If you’re a regular reader, you know how important fiduciary responsibility and the fight against political, ESG-investing is to investors and Unleash Prosperity. For the past four years, our Pension Politics project has been shining a spotlight on the abuse of proxy voting to push political agendas at the expense of shareholders.

The result has been a smashing defeat for ESG resolutions as now the vast majority of firms vote “no.”

We also exposed that the “proxy advisory” firms were some of the biggest supporters of ESG. ISS and Glass Lewis were both routinely recommending that money managers vote thumbs up for racial preferences and radical climate change mandates imposed on firms, such as divestment in oil and gas stocks.

Fortunately, new rulemaking from the Labor Department takes square aim at proxy advisory firms by determining that they themselves are fiduciaries and can’t be playing politics with other people’s money.The ruling makes it clear that “proxy advisors regularly fit the definition of functional fiduciaries under the Employee Retiree Income Security Act of 1974.” This is a big victory for investors and a big setback for liberal shareholder activism.