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Republicans Plot Legislative Avalanche Targeting Progressive Big Biz

Congressional Republicans are launching the 118th Congress with a series of bills targeting the politicization of big business.

GOP members view ESG investing and major firms partnering with the federal government as part of the same problem. From bureaucrats pushing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing to companies themselves entering the political arena, officials in both chambers are pledging legislation and investigations. In some cases, they are even supporting a Biden administration antitrust lawsuit that could break up Meta.

“There’s a whole movement to bring this woke ideology everywhere,” freshman Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt told the Daily Caller. “It’s nuts. And I think you just need people speaking out and being willing to take action.”

As state Attorney General, Schmitt signed on to lawsuits targeting Twitter, Facebook and the financial ratings firm Morningstar. He also launched a probe into a group of banks that promised to issue loans with the goal of reducing worldwide carbon emissions. Discovery and testimony in the big tech lawsuits revealed that federal agents regularly contacted social media companies with a list of accounts labeled as spreading disinformation. Many of those accounts were later removed by the social media companies.

“It ought to scare everybody in this country, regardless of whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, that the government is that involved in censoring speech,” Schmitt said, citing social media’s “censoring Americans and censoring conservatives” as his rationale for supporting a Justice Department lawsuit that would break up Meta. “I think we need to bust up big tech, no doubt about it.”

While not all Republicans agree with the need for antitrust enforcement, they do concur that politicized tech companies threaten the free exchange of ideas.

“Whenever you’ve got too much concentration in anything, even something amorphous like information, you’ve got to be careful. That generally ends up in bad behavior because you have no one keeping you honest,” Republican Indiana Sen. Mike Braun told the Daily Caller. “Whenever any entity starts pushing a certain political point of view we’ve got to be careful.”

Braun recently introduced legislation would overturn a Biden administration rule allowing retirement plan fiduciaries to consider ESG factors when making investments. Before the rule, instituted in November, fiduciaries could only consider financial factors. Twenty-five states filed a lawsuit against the Department of Labor challenging the rule on Jan. 26.

In an interview, Braun noted studies showing that funds that consider ESG factors have worse rates of return than those that do not. The institutional asset management firm BlackRock, which famously pivoted to ESG, lost $1.7 trillion over the first half of 2022, more than any other firm over the time period.

“Until they show they can get better returns, they shouldn’t be talking about it in the first place. It’s a slippery slope where you start involving ideology and political points of view into return on investment,” Braun said.

Current and former Biden administration officials previously worked for companies that employ ESG investment principles. Outgoing National Economic Council chairman Brian Deese was the head of sustainable investing at BlackRock, and Treasury Department chief of staff Didem Nisanci led climate disclosure task force at the Financial Stability Board.

https://dailycaller.com/2023/02/10/republicans-esg-congress-investigations/

Blue State Lawmakers Push To Hide Teachers’ Conversations On Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation

Connecticut Democratic lawmakers are pushing for legislation that would hide teachers’ conversations with students regarding gender identity and sexual orientation.

Democratic state Reps. Sarah Keitt, Dominique Johnson, Cristin McCarthy Vahey and Jennifer Leeper introduced “The Act Concerning Nondisclosure of Certain Communications Between Teachers and Students” which would prohibit Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for teachers’ conversations with students on certain subjects including sexual orientation, gender identity and race. The legislation would aid teachers in helping students transition their gender in secret at school, parental rights in education advocates told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“The language in this bill seems to be a deliberate attempt to hide information from parents and the public,” Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for Parents Defending Education, a group focused on parental rights in education, told the DCNF. “Schools are public and parents have a right to know what their children are being told and taught, especially when it comes to subjects that have become highly ideological and politicized in the classroom. It is never okay to tinker in the minds of children and then keep it a secret.”

Democratic lawmakers also introduced a piece of legislation in the state that would prohibit public school educators from being punished or restricted from teaching “about subjects in which ideological differences of opinion exist between such board and educator.” The bill names topics including “gender, sexuality, race, racism and climate change.”

The pieces of legislation would diminish transparency within districts when parents need to know what is going on in their child’s school, the Hartford County, Connecticut, chapter of Moms For Liberty, a coalition of parents focused on transparency in education, told the DCNF.

“We need transparency in our school district, whether it be with the administration, board of education, and especially with our childrens’ teachers who, most importantly interact with our children daily during most of the school hours,” the Moms For Liberty chapter told the DCNF. “Who would know the children best but the parents?”

With a Democratic majority in the state senate and house, the bills have a path to become law.

Across the country, school districts are hiding student’s gender transitions from their parents; some of the nation’s largest school districts including Los Angeles Unified School District, Chicago Public Schools and New York Public Schools have policies which hide a student’s transgender status from their parents. The policies have become a focus in the battle for an increase in parental rights within the classroom.

https://dailycaller.com/2023/02/10/blue-state-lawmakers-push-hide-teachers-conversations-on-gender-identity-sexual-orientation/