Investors Using Your Money to Promote ESG – with Texas Senator Bryan Hughes: Today we have Texas state Senator Bryan Hughes on the program to shed some light on this topic of investors using your investments to promote ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance). BlackRock State Street and Vanguard are the most notable investment firms engaging in this. They use ownership of the shares you invest in, to leverage influence in large companies to follow this dangerous ESG philosophy. Senator Hughes brings all the details to the table and gives us the do’s and don’t’s when it comes to selecting who to trust with your investments.

Air Date: 3/20/2023

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Tim Barton and Rick Green

Guest: Texas state Senator Bryan Hughes

Listen:

Download: Click Here

Listen:

Download: Click Here

Transcription:

Rick Green
Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture, it’s WallBuilders. We’re taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. I’m Rick Green America’s constitution coach and a former Texas legislator along with David and Tim Barton. Bringing you these truths David, of course, America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders. Tim Barton’s national speaker, and pastor and president of WallBuilders. You can learn more about all three of us at our website WallBuilders.com . And also at our radio site, WallBuildersLive.com . Links there for archives as well. So if you missed some programs, last couple of weeks, you want to catch up, all of those links are available at the website. Certainly encourage you to listen to those good news Fridays, get a good encouragement pick me up going into the weekend, Thursdays you can get into those foundational questions we get from the audience, you can send those in to [email protected] . And on Thursdays, we answer as many of those as we can. And then Monday through Wednesday, of course, we interview as many people as we can on hot topics of the day, get their perspective, and give you a chance to get that biblical, historical constitutional perspective from them. But then for you to apply it in your family and your community. A couple of quick reminders before we jump into today’s program. Number one, don’t forget what we’re always saying here, if we’re going to save the country, save liberty, if we’re going to restore these things, we got to be in God’s word that is the number one thing. We’ve got to bring back a biblical worldview, biblical perspective on every issue of the day. So just want to encourage you to do that. Make sure you’re diving in every day, getting into God’s word. And then secondly, when encouraged you to be a part of the solution in your community, become a constitution coach, host a biblical citizenship class, be a leader there in your community. All you got to do is get people in the room, in your living room or at your church or wherever it might be, and then play the videos and we give those away for free. So check that out today at ConstitutionCoach.com . Alright guys, we got Senator Bryan Hughes from Texas coming up a little later in the program, talking about this whole, you know, BlackRock and these other big companies, and the things that they’ve been doing with our money, with our tax dollars. That’s the thing, and you know, people listening today, you know, we’re not just saying, oh, these are private companies that didn’t… shouldn’t do X, Y, and Z. Part of the problem is they’re private companies doing X, Y, and Z with our taxpayer money, and with massive funds, that are being directed by states. And so it’s going to be pretty interesting to see how to how to intercept many of those things. So guys, many of our listeners may not know who BlackRock is, or who these companies are, or why their implementation of ESG is such a bad thing. So maybe just a quick primer on what that is and how they implement it in a way that can harm our culture.

