But executives across industries have also worked to extricate themselves from public political commentary, and influential business and legal scholars have made the case for doing exactly that: A 2024 article in the University of Chicago Business Law Review argued that any other course of action might be construed as securities fraud, because the public statements of corporations in support of progressive causes tended to conflict with the actions and interests of the businesses making them. “The fundamental problem is that corporations are institutionally ill-equipped to take center stage in policy debates. They are inherently self-interested economic actors with goals that often conflict with those of society,” wrote its authors, the business law professors Jill Fisch and Jeff Schwartz. Indeed, when you think of Mister Rogers’ famous edict to “look for the helpers” during frightening times, corporate America probably isn’t where you’d start searching.