Target’s Beige Pride Collection Doesn’t Seem All That Proud

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.

Target's Pride Line Is, Uh, a Little Subdued

As someone who’s never quite understood why Minnesotans love Target so much, watching The House That Bullseye Built step on one public relations rake after another has filled me with a warm sense of schtargetfreude. After hastily dismantling its DEI initiatives to appease the Trump admin, a backlash from customers helped cause the Minneapolis-based company’s Q1 sales to drop 2.8% compared to the same time last year. I’m not a business reporter, can someone tell me if that’s bad?

The latest fumble from the retail behemoth next door? Its 2025 Pride line, which is overwhelmingly… beige? Almost as though Target, which was lambasted for pulling its Pride merch from some stores in response to a homophobic 2023 boycott campaign, didn’t want anyone to notice the new line. Maybe they could even find a special section of the store to house these items. A closet, perhaps?

Go Mag has a roundup of online responses to this year’s Pride merch, and says “the designs feel like they were created by someone who Googled ‘gay’ and then immediately got nervous.” What’s more, the tags on many Pride include “lorem ipsum” placeholder text.  

School Segregation? Here in Minnesota?

Kyle Stokes of Axios has a story on how open enrollment is shaping school districts in the metro area that gives readers a whole lot to chew on. (There are also cool maps, which—pro tip—will always give you a good shot at getting into The Flyover.)

Where do open enrolled kids wind up? Well, almost half of the students in Brooklyn Center schools live in other districts, while 40% of the students at Minnetonka Public Schools live outside that district, and six other suburban districts import a third of their students. In total, 13 of 47 metro districts enroll at least 20% of their student population through open enrollment.

"WHY THIS MATTERS," Stokes screams via Axios style on Twitter. "State dollars follow students who open enrolls So each incoming student brings additional state funding to a district, and each student lost comes at a cost."

On its face that seems, well, not ideal. Now toss in the fact that a third of the white students in open enrollment head to less integrated districts. The story quotes perpetually quoted U of M law professor Myron Orfield as saying that Minnesota’s longstanding open enrollment law only began to really trigger movement between districts in the 2000s, after the state weakened integration rules. 

U of M Food Service Workers: “The Labor Relations System Here Is Broken”

If you’re an employer and there’s a story about you in Workday Magazine, you know you’ve done fucked up. So University of Minnesota alums shouldn’t be too excited to see their alma mater named in the latest from Workday’s Amie Stager about the U’s food service workers represented by Teamsters Local 320. In 2022, the school contracted out its food service to the private company Chartwells, and things have not gone well for workers since.

“According to Local 320 business agent Jackson Kerr, there has been an ‘explosive’ increase in harassment, discipline, suspensions, and terminations of dining workers since Chartwells took over,” Stager writes. Kerr accuses the company of “disciplining workers out the door,” a backdoor union-busting tactic, and failing to address grievances.

Truck Amok!

We’re not big on car crash news at The Flyover—highway mayhem tends to get enough coverage elsewhere. But sometimes an accident is so spectacular we’ve just got to go along with the crowd. Like when, for instance, an 18-wheeler somehow skids into the wall separating east- and westbound Minneapolis traffic in the Lowry Tunnel. And also when that truck is carrying ammunition. (Isn’t ammo among the “hazardous materials” vehicles prohibited from transporting through the tunnel? That’s a question for another day, I suppose.)

OK, let’s gawk:

Somehow, no other vehicles were involved in the crash and the driver is being treated for non-fatal injuries. That’s all great news, almost miraculous. In fact, if this was a Final Destination movie, Death would soon be coming to claim all the drivers who passed safely through that tunnel after the crash in an elaborately macabre fashion.