David Barton
Yeah, let’s go back to the beginning of the way that progressives deal with climate. The way progress to deal with climate, this is the altar at which they worship. Everything in your life needs to be controlled, by whether it’s good for the planet, good for the environment. One of the things that Rabbi Lapin pointed out was that if you look at the creation that occurred in Genesis 1, 2, and 3. He says things are always ascending upward, you started with just the, you know, everything that’s out there, the land, the Earth, the moon, the… and then you get the oceans and you get the light, and then you get the fish and you get the birds and then you get the animals and finally you get man. And he says it occurs in the ascending order. So creation occurs from the least important to the most important, most important is man. And what happens is in Romans 1, you have secular people who worship the creation more than the Creator is what the Bible says. So they completely reverse the sequence of God’s creation to where that the most important is the environment. And the least important is man. We’ll sacrifice man. And anything that it takes to save the planet will do that, and the planet is not in danger. So what happens is they come in with this agenda. And this is secular progressive, is it’s all about saving the planet. And so they started this back a number of years ago, you have Kyoto then you have Copenhagen, under… back under Clinton, it was called Kyoto, and then Copenhagen came layer. And then under Obama, it was the Paris Accords. And the Paris Accords are, we’re going to get all these secular nations together to save the planet, save the globe. And so when Trump came in, one of the first things he did was set aside the Paris Accords. And when Biden got back in the first thing he did was reinstate the Paris Accords. So the Paris Accords are how we’re going to control people’s behavior to save the planet. And so when that happened back under Obama, they had 400 banks there, and 400 banks said we’ve got to change the way people live. They have to get off of using fossil fuels. We can’t have any kind of fossil fuel stuff. Anything that’s related to coal, or oil or gas or anything else that has to change. We’ve got to change what we do and what we consume, because that’s hurting the planet. And so they came up with all this stuff to regulate our lives and control our lives. And they called it energy… they call the new format ESG which is we have to get control of energy. We have to get control of the societal norms. societal norms is this is their agenda pro LGBTQIA+ It’s anti religion, it’s anti traditional family. So we’re going to take the woke definition of society, and we’re going to take the woke definition of governance, that governance is not a republic, it’s we telling you what to do, we are the experts we know better. And this is how much of Europe has been if you doubt what this is just look at what has happened in Canada, with Justin Trudeau, the Paris people, they say he’s the epitome of what we want in a leader. So this is where ESG is heading. So we in America have been fairly unaware of it, until it started really getting into our pocketbooks. And then we saw, this came out with Biden at the start of his administration. So he’s been promoting and talking ESG. And now we find that these ESG forces, this Paris Accord forces, they have taken over so much of the money control. There are three groups BlackRock, and Vanguard and State Street that have about $22 trillion of assets, they have become fund managers for lots of different groups. And in fund management, they say, hey, we’ll take your teacher pension funds, Texas, and we’ll invest them and make money on it. Well, they take those teacher pension funds for the state of Texas, and they invest it, but they invest it in companies that are woke and that are doing climate things that they agree with. So that means like, if you’re in West Virginia, as they did in West Virginia, they say, you know, we’re a bank, and you work for coal mines and coal mines are destroying the planet. So we can’t give you a loan. And I know you need a house loan, you get a loan to get food, but you just can’t do that, because you’re working for coal mines. And then they told coal mines we can’t give you any loans for any equipment or upgrades or anything else. And so they’re shutting down businesses that they disagree with. And so this is ESG. So what’s happened is a number of states have gotten together and said, wait. And this started three years ago with Texas. We said, wait a minute, what… if you’re going to take our state funds, which could be our retirement funds, our pension funds, it could be our land funds, anything else. You cannot invest it in stuff that is going to promote this woke anti planet kind of stuff, we’re not going to let that happen. So other states joined on, and now they’ve come back. And so this is what ESG is all about. And it’s about a group of people who want to control the world and protect the world from people. People are the worst enemies they have, versus people who believe and know, God put the world here and it serves us. We’re the ones who are to be stewards of the world, not the other way around. And that’s what the ESG debate is all about. And it’s really gone really, really high now, because $22 trillions of dollars, what happens is these guys can take that $22 trillion, and they can control companies like Mobil Exxon. Mobil Exxon, if you recall, 15 years ago Mobil Exxon was the largest corporation on the face of the planet. Today, Mobil Exxon is not even in the top 15 corporations on face of the planet. Because the ESG people took all the stock they had. They elected new people to the board that are anti oil, anti environment, anti energy kind of folks. And so even your great energy companies no longer are, and this is part of phasing out, we’re going to electric vehicles, you don’t have a choice on that. We’re going to tell you what to do. And we haven’t figured out what to do with the batteries yet, or even how to harvest them or what to do. And they’re worse than than oil is. But that doesn’t matter, we just hate oil. So there’s so many stupid things with ESG. Nonetheless, that’s the political 900 pound gorilla coming at us all. And Bryan Hughes, who’s been in the Texas legislature, and really the Texas Legislature passed the first anti ESG law three years ago. But in the last three years, this thing has been on steroids, it has taken off, it has grown into a big huge movement. It was already a big global movement. But now that global stuff has come in, so Bryan Hughes with the Texas Legislature has recently gotten in the middle of this again and said, wait a minute, guys, we told you what we wanted to done with our money. And you’ve been disregarding that. We want to see… We want some better accountability from you. And we don’t want you doing this. And so as we saw this happen with Bryan in the legislature, and he got really aggressive with these folks from BlackRock and others in demanding accountability because they are handling our money. It became a national kind of news reported issue, which it should be, but it’s something that everybody needs to be aware of this ESG stuff is coming at you, whether you like it or not, whether you agree with it or not. Right now, anybody that’s got $22 trillion is going to have a lot of influence over your life in ways that you can’t control and the laws that go on and the policies that go on and the banking decisions that go on that has a lot of control. And so Bryan has been right on the front of this in helping push back on this woke agenda they’re trying to impose on America through economic policies.

Rick Green
Stay with us, folks. We’ll be right back with Bryan Hughes, senator from the great state of Texas. You’re listening to WallBuilders.

