The dark money funding conservative anti-trans groups

This story is part of a series on the origins and implications of the conservative campaign against transgender rights.

Since 2020, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of anti-trans bills proposed and passed in state legislatures across the country. Transphobic and eliminationist rhetoric is now a common feature of Republican political communication. Behind this rise is a network of shadowy nonprofit groups funded by opaque sources. 

The donors identified by the American Independent Foundation as major supporters of the anti-trans groups profiled in this story are among the most powerful and wealthy on the American right: Leonard Leo, the conservative judicial activist who helped former President Donald Trump pick his Supreme Court nominees and who controls a billion-dollar funding apparatus; Richard Uihlein, the GOP megadonor who has bankrolled far-right and election-denying candidates; and members of the Koch donor network of nonprofit political organizations spearheaded by the conservative billionaire Charles Koch and his late brother, David.

The proximity of influential and powerful right-wing figures to these groups shows the close ties between the newer, vocal wave of anti-trans political groups and the conservative establishment.

The American Principles Project

The American Principles Project has seen its star rise in recent years, becoming one of the key groups coordinating legislation to restrict gender-affirming care while utilizing its political action committee to target Democrats with anti-trans campaign advertisements. Terry Schilling, the group’s president, has said that the group’s ultimate goal is to ban gender-affirming care outright. However, its current focus, Schilling said, is on supporting Republican efforts to ban care for minors “because that’s where the vast majority of the American people are right now.”

Because the group is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, a social welfare organization that engages in public advocacy, it does not have to disclose its donors. Some information, however, is available about the group’s donors and spending in elections.

After spending less than $1 million in the 2016 election cycle, the group spent $7 million on federal and state elections during the 2022 midterm elections, according to OpenSecrets. Restoration PAC, one of far-right, election-denying billionaire Richard Uihlein’s main channels for political spending, gave the PAC $4 million during the 2022 midterms.

Earlier this year, Restoration PAC and the American Principles Project PAC both spent heavily to support Daniel Kelly, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who lost his bid to reclaim a seat on the state’s highest court. In the waning days of the campaign, APP PAC embarked on an anti-trans ad blitz, spending on digital advertisements and sending direct text messages to Wisconsin voters warning about the dangers of “trans ideologues” backing Kelly’s opponent, liberal Judge Janet Protasiewciz.

During last year’s midterms, the American Principles Project PAC spent heavily in swing states against Democrats. In Arizona, the group spent $160,000 against winning gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs, and in Michigan it spent more than $400,000 attacking incumbent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and supporting her opponent, Tudor Dixon.

In 2020, the group, which had previously organized extensively against same-sex marriage, promised to spend $4 million attacking presidential candidate Joe Biden over his support for transgender rights. In total, the PAC spent just under $6 million in 2020. 

The 1776 Project

Ryan Girdusky, a far-right political operative and writer, launched the 1776 Project PAC in May 2021 with a founding mission to elect school board members across the country “who want to reform our public education system by promoting patriotism and pride in American history.” Since its launch, the 1776 Project has said it is focused on fighting “critical race theory,” a catch-all term, as used by conservatives, to tar efforts to teach public school students about white privilege, systemic racism, and America’s history of racial violence and exclusion. The group has particularly targeted  teachers’ use of the 1619 Project, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalism project that examines the history of slavery and racism in America.

Starting in September 2022, the PAC began to expand its attacks to gender-affirming care for minors, trans girls’ access to girls sports, and public school lessons about gender and sexuality. It endorsed more than 100 school board candidates across the country and, in its Twitter profile, claims that it has “helped elect over 100 un-woke school board members.”

To pay for these efforts, the 1776 PAC raised nearly $3.5 million in 2022, according to OpenSecrets. More than a third of that total came from a single $900,000 contribution from Uihlein’s Restoration PAC.

Moms for Liberty

Moms for Liberty, a far-right education advocacy nonprofit, was officially formed on Jan. 1, 2021, by one current and two former Florida school board members to “organize, educate and empower parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.”

In its early days, the group rallied conservative parents to protest at school board meetings, first in Florida before quickly forming local chapters in counties across the country, over issues like COVID-19 and “critical race theory.”

The group has since shifted its focus to opposing gender-affirming care, school policies that allow trans girls to play girls sports in school, and books and lessons on sexuality and gender, often using the term “gender ideology.” Moms for Liberty’s funding is somewhat opaque. The group has county-specific chapters across the country, each filing its own 990 tax forms with the IRS — 126 chapters in total, according to a search of the IRS’s database of nonprofit organizations.

Tina Descovich, one of the groups’ co-founders, told the Washington Post in 2021 that the group is mostly funded by individual $50 memberships and the proceeds from t-shirts it sells. In the same article, Pamela Castellana, the chair of the Brevard County Democratic Party, questioned the group’s grassroots funding efforts, explaining that itss three leaders have close ties to Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has announced his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

An investigation into the group by Media Matters for America further explores the connections between Moms for Liberty and top GOP politicians, donors, and operatives. In one example, the wife of Christian Ziegler, the vice chair of the Republican Party of Florida, was listed as the co-director of Moms for Liberty in the group’s incorporation documents uncovered by Media Matters. In an interview with the Washington Post, Ziegler downplayed his wife’s involvement with the group, saying that she is “loosely aligned with Moms for Liberty.”

