Adding new advisors is how we continue to grow our business. This is part of our growth plan. Thrivent recruits advisors through both its traditional field network and a newer Virtual Advice Team, an employee channel where advisors serve clients remotely rather than through a traditional in-person practice. Participants typically spend 12 to 24 months in the program before joining an established advisor team or launching their own practice.
Out of all the earnings periods Target reports over the year, Q4 is the most important because covers the holiday shopping season when consumers are traditionally most willing to spend on non-discretionary items-a category that is Target's bread and butter.
One donut shop in Saint Anthony, northeast Minneapolis, is delighting donut lovers with creative approaches to classic recipes. Opened in 2025 by Seneca Little, Waddup Dough's signature style serves scoops of ice cream inside a sliced donut before the creation is quickly pressed together in a warm panini press. The result is a brightly colored and super sweet ice cream sandwich.
There was something different about this one, though. Something about how visible the whole act was. Something about this one coming so soon after the last one. Whatever it was, the Alex Pretti killing seemed to spark a different reaction online. Meanwhile, the counternarrative seemed to move just as quickly, and AI imagery became so ubiquitous that it might have been hard to trust your view of such a heavily documented event. How is anyone supposed to make sense of any of it?
My partner, an immigrant from Brazil, shows love through acts of service. At first, I was confused. I had been raised to see romantic love, partner love, as centered on acts of adoration, big and intense actions designed to make me, the beloved, feel exceptional. My partner, who is romantic but not in that way, finds this focus on exceptional love confusing.
Net Sales -- $141.6 million, up 1.8%, supported by higher average order value and increased units per transaction. Gross Margin -- 52.3%, a 90 basis point improvement, driven by sourcing initiatives and sell-through of higher-cost inventory. Adjusted EPS -- Loss of $0.02, favorable to last year's loss by $0.04, with adjustments for $1.6 million in restructuring and a $2.4 million one-time sales tax contingency. Adjusted EBITDA -- $10.6 million, 7.5% of net sales, an increase of $2 million, or 23.9%.
Fiddelke, who officially took the reins of the struggling retailer on Sunday, laid out in a note on LinkedIn and on Target's website on Monday what his priorities are as he takes over. They include restoring Target's leadership in cheap-chic merchandise, making its stores and website easier and more pleasant to use, more fully leveraging tech to improve customer experience and operations, and "strengthening" employees and "growing alongside the communities" where Target runs its stores.
A Border Patrol agent killed Alex Pretti, 37, a US citizen who worked as a nurse at the local Veteran Affairs hospital, on Saturday morning. Pretti had been filming federal immigration agents when the confrontation began. Minneapolis and neighboring St. Paul have been the site of continuous protests since the Department of Homeland Security flooded the cities with immigration agents in December.
"Stand up for America," Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, implored on Saturday, after federal agents shot to death another one of his constituents. "Recognize that your children will ask you what side you were on. Your grandchildren will ask you what you did to act to prevent this from happening again-to make sure that the foundational elements of our democracy were rock solid. What did you do to protect your city? What did you do to protect your nation?"
Target's incoming CEO, who starts next week, sent a video message to staff in which he described the violence and loss of life in the local community as "incredibly painful;" he did not mention Trump or ICE directly. Others have been more blunt. Big names in tech and venture capital, as well as small business owners around the country, have expressed outrage at the Trump administration and ICE on their own social media pages, using words like "murderer," "shameful," and "a conscious-less administration."
Two fatal shootings are now central to those questions. Renee Good, a 37-year-old wife and mother, was fatally shot in her vehicle on January 7 by agent Jonathan Ross while attempting to drive away from the scene. The violence by ICE agents against civilians escalated from there, with reports describing an expanded federal presence in Minneapolis and mounting confrontations between agents and residents.
Before Walz ran for Congress and later governor, he was a teacher and football coach at Mankato West High School in southern Minnesota. Walz's political future looked bright in 2024 when his legislative successes and folksy image helped entice Kamala Harris to choose him as her running mate. Though they lost, Walz was still seen as a rising star within the Democratic Party - even a possible presidential candidate for 2028.
