Millions of dollars in television advertisements blasting schools for teaching critical race theory and assailing corporations like BlackRock, Uber and American Airlines for catering to “woke politicians.”
A lawsuit pending before the Supreme Court to radically reshape how federal elections are conducted. Complaints against President Biden for violating election law and against school districts that allow information to be withheld from parents about children’s gender identities.
These initiatives were advanced in the past year or so by a handful of new or reconfigured conservative groups — each with their own leadership and mission.
Behind the scenes, though, these groups have something in common: They are part of an ambitious coalition developed in recent years by the conservative activist Leonard A. Leo, who until now has been best known for his role in pushing the appointments of conservative judges to the center of the Republican Party’s agenda.
Most of the initiatives were financially supported, or in some cases launched, by an opaque, sprawling network shaped by Mr. Leo and funded by wealthy patrons, usually through anonymous donations that critics call “dark money.”
An investigation by The New York Times of Mr. Leo’s activities reveals new details of how he has built that network, with relatively little public attention, into one of the best-funded and most sophisticated operations in American politics, giving him extraordinary influence as he pushes a broad array of hot-button conservative causes and seeks to counter what he sees as an increasing leftward tilt in society.
The network represents a dramatic expansion of tactics and focus for Mr. Leo, who spent nearly three decades working mostly behind the scenes to pull the judiciary to the right as an executive at the Federalist Society. His success in that effort, and expansion into other polarizing fights, is rapidly making him a leading target of criticism from the left.
His philosophy is defined by a belief that the federal government should play a smaller role in public life and religious values a larger one, and that institutions and individuals should be challenged for embracing what he sees as subversive liberal positions….
The network’s nine core groups have spent nearly $504 million on policy and political fights, including grants to about 150 allied groups, between mid-2015 and last year, with roughly half of that spending since mid-2019, according to an analysis by The Times of dozens of tax filings. And his efforts have been turbocharged by an unusual $1.6 billion infusion from a Chicago electronics manufacturing magnate in late 2020 that was revealed by The Times this year, giving Mr. Leo the cash to match his ambitions going forward…
His expanded effort focuses on a variety of causes, including restricting abortion rights in the states; ending affirmative action; defending religious groups accused of discriminating against L.G.B.T.Q. people; opposing what he sees as liberal policies being espoused by corporations and schools; electing Republicans; and fighting Democratic efforts to slow climate change, increase the transparency of money in politics and expand voting access.
“The idea behind the network and the enterprise we built is to roll back liberal dominance in many important sectors of American life,” Mr. Leo said in an interview last month. “I had a couple of decades or more of experience rolling back liberal dominance in the legal culture, and I thought it was time to take the lessons learned from that and see whether there was a way to roll back liberal dominance in other areas of American cultural, policy and political life.”
Since 2016, the grant-making hubs in his network and the recipients of their money have paid more than $30 million to the firms owned at least partly by Mr. Leo, CRC Advisors and BH Group, according to the Times analysis. It shows that he also has been paid more than $2.7 million in personal salary and consulting fees during roughly that time period by nonprofit groups in the network and their grantees, including more than $2.2 million from the Federalist Society, where he remains co-chairman….
Some allies of Mr. Trump privately complain that Mr. Leo’s unwillingness to embrace the false claim that the election was stolen hindered their ability to sign top lawyers and firms to litigate the issue. They are closely watching Mr. Leo for signs that he or his network might align behind a Republican challenger to Mr. Trump in 2024.
Mr. Leo’s allies say he will support the party’s nominee, regardless of who it is.