Trump Taps Paul Atkins to Lead SEC

Paul Atkins

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday announced that he had chosen Patomak Global Partners CEO Paul Atkins to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

“Paul is a proven leader for common sense regulations. He believes in the promise of robust, innovative capital markets that are responsive to the needs of Investors, & that provide capital to make our Economy the best in the World,” Trump posted. “He also recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before.”

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Woke 2.0: ESG Critics Say the Same Movement Marches on, Only with a New Name

BlackRock began renaming environmental, social and governance (ESG) earlier this year. It’s now calling it “transition investing.”

The company recently updated its climate and decarbonization stewardship guidelines. The document makes no mention of ESG, but it shows in many ways, the world’s largest investment manager with $10 trillion in assets under management is still pursuing many of the same goals.

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Memo Sounds Alarm Over Massive ‘Unconstitutional’ Database of Americans’ Info Pushed by Biden Admin

Rep. Barry Loudermilk

Advancing American Freedom, a conservative group founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, is sounding the alarm about a Biden administration effort to collect Americans’ private financial information, according to a memo obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2012 authorized a program to make it easier for financial regulators to track transactions in U.S. markets by creating a “consolidated audit trail,” or CAT. This would require brokerages and exchanges to collect and report certain financial information to regulators and other financial organizations. Under the Biden administration, the SEC approved a new funding model for CAT in September 2023.

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Luxury Electric Vehicle Maker Becomes Latest in Industry to Announce Huge Layoffs

Lucid Motors

Electric vehicle (EV) maker Lucid Motors announced that the company would be laying off staff in a bid to lower expenses amid a slowdown in the market.

The layoffs will affect 6% of its workforce, equating to around 400 employees, and will trim from all employee levels, including leadership and mid-level management, according to a filing submitted Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Lucid is one of several EV makers to announce layoffs in recent months as consumers decline to adopt the product at the rate expected.

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Feds Secretly Knew for Years Joe Biden Met with Son’s Chinese Partners on Official Trip

Federal agents gathered evidence during the 2016 election that Hunter Biden had used access to his father on an official government trip to Beijing aboard Air Force Two to connect prospective Chinese business partners with then-Vice President Joe Biden, according to a massive cache of documents recently turned over to Congress and obtained by Just the News.

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Biden Wants Companies to Disclose Climate Risks, Pilot Program Unreliable

Six major American financial institutions struggled to accurately assess the extent of their exposure to climate change and related risks, according to the Federal Reserve.

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Ford Shareholders Reject Proposal to Audit Child Labor in Electric Vehicle Supply Chain

Ford electric vehicles

Shareholders at auto manufacturing giant Ford Motor Co. voted down a proposal Thursday requiring that a report be compiled on the use of child labor in its electric vehicle (EV) line.

The proposal, which was presented by the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) at Ford’s annual shareholder meeting, called for Ford to report to shareholders the extent to which the company’s EV supply chain involves, depends or relies on child labor outside of the U.S., according to Ford’s proxy statement. The NCPPR called for the report due to the prevalence of child labor in the harvesting of the components used to craft EVs, particularly cobalt, which is commonly sourced from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

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SEC Voluntarily Puts on Hold Climate Change Rule

John Rady

Requiring publicly traded companies to make climate-related disclosures has voluntarily been put on hold by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The SEC’s move came before a decision was reached by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. John Rady, counsel for the SEC in the case, notified the court in a letter.

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