Right-Wing Leader Says Conservatives Need ‘Scalps' of Woke Wall Street CEOs

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5 days ago

In late January, the CEO of the pro-business American Legislative Exchange Council told right-wing operatives and officials that they need a 'scalp' from one of two supposedly woke CEOs of major Wall Street firms.
Lisa Nelson, who leads ALEC, was discussing Larry Fink of BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, and Brian Moynihan of Bank of America, the second largest bank in the country. She appeared to be speaking metaphorically, as she struggled to refer to an unknown movie. Nelson made the comments at the Consumers' Research Summit in Sea Island, Georgia. Rolling Stone has obtained exclusive audio and documents from the event.
Nelson noted she had spoken about this at breakfast. 'Whether it's Larry Fink or Brian Moynihan, we have got to take one of these guys out,' she said, presumably another metaphor. She added, 'Brian Moynihan is the guy, or Larry Fink is the guy that we should have their scalp.'
ALEC is a powerful 'bill mill' that brings corporations, conservative advocates, and state legislators together to hash out right-wing, pro-business legislation that is then introduced nationwide, with a focus on red states.
A spokesperson for ALEC declined to comment for this story.
'Over the past three years, the assets BlackRock manages on behalf of our clients have grown by $4 trillion to $12.5 trillion,' says a BlackRock spokesperson. 'We are focused on delivering for each and every client in every market we operate in around the world, including helping millions of Americans in states across the country retire with dignity.'
Bank of America declined to comment, though a person familiar with the matter says that the bank's representatives attended ALEC's annual meeting last week.
Fink and his firm BlackRock have become primary targets in conservatives' crusade against environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and initiatives promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The firm has trillions in assets under management, and manages billions of dollars for public pension funds. Because of its extensive holdings, BlackRock exerts enormous influence across the stock market through shareholder votes. In his widely-read annual letters to CEOs, Fink has written that 'climate risk is investment risk.'
Moynihan, for his part, has defended the idea of inclusion in the workplace, characterizing it as a positive business opportunity. Consumers' Research targeted Bank of America in 2023 for engaging in 'anti-consumer' behaviors: namely, having internal DEI training and offering tips for how clients can calculate their greenhouse gas emissions.
Amid Republican attacks on ESG and DEI, including from President Donald Trump, BlackRock and Bank of America both dropped out of Net Zero alliances, which require a commitment to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Additionally, both companies have eliminated their DEI goals, while maintaining a general commitment to inclusion.
Consumers' Research, which hosted the event, is at the center of a network of nonprofits tied to the right-wing power broker Leonard Leo that is waging a 'War on Woke' against corporations and financiers who embrace ESG investment criteria — or the idea that asset managers should consider the threat of planetary devastation when deploying money. Leo's network helps fund ALEC, which has pushed model legislation in the states to ban asset managers for state retirement funds from promoting ESG.
The anti-ESG coalition has notched some wins in terms of BlackRock and Bank of America's public posturing, but these conservatives argue the fight is far from over. 'We have our good examples. We're sharing them every day when they get out of something,' Nelson noted, but 'it's words right now.'
That's why conservatives need their scalps, Nelson explained. 'And, you know, and that's — it's like the scalps. I don't know what the movie is,' she said, adding it was about 'taking the scalps.'
'Brian Moynihan would be the perfect person,' Nelson continued. 'We were talking about it at lunch, or breakfast. I think he is ideologically all-in on everything he's doing.'
Comparing him to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, the ALEC chief said she doesn't believe that Dimon is 'all-in' ideologically. 'I think he is just seeing where the winds are blowing and trying to have his cake and eat it, too — and 'I'm gonna play footsie with everybody,' and all is going to be OK for JPMorgan in his mind,' Nelson asserted.
Nelson spoke with a JPMorgan executive on a panel at ALEC's annual meeting last week. A JPMorgan representative declined to comment but confirmed the firm is an ALEC member.
ALEC does not disclose its donors or a full list of its members. The organization receives some corporate funding, including from Chevron, and donations from lobbying groups for Big Pharma, fossil fuel interests, the telecom industry, and electric utilities. ALEC's Private Enterprise Advisory Council includes Mike Thompson, a top lieutenant at Leo's consulting firm CRC Advisors, which helped manage the summit; as well as execs at Consumers' Research; the American Bankers Association (ABA); oil billionaire Charles Koch's business empire; and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Washington's top business lobby. Bank of America previously cut ties with ALEC in 2012.
Nelson, who previously ran global government relations at credit card giant Visa, made her comments about the CEOs during a larger conversation about the necessity of political neutrality in public investments.
Fiduciaries, like BlackRock, are legally bound to act in the best financial interests of their clients. Conservative politicians and groups, ALEC included, have demanded that companies eschew ESG and DEI as part of their investment criteria, arguing the only thing that should matter is maximizing shareholder profit.
