It is now clear that President Trump will win the Republican Nomination for President. Nevertheless, Nikki Haley’s last-ditch effort to change the trajectory of the race has given rise to a concerning development. Republicans across the nation should take note. As her candidacy has looked increasingly tenuous, Haley has resorted to courting the well-heeled advocates of environmental extremism on Wall Street. 

Haley has long accepted at face value the climate cult’s framing of environmental matters, even calling climate change a national security issue. Allowing the left to frame arguments about America’s future presupposes assumptions we should treat with suspicion and even disdain. Some politicians adopt these frames either instinctively or because they don’t know better. Others do so as a subtle way to let their donors know they don’t intend to rock the boat. But regardless of which explanation applies to Haley—and we have good reason to think Haley falls into this second category—her rhetoric should be a red flag for those of us on the right. 

Conservatives have waged an intense struggle against radical social engineering schemes cooked up in federal agencies and corporate boardrooms alike, and often in concert. These efforts—known broadly as ESG for “environmental, social, and governance”—seek to revalue financial risk based not around the market forces of supply and demand, but rather on liberal social goals like decarbonizing the economy, imposing anti-family orthodoxy, and empowering unelected bureaucrats. Access to capital, in the world of ESG, hinges on obedience to progressive ideology, not on expected future returns. 

ESG has had no greater advocate than Larry Fink, the CEO of the behemoth fund manager BlackRock. BlackRock, with more than $8 trillion in assets under management, throws a lot of weight around trying to coerce firms and governments into toeing Fink’s preferred political line. That political line has one consistent aim: to cripple the backbone of our domestic energy production by denying the fossil fuel industry access to capital. 

Here in West Virginia, I led the charge to kick BlackRock out of our state government because its Fink-led efforts to strangle our coal jobs presented a clear threat to the well-being of my constituents. More than a dozen states have, to varying degrees, followed suit. We have rejected, out of hand, the argument that we simply have to submit to funding our own impoverishment. And we have succeeded. Thus, we can say with confidence that no conservative public official should have anything to do with Larry Fink. 

Still, raising money isn’t easy. Campaign finance limits keep those running for federal office on the road and on the phones, seeking out sufficient resources to power our campaigns. Yet in fundraising, there comes a time for choosing: whether or not to accept money that undermines our values and objectives as conservatives. When major financial institutions and renewable energy interests back up a proverbial Brinks truck, the temptation can be overwhelming. 

Given the opportunity to hobnob with Fink and take his ill-gotten gains at a fundraiser, Nikki Haley was all in. In other words, she failed the test. The pursuit of power has made her dependent on those who would harm the very people whose votes she would need to win. It’s an untenable situation. 

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While it’s easy to call out Nikki, she’s not alone in this. Countless Republicans across the nation continue to seek out and accept this dirty money. Can we really count on these Republicans to stand up to the radical green agenda? No, we can’t. Conservatives need to wake up to the threat posed by woke corporations—and we need to make sure that those politicians who cross the line and seek support from ESG’s champions pay the price at the ballot box. 

When we choose to stand up to woke corporations, we can win. They have money, but we have people. By electing anti-ESG fighters, we can secure the economic, cultural, and social wellbeing of the people who elect us. Those on Wall Street who want to destroy our fossil fuel industry, and put thousands of hard working Americans out of a job in the process, do not have the political power on their own to overcome us. That is, unless we surrender the power to them. 

Nikki Haley chose to do just that, to hand power back to the banks, and put herself out of consideration by serious conservatives in the process. Donald Trump, by contrast, fought for our energy jobs in his first term and will do so again in his second. He has repeatedly raised issues of ESG and debanking. He gets it. Let’s send him back to the White House and get back to making America great again.