Paxton
md5: bb62116eda671aab25ecf2b06e5e7fcd
🔍
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/09/climate/blackrock-coal-texas-lawsuit.html
Did some of the biggest investors in the world buy up shares in coal companies to force them to produce less coal?
An unusual lawsuit in Texas claims that investment firms including BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street did just that, illegally colluding with one another to reduce coal production as part of a conspiracy to fight climate change.
In a federal court in Texas on Monday, a lawyer for BlackRock told a judge that the claims “defy economic reality” and that the lawsuit should be dismissed. “The complaint ignores that the coal market has been declining for decades for a host of reasons well before this alleged conspiracy,” said Gregg Costa, a lawyer with the firm Gibson Dunn, speaking on behalf of all three defendants.
A lawyer for Texas, which filed the suit late last year along with 10 other states, said BlackRock’s chief executive, Laurence D. Fink, has written in the past that corporations should set targets for greenhouse-gas reductions. For coal companies, that means “reducing output,” said the lawyer, Brian Barnes of the firm Cooper & Kirk.
Texas, a major oil- and gas-producing state, has taken aggressive action against financial companies over climate issues, including enacting a law that bars state entities from doing business with investment firms that the comptroller says are boycotting energy companies. In January, the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, and 10 other state attorneys general sent a letter to financial institutions warning that their policies on climate and environment, as well as diversity, “could lead to enforcement actions.”
As power has changed in Washington, financial firms have walked back their messaging and participation in climate action groups. The complaint in the Texas case noted that BlackRock and State Street had already withdrawn from a trade association known as Climate Action 100+. (Vanguard had not been a member.) The firms have also exited the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, which had been a target of criticism from the right.
Just last week, the Texas comptroller, Glenn Hegar, removed BlackRock from the list of companies his office had accused of boycotting the oil and gas industry. The blacklist bars retirement funds for Texas public employees from investing with the firms. Mr. Hegar pointed to the firm’s exits from the climate networks in the announcement.
On Monday, Mr. Costa called on Judge Jeremy D. Kernodle in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas to dismiss the complaint. He said that allowing the case to continue would impose heavy financial burdens on the defendants, and also on the coal companies in question, as they went through the time-consuming and costly process of discovery, or exchanging information about evidence and witnesses that would be used at trial.
Mr. Costa said there was no allegation that the defendants had taken specific actions to reduce coal output. He added that coal was only a small part of the portfolios of the asset managers.
Mr. Barnes, the lawyer representing the states, pointed to a letter from Mr. Fink, the BlackRock chief executive and once an outspoken proponent of climate action, asking companies to set targets for greenhouse gas reductions. He said the firms “had a declared policy of basically leveraging their shares to try to push ‘carbon-intensive industries’ to set targets in alignment with the Paris Agreement,” referring to the pact among nations to limit damage from climate change by reducing greenhouse gases.
The burning of fossil fuels like coal produces carbon dioxide that is dangerously warming the planet because, once released into the atmosphere, it acts like a blanket, trapping the sun’s heat.
David Lawrence, policy director for the Justice Department’s antitrust division, also appeared before the judge on behalf of his agency and the Federal Trade Commission. The agencies wrote in a brief to the court last month that actions alleged could reduce competition and raise prices for consumers.
Before the judge, he presented a scenario in which an influential investment firm could encourage airlines to not offer as many flights, or a wireless company to not give out free phones. “We think it’s critically necessary that the harms to consumers that would result be prevented,” he said.
In a statement after that brief was filed, BlackRock said the government’s support for the “baseless” case undermined the Trump administration’s stated goal of American energy independence. “This case is trying to rewrite antitrust law and is based on an absurd theory that coal companies conspired with their shareholders to reduce coal production,” the statement said.
As the judge concluded the hearing, he said he owned shares, like many Americans, in Vanguard funds. He said he did not believe it precluded him from hearing the case, but was disclosing the information in case any of the parties would argue otherwise.
>>1411377 (OP)Why the fuck would you need to hatch a plot against coal? It's fucking coal, it's already dead.
>>1411408>Why the fuck would you need to hatch a plot against coal?Coal barons have a stranglehold over West Virginia politics, so maybe they've got a beef with them.
"Black Rock" "coal" get it? Coal is a black rock. Get it now? Got it! Good!
>>1411377 (OP) (OP)
related
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/08/texas-senate-dems-paxton-cornyn-00393332
>Senator John Cornyn of Texas believes he can win a no-holds-barred Republican primary next year with his state’s hard-charging attorney general, Ken Paxton, by making the race all about the character of his opponent.>It’s a tall order, considering that Mr. Paxton has already faced down corruption allegations that played out in public when the Republican-controlled State House impeached him in 2023, only to see the Republican State Senate acquit him.Paxton is virtue signalling to the woke right for votes in the upcoming Senate primary next year.
>>1412031You're retarded.
https://reason.com/2025/06/11/the-rise-of-the-woke-right/
>>1412093Your proof is that someone submitted a hoax paper to a publication so tiny that it doesn't even have a Wikipedia article? A hoax paper that just rewrite karl Marx from the perspective of white supremacy?
Wow.
You don't even know what woke is
>>1412100woke is a term racists stole from black people, and you're mentally ill
>>1412101You don't even know what woke is, obviously. You can't even define it. You think it's a karl Marx from the perspective of Hitler.
>>1412102no no, its because he thinks leftists are awake and not dreaming of America
>>1412102>You think it's a karl Marx from the perspective of Hitlercan you please learn english before you post, esl anon
>>1412102Obviously you're the one who doesn't know what woke is.
>>1412100That was in 2018. The woke right is a much larger movement today.
>>1412093>>1411729you are the fuckwit the billionaires funds think tanks to do psy-ops on.
The only good thing blackrock does is anti carbon investments. Coal is nasty and dirty (acid rain due to sulfur), unless you use it to produce nat gas, but thats less profitable than burning it directly.
