Free Republic

Huge funding from influential conservative donor networks is flowing into groups affiliated with a conservative venture aimed at creating a Republican "government-in-waiting," including over $55 million from groups linked to conservative activist Leonard Leo and the Koch network, according to an Accountable.US review shared exclusively with NBC News. Launched by the Heritage Foundation in April 2022, Project 2025 is a two-pronged initiative to develop staunch conservative policy recommendations and grow a roster of thousands of right-wing personnel ready to fill the next Republican administration. With former President Donald Trump now the GOP's presumptive 2024 nominee, the effort is essentially laying...

Majority Democrats on a Senate committee on Thursday abandoned their work, which was targeting conservatives on the Supreme Court, when GOP members suggested subpoenas for the staff of leftist Justice Sonia Sotomayor... Senate Judiciary Committee “punted” on votes scheduled regarding the issuance of subpoenas for GOP donors Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow. Sen Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has accused the two of “stonewalling” an investigation into the high court “that seeks to determine whether two Republican-appointed justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, acted with any impropriety,” the report said. The confrontation was launched when ProPublica said they helped facilitate trips for...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee abruptly adjourned a meeting on Thursday without holding an expected vote on subpoenas for two conservatives who have helped arrange luxury travel and other benefits for Supreme Court justices. The panel’s Democratic chairman, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, gaveled out after Republicans on the committee made clear they would call for subpoena votes on a raft of Democratic officials and others, a protest of the planned subpoenas for Republican megadonor Harlan Crow and conservative activist Leonard Leo. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the panel, warned majority Democrats that...

Democrats hit the brakes on plans to subpoena conservative legal scholar Leonard Leo and billionaire Harlan Crow during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday, scoring a win for the integrity of the Supreme Court. The move came after Republican Ranking Member Lindsey Graham warned Chairman Dick Durbin and other Democrats that their efforts to intimidate friends and acquaintances of conservative Supreme Court Justices, specifically Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito under the guise of "ethics reform," would backfire. "I promise you, everything that was working well with the committee is now in jeopardy," Graham warned. "You’re going to...

Before anyone goes nuts, this money did NOT go to the GOPe or Mitch McConnell etc. Instead it went to the very strong conservative Leonard Leo, who is the co Chairman of the Federalist Society, the organization that reviewed and strongly recommended President Trump's excellent judicial nominees. The money went to the Marble Freedom Trust, a strongly conservative PAC headed by Leonard Leo. The money came from one Berre Seid, a Chicago based electrons mogul/billionaire. Naturally the liberal heads are exploding everywhere. Its fun to watch the crazy Chris Hayes suffer a massive meltdown over this stunning donation to conservatives....

WASHINGTON — A new conservative nonprofit group scored a $1.6 billion windfall last year via a little-known donor — an extraordinary sum that could give Republicans and their causes a huge financial boost ahead of the midterms, and for years to come. The source of the money was Barre Seid, an electronics manufacturing mogul, and the donation is among the largest — if not the largest — single contributions ever made to a politically focused nonprofit. The beneficiary is a new political group controlled by Leonard A. Leo, an activist who has used his connections to Republican donors and politicians...

Senate Democrats released a 50-plus page report Wednesday sounding alarm bells over the rate at which Senate Republicans and President Trump have confirmed federal judges during the president's first term as Republicans are working on shepherding along even more lifetime-appointed federal judges. The account calls GOP-appointed judges "politicians in robes," rails against the Chief Justice John Roberts' Supreme Court, slams the conservative and libertarian lawyers' group the Federalist Society and says Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is "betraying the vision of our founders." The report was widely promoted by high-profile Senate Democrats on Wednesday, including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.,...

Dr. Leonard Leo is Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society, an organization of around 65,000 individuals advancing limited, constitutional government. Most recently, he has advised President Trump on judicial selection, helped to manage the Gorsuch selection and confirmation process, and served as a member of the Trump transition team. He organized the outside coalition efforts in support of the Roberts and Alito U.S. Supreme Court confirmations, and, in 2004, was the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign’s Catholic Strategist. Dr. Leo, along with the other founders and directors of the Federalist Society, received the 2009 Bradley Prize. He is the coeditor of...

Conservatives See Court Shift as Culmination By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK In February of last year, as rumors swirled about the failing health of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, a team of conservative grass-roots organizers, public relations specialists and legal strategists met to prepare a battle plan for whomever the next Supreme Court nominee might be. The leaders were Leonard A. Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society and informal adviser to the White House; Edwin Meese III, attorney general in the Reagan administration; and C. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel under the first President Bush and a veteran...

I mentioned Leonard Leo in a previous post but didn't go into much detail about him. I'm well aware of who he is and wrongly assumed that every reader would as well. Fortunately, Confirm Them (cross-posted at Southern Appeal) has stepped up to the plate to provide a little more information on Leo. He's Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society as well as the chairman of Catholic Outreach for the Republican Party.The conservative Catholic Site BeliefNet has some very interesting things to say about Roberts and his family:If Catholics in America tend to fall into two broad categories--those who...

NEW YORK -- The combined vote of "faithful Catholics" and "swing Catholics" will decide which presidential candidate wins a majority of the nation's 25 million Catholic voters. And perhaps the election. That's the view of attorney Leonard Leo, the new head of "Catholic Outreach" at the Republican National Committee. Leo succeeds Crisis magazine publisher Deal Hudson, who resigned the post Aug. 18 after acknowledging having had a sexual relationship with an undergraduate student while he was teaching at Fordham University (NCR, Aug. 27). "There are two key elements to the Catholic vote," Leo told NCR. "There are 'faithful Catholics,' by...