Are investors in “passive” index funds being misled about how shares held in those funds are being voted? After providing some relevant background below, I argue that failing to properly disclose the active voting of passive fund shares could violate consumer protection provisions, anti-fraud provisions, or other related provisions covering deceptive practices. When it comes to asset managers, BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard are often referred to as the “Big Three,” and it has been reported that together “they are the largest shareholders in 88% of S&P 500 companies.” A large part of this immense control of corporate America stems from shares held in “passive” funds that millions of Americans invest in. Passive funds are generally designed to track the results of a given index such as the S&P 500. Given that no active management is involved, such funds typically charge lower fees. At least part of the theory behind passive funds is that they provide great diversification to unsophisticated investors while allowing them to piggyback on the capital allocation-growth magic of free markets. Putting aside for a moment concerns about the viability of free-market capital allocation if everyone is invested in index funds, one puzzling feature of passive funds is that their proxy voting is often anything but passive. In fact, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, has stated that using the voting power of BlackRock’s funds to force corporations to bend the knee to his woke vision of corporate utopia is a core feature of his role. This is particularly disturbing when people think they’re signing up for passive investments, when in reality their money is being leveraged by woke stewardship teams to undermine investors’ values without their consent. And given the entire model’s efficiency rationale, one should likely assume those woke stewardship teams replace company-specific expertise with top-down ideology. Now, some may argue that we are post-woke when it comes to corporate governance, pointing to articles with headlines like: “How BlackRock Abandoned Social And Environmental Engagement.” But there are very real reasons to be concerned that asset managers like Fink are just waiting for the political winds to change. So those concerned with keeping corporations focused on the bottom line and free from ideological capture by leftist neo-racists and neo-Marxists should continue to stay vigilant. And we have certainly seen some positive movement on that front, including President Donald Trump’s recent executive order, “Protecting American Investors From Foreign-Owned and Politically Motivated Proxy Advisers,” which among other things addresses related concerns about proxy advisers by calling for “action to enhance transparency concerning the use of proxy advisers, particularly regarding ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ and ‘environmental, social, and governance’ investment practices.”  But what about those asset managers and their very active proxy voting schemes? A couple of proposals for improvement involve increased mirror or pass-through voting. In mirror voting, the asset manager may retain control of 10% of the passive fund’s votes, while the rest mirrors the votes of investors writ large such that if “other investors support a proposal or a director by 75%, then the votes over the cap [are] voted 75 to 25 as well.” Meanwhile, pass-through voting allows the true owners of the fund to select a voting benchmark to reflect their voting preferences. Certainly, attempts could be made to force asset managers to vote all shares held in passive funds via mirror voting, pass-through voting, or some other similar mechanism. Even if that happens, myriad related issues remain unresolved. First, to the extent pass-through voting is understood to mean offering clients voting choice options, the scope of options becomes critical. Second, to the extent pass-through voting places direct responsibility for discrete proxy votes on clients, the reality of rational ignorance means many proxies will go unvoted. Third, promoting alternative voting structures potentially lets asset managers off the hook in terms of whether they should be subject to fiduciary duties in connection with their voting decisions and the extent to which any such duties have been breached. Fourth, focusing on voting may obscure the engagement elephant in the room. Even with some asset managers promoting “dual-track” engagement options, concerns remain about the extent to which the new options boil down to left and far left, though this may also raise issues of false advertising. Finally, there is some uncertainty about which voting agendas fill any gap left open by asset managers reducing their active voting. Having said all that, we should likely all be concerned about the consequences of failing to hold asset managers sufficiently accountable when it comes to proxy voting past, present, and future—and making sure related disclosures don’t mislead is one way to improve accountability. A recent settlement by Vanguard of a suit brought against it, BlackRock, and State Street by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton can certainly be viewed as a strong step in the right direction, but another route to accountability could be to make it a form of false advertising for asset managers to offer “passive” or “index” funds wherein the shares are actively voted by the asset manager without prominent and full disclosure of the asset managers use of the funds voting power. Such an approach could allow investors to make more fully informed decisions while reducing the undue influence of woke asset managers without excessive regulation.

