it was enough to move Trump. He began the agent drawdown and adopted the ‘de-escalation’ language.

Now, we are watching Trump carry out efforts to steal the midterm elections . We’ve witnessed the power of Target and other corporations to make Trump change course, and it serves as proof of what we already knew: Corporations have a lot of power. And we have the power to move them to intervene and ensure that our democracy holds.

Target is a highly influential leader in MN. Where they lead, others follow. Their silence is a choice. They can make a different choice and sign the Business for Democracy Pledge.

We recognize and honor the incredible work done by the Target Boycott Campaign regarding the company’s removal of DEI initiatives and are in solidarity with the work of the local leaders in Minnesota leading that effort. We support the ongoing boycott, which continues until their demands are met.