During Nelson's panel, an operative asked the panelists if they had any examples where Republican-led states had 'in their efforts to kind of correct, [and] go from liberal ESG investing, instead of going back to neutral, they over-corrected,' to a place where they're putting public money into conservative investments.
'If we want neutral, we should want neutral,' the operative said.
Debate ensued, with most participants concluding that long-suffering conservatives needed to beat back Big Banks, who are in cahoots with the Left — neutrality be damned.
'That's a very good kind of point to bring up,' Nelson said. 'But I think you know, we should plant our flag as far as we possibly can.'
Thompson, the CRC exec who moderated the panel, agreed, but was more explicit, comparing the Left and Big Banks to Hitler: 'If the Allies said, 'Hey, Hitler, will you go neutral? You've taken over France. You've got Northern Africa. You've got all this stuff. We'll stop if you stop.' OK, he'll stop for a little while and then he'll keep coming.'
He complained about an initiative attempting to get companies to reduce their climate impact, because it was rating corporations and docking them for giving money to nonprofits that do not align with their climate goals. 'Which means ALEC,' Thompson said, adding it 'means Consumers' Research should get no money from the other side.'
'We need to stop their momentum and then push back,' Thompson continued. 'We don't need them to go, 'Oh, we're neutral now. We've run over 90 percent of your world. We've burned down 90 percent of your house, and now we'll stop' … Sometimes that means not neutral. It means get us back to where we can be neutral. It's not enough to say, 'We're no longer gonna push the DEI agenda, but we're still going to have trans bathrooms, you can go to any bathroom you want, do whatever you want. No, no, no. You have to rip out all those policies.''
Tom Jones — the right-wing opposition researcher notorious for publishing a DEI Watch List of mostly Black federal officials he decided should be fired by Trump — argued that conservatives should not 'get wedded' to neutrality.
'Publicly held funds should reflect the values of Americans, and if that means we're not going to invest in companies that support boycott, divestment, and sanctions, [against Israel] or we're not going to invest in companies that use slave labor in China, or we're not going to invest in companies that invest in Iran because it's a threat to American national security, we should 100 percent have those policies,' said Jones.
'I don't know what neutral means — but legal and principled,' said perennial anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, who seemed irritated with his compatriots' hypocrisy. 'I think you can't go to a court and say, 'We want to make decisions that aren't fiduciary, but we shouldn't be ruled to be stealing people's money, but they do.' I have no idea how you don't get laughed out of court with any argument…. This is a real slippery slope, and I don't know how you make that argument without laughing at yourself.'
Described by NPR in 2001 as a 'conservative revolutionary,' Norquist famously told the outlet: 'I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.'
A spokesperson for Consumers' Research tells Rolling Stone, ​'For years, megalomaniacs at the helm of powerful corporations like BlackRock and Bank of America exploited their positions to impose a political agenda and bully others into compliance. The American people have had enough and they are demanding a return to business, not activism. Neutrality means moving away from the far left and back to focusing on consumers. There is still a long way to go and damage to make amends for before these companies and others like them can earn the public's trust again.'
GOP attorneys general — long financed by Leo through their Republican Attorneys General Association — are currently suing BlackRock on alleged antitrust violations regarding its coal investments. The effort is being led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose top deputy bragged during a different panel that he threatened another big bank, Wells Fargo, into leaving the Net Zero Banking Alliance. (Texas had similarly threatened Bank of America's bond business, until it dropped out of the climate coalition.)
Even former Congressman Ken Buck, who was the ranking Republican on the Antitrust Subcommittee, thinks Paxton's case against BlackRock is politically motivated 'lawfare.'In May, Democrats in the Senate and House announced probes into the exodus of banks from major climate change initiatives. Sheldon Whitehouse, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, tells Rolling Stone: 'We have apparent open admissions — straight from the mouths of fossil-fuel-funded Republican operatives and lawmakers — of their phony anti-ESG scheme and their calls for the 'scalps' of the banking executives who've warned about the systemic risks from climate change.'Facing increasingly costly legal backlash from Republican state officials in the Leo network, BlackRock has tried to mend fences with conservatives. In January 2024, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick detailed Fink's moves to get back into his good graces, by lining up investors for new natural gas plants in the state's power grid. That didn't dissuade Paxton from launching the antitrust lawsuit against BlackRock last November.
Fink's firm withdrew from the Net Zero Asset Managers alliance in January, but the attacks from conservatives have not abated. They've continued even after the financier made a huge overture to Trump, in helping to achieve one of his key priorities: wresting control of the Panama Canal from China. Multiple agencies in the Trump administration have since written letters in support of Paxton's antitrust lawsuit.
From the sounds of it, no amount of concessions will satisfy these conservatives, only scalps.
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