Republicans praise President Trump’s plan to neutralize woke voting power of the big three passive investors

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported the Trump administration is considering a plan to protect retirement savings by depoliticizing the influence of index funds like Blackrock and Fidelity over shareholders.

The report said that “officials also are exploring limits on how index-fund managers are allowed to vote, seeking to curtail the power of such behemoths as BlackRock BLK Vanguard Group and State Street the people said. These three together own on behalf of clients roughly 30% or more of many of the biggest U.S. publicly traded companies.”

The Washington Reporter has extensively covered the problem with progressive passive investors dictating corporate policy. At a recent Congressional hearing, Republicans slammed Blackrock, State Street, and Vanguard for pushing far-left policies through the shareholder voting process.

Now, the Trump administration is poised to act, and Republicans are praising the President for preparing to take decisive action to protect retirees’ savings. The White House is reportedly also considering a “mirror voting” rule like the one proposed by the deeply-respected Sen. Dan Sullivan (R., Alaska).

A Senate source praised the White House, telling the Reporter that “limiting the power of the woke passive investors is great policy and it’s great politics. The last thing seniors want is diminished returns because some DEI activist at State Street decided to vote for a shareholder proposal to make Exxon Mobil go carbon neutral by 2026.”

Will Hild, who has led many of the campaigns against index funds like BlackRock, told the Reporter that it is “wonderful news to hear that the White House is considering taking action to reign in woke Wall Street firms that have been micromanaging American businesses and undermining consumers by using their outsized influence to push a far left agenda.”

Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research, added that “asset managers like BlackRock, along with proxy advisors Glass Lewis and ISS, have misused and abused their positions as fiduciaries to further their own politics, taking the shares and votes of their clients and using them to bully boards and c-suites out of the business of serving their customers and instead forcing a noxious agenda down consumers’ throats.”

“Our hope is that the ultimate action is severe enough to curtail these bad actors,” Hild concluded. “As BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink infamously said, sometimes ‘you have to force behaviors’ to change.”