A society that begins to excuse political violence should not be surprised when political violence multiplies. Once you create a moral framework in which violence is not merely understandable but righteous—once you argue that certain institutions are so corrupt, so “murderous,” that the people who participate in them deserve to be killed—you are no longer condemning violence. You are licensing it. And when that cultural permission structure meets a criminal justice system increasingly designed to favor perpetrators over victims, the results are predictable: more criminals walking free, more public cynicism, and more people tempted to believe that vigilantism is the only remaining form of accountability. Consider the case of Luigi Mangione, accused in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. A New York judge ruled this week that while the murder weapon will be admissible at trial, several other pieces of evidence seized during Mangione’s arrest will be suppressed. The admissible items include a gun, a 3D-printed silencer, and a red notebook reportedly filled with incriminating writing. But the judge excluded other evidence found in Mangione’s backpack: his phone, passport, gun magazine, wallet, and a computer chip. The rationale is the kind of procedural hair-splitting that leaves normal Americans wondering whether the system has lost its mind. The defense argued that the backpack was searched unconstitutionally because it had been moved away from Mangione’s immediate reach before officers searched it. The judge agreed. What makes it stranger is that the search occurred in Pennsylvania—inside a McDonald’s—yet the judge ruled that New York law governs suppression issues because Mangione is being tried in New York. In other words, a police officer in Pennsylvania is apparently expected to know the intricate procedural rules of New York criminal law while making an arrest in real time. This is not a recipe for justice. If Mangione was caught in California, would cops there be expected to know New York law to properly do their job? These kinds of rulings are the downstream consequence of decades of doctrine that has steadily shifted the criminal justice system away from protecting the public and toward protecting defendants. Mapp v. Ohio established the exclusionary rule, which bars evidence obtained through unconstitutional searches. The practical result is simple: When the police make a mistake, the public pays the price. The deeper problem in the Mangione case, however, is cultural. Mangione has loud supporters, and they are not operating in a vacuum. They are the product of a long-running ideological campaign—largely from the political Left—that frames American institutions not as flawed systems in need of reform but as evil systems maintained by evil people. This worldview has been building for years. Occupy Wall Street in 2011 was a turning point. Instead of focusing anger on government policy, bailouts, and political corruption, activists targeted “Wall Street” itself—the private sector, the idea of profit, and the legitimacy of business power. Today, this mentality is embedded in the rhetoric of politicians like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who recently argued that government should use its power to lower prices and make life more affordable. The underlying assumption is always the same: If people are suffering, the private sector must be guilty, and government must be the savior. That ideological reflex produces what activists now call “social murder”—the claim that private-sector actors are morally responsible for deaths caused by imperfect systems. Under this logic, a CEO operating legally within a flawed health care structure is the moral equivalent of a killer. Outside Mangione’s proceedings, self-described “Mangionistas” reportedly proclaimed that Thompson’s children were “better off without him” and compared Thompson to Osama bin Laden. One even praised the idea of “heroic violence.” This is moral psychosis. Bin Laden orchestrated mass murder. Thompson ran an insurance company. To equate the two is not just wrong—it is the kind of rhetoric that turns political disagreement into justification for assassination. When a culture begins to rationalize murder as justice, it will get more murder. If you want more political violence in the U.S., keep telling people that political opponents are not merely mistaken but murderous—and that killing them is “heroic.” COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Road trips are quintessentially American. What’s more America than a family packing into an SUV and driving hundreds of miles across state borders, eating homemade sandwiches and entertaining children with endless games of “I Spy,” just to see beautiful views and a couple of major landmarks? Family road trips from our home in southern Michigan to New Hampshire, Alabama, northern Michigan, and Yellowstone National Park formed strong childhood memories and made me love my country. If we couldn’t swing a long trek to a National Park, we tried to see some part of America—even if it was just a state park on Lake Michigan. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s efforts to encourage similar “tourism and travel” by filming “The Great American Road Trip” with his wife Rachel Campos-Duffy and their nine children is a great promotion of American tourism and this classic summer pastime. Road tripping captures part of our national character. The same independence and desire to see the limits of America that drove the pioneers to follow the Oregon Trail are what stir Americans today to take Route 66 from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California.  