Audrey Streb
Contributor
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) threw their weight behind an antitrust lawsuit against major asset managers that alleges the firms colluded to tank coal production with their embrace of zero-emissions goals on Thursday morning.
The lawsuit, led by Paxton and backed by ten other state attorneys general, alleges that BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street collusively used their market power to suppress coal production, thereby burdening consumers by causing the price of coal to skyrocket. The Trump FTC and the DOJ filed a statement of interest on Thursday supporting the attorneys general’s lawsuit, signaling the administration’s view that the firms’ so-called “environmental, social and corporate governance” (ESG) investing may fall afoul of antitrust law.
“These companies allegedly blocked the production of American coal in the name of climate change scaremongering, all so they could take money out of the pockets of American consumers and put it in theirs,” Ferguson continued.
The FTC and DOJ are taking action following Trump’s day-one energy emergency declaration and his April 8 executive order, which directed federal agencies to “encourage and support our Nation’s coal industry to increase our energy supply, lower electricity costs, stabilize our grid, create high-paying jobs, support burgeoning industries, and assist our allies.”
“The President has declared a national energy emergency, and we need competition in coal production now more than ever to help fuel American energy dominance,” said Assistant Attorney General Abigail A. Slater of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division. “American consumers suffer when institutional asset managers use shareholdings in competing companies to orchestrate output reductions.”
BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard are three of the world’s largest asset managers. All three were members of the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative until Vanguard dropped out in December 2022 and BlackRock exited the coalition in January.
The DOJ and FTC’s “support for this baseless case undermines the Trump Administration’s goal of American energy independence,” a BlackRock spokesperson wrote to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “As we made clear in our earlier motion to dismiss, this case is trying to re-write antitrust law and is based on an absurd theory that coal companies conspired with their shareholders to reduce coal production. Forcing asset managers to divest from coal companies will harm their ability to access capital and invest in their businesses and employees, likely leading to higher energy prices.”
“These asset managers, which have been acting as an ESG climate cartel have not only deceived investors but also harmed millions of American families by raising costs and contributing to record inflation,” executive director of Consumers’ Research Will Hild wrote to the DCNF. “Not only does the FTC and DOJ agree that the investments made were driven by a radical, political objective, but go directly against President Trump’s energy goals.”
The White House, the FTC, Paxton’s office, Vanguard and State Street did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
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Excellent The banking bullies need to be put in there place
Vanguard is an asset manager, unlike banks: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo
A famous working class man said of Britain:
This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.
Aneurin Bevan
Coal has gone! And fish?
Fury explodes as Keir Starmer ‘sells out’ Britain in ‘horror show’ dealhttps://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2056917/live-eu-uk-summit-brexit-fishing-defence#
What the investment firms did was unwise, and probably ran afoul of their fiduciary duty to shareholders. I am really surprised at Vanguard for taking part, but they apparently realized their mistake in ’22. Punishing them now, after the fact seems pointless. The case should be thrown out.
If a thief stops stealing, should they escape punishment for their earlier crimes?
False equivalence.
If they ran afoul of their fiduciary duty they must pay a price. It would be a deterrent if nothing else. You cannot let something like this slide. By your logic, no sports team would ever pay a price for cheating if it were uncovered after the season ended.
It’s about time. This video, while humorous, highlights just how fraudulent this “science”
truly is.
https://app.screencast.com/DFd1viHxsRjq7
More people and corporations have to start punching back and expose the fraud.
Here is another one the totally debunks the “Science”
https://youtu.be/ZUVqZKBMF7o?si=6AjzotZdhfxkEKh_
CO2 IS AN ABSOLUTELY VITAL GAS/INGREDIENT FOR GROWING FLORA AND FAUNA; NET ZERO IS A SUICIDE PACT
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/co2-is-an-absolutely-vital-gas-ingredient-for-growing-flora-and
.
The IPCC, etc., has dubbed CO2 as having magical global warming power, based on its own “science”
The IPCC, etc., claims, CO2 acts as Climate Control Knob, that eventually will cause runaway Climate Change, if we continue using fossil fuels.
CO2, just 0.042% in the atmosphere, is a weak absorber of a small fraction of the available low-energy IR photons.
CO2 has near-zero influence on world surface temperatures.
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Governments proclaimed: Go Wind and Solar, Go ENERGIEWENDE, go Net zero by 2050, etc., and provided oodles of subsidies, and rules and regulations, and mandates, and prohibitions to make it happen.
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MAGA and burn, baby, burn, may lead to a slightly greater CO2 ppm in atmosphere, which is an absolutely essential ingredient for creating: 1) increased green flora to support abundant fauna all over the world, and 2) increased crop yields to feed 8 billion people. What is not to like?
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The slogan Net-zero by 2050 to-reduce CO2 is a super-expensive suicide pact, to increase command/control by governments, and enable the moneyed elites to get richer, at the expense of all others, by using the foghorn of the government-subsidized/controlled Corporate Media to spread scare-mongering slogans and brainwash people.
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They deny the Little Ice Age, support fraudulent computer temperature projections, and are using the USAID-subsidized Corporate Media to scare-monger/control/brainwash the people, already for 35 years
.
At about 30% annual W/S electricity on the grid, various costs increase exponentially.
The weather-dependent, variable/intermittent W/S output, often too-little and often too-much, creates grid-disturbing difficulties that become increasingly more challenging and increasingly more costly/kWh to counteract, as proven by the UK and California for the past 5 years, and Germany for the past 10 years, and recently in Spain/Portugal.
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All four have “achieved” near-zero, real- growth GDPs, the highest electricity prices/kWh in the EU, and stagnant real wages for almost all people, while further enriching the jet-setting elites who live in the poshest places.
