Georgia Attorney General Leads Coalition Challenging ‘Unlawful’ Rule Demanding Companies Issue Annual Climate Change Reports

Georgia Atty Gen Chris Carr

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr on Thursday announced he is leading a coalition of 10 attorneys general in opposition to a new rule requiring publicly traded companies to create annual climate change reports.

Carr leads a coalition that includes attorneys general serving Georgia, West Virginia, Alabama, Alaska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Wyoming and Virginia in a petition for the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review whether the newly-enacted rule should remain.

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Ohio U.S. Senator JD Vance Demands Answers After SEC X Account ‘Compromised,’ Announces Premature Approval of of Spot-Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Funds

Vance Tillis

U.S. Senators JD Vance (R-OH) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) have sent a letter to Gary Gensler, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), demanding answers after the commission’s X account tweeted false information leading to “drastic swings in the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.”

On Tuesday, the SEC’s X account published a post announcing that it had approved Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to be listed on all registered U.S. securities exchanges.

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Proposed SEC Climate Disclosure Rule Will Add Costs That Consumers Will Bear, Critics Warn

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) has been slammed with comments from supporters and critics of its proposed climate disclosure rule.

The release of the final rule has been continually delayed, but its publication is anticipated in the next few months. Congressional Democrats are urging for it to be done sooner rather than later.

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Commentary: DC’s Revolving Door Is Swinging Briskly for the Eco-Green Eyeshade People

Washington’s revolving door is getting a fresh green paint job: Federal architects of a controversial new rule requiring businesses to measure their carbon footprints throughout their supply chains have joined a start-up company poised to reap millions by performing those calculations.

At least three ranking Securities and Exchange Commission officials have joined Persefoni, a company formed in 2020 for the purpose of measuring such footprints of large business enterprises. 

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Senator Bill Hagerty Joins Effort Demanding Answers on SEC Predictive Data Proposal

U.S. Senator and member of the Senate Banking Committee Bill Hagerty (R-TN) joined on Tuesday the effort against a new Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposal claiming that it “would harm broker-dealers, investment advisors, and Main Street investors.”

This follows the SEC proposing a new rule on July 26th that requires broker-dealers and investment advisors, irrespective of their size, to confront challenges posed by predictive data analytics (“PDA”) and related technologies like artificial intelligence (“AI”).

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Tennessee Congressman Mark Green Urges SEC to Reconsider a New Rule on Cybersecurity for Public Companies

U.S. Congressman and Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green (R-TN-07) signed a letter this week urging the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to rethink a new rule on cybersecurity for public companies.

According to the new SEC rule, effective Tuesday, publicly traded corporations must alert the SEC of a cyberattack within four days of the event. A company’s strategies and procedures for managing cybersecurity risk must also be disclosed on a regular basis, among other requirements.

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Tennessee AG Sends Letter to SEC Concerning the World’s Biggest Fashion Retailer’s Business Practices

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has joined a coalition of 15 other state attorneys general in sending a letter to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler regarding business practices reported by the China-founded, fast-fashion retailer SHEIN.

SHEIN was founded in Nanjing, China in 2008 has become the world’s largest fashion retailer with an estimated value of $64 billion. The company’s mobile app is currently the fourth most downloaded app in the United States. In addition, the company is one of TikTok’s largest advertisers and pays thousands of social media “influencers” to market its wares to consumers via videos on the platform.

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Iowa Congressman Zach Nunn Introduces Bill Aimed at Protecting Retirement Investments from Woke Politics

Amid rising concerns about the liberal political agenda driving environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment decisions at the expense of retirement income, U.S. Representative Zach Nunn (R-IA-03) has introduced the “Protecting Retirees’ Savings Act.”

The bill, according to proponents, will help eliminate conflicts of interest for financial managers that cost investors by lowering investment returns.

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Virginia AG Miyares and Other AGs ‘Demand Answers’ from BlackRock

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is the latest to join a coalition of attorneys general “demanding answers” from global investment firm BlackRock Inc., questioning its ability to manage funds passively.

Since August 2022, three groups of attorneys general representing 24 states have banded together in actions challenging company practices at BlackRock – the largest asset manager in the world and the first to reach $10 trillion in assets – claiming that it has allowed political persuasions to interfere with the investment of its clients’ funds.

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Ohio Congressman Legislates Against Use of SEC for Social Policy

U.S. Representative Dave Joyce (R-OH-14) is encouraging fellow congresspersons to get behind a resolution he introduced to shield American industry from new disclosure requirements meant to advance leftist environmental policy. 

Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed requirements for publicly traded companies to disclose information about the “climate-related risks that are reasonably likely to have a material impact on their business, results of operations, or financial condition….” 

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SEC Charges Eight ‘Social Media Influencers’ with Securities Fraud

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday announced charges against eight “social media influencers” in what the agency said was a coordinated effort to manipulate stocks via multiple Internet platforms. 