Yet Democrat Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Patty Murray of Washington lambasted Duffy for this project in a recent hearing regarding the 2027 Department of Transportation Budget Request. Both alleged the trip’s funding raised ethical concerns, with Gillibrand saying the road trip “doesn’t smell right” because the nonprofit that funded the trip received donations from companies such as Toyota and Boeing, implying that Duffy would favor those organizations for sponsoring his family’s “vacation.” It’s unjust of the senators to assume there is some behind-the-scenes understanding between Duffy and these companies, as if Boeing will get unsafe aircraft designs approved by the DOT because they earned Duffy’s favor by contributing to a nonprofit that funded his America 250 project. They’re questioning why Toyota and Shell would promote American road trips, as if there must be a deeper reason why a car and a gasoline company would encourage Americans to travel this summer. It seems doubtful that Toyota tried to buy Duffy’s favor. They want Americans to buy their cars.Specifically, they’ve donated to a nonprofit to advertise for them not only by encouraging car trips, but by showing a family traveling in a Toyota vehicle. Presenting traveling by car as part of our American identity is the oldest trick in the book for car advertisements. Chevrolet released their iconic “Baseball Hot Dogs Apple Pie” ad in 1974, promoting its vehicles as classic Americana culture. This summer, Toyota’s doing the same. Duffy stated in an X post on May 9 that “career ethics and budget officials” reviewed and approved his participation in filming “The Great American Road Trip.” He’s been charged with promoting travel in America and celebrating the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding, plus he and his wife met because they were both stars on reality TV shows. Why wouldn’t he promote American tourism with a TV series on YouTube, the most popular online platform? Murray also claimed that the trip is “incredibly out of touch” with the high gas prices that are a burden for many Americans, citing the national average cost for a gallon of gas at $4.50. Gas prices are high now, but when Duffy and The Great American Road Trip Inc. launched this campaign in September, gas prices were at a national average of $3.17, $1.33 cheaper than the average when the senators grilled Duffy. It will cost more to take a road trip this summer than Duffy could have anticipated when he and his family filmed their trip. But for many families, sacrificing morning Starbucks runs and delaying the purchase of a new TV to bring their children to hike the Adirondacks or marvel at the stone faces carved into Mount Rushmore is worth it.  Duffy’s project calls Americans to celebrate our nation’s culture in the summer of America’s semiquincentennial and revel in the land our forefathers fought for us to have.

The other day, a young lady got on the elevator and promptly whipped out her smartphone and began scrolling. “Excuse me,” I said, “can I ask you where you get your news?” She said, “You mean like news about what’s going on in the world?” “Yes.” “Oh, TikTok.” This reminded me of a dinner conversation I once had with economist Thomas Sowell. We discussed the overwhelming consensus among economists that the minimum wage does more damage than good. He called the minimum wage perhaps one of the most studied topics in the field. Sowell talked about a 1987 New York Times editorial with the headline, “The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00.” It said: “There’s a virtual consensus among economists that the minimum wage is an idea whose time has passed. Raising the minimum wage by a substantial amount would price working poor people out of the job market … “An increase in the minimum wage to, say, $4.35 would restore the purchasing power of bottom-tier wages. It would also permit a minimum-wage breadwinner to earn almost enough to keep a family of three above the official poverty line. There are catches, however. It would increase employers’ incentives to evade the law, expanding the underground economy. More important, it would increase unemployment: Raise the legal minimum price of labor above the productivity of the least skilled workers and fewer will be hired.” Now The New York Times has since reversed its position. But Economics 101 has not been repealed. “Given this consensus,” I asked Sowell, “why does the minimum wage remain so popular even among some Republican politicians? Why haven’t you economists won this argument?” He said, “Because many people, especially on the Left, have never heard the arguments against the minimum wage. They get their information from TV news, and they’re not interested in the downside of the minimum wage.” This conversation about this “ignorance bubble” took place about 25 years ago. Today, most people no longer get their news from the evening newscasts on ABC, CBS, and NBC. News aggregators like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo, TikTok, and YouTube now serve as primary news conveyors and deliver the news feeds that pop up on smartphones. As aggregators, they select stories from news outlets and serve them to consumers based on what the platforms think users want to see. This means the aggregators increasingly prioritize stories that reinforce a user’s preexisting worldview. Their goal is to keep the user glued to the phone. The best way to do this is to tell people what they want to hear and give “news” that confirms what they already believe. And that’s the