Every day the Left keeps showing off how the total weaponization of everything, especially government, works. The massive municipal unions that the Left created aren’t just a massive volunteer and cash corps for leftist candidates, but their pension funds (usually running to insolvency) are leverage for forcing corporate compliance.

The Left defines its politics as the ideal for every profession and venue, everything from public health to corporate responsibility, which quickly became accusing oil and gas companies of ‘fraud’ for not bowing to their cult of climate change. Anyone not paying money to the climate cult is carrying heavy undisclosed ‘risk’.

But the combination of government pension funds and the Left’s war on speech just went nuclear.

New York City’s pension funds sued the Fox Corporation and its board on Tuesday, accusing the company of neglecting its duty to shareholders by opening itself up to defamation lawsuits from the persistent broadcasting of falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election.

That’s a New York City government official and his political allies suing an opposition media outlet for disagreeing with him while using municipal pension funds as a trojan horse.

So we’ve officially reached the “shareholder activism is just a tool by government officials to silence opposition media outlets” phase of our banana republic dissent.

“We are shareholders at a company that, unfortunately, has a longstanding practice of allowing conspiracy theories that its executives and its board know are false to be repeated over and over and over again, despite the very clear and present risk of defamation lawsuits eroding shareholder value,” said Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller, who oversees the pension funds. “And there has been no effort to make governance reforms.”

Brad Lander is an elected Democrat government official. If this is the new normal, do Republican state officials get to sue CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post for their “longstanding practice of allowing conspiracy theories” which led to them being faced with and, in some cases, being forced to settle defamation lawsuits?

Suddenly there will be an explosion of concern for the First Amendment if that happens.

We already have a massive municipal pension bomb. It may be time for the government to step in, investigate and seize pension funds that are underperforming because they have been focusing on politics rather than returns. By doing so, there will be the opportunity to stop a massive financial crisis that’s coming and to check some of the totalitarian power of the Left which quickly leapfrogs its way to suppression.

And if the pension funds want anyone investigated, let’s start with their SVB exposure.

New York City employees, including teachers, cops and firefighters, lost nearly $30 million in pension funds tied to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

Critics accuse Comptroller Brad Lander, who is custodian of the pension systems, of favoring the “woke” bank over shareholders.

So much for corporate risk.