From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Jason Cohen

Several asset managers leveraged two major Texas university systems’ endowment funds to advance anti-fossil fuel shareholder proposals in 2022 and 2023, according to a report from the conservative watchdog group American Accountability Foundation (AAF).

BlackRock-owned Aperio Group, Cantillon, former Vice President Al Gore-chaired Generation Investment Management, GQG Partners and JP Morgan Asset Management collectively manage approximately $4 billion for The University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) as of July, which handles the university systems’ endowments. Despite the company’s policy against it and Texas’ status as the leading crude oil and natural gas-producing state, UTIMCO’s asset managers backed over 150 shareholder resolutions under the environmental, social and governance(ESG) umbrella, including proposals that could undermine the oil and gas industry, according to documents AAF obtained through a public records request and shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Once again, woke ESG ideology has infected a public institution and hijacked its money for their own purposes. This is an outrageous betrayal of the public’s trust,” AAF president Thomas Jones told the DCNF. “[Republican Texas] Gov. Greg Abbott must take immediate action to end this nonsense. He must shake up the leadership at UT/A&M that let this happen and use his influence with UTIMCO to ensure that it never happens again.”

UTIMCO told the DCNF that the ESG and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)-related votes violate “a long-standing policy that prohibits using the endowments’ economic power to advance social or political agendas” and that a review found they consist of 0.3% out of around 45,000 proxy votes in recent years. The endowment manager added that it has since modified its guidelines after finding the violative votes and will impose them on all of its third-party investment managers before future proxy votes, and revoking voting authority for those that cannot follow them.

🚨EXCLUSIVE🚨Swing State’s Pension Funds Used By Wall Street Titans To Push ‘Racial Equity’, Climate Agenda, Report Finds from @jasonJournoDC https://t.co/LXx3y4WZPV

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 25, 2024

The company’s asset managers voted in favor of a total of 159 shareholder proposals between them that include “racial and gender pay gap reports, efforts to defund conservative candidates and pro-business trade associations, radical climate policy, targeting of gun purchasers, and proabortion initiatives,” according to the watchdog.

UTIMCO oversees the largest public endowment fund in the U.S., managing over $76 billion as of Aug. 31.

“UTIMCO’s mission is to ‘generate superior long-term investment returns to support The University of Texas and Texas A&M University Systems,’ yet these votes endorse political agendas that run contrary to the Systems’ best interests,” American Energy Institute CEO and former Republican Texas state Rep. Jason Isaac told the DCNF. “By supporting proposals that harm American energy producers, UTIMCO’s fund managers are violating their fiduciary responsibility.”

Texas leads the nation in crude oil and natural gas production and in 2023 was responsible for 43% of crude oil output, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. However, AAF found many examples of UTIMCO’s asset managers voting in favor of proposals aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) emissions and other actions to mitigate so-called climate change, which the watchdog alleges comes at the expense of producing value for investors.

For instance, at ExxonMobil’s May 2023 yearly shareholder meeting, Aperio Group voted in support of a proposal to recalculate its GHG emissions to account for the assets it has sold. The resolution asserted that “the economic risks associated with climate change exist in the real world rather than on company balance sheets” and argues that the investments ExxonMobil sells may lower emissions on paper but that they fail to actually help achieve the goal of keeping global temperatures from rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius — which is an objective of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement — potentially exposing the company and its stakeholders to what it calls “climate risk.”

Some of Aperio Group’s clients have access to customize their individual proxy voting policy, according to BlackRock. BlackRock itself voted against this ExxonMobil proposal on behalf of most of its clients.

AAF’s “report on UTIMCO’s investment practices should alarm every Texan who values our state’s proud oil and gas industry,” Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian told the DCNF. “It’s outrageous to see Texas university investments being used to support radical ESG agendas, decarbonization, and dangerous policies like Net Zero and the Paris Accord, which threaten our energy independence and economy. We must put an end to the woke political agendas that undermine the very foundation of Texas’ success and ensure our investments align with the values of hard-working Texans.”

Moreover, at defense contractor Raytheon Technologies’ yearly shareholder meeting in May 2023, J.P. Morgan Asset Management backed a proposal urging the company to publish a report on efforts to reduce GHG emissions in alignment with the Paris Climate Agreement.

“Raytheon Technologies creates significant carbon emissions from its value chain and is exposed to numerous climate-related risks,” it states. “Failing to respond to this changing environment may make Raytheon less competitive and have a negative effect on its cost of capital and shareholders’ financial returns.”

Isaac told the DCNF that UTIMCO’s “managers are discriminating against fossil fuel” companies through ESG investing based on the definition of “boycott” in Texas’ Senate Bill 13, which Abbot signed in 2021 and the former representative said he helped create.

The bill defines boycotting energy companies as refusing to engage or ending business with a company involved in fossil fuels “without an ordinary business purpose.” It also specifies actions aimed “to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations with a company because the company” does business related to fossil fuels and fails to “pledge to meet environmental standards beyond applicable federal and state law.”

