Last week, extreme members of the House rolled out ‘Anti-Woke Week’ and brought several anti-ESG bills to a floor vote, wasting taxpayer resources to appease their wealthy donors from the oil and gas industry. Last Friday, Unlocking America’s Future (UAF) held a press call with Representatives Sean Casten (IL-06) and Juan Vargas (CA-52) and Democracy Forward President and CEO Skye Perryman where they discussed the failures of these bills and of the broader movement to dismantle responsible investing and the clean energy economy.
InvestmentNews and ESG Dive covered UAF’s work to push back on these misinformed attacks, which a majority of Americans across party lines do not support.
InvestmentNews: GOP ‘woke week’ advances package of anti-ESG bills
- An advocacy group for ESG standards and sustainable investing, Unlocking America’s Future, characterized the Republican campaign as an effort backed by fossil fuel interests.
- “Trump and his Project 2025 backers have developed a secretive blueprint backed by greedy oil and gas billionaires to ban the American people and business owners from being able to invest responsibly,” group spokesman Kyle Herrig said in a statement provided by email. “Their plans will hurt Americans’ retirement savings and cost them more in taxes. We will ensure that these plans don’t become a reality.”
ESG Dive: House GOP passes pair of anti-ESG bills targeting ‘woke’ investment policies
- Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich, called the passage of H.R. 4790 “a culmination of almost two years of work by House Republicans” in a Thursday press release. However, neither bill is likely to go anywhere in the Democrat-controlled Senate, as Reps. Sean Casten and Juan Vargas, respectively of Illinois and California, acknowledged Friday.
- “The good thing is, these bills are going nowhere,” Vargas said in a Friday morning briefing hosted by pro-ESG 501(c)4 Unlocking America’s Future.
You can watch the full press call here.