The agency said in a press release those charged where involved in a $100 million securities fraud scheme in which they used the social media platforms Twitter and Discord to “manipulate exchange-traded stocks.”

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Wisconsin Senator Johnson and Colleagues Urge White House to Reverse Major Climate Policies

Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson wrote jointly with several colleagues to President Joe Biden this week urging him to reverse major elements of his anti-fossil-fuel agenda. 

The letter from the senators takes issue with several actions the White House has taken to hinder investment in and use of oil, natural gas and coal in an effort the administration insists is important to lessening global warming. 

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Commentary: Connecting ‘Energy Inflation’ with ‘Climate Extremism’

In the approaching 2022 midterm elections, American voters will have the opportunity to decide whether oil industry executives are really to blame for high energy prices—or if it’s instead the political class that needs a shakeup. 

In a new report for Real Clear Energy, Joseph Toomey, a career-management consultant, makes a persuasive case that the energy inflation now victimizing American consumers and taxpayers is the result of deliberate public-policy choices made here at home. Even as President Biden vilifies energy companies, the evidence is overwhelming that the current regime in Washington is beholden to climate extremism at the expense of affordable energy, Toomey argues. 

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Rep. Rose Slams Corporate ESG Policies in Congressional Testimony

A U.S. Congressman from Tennessee testified in front of the House Rules Committee, where he spoke against proposed government regulations regarding Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) standards that he says will negatively impact farmers.

“I’d like to support by urging support for my bipartisan amendment, number 631, cosponsored by the gentlelady from Michigan, Representative Alyssa Slotkin, to prohibit the Securities and Exchange Commission from enforcing any provision on its rule making on enhanced standardization of climate-related disclosures for investors that would directly or indirectly require farmers to submit climate-related information to public companies or the SEC,” said Rep. John Rose (R-TN-06).

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Arizona Attorney General Brnovich Leads 24 States Objecting to SEC Requiring Climate Change Disclosures by Businesses

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is leading a coalition of 24 states objecting to proposed rule changes by the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) that would require publicly-traded businesses to disclose information about their greenhouse gas emissions and discuss climate risks. The coalition filed formal comments indicating the 500-page rule titled “The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors” goes beyond the jurisdiction of the SEC and into environmental regulation. 

In a 44-page letter addressed to the SEC, Brnovich and the others stated that the Biden “administration has tried and failed to impose regulation directly, and it now appears content to use back-door financial regulatory actions to implement its political will.” The coalition warned, “profit will become secondary to political interests, and capitalism will fall by the wayside.” The proposed rule “seeks to make ‘decisions of vast economic and political significance.’” They accused the SEC of “taking on major policy decisions that belong to Congress.” 

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‘Unprecedented Level of Federal Overreach’: 16 Governors Urge Biden to Rescind Costly Wall Street Climate Rules

A coalition of 16 Republican governors sent a letter Tuesday to President Joe Biden, urging him to rescind a proposal introducing a series of climate requirements for companies.

The recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposal, which forces publicly-traded companies to share so-called climate change risks and greenhouse gas emissions, would harm businesses and investors by adding high compliance costs, the governors argued in the letter addressed to both Biden and SEC Chairman Gary Gensler. The climate disclosure rule, they added, would also represent an overstepping of the SEC’s authority.

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Big Business Wins Again: Biden Climate Rules Will Hurt Small Companies Most

America’s top financial regulator issued climate disclosure rules that are more burdensome for smaller companies than large companies, according to the agency’s own analysis.

While the rules would cost large corporations $640,000 at first and $530,000 in subsequent years, they would cost smaller publicly-traded companies $490,000 initially and $420,000 in following years, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said in its proposal. The regulator’s analysis suggests that smaller companies would feel a relatively larger financial burden as a result of the proposed disclosure rules.

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GOP Calls Out Biden’s Attempt to Impose a ‘Green New Deal’ Through Wall Street Regulation

A group of 40 House Republicans sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Monday, urging the agency to rescind a regulatory proposal forcing companies to disclose “climate-related risks.”

The Republicans, led by House Oversight Subcommittee on Environment Ranking Member Ralph Norman, slammed the financial regulator, saying it exceeded its congressionally-mandated authority in issuing the climate rule, in the letter obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The lawmakers added that the rule was especially inappropriate given the ongoing energy crisis.

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Commentary: Expect Big Pivot from SEC to Require Climate, ESG Disclosures in Investor Filings

The biggest decision the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is likely to make this year will be on mandated disclosure of information related to climate change and corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. The Commission has been working on the issue since early last year, and a new proposed rule is now scheduled to be released on March 21st. The contents of that rule will likely determine the future direction of “responsible” investing in the United States.