Isaac added that the asset managers “should be held accountable and placed on Texas’ list of “financial companies that boycott energy companies,” which mandates Texas public investment entities subject to SB 13 “avoid contracting with, and divest from, these companies unless they can demonstrate this would conflict with their fiduciary duties.”

The S&P Global Clean Energy Index, which includes companies that engage in energy production from renewable sources, has fallen about 7% so far in 2024, while the S&P 500 Energy Index, which features many oil and gas companies, has risen close to 3% in that same time.

Louisianans’ pension funds were similarly leveraged to push climate-related proposals within publicly traded companies, the DCNF reported in April, based on another public records request by AAF.

“UTIMCO’s asset managers’ apparent promotion of leftist objectives, including ESG, is extremely troubling and contrary to Texas law banning boycotts and discrimination against fossil fuels. The legislature must exercise oversight and hold UTIMCO accountable,” Republican Texas state Rep. Brian Harrison told the DCNF. “Governmental bodies, including their proxies, should not pursue objectives that harm the Texas economy and go against our values.”

Cantillon, GQG Partners, Texas A&M and Abbot’s office did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment. Aperio Group, Generation Investment Management, JP Morgan Asset Management and the University of Texas declined to comment.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Jason Snead

This week, officials in Oregon announced the state had made a major mistake: Oregon automatically registered 1,259 noncitizens to vote. Last week, Arizona election officials realized they had for years failed to catch a software “coding oversight” that allowed nearly 100,000 people to vote without providing proof of citizenship.

If you are wondering how this could happen, you are not alone. After all, Democrats and most major media outlets spent the last few weeks insisting noncitizens cannot and do not register or vote in American elections. These news stories put the lie to those claims—claims peddled specifically to kill a bill in Congress that would ban noncitizen voting.

That bill, the SAVE Act, is designed to fix problems with federal law that let noncitizens illegally register and vote in federal elections. Speaker Mike Johnson tried to pass it alongside a spending measure, igniting a firestorm of liberal and media misinformation claiming that Republicans are risking a government shutdown over a bill to make it “harder to vote.”

That’s an absurd claim, even by today’s standards. The SAVE Act simply requires that states verify citizenship before allowing someone to register and vote in federal elections. To register, citizens can use the photo ID they use every day to drive, buy a beer or board a plane. Other records would work, too, like naturalization documents or birth certificates. And there are protections for any citizens who have none of these. The only people who would find it hard to vote under the SAVE Act are people who should not be voting at all.

Only progressives can find the controversy in that. The rest of America — nearly 90% of the public — rejects noncitizen voting. That hasn’t stopped Democrats from opposing the bill. When the U.S. House of Representatives passed the SAVE Act earlier this year, just five Democrats voted yes. This time around, the opposition may be unanimous.

Democrats insist that it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote. That’s true. But it is also against the law for anyone to enter the country illegally, and that has not stopped millions — including criminals, rapists and drug traffickers — from crossing our southern border in just the last few years.

Laws only work when they are enforced, and the left has done everything possible to make sure they are not. Liberal lawyers have used the courts to twist federal law into a straitjacket that limits states to simply asking voters to check a box that they are a citizen before registering. When states take action, left-wing groups sue them. Arizonans, for example, had to fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to defend a proof of citizenship law after liberal groups filed suit.

Liberals also claim that noncitizen voting never happens, but there are countless documented examples of noncitizens who have registered and cast votes across the country. This year, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose identified nearly 600 noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls, 138 of whom appeared to have cast ballots. Just since 2022, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration has removed more than 6,000 noncitizens from state voter rolls. In Texas, the problem is just as severe: Texas Governor Greg Abbott reported removing “over 6,500 potential noncitizens,” including more than 1,900 with voter history.

Clearly, the left knows noncitizen voting happens. For proof, just look to the past. When congressional Democrats crafted HR1, their signature bill to stage a partisan takeover of elections, they included provisions granting amnesty to noncitizens who illegally vote. Fortunately for our Republic, HR1 failed to pass, but Democrats on Capitol Hill have already made it a top priority next year if Vice President Kamala Harris is elected president.

Turning a blind eye to illegal voting is bad enough. What’s worse is that liberal politicians in places like Washington, D.C. and New York are actively pushing for noncitizens to vote. As more cities cave to left-wing activism and allow noncitizens to vote in local elections, there is a growing risk that some noncitizens will slip through the cracks and wind up being given federal ballots. Others can get mistakenly registered due to clerical errors. Refusing to address these problems is an invitation for fraud, but it is also a trap for the unwary. If an unsuspecting noncitizen casts an illegal vote, he is committing a federal crime and could wind up being deported.

Across America, Democrats are fighting to keep it easy for foreigners to register and vote. Even for today’s left, that’s a new low. American elections should be decided by American voters.

Jason Snead is the Executive Director of Honest Elections Project Action.