The Daily Signal - Oklahoma Treasurer Leads Fight Against ESG

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

Oklahoma is center stage in the fight against environmental, social, and governance policies (ESG), and the man leading the charge is state Treasurer Todd Russ. Russ was in Washington, D.C., this week and visited The Daily Signal to share an update on his efforts to combat the ESG agenda. Oklahoma enacted the Energy Discrimination Elimination Act in 2022, and tasked Russ with managing a list of financial institutions prohibited from doing business with the state. That list currently includes BlackRock, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, State Street, and Climate First Bank. Russ found their ESG policies run counter to the financial interests of Oklahoma. The law is now in jeopardy, however, following a judge’s ruling in May that temporarily blocked its enforcement. Russ spoke with The Daily Signal about what’s at stake and how individuals can join the fight against ESG. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, June 13th. I'm your host, Rob Bluey. Oklahoma is center stage in the fight against environmental, social, and governance policies. More commonly known is that dreaded three-letter acronym of ESG. And the man leading the charge is state treasurer Todd Russ. He was in Washington yesterday and visited the Daily Signal to share an update on his efforts to combat the corrosive ESG agenda. Oklahoma enacted the Energy Discrimination Elimination Act in 20, and tasked Russ with managing a list of financial institutions prohibited from doing business with the state.

That list currently includes Black Rock, Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, State Street, and Climate First Bank. Russ found their ESG policies run counter to the financial interests of Oklahoma. The law is now in jeopardy, however. Last month, a judge temporarily blocked its enforcement, and you'll hear from Russ, what's at stake and how you can join the fight against E.N. Stay tuned for our interview right after this. Conservative women are problematic women. Why? Because we don't adhere to the agenda of the radical left. Every Thursday morning on the problematic women podcast, Kristen I-Cammer, Lauren Evans, and me, Virginia Allen, are joined by other conservative women to break down the big issues and news you care about. Whether you're interested in hot takes and conversations on pop culture, or, what Congress is up to, problematic women, has you covered. We sort through the news to keep you up to

date on the issues that are of particular interest to conservative leaning, that is problematic women. Find problematic women wherever you like to listen to podcasts and follow the show on Instagram. We are joined in studio today by the state treasurer of Oklahoma, Todd Russ. Thanks so much for being with us. Yeah, thank you for letting me be here. Absolutely. Well, what brings you to Washington, D.C.? You know, we've got some people we're going to meet with, and we've got some issues that we're talking to other people about. I'm also going to join the sovereign capital symposium or conference, and look forward to that as well. Well, it's great that you could stop by and make the time. You have emerged as one of the leaders among state financial officers and treasurers when it comes to pushing back on some of the agenda that's commonly known as ESG, environmental social governance.

And in fact, your state has taken a position where you have said, we're going to put the interests of Oklahomaans ahead of these outside groups. Tell us a bit about that particular fight and where things stand today. Yeah, Oklahoma is one of several states that have really taken on this issue. And ironically, Oklahoma's kind of moved to the front probably because of the pushback that we've had. and we passed legislation two years ago that said that, you know, any financial institutions or investors that are using state dollars that are contrary to the goals and the best interest of the oil and gas industry because, you know, where we're at, that's a big part of it, that the treasurer would evaluate that.

And if he finds that they are actually doing things that would be harmful to the industry, that he'd put them on a restricted list. and we did that. And so it had some teeth in it. And so as a treasure, I put the list together and came out with what's now about five or six different financial institutions on that list. And as you can imagine, they didn't take that well and it turned into quantify it. These are fairly household names like Black Rock that are on your list.

You have a situation now where probably not surprisingly was challenged in court. and you see you're working through that lawsuit, do you feel confident about where things are going and where this land up in the future? You know, I would like to say mostly yes, but when you get into the court systems, you never really know. In Oklahoma, you'd think one of the reddest of the red states that we wouldn't really run into any big problems, but we kind of have. I mean, we've kind of lost the first preliminary round of that engagement in the court systems, had a district judge that ruled in favor of the pension systems. The pensions are kind of where the money lies and would be the ones that would have to divest.

And they found someone in the pension system to file a suit. They've got, you know, an organized group that's pushing back on it. And we actually lost the first round based on a constitutional position, which is really interesting. The way the judge interpreted it, it seemed like maybe you only imagine someone that goes and Googles, B.S. G. 24 hours before the hearings to see what she's getting into. And then they start throwing out these $10 million and all these things that are not really relevant. And she actually

ruled that the fiduciary obligation of the pensioners was to manage the money for a specific purpose and use some other specific language. And interestingly, that's exactly what she claimed was exactly what we're trying to do, but she's kind of using it in the reverse direction saying that we're the ones that are being political about it when we're saying all along, no, these people are the ones that are being political about it. Yeah, I mean, it seems to me that the law that was passed and the list that you put together makes perfect sense. You're representing the interests of the people who sent you to represent them as state treasurer.