Tim Barton
This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. The second amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees to every individual the right to keep and bear arms has been targeted for years now by those who are determined to dismantle the individual right to self protection. Opponents argue that only the militia, the military, and law enforcement are to have and use firearms. But those who wrote the Second Amendment strenuously disagreed, including founding father Richard Henry Lee, a signer of the Declaration, a president of the Continental Congress, and one of those who actually frame the Second Amendment. He declared, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them. For more information about Richard Henry Lee, in the history of the Second Amendment, go to WallBuilders.com .

Rick Green
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Great to have our good buddy Bryan Hughes, state senator from Texas with us. Bryan, always good to have you, brother. Thanks for some time, today.

Bryan Hughes
Rick, I’m thankful for you. And as you know, I’ve known you forever and been listening for a long time. I’m honored to be on with you.

Rick Green
Well, man, I know you’re in the middle of a Texas Legislative session. So you got a million issues flying past you right now. But one of the ones that got some attention nationally was, you know, the exchange that you had with some of the folks from BlackRock and others. And it all has to do with this whole ESG thing. So if you could just tell us real quick before we get into what happened at the hearing, what is ESG? And why are you as a senator, and why is the legislature interested in this?

Bryan Hughes
Rick, it is really something. It’s really hard to conceive of. It’s like so many things, where they take terms that used to have a meaning we all understood, but they redefine those terms. And so under the guise of E, S, G, which is for environmental, social, and governance, what you have as these Wall Street firms like BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, I bet countless people listening to this broadcast, have their 401 K’s with BlackRock, maybe you’re in a state retiree system or you have money that you watch in a university endowment fund. State Street, Vanguard, BlackRock invest trillions of dollars, they hold trillions of dollars, and it’s other people’s money. So Rick, you give them some money to invest for you. And then they buy stock with that money. And under federal law, they own the stock. What does that mean? That means they buy shares in Exxon, Walmart, every other company you can think of, and when the annual meeting of those companies come around, here’s BlackRock, and they’ve got millions of shares in Exxon, for example, and they go to Exxon, and they say, hey, if you want us to vote our shares in favor of you to keep your job, Mr. CEO, if you want us to vote these shares to keep the board members you want, then we need you to do the following things. It’s kind of like in Chicago in the 1920s, when the Al Capone’s guy comes in, and he says, hey, you got a nice store here. I’d hate for it to burn down, I can help you with that if you’ll pay me for protection. Forgive me, but it’s like that. And so they’re making these companies take left wing positions, at the risk of voting the board out, firing the management. And this is all been happening quietly over the last few years. Stuff that the left could never get accomplished in Congress, or in a state legislature. They’re doing it in corporate boardrooms. And Rick, they’re using our money to do it. It’s horrible what’s been happening, but we’re on to them. We’re pushing back.

Rick Green
Well, and that’s, you knew… you read my mind on the next question- how to push back, right, with these big massive corporations? Who are they willing to listen to? And how do we put pressure on them, because I guess as a consumer, I could try to figure out where that money’s going with my mutual funds and 401ks and everything you’re talking about and try to, you know, direct my funds better to companies that aren’t going to do this. I think we should encourage people to do that. Absolutely. And then what can… what are you what are you working on? And what led to this this hearing were you… actually question, these major corporations?

Bryan Hughes
We did, Rick, you know, this started two years ago, Texas passed Senate Bill 13. And it was aimed at these big banks, like Bank of America and other banks that had said publicly, we are no longer going to loan money for oil and gas projects. And so you know, Rick, that if there’s no money for a project, the project doesn’t get done. If there’s no oil and gas, that means the price of energy goes up. That means the price of everything we buy goes up. It harms the poor, mostly, but it hurts everyone. And so we passed this bill that said to these banks, if you boycott oil and gas, Texas boycotts you. no pension work for you, no bond work for you, no university endowment fund work for you, and it’s having an effect. Other states are starting to push back. And so now, you mentioned the hearing. Texas senate committees have subpoena power. We don’t use it very often, but we have subpoena power. And because BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard invest so much money on behalf of the State of Texas, we’re a pretty big customer. And so we…

Rick Green
And when you say on behalf of the State of Texas, that’s all the different funds, like the permanent school fund or other areas where a lot of, you know, teacher retirement funds, those kinds of things are state funds.

