Conservative Activist Vows $1B Investment to ‘Crush Liberal Dominance’

Leonard Leo, a conservative activist and the former executive vice president of the Federalist Society, told the Financial Times his nonprofit group was pledging $1 billion to “crush liberal dominance” in corporate America. The conservative activist told the British broadsheet he would “direct resources to build talent and capital formation pipelines in the areas of news and entertainment, where leftwing extremism is most evident.” Leo said the money would target “companies and financial institutions that bend to the woke mind virus.” Leo is most famous for his longtime role as vice president of the Federalist Society, where his networking helped reshape the Supreme Court’s conservative majority that eventually overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Leo stepped back from his position as head of the Federalist Society in 2020, but remains the organization’s co-chair. He is now the current chair of the Marble Freedom Trust, a nonprofit activist group he founded with the help of a $1.6 billion donation from Barre Seid, a nonagenarian electronics billionaire, in 2020.