In March of last year, then-Acting Chair Allison Herren Lee issued a request for information on the matter, consisting of 15 questions and described as a response to the “demand for climate change information and questions about whether current disclosures adequately inform investors.” The questions covered a wide range of topics, from how to measure greenhouse gas emissions to how climate disclosures “would complement a broader ESG disclosure standard.”

When the SEC first issued guidance on climate change-related disclosures for public companies in 2010, the standards were fairly general and advisory, but the questions from last year’s request-for-information suggests that the agency’s leadership is considering a more aggressive and prescriptive framework.

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Corporations Go Out of Their Way to Help Employees Get Abortions

Corporations, including Citigroup, Apple and Match, are helping their employees undergo abortions in light of new, state-level restrictions.

Citigroup announced a policy of covering travel costs for U.S.-based employees seeking abortions “in response to changes in reproductive healthcare laws in certain states” in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing. The policy will cover airfare and lodging, according to Bloomberg.

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Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer Seeks Information on SEC’s Cryptocurrency Regulation

U.S. Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN-06) sent a letter to Gary Gensler, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to receive more information relating to the agency’s information seeking process relating to cryptocurrency and blockchain firms.

The letter, a bipartisan effort signed by multiple representatives, encouraged accountability and transparency, as the group outlined more than a dozen questions about the process.

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Dr. Oz’s Ties to Pharma, Tech Complicate Anti-Corporate Campaign Claims

While Republican Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz has billed himself as a staunch opponent of big corporations, his ties to major technology and pharmaceutical corporations complicate his campaign rhetoric.

Oz, who announced his candidacy in late November, is running for the empty Senate seat left by retiring Republican Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey. The celebrity doctor has made opposition to major technology and pharmaceutical companies a hallmark of his campaign, pitching his experience working in television and exposing scams as an example of his anti-corporate positions.

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Securities and Exchange Commission to Crack Down on Private Companies, Heighten Disclosure Requirements

Securities and Exchange Commission building

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) plans to crack down on private companies, forcing them to disclose financial and operation statements more frequently, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Regulators have grown more concerned over the lack of oversight regarding private fundraising for companies, the WSJ reported. The private investment market has become a popular way for companies to raise money without undergoing the regulatory scrutiny required for public trading.

“When they’re big firms, they can have a huge impact on thousands of people’s lives with absolutely no visibility for investors, employees and their unions, regulators, or the public,” SEC Commissioner Allison Lee told the WSJ. “I’m not interested in forcing medium- and small-sized companies into the reporting regime.”

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Electric Truck Maker Pays $125 Million to Settle Charges It Defrauded Investors

Electric truck manufacturer Nikola announced Tuesday it had settled fraud charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), agreeing to pay the regulator $125 million.

The settlement is in response to allegations by the SEC that Nikola’s founder and former chief executive Trevor Milton misled investors about Nikola’s products and technological progress in order to boost the company’s share price. The SEC alleged that Milton misrepresented the anticipated costs and sources of electricity for its truck venture.

Milton was indicted by the Department of Justice in July on fraud charges, to which he pleaded not guilty.

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Chase Bank Fined $200 Million for ‘Widespread’ Record-Keeping Failures, Unapproved Communications

Federal regulators hit the largest bank in the U.S. with a $200 million fine Friday for failing to keep track of employees’ use of messaging apps, including WhatsApp, to evade federal record-keeping laws.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced Friday that a subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase & Co. would pay $125 million after admitting to “widespread” record-keeping failures. The bank will pay an additional $75 million fine to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for allowing unapproved communications since 2015.

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Arizona Attorney General Brnovich Part of AG Coalition Demanding Ben & Jerry’s Stop Boycotting Israel

Mark Brnovich

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich and 11 other attorneys general sent a letter to Unilever and its subsidiary, Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc., demanding they reverse their decision to boycott Israel in refusing to sell Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

“We must defend the laws of our states and oppose attempts by global corporations to engage in economic warfare against the State of Israel,” said Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich in a statement.

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Facebook Is Under Government Investigation over Leaked Documents

Facebook is being investigated over leaked company documents and allegations by a former employee, according to financial filings.

The company’s 10-Q form filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday mentions that Facebook is “subject to government investigations and requests” seemingly related to documents leaked by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen that detail tech giant’s business practices and internal research.

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Facebook Employees Actively Censored Conservative Websites, Even in Defiance of Managers

Facebook logo with smartphone showing lock in front

A series of new leaks from Big Tech giant Facebook has revealed even more bias against conservatives from the company’s employees, even to the point of causing internal debates between employees and upper management, according to the New York Post.