Bryan Hughes
Rick, you’re exactly right. The Employee Retirement System of Texas, Teacher Retirement System of Texas, that money belongs to those retirees, and a lot of that has been managed by BlackRock. And so we told BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, we want to see documents to show what you’ve been doing, because they’ve been going around crowing about how they’re using all the shares they own to push public policy. I bet many of our listeners know who Larry Fink is. He’s been for the last few years just bragging about what they’re doing. He says they want to do what’s called a fundamental reshaping of finance. He called it stakeholder capitalism. Rick, it used to be as someone managed money for you, their job was to maximize returns, make you money. But now these firms say, oh, no, it’s our job to push public policy. And so what we’re telling them is, hey, you take care of managing the money, let us take care of the politics. The people can make their own choices on politics. So we sent subpoenas…

Rick Green
because it’s kind of like an undermining of the… I mean, this is some people are going to say this exaggeration, it’s an undermining of the Republicans, an undermining of how a Constitutional Republic works. It’s taking away, you as my senator, my representative in government, making those public policy decisions as we would expect, and giving that to these unknown, not elected, you know, backroom deal Corporation folks.

Bryan Hughes
Rick, that’s exactly what’s happening. And as you say, it’s happening quietly, no one even sees it. That’s part of what we sent them a subpoena for. They said, they’ve been forcing these companies to take action. We want to know what companies? What actions? What did you threaten them with? What did you do? And so we’ve gotten thousands of documents, we did have to send a subpoena to BlackRock, we also had BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard appear and to ordered to testify at this hearing. One of the things they’ve done, Rick, they’ve joined a group, for example, called Net Zero Asset Managers. And when you join this group, you pledge to use all the assets you have under management, to push for the Paris Climate Accords, for Net Zero by 2050. Now, Rick, you and I want clean air and clean water, all of your listeners do. It’ll be a great day when technology gets there, and we don’t need fossil fuels. But we’ve got a ways to go. We’re not there today. So cutting off fossil fuels by that time, would raise the cost of living, raise the cost of goods, put people in darkness. And so BlackRock will say, oh, but wait, we have this fund for ESG. If folks want to invest in ESG, they can. We have this other fund for other things. But Rick, when they join this group, they pledged to use all assets under management, yours, mine, the state of Texas, everyone’s and so that’s what we wanted to talk to them about, because they have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder returns. But on the other side of their mouth, they’re saying, we’re going to push everything toward this political goal. So that’s what we had the hearing about. And that’s what we made them come answer your questions about.

Rick Green
Well, how how did they do? Did they answer questions? Or did they dance?

Bryan Hughes
They danced. Rick, the BlackRock witness came a very nice lady, very sharp. And so we put statements in front of her, documents we got from BlackRock, even their website, and their website says, We joined climate action 100 to push for Net Zero by 2050. That’s what… we got that from their own documents, and couldn’t get much of an answer out of the witness to tell you the truth. But we put a lot of documents up a lot of people watch the hearing, just to shine a light on what is happening. There was some good news. I mentioned BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard after we set this hearing, and ordered those three firms to appear, Vanguard, a very large investment firm, they withdrew their membership in Net Zero Asset Managers. And it’s encouraging Rick and their CEO made a statement: our job is to maximize shareholder returns. And that’s what we’re going to focus on. So there’s some encouragement. Other red states are doing similar to what Texas is doing. And Rick, there’s enough of us, if the red states push back and use our pension funds, our retirement funds, our endowment funds, as you say, we’re talking about billions and billions of dollars. If we all push back, we can teach them some manners and teach them to not play politics with our people’s money.

Rick Green
I love it, teach them some manners and teach them to not play politics with our money. Fantastic. Well, Senator Hughes, you’re well known for the life issue and so many other things that you’ve worked so hard and been on the on the front lines of. I appreciate the fact that you’ve got the breadth to also go after these economic issues and there’s just… you got a lot of stuff going on man. And I appreciate you taking time to come and inform our listeners and us about it as well. And I know you got a couple of really busy months coming up with the final part of the session. Keep up the great work, our listeners are going to be praying for you. We’re going to be praying for you. And look forward to getting you back and getting some good news on some of the bills that passed this session.

Bryan Hughes
Rick, I’m following your lead. I thank the Lord for you. I’m so… we’re so blessed to know you to be your friend and our country and our state are blessed for what you’re doing. We thank the Lord for you.

Rick Green
Well right back at you, man. That’s Senator Bryan Hughes, folks stay with us. We’ll be right back with David at Tim Barton.

