🌎 Missing the Target

Target’s new CEO pick misses the mark with investors

I guess you could say they missed the target (queue laugh track). After more than a decade of leading the company, Target CEO Brian Cornell announced he will be stepping down amid lackluster sales and declining profits.

The retailer’s replacement, however, drew criticism from investors who wanted an outside hire… not a 20-year Target veteran.

Struggle bus

The news came shortly after Target reported declining (or flat) sales for the 11th straight quarter, with profits down nearly 20% from the same time last year.

While current CEO Brian Cornell oversaw a more than 40% jump in annual sales from 2018 through the pandemic, that momentum hasn’t lasted:

• Since inflation began rising about four years ago, Target’s revenue growth has been largely stagnant.

• In the first quarter of 2022, Target reported a staggering 52% decline in profits from the previous year.

Not to mention, increased competition from rivals like Walmart and Amazon caused Target to lose customers, which was only compounded by backlash over LGBTQ-themed products in 2023 and criticism for ending its DEI initiatives earlier this year.

What’s Target’s solution? Hire a new CEO. While the chain is wrestling with falling sales, messy stores, and a weakened brand identity, it thought promoting from within would help, but investors are anything but happy.

Who’s the new guy?

The retailer announced on Wednesday that COO Michael Fiddelke, who started as an intern two decades ago, will take the helm and replace Cornell.

Fiddelke is the ultimate Target insider, scoring a permanent role in 2003 and working across merchandising, operations, HR, and finance, then serving as CFO from 2019 to 2024 before becoming COO. But Wall Street, apparently, doesn’t want the ultimate insider:

• Target shares fell more than 6% after the news, hoping a fresh face from outside the company would help pull the retailer out of its slump.

Despite the noise, Fiddelke has a plan: He said the three priorities going forward are trendier products, stronger service, and a bigger push into technology to reestablish Target as an elevated shopping destination.

DOJ launches investigation into DC police over fake crime data

The DOJ seems to think DC cops were better at fiction than fighting crime. The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into allegations that Washington, DC’s Metropolitan Police Department deliberately altered crime statistics to make the city seem safer than it actually is.

Cooking the books

The move came about a week after President Trump deployed more than 800 National Guard troops to DC to address rising crime (see overview).

According to recent police data, violent crime in DC has dropped 27% over the past year, including an 11% decline in homicides. Trump and the DOJ, however, responded with a big eyebrow raise:

• The investigation comes after a police commander, who is currently on administrative leave, reportedly downgraded serious crimes such as stabbings and carjackings.

• DC officials, including Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), have called it an isolated incident, but the DOJ wants to take a harder look and see if others were involved.

The head of the DC police union has backed President Trump’s skepticism, claiming crimes are being intentionally minimized and either left off the books or downgraded to less serious categories.

Looking ahead: If the DOJ finds foul play, officials could be staring down charges like fraud or obstruction. Not to mention, serious questions would be raised about the MPD’s claims that violent crime is at a 30-year low in the city.

TSA brings “biometric eGates” to major airports

TSA finally accepts documentation you can’t forget at home… your face. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced it’s introducing biometric eGates at select US airports, marking the first step ahead of a nationwide rollout.

Security scanning

The eGates, part of a partnership with CLEAR (see overview), aim to speed up identity checks using facial recognition technology, making TSA checkpoints faster and more secure. Here’s how it works:

• Travelers passing through eGates have their faces scanned and automatically matched to their ID and boarding pass, cutting out the need for verification by a TSA officer.

• The entire process takes less than six seconds, according to CLEAR’s CEO, Caryn Seidman-Becker.

Worried about security? CLEAR says you shouldn’t be. The company maintained that TSA has full control of the eGates and that it doesn’t have access to watchlists or the ability to override any TSA gate decisions.

It’s about to get busy

The initiative was strategically timed to streamline security checks and reduce wait times in preparation for the huge crowd of global travelers during the 2026 FIFA World Cup and America’s 250th anniversary celebrations.

