The Lever is a site created by investigative journalist David Sirota. Sirota was a speech writer for Senator Bernie Sanders and co-writer of the award-winning film “Don’t Look Up.” In this post, he reveals the Dark Money behind state-level efforts to get rid of abortion rights. Based on what happened in Kansas, anti-abortion forces will try to block referenda in the future; letting voters decide defeats their cause, just as it does with vouchers, which never win state referenda. In Kansas, their deceptive tactic was to confuse voters about whether to vote yes or no. Most women do not want to abandon a right they had for almost fifty years.
The dark money network led by conservative Supreme Court architect Leonard Leo financed the nonprofit that bankrolled a misleading text message campaign pretending a Kansas ballot measure would “give women a choice,” when it actually would have eliminated state abortion protections.
New tax documents hint at how Leo’s network has been quietly working to influence abortion policy in the states utilizing his historic $1.6 billion dark money fund, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision last year overturning Roe v. Wade and ending federal protections for abortion rights. As President Donald Trump’s judicial adviser, Leo helped select three of the six justices making up the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority.
Leo’s network donated $1.7 million to CatholicVote Civic Action, a conservative Catholic advocacy group, between July 2021 and June 2022, according to a new tax return obtained by The Lever.
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 measure would have affirmed “there is no Kansas constitutional right to abortion” and given state lawmakers “the right to pass laws to regulate abortion.”
Do Right PAC, a political action committee funded by CatholicVote Civic Action, sent text messages to Kansas voters a day before the election last summer giving the false impression that a “yes” vote on the ballot measure would “give women a choice” and “protect women’s health,” when its passage would have ended state protections for abortion rights.
The PAC also paid for TV ads featuring Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, in which he claimed that the amendment would “let Kansas decide what we do on abortion, not judges and not D.C. politicians.”
A spokesperson for Leo did not respond to questions from The Lever.
Former Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.), a senior political advisor 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.
Despite these efforts, the Kansas initiative failed decisively, 41 to 59 percent — offering an early preview of how anti-abortion efforts would flounder in the 2022 state elections. While Kansas Republicans recently overrodeDemocratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s vetoes of some anti-abortion measures, abortion remains legal in the state up to 22 weeks.
The Leo network’s 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’s judicial adviser.
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’s Marble Freedom Trust. As The Lever and ProPublica reported last year, this trust was the recipient of an unprecedented $1.6 billion cash infusion courtesy of Chicago surge protector magnate Barre Seid.
The new tax documents show how Leo is using the Concord Fund to imprint his conservative vision on both politics and policy.
The disclosure shows the Concord Fund donated $3 million to One Nation, the Senate GOP’s dark money arm. One Nation, which supports Republican Senate candidates, aired ads supporting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation in 2018.
The Concord Fund separately donated nearly $1 million to the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion advocacy group that pressed the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. The organization has actively backed voter suppression laws passed by Republican lawmakers around the country.
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 “campaign-in-waiting” in advance of a potential 2024 presidential bid, according to Politico.
In 2021, Advancing American Freedom filed an amicus brief, or friend-of-the-court filing, pressing the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade — warning that “unfettered access to abortion” has led to “declining formation of families with accompanying increases in family instability and single parent households (many living in poverty).”
This year, the organization filed a brief unsuccessfully urging the high court to approve a Texas district court ruling designed to ban a commonly-used abortion pill. The Supreme Court blocked the lower court’s decision in April, allowing an appeals court to consider the case first, though it’s widely expected that the case will eventually end up back at the high court.
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’s Political Moneyline.
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 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case at the Supreme Court, by which justices overturned federal protections for abortion rights.
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.
President Joe Biden’s recent debt ceiling deal with House Republicans includes some of those expanded work requirements, at the urging of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“A Rare Peek Inside the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy,” an article by Anne Nelson, identifies Leonard Leo as a funder the Council on National Policy, a secretive right wing religious group. Nelson added, “Carrie Campbell Severino, president of Judicial Crisis Network, convened a ‘war room’ of Catholic and CNP organizations after the death of Justice Ginsberg.”
Leo is right wing Catholic with 9 kids.
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A former majority leader (R) alleges that a single Kansas City Catholic bishop “torpedoed” an expansion of Medicaid.
The politician links the Bishop’s motivation to the attack against abortion.
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“the vast right wing conspiracy” has been around for decades and the super wealthy individuals funding it with Dark Money represents the real Deep State.
