Vermont State Treasurer Mike Pieciak and five of his counterparts in other states are challenging the inclusion of President Donald Trump’s media company in one of the country’s major indexes that’s used to guide investments in the stock market.
Pieciak was the lead signatory on a letter this week to the head of the Russell 3000 Index, which tracks the performance of 3,000 of the country’s largest companies. The letter asks why the company that manages the listing, London-based FTSE Russell, decided last year to make Trump Media & Technology Group a part of its index.
In addition to Pieciak, the letter was signed by state fiscal leaders from New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Maryland, as well the comptroller of New York City.
Trump Media & Technology’s most prominent brand is Truth Social, the social media network Trump launched in 2022 after he was banned from what was then Twitter. The president’s company, which trades under the symbol DJT, also operates Truth+, a streaming service, and earlier this year launched a financial technology platform.
Pieciak and the other state treasurers and comptrollers wrote that the inclusion of Trump’s company in the Russell 3000 Index “undermines” the index’s credibility. That’s because the company has lost more than half of its value since it debuted on the stock market in March 2024, they wrote, while at the same time, generating “negligible revenues.”
Other Trump-related ventures, they added, have been similarly volatile for investors, including a meme cryptocurrency coin and non-fungible token trading cards, which “surged briefly before collapsing, leaving many investors with heavy losses.”
“The continued presence of TMTG in the index raises troubling questions on both financial and governance grounds, as well as on the integrity of the benchmark itself,” Pieciak and the other state leaders wrote in the letter, which was sent Sept. 29.
Pieciak and Vermont’s other Democratic statewide officials have repeatedly taken aim at Trump and actions taken by his administration since the president took office for a second term. Attorney General Charity Clark has joined other states to sue the Trump administration more than two dozen times since January, while Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas has pushed back on efforts by Trump’s Department of Justice to obtain sensitive voter data.
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It’s a different tact than Republican Gov. Phil Scott, who has urged state leaders to be less confrontational in what he’s said is an effort to protect Vermont’s existing federal funding and benefits.
To be sure, Scott rejected two requests over the summer from the White House to use Vermont’s national guard to aid federal immigration enforcement and crack down on crime in Washington, D.C. But he also drew sharp criticism for complying with a request to share data on nutritional benefit recipients.
Pieciak said in an interview Thursday that more than $10.6 trillion in assets flow through the Rusell 3000, which includes retirement accounts, college saving plans and some state pension funds. Vermont’s public pension plans are not invested using the Russell index, he said.
But he noted that it’s likely many Vermonters are invested in funds that automatically buy whatever shares are part of the Russell index. That means many people likely own a piece, albeit small, of Trump’s media company, even if they don’t realize it.
The treasurer said Trump’s media company is unique among the companies in the index because its value is largely based around the political capital of a single — albeit extremely powerful — person, rather than its own underlying financial success.
The letter asks FTSE Russell for “a clear explanation of the criteria and methodology used to include” Trump’s company in the Russell 3000, as well as “an assessment of how FTSE Russell has accounted for TMTG’s financial instability” and what safeguards the index will use to ensure future additions “reflect sound market fundamentals.”
“In some ways, it is the first of its kind,” Pieciak said.
