{"id":1063568,"date":"2023-06-03T08:36:34","date_gmt":"2023-06-03T08:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2023\/06\/leonard-leo-abortion-supreme-court-kansas\/"},"modified":"2023-06-03T08:36:34","modified_gmt":"2023-06-03T08:36:34","slug":"right-wing-dark-money-funded-kansass-failed-anti-abortion-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/06\/03\/right-wing-dark-money-funded-kansass-failed-anti-abortion-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Right-Wing Dark Money Funded Kansas\u2019s Failed Anti-Abortion Campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Leonard Leo\u2019s massive conservative dark money network is quietly working behind the scenes to try to eliminate abortion protections at the state level.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n Abortion rights protesters along 15th Street near Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington DC, on May 14, 2022. (Elvert Barnes Photography \/ Wikimedia Commons)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

The dark money network led by conservative\u00a0Supreme Court architect Leonard Leo<\/a>\u00a0financed the nonprofit that bankrolled a misleading text message campaign pretending a Kansas ballot measure would \u201cgive women a choice,\u201d when it actually would have eliminated state abortion protections.<\/p>\n

New tax documents hint at how Leo\u2019s network has been quietly working to influence abortion policy in the states utilizing his historic\u00a0$1.6 billion dark money fund<\/a>, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision last year overturning\u00a0Roe v. Wade<\/em>\u00a0and ending federal protections for abortion rights. As President Donald Trump\u2019s judicial adviser, Leo helped select three of the six justices making up the Supreme Court\u2019s conservative supermajority.<\/p>\n

Leo\u2019s network donated $1.7 million to CatholicVote Civic Action, a conservative Catholic advocacy group, between July 2021 and June 2022, according to a newly obtained tax return.<\/p>\n

The contribution was made around the time that CatholicVote Civic Action was funding a campaign supporting a Kansas ballot measure designed to eliminate protections for abortion rights in the state constitution. The ballot\u00a0measure<\/a>\u00a0would have affirmed \u201cthere is no Kansas constitutional right to abortion\u201d and given state lawmakers \u201cthe right to pass laws to regulate abortion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do Right PAC, a political action committee funded by CatholicVote Civic Action,\u00a0sent text messages to Kansas voters<\/a>\u00a0a day before the election last summer giving the false impression that a \u201cyes\u201d vote on the ballot measure would \u201cgive women a choice\u201d and \u201cprotect women\u2019s health,\u201d when its passage would have ended state protections for abortion rights.<\/p>\n

The PAC also\u00a0paid<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0TV ads<\/a> featuring Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, in which he claimed that the amendment would \u201clet Kansas decide what we do on abortion, not judges and not DC politicians.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Leo did not respond to submitted questions.<\/p>\n

Former Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.), a\u00a0senior political advisor<\/a> to CatholicVote Civic Action, led Do Right PAC. CatholicVote Civic Action donated $500,000 of the $556,000 raised by the PAC last year. Huelskamp did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Despite these efforts, the Kansas initiative failed decisively, 41 to 59 percent \u2014 offering an early preview of how anti-abortion efforts would flounder in the\u00a02022 state elections<\/a>. While Kansas Republicans recently\u00a0overrode<\/a> Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly\u2019s vetoes of some anti-abortion measures, abortion remains legal in the state up to\u00a0twenty-two weeks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Leo network\u2019s donation to CatholicVote Civic Action came via the Concord Fund, the conservative advocacy group that spent tens of millions to confirm the three Supreme Court nominees whom Leo helped select as former Trump\u2019s judicial adviser.<\/p>\n

Tax records show the Concord Fund raised $29 million between July 2021 and June 2022. All of that money appears to have come from Leo\u2019s Marble Freedom Trust. As the Lever<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0ProPublica<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0last year, this trust was the recipient of an unprecedented $1.6 billion cash infusion courtesy of Chicago surge protector magnate Barre Seid.<\/p>\n

The new tax documents show how Leo is using the Concord Fund to imprint his conservative vision on both politics and policy.<\/p>\n

The disclosure shows the Concord Fund donated $3 million to One Nation, the Senate GOP\u2019s dark money arm. One Nation, which supports Republican Senate candidates,\u00a0aired ads<\/a>\u00a0supporting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s confirmation in 2018.<\/p>\n

The Concord Fund separately donated nearly $1 million to the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion advocacy group that\u00a0pressed<\/a>\u00a0the Supreme Court to overturn\u00a0Roe v. Wade<\/em>. The organization has\u00a0actively backed<\/a>\u00a0voter suppression laws passed by Republican lawmakers around the country.<\/p>\n

Records show the Concord Fund also donated $500,000 to Advancing American Freedom, a dark money group chaired by former Vice President Mike Pence that is serving as his \u201ccampaign-in-waiting\u201d in advance of a potential 2024 presidential bid, according to\u00a0Politico<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Advancing American Freedom filed an amicus\u00a0brief<\/a>, or friend-of-the-court filing, pressing the Supreme Court to overturn\u00a0Roe v. Wade<\/em>, warning that \u201cunfettered access to abortion\u201d has led to \u201cdeclining formation of families with accompanying increases in family instability and single parent households (many living in poverty).\u201d<\/p>\n

This year, the organization filed a\u00a0brief<\/a>\u00a0unsuccessfully<\/a>\u00a0urging the high court to approve a Texas district court\u00a0ruling<\/a>\u00a0designed to ban a commonly-used abortion pill. The Supreme Court blocked the lower court\u2019s decision in April, allowing an appeals court to consider the case first, though it\u2019s widely expected that the case will eventually end up back at the high court.<\/p>\n

The Concord Fund has long been the chief financier of the Republican Attorneys General Association, which elects GOP attorneys general and donated $6.5 million to the group last election cycle, according to data compiled by CQ Roll Call\u2019s Political Moneyline.<\/p>\n

Those attorneys general regularly bring cases and file briefs urging the Supreme Court to issue precedent-shattering decisions. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, for instance, led the\u00a0Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization<\/em>\u00a0case at the Supreme Court, by which justices overturned federal protections for abortion rights.<\/p>\n

The Concord Fund additionally reported donating $750,000 to the lobbying arm of the Foundation for Government Accountability, which has led the fight to institute new and expanded work requirements for a range of social safety net programs.<\/p>\n

President Joe Biden\u2019s recent debt ceiling deal with House Republicans includes some of those expanded work requirements, at the urging of Speaker Kevin McCarthy.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n\n \n \n \n\n\n

This post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The dark money network led by conservative\u00a0Supreme Court architect Leonard Leo\u00a0financed the nonprofit that bankrolled a misleading text message campaign pretending a Kansas ballot measure would \u201cgive women a choice,\u201d when it actually would have eliminated state abortion protections. New tax documents hint at how Leo\u2019s network has been quietly working to influence abortion policy [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1649,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063568"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1063568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1063569,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063568\/revisions\/1063569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1063568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1063568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1063568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}