Not to mention, the gates are already in action:

• The company already debuted the facial recognition tech at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport earlier this week, with plans to expand to DC’s Reagan National and Seattle-Tacoma later this month.

• CLEAR wants to bring the gates to at least 30 airports before the start of next year.

Biometric scanning is taking off: CLEAR also expanded its services to residents of the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand traveling in the US. Additionally, 15 US airports already offer it to TSA PreCheck travelers on American, Delta, Alaska, or United, according to the WSJ.

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MSNBC is changing its name… and ditching the peacock

They better not be stealing my color scheme. MSNBC is undergoing a major rebrand, adopting the new name MS NOW, an acronym that stands for My Source for News, Opinion and the World.

A big overhaul

The shift comes as NBC Universal, which owns NBC, continues its plan to separate its cable networks into a new company called Versant. Under the new switch:

• Channels like CNBC, the Golf Channel, E!, and SportsEngine are also included in the separation.

• They, along with MSNBC, will all drop the iconic peacock logo, though none will be changing their names.

Overall, the rebrand aims to set a clear direction for MSNBC’s post-spinoff future, allowing it to focus on the network's commitment to delivering news and opinion content catered toward its left-leaning audience.

Why change now? 

Mark Lazarus, Versant’s CEO, said the move allows the company to chart its “own path forward” and “create distinct brand identities,” while also giving NBC—a more neutral-leaning network—the separation it wanted from MSNBC’s progressive tone.

It also represents a larger set of changes for the network:

• MSNBC has been recruiting for dozens of new roles in recent months as it prepares for its spinoff from NBC Universal.

MS NOW should have plenty of viewership: MSNBC performs well in nightly viewership, surpassing CNN to claim the second-highest primetime ratings among cable news networks. However, it remains well behind Fox News, which attracted more than twice as many primetime viewers last quarter.

Investors poured $100 million into this $5,000 mattress cover

Ahh yes, the layman’s mattress pad. Eight Sleep, a maker of “sleep fitness” technology whose customers reportedly include Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, announced it has raised $100 million in new funding to expand its reach to the masses.

AI-assisted sleep

While $5,000 may be a little far off from the $20 most people spend on a mattress cover, Eight Sleep is betting that the everyday person wants to pay their entire bank account a little extra to get better sleep.

• The company’s flagship product, the Pod, is a high-tech mattress cover that monitors sleep metrics, regulates temperature, and carries a price tag of up to $5,099.

Eight Sleep says it’s planning to use some of the newly raised investor funding to make a push into retail stores to help quench the thirst for those prioritizing sleep and overall wellness:

• The company plans to expand into China next year, since the nation has a growing emphasis on sleep and wellness, per co-founder Alexandra Zatarain.

• Zatarain went on to say that Eight Sleep’s audience, which includes “doctors, dancers, and teachers,” are willing to spend extra to get a better night’s rest.

They also want to go medical: Eight Sleep’s CEO, Matteo Franceschetti, said to Axios that the company will file FDA applications to classify its products as medical devices for sleep apnea and menopause.

Catch up on this week’s weird news

 > OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted in a recent interview that AI is in a bubble and warned that “overexcited” investors might get “burnt.”

 > Researchers have developed a surgery-free alternative to LASIK that uses electricity instead of lasers to reshape the cornea. Early tests were successful in rabbit eyes, showing potential for human vision correction.

 > Astronomers discovered a previously unknown moon on Uranus using the James Webb Space Telescope, increasing the planet’s total known moons to 29.

 > Sony is raising PS5 prices by $50 across all of its models, with the PS5 Pro nearing $750, joining Microsoft and Nintendo in hiking hardware prices.

 > The largest space antenna ever built, measuring 39 feet across, has been deployed to detect tiny changes on Earth’s surface. It’s able to track ice loss, earthquakes, landslides, and volcanic activity with inch-level precision.