The latest leaks come from message board conversations reviewed by the Post, which showed back-and-forth discussions within Facebook about how to deal with conservative news outlets during last year’s race riots by far-left domestic terrorist organizations such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

Some employees expressed their desire to completely remove sites such as Breitbart from Facebook’s “News Tab” feature. When one such employee asked a manager about doing so, the manager responded by pointing out that “we saw drops in trust in CNN 2 years ago,” before rhetorically asking “would we take the same approach for them too?”

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Another Whistleblower Files SEC Complaint Alleging Facebook Didn’t Do Enough About ‘Hate Speech’, ‘Misinformation’

Person looking on Facebook with trending topics

Another former Facebook employee filed a whistleblower complaint Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission alleging that the tech giant misled its investors by failing to combat the spread of hate and misinformation on its platform, The Washington Post reported.

The former employee, whose name is not yet public, alleged that Facebook executives chose not to pursue adequate content moderation policies related to hate speech and misinformation for the sake of maximizing profits. The complaint also alleges that Facebook did not do enough about alleged Russian misinformation on the platform for fear of upsetting former President Donald Trump.

In particular, the complaint alleges that Trump and his associates received preferential treatment, according to the Post.

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Biden Administration Approves Rule Forcing Companies to Hire Minority, LGBTQ+ Executives and Publicly Disclose Diversity

group of people in an office watching a presenter

The top U.S. financial regulatory agency approved a rule that forces publicly-traded companies to reveal the diversity of their executive boardroom to investors.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) voted in favor of the rule, which will apply to all companies traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange, according to the text of the approval released Friday. The rule, first proposed by Nasdaq in December, will also require companies to hire at least one female director and one either minority or LGBTQ+ director to their boards.

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GameStop Revolt Redditors File Class Action Lawsuit Against Robinhood for Cutting off Access to the Market as Hedge Fund Losses Mount

by Andrew Kerr   A class-action lawsuit filed against the investing app Robinhood on Thursday just hours after it prohibited its users from purchasing GameStop stock is unlikely to be successful in court, legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation. And federal regulators with the Securities and Exchange Commission are going to have a hard time proving that the millions of retail investors from the Reddit forum WallStreetBets who forced a monumental short squeeze on GameStop, causing the company’s price to skyrocket nearly 1,500% in January, violated any securities laws, the experts said. “They may be ganging up, but it doesn’t seem like there are a lot of material misrepresentations being made. And the SEC’s standard modus operandi is to go after people who are making material misrepresentations,” University of Michigan Law professor Adam Pritchard told the DCNF. “These people may just be stupid. But there are a bunch of them and they’re encouraging each other. It’s not a crime to be stupid.” GameStop’s price explosion in January was made possible because hedge funds and other institutional investors had shorted 140% of the company’s existing shares. When an investor shorts a stock, they’re betting that the security will decrease…

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SEC Transaction Fee Pilot Program Could Save Big Money for Small Investors, Pensioners

SEC building

By Robert Romano   In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a new transaction fee pilot that would “subject stock exchange transaction fee pricing, including ‘maker-taker’ fee-and-rebate pricing models, to new temporary pricing restrictions across three test groups, and require the exchanges to prepare and publicly post data,” according to the agency’s website. The idea is to see what distortions these fees and rebates have on “best execution” of orders to buy and sell stocks. For example, an excess of rebates might lead to investors’ orders waiting on longer lines for execution, allowing high frequency traders to game the system, see those orders incoming and beat them to the punch. In 2014, 60 Minutes interviewed “Flash Boys” author Michael Lewis, who described this type of “front-running” of investors, saying, “Means they’re able to identify your desire to, to buy shares in Microsoft and buy ’em in front of you and sell ’em back to you at a higher price. It all happens in infinitesimally small periods of time. There’s speed advantage that the faster traders have is milliseconds, some of it is fractions of milliseconds. But it’s enough for them to identify what you’re gonna do and do it before you do…

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The $36 Billion Multi-Employer Pension Time Bomb Is Almost Ready to Go Off

retired people

By Robert Romano   114 out of the nation’s 1,400 multi-employer pension plans covering 1.3 million workers are underfunded to the tune of $36.4 billion, with plans expected to start going insolvent in the next 5 years or so, an Aug. 2017 analysis by Cheiron has found. This is the end result of unsustainable collective bargaining arrangements between unions and employer, creating defined benefit pension plans that promise retirements far in excess of what could be justified by monthly contributions and market returns. If these had been investment products, surely the Securities and Exchange Commission might have investigated for fraud. But because they were collectively bargained pensions, a different set of fiduciary rules apply. Other factors leading to the shortfall include unfavorable demographics with fewer new workers joining the plan as the ratio of workers to retirees continues to drop. Unfortunately for pensioners, that will mean a huge cut in retirement benefits should the plans go belly up. Even with federally backed Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), in the event of failure, only a fraction of benefits will be paid out. According to the PBGC, the payouts under existing law can be “summarized as a maximum guarantee amount of $12,870 per year (payments…

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