ESG critic appointed to Labor Department (2025)
| Environmental, social, and corporate governance |
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| • What is ESG? • Enacted ESG legislation • Arguments for and against ESG • Opposition to ESG • Federal ESG rules • ESG legislation tracker • Economy and Society: Ballotpedia's weekly ESG newsletter |
The Department of Labor this month appointed Justin Danhof—a critic of ESG investing and a proxy voting and corporate engagement expert—as a senior policy advisor in the Employee Benefits Security Administration.
Danhof’s appointment brings an anti-ESG voice into a role that shapes guidance for retirement plans.
Danhof previously led the Free Enterprise Project at the National Center for Public Policy Research, where he filed shareholder proposals opposing ESG initiatives and helped organize pushback against the strategy. He also worked at Strive, an asset management company founded by Vivek Ramaswamy to promote non-ESG investing.
According to Pensions & Investments:
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“Without Justin's efforts, I don't know if there would even be a pushback against ESG,” said Stephen Soukup, author of the 2021 book, “The Dictatorship of Woke Capital: How Political Correctness Captured Big Business,” who credits Danhof with getting him involved in the anti-ESG movement. “I think that he's essentially the founder of the capital markets pushback against ESG,” Soukup added. In public remarks and writings, Danhof, whose bio on X says he’s “pioneer of the post-ESG movement,” has railed against large asset managers and their ESG investing practices. Most notably, Danhof has criticized BlackRock and its CEO Larry Fink. In a March 2023 post on X, Danhof linked to an opinion piece critical of Fink and wrote, “Larry Fink uses other people's money to advance leftist policies throughout corporate America.”[1] |
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See also
- Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG)
- Economy and Society: Ballotpedia's ESG newsletter
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
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