Ultimately, though, it seems that there has been. been significant pushback on these corporate entities and the radical left activists who are pushing ESG. So zooming out from Oklahoma, what is your prognosis about where ESG goes in the future? It looks very positive from a national world perspective. I mean, we've definitely got their attention. You start popping big money people with billions of dollars in activity, negative activity on their part, that they're losing those dollars. You've got their attention and you're seeing a lot of kind of squirming around with Black Rock and J.P. Morgan State Street and some of the big, big key players.

So they definitely are concerned about it and have their attention. Now, they're not inclined to align with the ideology of anti-ESG. They seem to be pretty embedded in that. So they're trying to figure out ways to kind of strategize. the fence and get along with everybody and they have they withdrew from one of the climate alliances just in the last six weeks or so and and claim that hey you know hey how about that is that good enough we met with some of them had conversations well what does that mean are you are you leaving the other ones as well as oh no we're we're we're still in four

or five of them well then are you taking this new message to them oh no we're this you know And it's kind of more like, well, we were just paying too many memberships. We're just going to get it down to four or five. So the philosophy didn't change a bit. So we weren't able to take them off the list. So those are kind of some of the things they're trying to do to reposition themselves to get off of those lists. And it's nice to know they're trying to get off the list. One more question on that.

Are there things that the everyday American or an Oklahoman can do to push back on this ESG agenda? There are. You know, first of all, just understanding what's going on. It's kind of like the Wizard of Oz. Somebody's behind the curtain, or seems like somebody may be or may not be. But they definitely have a lot of things that are going mostly behind the scenes. When you're talking about the C suites, the shareholders' resolutions, the board meetings, most of the public doesn't see that.

And that's where a lot of this activity is going on because they take my state dollars in Oklahoma and other states and everybody else's tax dollars and pension dollars. and pension dollars, and then they put them in their ETFs so they can vote the proxy votes, and we don't necessarily vote those votes. So they have billions and billions and trillions of dollars that they get to vote, these big, massive bundles of proxies. And so they can redirect a whole board position or direction with these big, big organizations and companies primarily, like, for example, Exxon, some of these big energy companies.

They will manipulate the board. They just need to change. or three board seats to get that board to reposition their their their their mission statement and that's what they've done i mean they they went into exon uh replace three board members and literally was able to redirect their mission statement to be out of they call it out of the fossil footprint which basically if that's your your business it's like then you'll be out of business by a certain time and they have these benchmarks on walking that back. After a year or two, management realized just what was going on in the last three or four months.

They actually had their board meeting, fought back hard, filed some lawsuits, and they've realized the strategy these ESG people are after to put them out of business, and now they're beginning to fight back. So people being aware of those things, I mean, if you can only imagine what Ukraine would have been like, if we weren't able to be shipping compressed natural gas over to them during that first year of the war there, people would have not been getting shell to death. They'd been freezing to death because there was no energy, no gas to get them through the winter. We would be in the same situation.

This is not just a convenience. This is a national health, certainly a world health, and a national security issue for America and other countries. So it's very, very important. It's systemic. It's not just energy. It's agriculture. It's energy. It's the governance.

side of corporations. It's all about just kind of they want to put their finger on the scales and tilt this the way they wanted to go, not based on performance, based on philosophical, political agendas that they have out there. So those are the things that are going on that people really need to know about. Well, thank you for explaining that. You yourself started in the banking world before running for office. Did you ever imagine you'd be in the position where where you are today representing the state? No, I never dreamed of it, actually. You know, when you're running a bank and busy in your own world, you're really busy.