Have you noticed the vacuum of leadership in America, we’re looking around for leaders of principle to step up and too often, no one is there. God is raising up a generation of young leaders with a passion for impacting the world around them. They’re crying out for the mentorship and leadership training they need. Patriot Academy was created to meet that need. Patriot Academy graduates now serve in state capitals around America, in the halls of Congress and business, in the film industry, in the pulpit in every area of the culture they’re leading effectively and impacting the world around them. Patriot Academy is now expanding across the nation. And now’s your chance to experience this life changing week that trains champions to change the world. Visit PatriotAcademy.com for dates and locations. Our core program is still for young leaders 16 to 25 years old, but we also now have a citizen track for adults. So visit the website today to learn more. Help us fill the void of leadership in America. Join us in Training Champions to change the world at PatriotAcademy.com . We’re back here on WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. And thanks to Senator Bryan Hughes for joining us as well. Back with David and Tim Barton. And it’s not just Texas, of course, guys, we’ve seen as you mentioned, you know, David, other states are moving in on this, like West Virginia is taking some big steps. There’s other ways for this to, you know, to snowball, if you will. And now we see actual action on one of the companies parts anyway, to move away from this agenda. So good reminder that it, you know, these things that seems so big, giant companies, big states with big budgets, I can’t do anything… Here it is, we’re seeing results. This is good stuff.

David Barton
Yeah, Rick. There’s no question Other states are involved. There’s 28 states right now working on trying to limit ESG type of stuff. Utah just passed a complete comprehensive measure on this. It’s big stuff going on the legislature trying to protect the freedom of average citizens.

Tim Barton
And guys, it’s worth noting too, that even if states get involved and do this, there still is a limited amount of impact they can have based on how much money their state is investing. However, making a statement is still better than doing nothing. We can look at things, whether it be Disney, with some of the woke stuff happen and people said, well then we’re not going to buy the product anymore. And we can go back with Target or, right, some of these old, different stores that have done this over time. And people said, well, if you’re going to embrace some of these anti American or anti biblical anti family values, we’re not going to support you. And if you look at their stock, their stock didn’t tank, but it went down 8% or 10%. And when it went down 8% or 10% it caused executives to go, wait a second, we can’t afford to lose this 8% or 10%, because that cuts a significant portion of our profit margin. We want to do what we can to help bring those people back, we want to drive people away. It’s no different when you look at BlackRock where there are so many individuals now who are paying attention to what their investment is, what their retirement accounts are. And they’re talking to… their investors are saying, hey, I want to make sure that I’m not investing in BlackRock, and it is hard to have investments with companies where there’s not a company that’s semi woke on some level, but there’s… it’s almost like there’s degrees of evil, right? And it’s like, okay, I don’t want to be in the one that is the most outrageous and ridiculous. Let’s stay away from the worst, and let’s just do the best job we can. And there’s people doing that with investments now. And it is making a difference. And also, you can look at the fact that over the last year ESG investments was the lowest performing investments there were, which is now given a lot of reason for some of these different boards, some of these different clients to go, what are you doing with our money, you are investing in things that you know, do not have returns, and there’s some financial liability there. So there is some good news happening on these fronts. And it’s great that there were people like the legislature in the state of Texas that were taking a lead on this several years ago, saying well we’re going to do what we can, we can’t solve all the problems. This again, this is kind of where we find ourselves. We can’t solve all these problems. But if everybody will do it where they can, we can make a difference and this overall battle against ESG.

David Barton
And you know, stats show right now that if you have a retirement account, it’s probably invested with some of these BlackRock guys or State Street guys. And so it’s something that even if you have a retirement… if you’re a teacher, if you’re a law enforcement officer, if you’re a city official, whatever it is, you can go back and tell your people who are handling that. I want you to get all of my retirement funds or all of my healthcare funds or whatever, I want that gone. So that’s the way that every single one of us can have some impact on this. Take the money away from BlackRock, so they don’t have that money, so they can’t go in and tell boards, what they have to do with energy stuff. Get your own money, whether it’s in investments, it’s not hurting our freedom. And probably again, if you have retirement funds, it’s going to be in one of these bad accounts. So work with your manager, whoever that is, to get those retirement funds somewhere else.

Rick Green
Alright folks, we’re out of time for today. Thanks again for tuning in, for being a part of the solution, for taking the things that we’re teaching here and sharing it with as many people as you can. That’s easy to do on your social media feeds. It’s something you can do with just a few clicks of a button. Or you might even just get people together and do one of our classes like we’re talking about all the time- Biblical Citizenship or Constitution Alive, getting people together, that community is so important. And speaking of getting people together, we got our big kickoff for the Patriot Academy campus. The groundbreaking, the ceremonial groundbreaking, is going to take place April 22nd. And we would love for you to be there, come in from all over the country to Fredericksburg, Texas for the weekend. You can be a part of the groundbreaking celebration there on Saturday, April 22 at two o’clock PM with Congresswoman Lauren Boebert and John Rich and Tim Barton and many others and stay over for our very first constitutional defense course on the Patriot Academy campus. Get your handgun defense training and your constitution training all at once. We’d love to see you there. Check that out at PatriotAcademy.com . Thanks for listening to WallBuilders.