A Leonard Leo-Linked Group Is Secretly Funding Legislative Attacks On Trans Rights

A group at the center of conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo’s network funneled $750,000 to an influential new lobbying operation that pushes anti-LGBTQ+ legislation around the country, new tax records show.

Do No Harm presents itself as a grassroots association of doctors against gender-affirming care and diversity efforts in the medical profession. The group, which was founded in 2022, does not disclose its donors. But newly disclosed tax filings provided to HuffPost by Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog, show that the Concord Fund, the funding arm of Leo’s network, donated $750,000 in 2022 to Do No Harm Action, the group’s official lobbying effort.

Do No Harm also received more than $1.4 million from a nonprofit, the Project on Fair Representation, run by conservative activist Edward Blum, new records show. Blum, a conservative activist who helped engineer two Supreme Court cases that struck down affirmative action and major sections of the Voting Rights Act, is now a Do No Harm board member.

HuffPost previously revealed that Do No Harm received $1 million in seed funding from Joseph Edelman, a billionaire hedge fund CEO, and his wife, Suzy Edelman, who has said she considers “transgenderism” “a fiction designed to destroy.”

Leo is best known as the kingpin of a decades-long effort to pack the federal judiciary with conservative judges. As the leader of the Federalist Society, Leo assembled a vast and secretive network of wealthy donors and nonprofits to amplify the power of the conservative legal movement, culminating in Leo handpicking the list of former President Donald Trump’s potential nominees to the Supreme Court. While some of his efforts are highly public, others, like the funding of Do No