problem: People increasingly consume information that confirms their beliefs instead of challenging them. All Sides is a company that measures media bias, whether from the left or the right. This is from a recent analysis: “AllSides conducted news aggregator bias analyses in late 2025. Among the most biased remain Google News and Apple News—in 2025, Google News (Lean Left) curated 73% of articles from outlets with a bias on the left and just 1% of articles from outlets on the right. Apple News (Lean Left) curated 50% from the Left and just 2% from the Right. “Most news aggregators curate primarily from media outlets with an AllSides Media Bias Rating of Lean Left or Left. Our 2025 analyses found that most curate less than 10% of articles from news outlets rated Lean Right or Right. Aggregators tend to source from legacy media outlets that Americans and expert bias reviewers on average rate Lean Left or Left, like CNN (Lean Left), AP (Left bias), and The New York Times (Lean Left).” Take one narrative pushed by the likes of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani: “The rich don’t pay their fair share in taxes.” In fact, the top 10% of earners pay nearly 75% of all federal income taxes. The top 1% pay over 40% while earning roughly 20% of the nation’s income. These numbers certainly undermine the narrative that “the rich don’t pay their fair share.” Indeed, based on their share of the nation’s income versus their share of federal taxes paid, one could argue that the rich are overtaxed. Large numbers of Americans do not know this. If the news aggregators have anything to say about it, many Americans never will. COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Billionaire Tom Steyer used his money to attack a lone climate researcher. Roger Pielke Jr.’s research on climate and disaster policy wins awards and is cited by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “My views are entirely mainstream,” says Pielke. “My work is cited by all three working groups of the IPCC. There’s nothing contrarian.” Both Steyer and Pielke agree that “greenhouse gases warm the climate,” but Pielke’s sin was saying, “it’s not the apocalypse.” Because of that, “the Center for American Progress decided to make me a target,” he says. The center is a lefty group that pushes climate hysteria, running articles claiming, “Climate change is fueling more deadly and destructive floods,” “Extreme weather is only intensifying,” etc. Anyone who disagrees is labeled a “climate denier.” Steyer, now running for governor of California, gave the center enough money to run hit piece after hit piece that describes Pielke’s work as “fantastical falsehoods,” and calls him a “disinformer” who “ignores the data on climate science.” Pielke didn’t know who funded the smears until WikiLeaks revealed an email to Steyer from ThinkProgress’s editor: “Thanks for your support of this work … it’s fair to say, without Climate Progress, Pielke would still be writing on climate change.” Think about that. “Progressive” activists are proud to stop a researcher from writing about what he knows. Pielke describes his persecution in my new video. It began after Al Gore’s Oscar-winning movie in which Gore claimed that temperature increases create stronger storms. Pielke had the nerve to disagree. “Doesn’t warmer water create bigger storms?” I ask him. “All else equal, yes, it does. But the atmosphere is a complicated place. You have things like windshear, which knocks over storms. … We haven’t observed changes in the frequency or intensity beyond natural variability.” Pielke’s research acknowledged that there were “increasing impacts of extreme weather, mostly economic costs and loss of life,” but said the impacts were not caused by bigger storms but by “what we build, where we build, how much wealth we have in harm’s way.” “When the climate advocacy movement shifted to extreme weather, I was on the ‘wrong’ side,” he adds. “I had a choice to make. Was I going to call things like I see them, or was I going to succumb to pressure to say things that maybe I didn’t believe?” Pielke called it as he saw it and paid a price.  “There was an enormous effort to try to silence people who had a voice,” says Pielke. Testifying before Congress, Pielke said, “It is misleading … to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, or drought have increased.” That information is also in the findings of the IPCC. But the Obama White House put out a 3,000-word memo attacking him: “Dr. Pielke’s statements … are seriously misleading … not representative of mainstream views.” “It was the sort of thing your crazy uncle might put on Facebook,” laughs Pielke. “I’m the only academic or researcher that any president, including Donald Trump, has ever singled out.” The University of Colorado, where Pielke worked for 24 years, caved in to the pressure. They closed Pielke’s research center, canceled his classes, and moved his office into a closet. “What I went through was not what a university is supposed to be for,” says Pielke. The state-funded school, after dumping Pielke’s actual scientific research, now calls “climate change and sustainability … the central focus of our campus-wide initiatives” and hosts silly things like “climate summits” with panels on “youth climate advocacy.”  It’s so dumb. And so wrong. Fortunately, Pielke found another job. Now he researches climate at the American Enterprise Institute, one of many think tanks that does research universities once did. As I write, betting sites have Steyer in second place in California’s governor’s race. COPYRIGHT 2026 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.