There’s the definition of what Deep State means and the Deep State conspiracy theory. They do not match. The conspiracy theory generated from the real Deep State on the extreme right says liberals are being it.
Another big lie that’s been repeated and spread far and wide for decades.
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Thank you, Diane, for adding Sirota’s investigative article to the blog.
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Anyone who wants to understand the fronts in the threat to democracy should read Catholic Vote. The site has praised Hungary’s authoritarian leader, Orban.
The alliance of politicized, right wing Catholics and Koch is the driving force that can take down American democracy.
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This is why the Repugnicans will lose in 2024. Trump is the guy responsible for the court that has stolen away women’s right to control over their own bodies (what a surprise) and reproduction, and DeSatan signed the six-week ban. That alone makes either one of them unelectable nationally.
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What’s in a name?
DeSatan
DeStalin
DeFascist
DeSanitize
DeSanctimonious
DeStructive
Any other candidates?
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Just repeating it- not condoning its use for anyone nor legitimizing its accuracy nor its use to disqualify for office
DeSpectrum.
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I loved Debacle. I think that that was RT.
DeStructive is perfect too. And DeFascist gets to the heart of the problem, doesn’t it?
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DeSaster!
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Language police back again. The term “abortion rights” has always bothered me, especially as one who firmly falls into that camp. For me personally, as an atheist and one who respects religious conviction (Scientology and LDS excepted), were I in a position to be part of making a personal decision about an abortion, I would choose not to. But I would never, ever presume my decision upon others’ unique circumstances. Therefore I consider myself to be solidly pro-choice in public policy and anti-abortion if it were personal.
Therefore, I propose expunging the term “abortion rights” from the public lexicon altogether. The decision a woman makes about this circumstance is never rash or frivolous, regardless of what extremists want to peddle. (As an aside, I have become militant about the “third trimester abortion” lie. There is not one woman in the world who to whom this applies. Any prospective mother who has a late-term abortion is going through the most personally tragic experience they have or will ever have in their lives. Up until the moment they learned why an abortion was essential to save the mother’s life and/or limit unnecessary suffering of the child, they would never have considered having an abortion. They were busy picking out cribs and other stuff for the baby’s bedroom.
This is about essential health care, not “abortion” anything. It is a medical decision, not a moral one.
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I agree, Greg.
Those who oppose abortion should not have one.
They should not impose their views on others who don’t share them.
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GregB To me, the core of your note is REALLY well said–and I am with Diane (in her above note) on the politics of it. But then you say, “This is about essential health care, not ‘abortion’ anything. It is a medical decision, not a moral one.”
I have never had an abortion but have thought long and hard about it. I have had one child on purpose. Essential is that, as a medical-only analysis, I cannot find a place . . . between conception and birth where life starts (an on-off moment, so to speak) . . . or where there was a definitive moment as clear as is the moment of conception. And so, I have tried, but cannot talk myself into seeing how abortion is not putting an end to a life.
I seriously doubt I would ever decide to have an abortion; though I have seen extreme scenarios in history where, thinking as a parent for the good of the child, for others, and for myself, I would do so. As for the rape thing, I cannot even imagine such a decision . . . except to say: it’s horrible either way, but the decision belongs to the mother, and to no one else.
That said, and regardless of extreme-or-not circumstances, I also doubt I would ever “get over it.” And so, I do take exception to your last sentence. That is, deciding to have an abortion IS a medical decision. However, seen as ONLY medical, it becomes an armchair abstraction . . . that is, not understood as being set in a history of a real person’s actual life . . . and so in the context of their (both hers and his) moral, psychological, and spiritual history.
Briefly, and as a normative point, a person’s moral comportment holds that person’s already-developed conscience which, depending on its earlier development, tends to survive exactly those kinds of decisions, no matter how we push it around; and it will tend to play interior havoc, variably of course, but for the rest of their lives. At the very least, it won’t be forgotten.
And so, yes, abortion IS a medical decision with medical consequences. However, the decision to abort is certainly loaded with moral meaning in a person’s life, family, and community, and certainly carries with it an abundance of historical fallout.
Regardless of that scenario, and murderous or not, my view is that it’s a personal decision; though my belief is that one’s decisions should be made in the light and consideration of one’s own familial input and environment; but its power and responsibility belong to the singular person, and does NOT belong in the political arena, familial, state, or otherwise. CBK
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