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25 States Sue Biden Admin Over Woke Investing Rules

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Over two dozen states filed a lawsuit against the Department of Labor (DOL) Thursday, claiming its recent ruling on plan fiduciaries prioritizes woke Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing over protecting the retirement savings of millions of Americans.

The lawsuit, co-led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton along with three energy companies, challenges a DOL rule that authorizes fiduciaries, such as pension plan managers, to consider non-financial factors when administering client assets, according to the lawsuit. The suit alleges that, as the rule allows fiduciaries to focus on ESG factors over long-term financial stability, the assets of 152 million workers could be jeopardized.

“This rule is an affront to every American concerned about their retirement account,” said Attorney General Paxton in press release. “The fact that the Biden Administration is now opting to risk the financial security of working-class Americans to advance a woke political agenda is insulting and illegal. For generations, federal law has required that fiduciaries place their clients’ financial interests at the forefront, and I intend to fight the Biden Administration in court to ensure that they cannot put hard-working Americans’ retirement savings at risk.”

The DOL initially released the rule in November after overturning a Trump administration rule that barred companies from evaluating ESG factors when making investment decisions. The DOL believed the Trump-era rule “unnecessarily restrained” the fiduciaries’ ability to weigh ESG factors that benefit plan participants financially.

After the rule was released, experts told the DCNF that the rule “betrays” the interests of those who have funded trust assets and places “enormous pressure” on fiduciaries to focus on ESG factors over more significant factors.

“The problem with the DOL rule is not that it permits fiduciaries to consider ESG factors,” Amberwave Partners co-founder and portfolio manager Dan Katz told the DCNF. “The problem with the rule is that it adds to the enormous pressure on fiduciaries to overemphasize ESG factors over other, typically more significant, factors that ESG ignores.”

“This is a mistake and betrays the interests of the people who the US Department of Labor is supposed to serve: American workers and retirees,” Strive Asset Management Executive Chairman Vivek Ramaswamy previously told the DCNF.

The DOL did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

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One Comment

  1. Trump was 100% correct that ESG should play no part in any fiduciaries investing decisions. ESG is just another piece of the “Green New Deal” environmental scam. Last year we saw the country with the highest ESG score on the planet (Sri Lanka) collapse because they banned chemical fertilizer and they had to borrow money (that they couldn’t afford) from China to feed their own people. We also see massive protests in the Netherlands because of the similar ESG policies bankrupting farmers. Then we watched after 20 years of Europe’s “Green New Deal” policies shutting down their nuclear and coal fired plants that they became totally dependent on Russian gas and oil. Trump warned them and they ignored him. The biggest irony is that if we had continued with our energy independence and growing surplus we could be supplying Europe with gas and oil instead of Russia. That it has all been a scam should be obvious to everyone as Europe’s inflation is now worse than the U.S. and their electricity costs have risen !000% in some places and businesses are having to close down because they can’t afford their utilities. Now they threaten to fine and jail their own citizens for turning up the heat too high.

    What’s even more bizarre is that Joe Biden and the Democrats just gleefully passed their laughably called “Inflation Reduction Act” which actually will increase inflation and is nothing but a 730 billion dollar Green New Deal slush fund for their Democrat donors and pet projects. This while California and four other states want to ban gas vehicles by 2030 yet they can’t even keep the electricity on long enough to charge the electric vehicles they already have and want people to turn their thermostats up over 78 degrees in a heat wave. It’s so ridiculous and completely avoidable, especially when we have enough abundant energy to power the whole country for 500 years.

    Wake up America. Unless you vote these useless communist ideologues out of office you will deserve the dystopian, universally poor, dangerous, lawless, racist, society that you will leave to your children and grandchildren.

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