I ended up selling my preferred stock in the bank that I owned and was in banking for many years. I'm the bank CEO and understood the business. And I will tell you, it is critical that people understand the difference in the big, massive world banks and your local community banks. The local community banks are probably going to be the salvation of, of all of this financial challenges that are going on because they're a little more nimble and not flying quite as high on the radar of these regulators and big money market people. Interesting. When you decided to run for state treasurer, what did you set out as your

agenda? What did you hope to accomplish? You know, in Oklahoma, I served 13 years in the legislature and knew that this law had been placed on the books when I filed to be the state treasurer. So I was I was, I was, I was, I was, fully aware of kind of what direction we wanted this to go for Oklahoma and understanding the financial backgrounds of industry and the financial world. It was a very comfortable place for me to step into, and I certainly felt like that there was a purpose for me to take on this call, and the people did too. So I was elected, and we've tried to enforce this and be very cautious and careful and deliberate and have good discretion when we put this list together,

but we feel like it's spot on for the subject matter that we're trying to deal with and the issues we're trying to protect Oklahomans in my state and the world from. You have a strong ally in Governor Stitt, who's a former guest on this podcast. I know he's supportive of your efforts on ESG in particular. What other challenges do you see the state encountering that you're working right now. You know, it's it's hard to say for sure. If we knew them all, we'd try to, you know, stop them before they got there. But, you know, they're definitely mobilizing the oppositions-wise. They've been in this arena before. They know how to fight on these kinds of engagements.

So we're trying to just be cautious and careful and very deliberate and stick with what the statute intends for us to do. It was interesting the language that the judge presented for her purpose and her reason was the language, the constitutional specific purpose rule. And she was talking about as a fiduciary, you only have a specific purpose to earn for the investments. That's exactly what we're saying. And they're literally saying not only will we manage your money, but we are also going to deal with climate issues. That is not a specific. purpose. That is that is blatantly saying we've got lots of things we want to do with your investments more than just focus on the earnings. And when you look at these green packages that are

that are anti-fossil fuel petroleum, you know, investment pools and EFTs and those kinds of things, they underperform the ones that have the fossil fuel energies in them. So that's, it is just crystal clear that their goals are not in the best interest of the pensioners, the people with the money, and they have a very clear, loud political agenda that they're utilizing that money for. It seems that also having a certain level of collaboration or cooperation with other state financial officers, other state treasurers across the country is helpful. So you're not going at this alone. How important is that to have that coalition in place? It is everything.

I mean, you can't, you can't deal with these mega, multi-trillion dollar black rock financial institutions that have massive, massive amounts of financial leverage if we don't pull our resources and our, you know, our purpose together as well. And there's been a great coalition. I mean, you know, a lot of the Midwest and more conservative red states have figured this out and are willing to align together to raise this issue. and fight back. So it's been everything. If we could take a look at some of the national challenges, I'm curious to get your perspective. Obviously, the national debt is increasing at a rate that we've not ever seen in our lifetime. Inflation is stubbornly still with us, despite the fact that President Biden seems to want to deny that it is. What's the steps that you would take or you would advise our federal leaders to get their house in order. That's a great question.

Several of us as state treasurer, state leaders joined together to send a letter to Biden to tell him how urgent it was that we get our house in order financially and quit spending money we don't have. And we're just trying to raise that issue to a new level by joining together as state treasures across the nation. So that's one of the things that we're doing to try to join with either, you know, also the treasures, join with the governors, the AGs, the auditors, any of the voices that we can put a symbol together to let Washington know how important it is. We're doing that. Yeah, it's an ever-present challenge for sure. What's the mood among Oklahomans these days? Particularly, you know, with the economy, and we always hear that that's the number one issue.

That's the number one concern. But are there other things that you hear as you visit with constituents that are on their mind? You know, in Oklahoma, we're kind of a, we're a Western part of the U.S. gone through a lot of tough times. We're very diverse. We have geographically, we have like five different geographic regions in the state. It's just absolutely phenomenal. Oklahoma is on a renaissance.

We are doing fantastic. We're very conservative for the most part and it's paid off. Governor Stitt didn't lock us down when COVID happened. So we come rolling out of that. Our economy has just been gangbusters. A lot of, we always said we were the best kept secret in the U.S. because the cost of living was among the very lowest. The quality of life was phenomenal.

Property was cheap. And I said it's the best kept secret that got out because people are moving in there like crazy now. But Oklahoma's doing really, really well. We have diversified our budgeting and our financial strategies at the legislative level. We put in an energy stabilization plan where instead of just using whatever money we had out of oil and gas, because that was a big, big part of our budget 20 years ago, that could have been as much as 30% of our budget. Today, it's less than 10. So you can see that our economy is diversified. We've got a lot of other types of industries. The governor's done a phenomenal job of recruiting

and maintaining the ones that we had. So Oklahoma's doing great. We are concerned politically about about our future financially as far as a country and some of the things that are going on. And Oklahomans are pretty heads up and they're pretty on top of what's going on. Well, state treasurer Todd Russ, we appreciate to the leadership that you've provided, particularly on some of these key issues and for taking the time to visit with the Daily Signal today. Well, thank you very much. It's fantastic to be on the Daily Signal. Absolutely.

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