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Their angry, over-taxed, over-regulated native populations are further burdened by the elites bringing in tens of millions of uninvited, unvetted, uneducated, inexperienced poor folks from all over; a chaotic, culture-clashing burden the native populations never voted for.
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All that W/S subsidy money uglified the countryside, killed fisheries, tourism, viewsheds, etc.
But the climate is not any different, even though, atmosphere CO2 increased from 280 ppm in 1850 to 420 ppm in 2025, 50% in 175 years.
During that time, world surface temps increased by about 1.5 C, of which:
.
1) Urban heat islands account for about 65% (0.65 x 1.5 = 0.975 C), such as about 700 miles from north of Portland, Maine, to south of Norfolk, Virginia, forested in 1850, now covered with heat-absorbing human detritus, plus the waste heat of fuel burning.
Japan, China, India, Europe, etc., have similar heat islands
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/05/16/live-at-1-p-m-eastern-shock-climate-report-urban-heat-islands-responsible-for-65-of-global-warming/
2) CO2 accounts for at most 0.5 C, with the rest from
3) Long-term, inter-acting cycles, such as coming out of the Little Ice Age,
4) Earth surface volcanic activity, and other changes, such as from increased agriculture, deforestation, especially in the Tropics, etc.
THE UK, GERMANY, SPAIN, FRANCE, DENMARK, ETC., ARE IN DEEP DO-DO, BECAUSE WIND/SOLAR SYSTEMS PROVIDE ZERO SYNCHRONOUS INERTIA TO THE GRID
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-uk-germany-spain-france-etc-in-deep-wind-solar-do-do
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The UK Conservative and Labor elites, using the foghorn of the government-subsidized/controlled Corporate Media, brainwashed the people to vote for them for decades.
Those voters ended up having the highest electric bills, i.e., total bill divided by consumed electricity, c/kWh, while the elite Owners are laughing all the way to the bank.
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Any energy systems analyst would know Spain/Portugal-like blackout problems would eventually happen, before a single wind/solar system were connected to the grid, but naive, woke, technically illiterate enviros do not want to listen to the pros.
Full speed ahead over the cliff, unless all this wind/solar/battery nonsense is stopped dead by taking away the overly generous subsidies.
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Expensive Wind and Solar Systems
The over-taxed, over-regulated taxpayers and ratepayers are paying at very high c/kWh for electricity and Heat Pump heating/cooling and for EV driving.
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They pay for:
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1) highly subsidized, expensive wind/solar systems that disturb the grid with weather-dependent, variable, intermittent electricity, which has caused expensive brownouts/blackouts, as in Spain/Portugal, and many other places, over the years.
2) grid expansion to connect all these far-flung wind/solar systems to the grid,
3) grid reinforcements to ensure the grids do not crash during periods with higher levels of wind/solar power
.
In cases of too much wind/solar power, it needs to be curtailed; Owners still get paid for what they could have produced.
In cases of too little wind/solar power, traditional plants need to increase outputs to meet demand, 24/7/365.
Synchronous Inertia Serves to Stabilize the Grid
Closing down traditional plants (nuclear, gas, coal, hydro), with rotating generators that provide SYNCHRONOUS inertia, de-stabilizes the grid; a death sentence for the grid.
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Wind/solar systems provide ZERO SYNCHRONOUS inertia to help stabilize the grid, because their variable outputs are digitized, then reconstituted into an artificial sine wave with the same phase and frequency as the grid.
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Connections Between Grids
Almost all grids have connections to other grids for import and export purposes.
Such connections usually are high-voltage, direct-current lines, HVDC
Such connections transfer power, but do not transfer SYNCHRONOUS inertia to other grids.
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Reactive Power
No AC grid can function without positive reactive power; power factor greater than zero.
Wind/solar systems take reactive power FROM the grid; power factor less than zero
All traditional power plants are automatically set up to provide reactive power TO the grid
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Synchronous Condenser Systems
The weather-dependent, variable/intermittent, wind/solar feed-ins to the grid often create transmission faults.
Those faults are often minimized with synchronous condenser systems that provide positive reactive power TO the grid.
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Net Zero to reduce CO2 by 2050 is a very expensive suicide pact.
We need higher CO2 ppm in the atmosphere for increased greening of the world, to support abundant fauna, and to increase crop yields to feed 8 billion people.
The minor little problem is that the asset managers were reacting to “jawboning”
by politicians. Of course, the managers backed that same political party in their folly, but the real target are the Green Blob politicians the managers were sucking up to.
It would be more honest to charge various politicians with outsourcing their Green ambitions unconstitutionally. Conspiracy to commit extortion?
The man who lead the UN initiative called NZAM is now the Prime Minister of Canada. A fact which gets zero coverage in the Canadian media and the conservatives failed to make an issue of during the election.
The man who tried to shut down Canada’s O&G industry through the global financial system is now in a position to do more harm than he possibly could have at the UN. The only thing staying his hand is the threat of Alberta and Saskatchewan separating.
Very nice.
I have money invested in Vanguard index funds.
“… until Vanguard dropped out in December 2022 …” Go to that link and read the statement and then explain what Vanguard did wrong. At the time I told my advisor to NOT put any of my money in an ESG fund — I did not know if they had one, then, or now. I doubt that my instruction had any influence – me being a relatively small $$ investor.
However, the Total Stock Market fund invests in “ approximately 100% of the investable U.S. stock market and includes large-, mid-, small-, and micro-cap stocks” so it is likely there were a few ESG companies in my portfolio. There is nothing I could/can do about that and follow the guidance to diversify.
These banking entities are rent-seekers, receiving guaranteed, front-loaded loans, repaid without significant risk to themselves..