The same Media Matters investigation noted that Moms for Liberty members were photographed with a number of prominent GOP politicians, including Sen. Rand Paul (KY), Rep. Thomas Massie (KY), and Eric Trump, the son of the former president.

In April 2022, Moms for Liberty partnered with Parents Defending Education, another right-wing education advocacy group, to author a letter co-signed by 27 other far-right organizations opposing the Department of Education’s proposed changes to include gender identity as a category protected under Title IX. Parents Defending Education has close ties to the Koch network of conservative nonprofit organizations.

In 2022, the group received a $50,000 donation from Julie Fancelli, an heir to the Publix grocery store chain and a donor to far-right causes. Fancelli was tangentially involved in the Jan. 6, 2020, rally that preceded the rioting by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol, having contributed $650,000 to organizations involved in planning the rally, according to reporting by the Washington Post.

Parents Defending Education

Parents Defending Education came to prominence in early 2021, when the group, an education advocacy nonprofit that claims its mission is to fight “indoctrination in the classroom,” filed federal civil rights complaints against school districts in Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina, and Minnesota, alleging that they had violated federal law by acknowledging systemic racism within the education system.

The group was founded by Nicole Neily. Since the initial civil rights complaints, the group has pivoted to attacking policies that help LGBTQ students.

In addition to partnering with Moms for Liberty in the letter opposing Title IX changes, Parents Defending Education has used its platform to attack policies that support trans students. It has published a list of school districts with policies that support trans and gender-nonconforming students and filed numerous federal complaints with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and in federal courts about school districts that have policies protecting LGBTQ students.

Because Parents Defending Education is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, it doesn’t have to disclose its donors. But the group has close ties to a number of other right-wing organizations that are funded by the Koch network. Specifically, Neily previously worked for Koch-affiliated organizations the Franklin News Foundation, the Cato Institute, and the Independent Women’s Forum.

The Searle Freedom Trust, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization formed in 1988 by the late conservative businessman Daniel C. Searle, in 2021 gave Parents Defending Education $250,000, according to the Searle group’s 2021 tax filings.

The Independent Women’s Forum

The Independent Women’s Forum is a conservative 501(c)(3) nonprofit that describes itself as a “national women’s organization dedicated to developing and advancing policies that are more than just well-intended, but actually enhance people’s freedom, opportunities, and well-being.” The group, founded by conservative women during Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ 1991 confirmation hearings, has opposed progressive policies such as paid family leave and the Violence Against Women Act.

Recently, the group has lighted on trans rights, working to promote legislation that would ban transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports, bar trans women from women’s spaces, and end gender-affirming care for minors. Earlier this year, the IWF launched an online video series called “Identity Crisis,” which highlights the stories of so-called detransitioners, people who once identified as transgender but no longer do. 

Medical experts have consistently found that the number of detransitioners is small, with some research finding that a majority of detransitioners stop identifying as transgender because of social pressure or to adopt a nonbinary identity. Conservative media and activists routinely use their stories to broadly delegitimize transgender medicine and identity.

According to materials reviewed by the Washington Post, many of the biggest names in conservative dark money, such as the Charles Koch Institute, the Walton Family Foundation, and Dick DeVos, are major supporters of the group.

DonorsTrust, a nonprofit that disburses millions of dollars collected from wealthy right-wing donors to conservative groups, gave the IWF $3.4 million between 2011 and 2019, according to investigative watchdog True North Research.

The group’s 2021 Form 990, a tax document nonprofits must file every year, confirmed the corporate and dark money network behind the IWF. That year, the group received millions from some of the same nonprofits and foundations that have funded organizations pushing the full spectrum of conservative political projects, from climate change denial to tax cuts for billionaires. Among the largest donors were the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation, which gave the IWF $2.4 million; the Sarah Scaife and the Walton Family Foundations, which gave the group $300,000 and $400,000, respectively; and the 85 Fund, one of several dark money vehicles controlled by Leonard Leo, which gave $300,000. In total, according to Truthout, Leo’s network has given $5 million to the IWF and Independent Women’s Voice, its 501(c)(4) affiliate that can endorse candidates and engage in more direct political advocacy.

IWF has enjoyed support from corporate donors, too; in 2021, the last year for which filings are available, Amazon gave the organization $400,000. In previous years, tech giants Meta and Google donated to the group, which opposes anti-trust regulation that would break up big tech companies.

The IWF says that it is a nonpartisan entity, but its leadership has sometimes conveyed a different message behind closed doors. According to an investigation by the Center for Media and Democracy, Vicks-Richardson heir Heather Richardson Higgins, the president of Independent Women’s Voice and the board chair of the IWF, told prospective donors in 2016, “Being branded as neutral, but actually having people who know that you’re actually conservative puts us in a unique position.”

“Our value here and what is needed in the Republican conservative arsenal is a group that can talk to those cohorts [women who are not Republican conservatives] that would not otherwise listen but can do it in a way that is taking a conservative message and packaging it in a way that will be acceptable,” she added.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.