Poli Alert Politics & Civics
Related Articles
Last week we broke down Edward Blum, the guy who killed affirmative action, gutted the Voting Rights Act, shut down the Fearless Fund, and is now suing the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation over scholarships for Black students. A one man wrecking ball aimed at every program this community built to get a fair shot.
Here’s the thing. Blum is not the boss. He’s not even close. He’s the lawyer. The face. The press release.
And here’s the part most people miss. Blum isn’t even a lawyer. He’s a former stockbroker. He has never argued a case in court. What he does is run the operation. He founds the organizations, recruits the plaintiffs, picks the targets, and hires the actual attorneys who do the courtroom work. He is a professional case manufacturer, not a litigator.
So if Blum is the middleman, who is the boss?
His name is Leonard Leo. And if you have never heard of him, that is by design. He has spent forty years in the shadows on purpose.
So let’s pull him into the light.
Who Is Leonard Leo
Leonard Leo is a 60 year old conservative Catholic lawyer from Long Island. He is the co-chairman of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal network that has spent the last four decades training, promoting, and placing right wing lawyers into every level of the American court system. Every single one of the conservative Supreme Court justices currently on the bench, Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, is connected to Leo’s operation.
Clarence Thomas once called Leo the “Number Three most powerful person in the world.” That quote wasn’t from an enemy. That was from a sitting Supreme Court justice calling his friend powerful.
Leo’s own biographer put it plainly. Over three decades running the Federalist Society, Leo stacked the federal bench with over 200 Trump appointed judges, roughly one third of the entire federal judiciary. He personally shepherded five of the six conservative Supreme Court justices through their confirmations. The Court that killed Roe. The Court that ended affirmative action. The Court that gutted the Voting Rights Act. The Court that ruled presidents are immune from prosecution.
That is all Leonard Leo.
The Money That Changed Everything
In 2021, an 89 year old electronics manufacturer from Chicago named Barre Seid sold his company. Quietly, before the sale closed, he transferred 100 percent of the ownership of that company to a new nonprofit called Marble Freedom Trust. When the sale went through, that nonprofit pocketed 1.6 billion dollars. Tax free.
The chairman of Marble Freedom Trust is Leonard Leo.
To put that number in perspective, it is believed to be the single largest political donation in American history. Bigger than anything the Koch brothers ever moved in one shot. Bigger than any George Soros contribution. One rich donor, one billion six hundred million dollars, handed to one man.
And that was on top of what Leo already had. According to reporting by ProPublica and Americans United, Leo linked organizations spent more than half a billion dollars between 2014 and 2020 just on packing courts. That was before the Seid money hit.
So when you see Edward Blum roll up with a new lawsuit against a Black scholarship program, ask yourself how a former stockbroker from Texas can afford to sue Harvard for eight years, appeal it to the Supreme Court, win, and then immediately pivot to suing venture capital funds and scholarship foundations across the country. He can’t. Not on his own. The money flows from Leo’s network through a web of anonymous trusts and shell foundations and lands at Blum’s feet.
How The Money Gets to Blum
Here is the pipeline, receipts and all.
Leo founded and controls a group called The 85 Fund, which also operates under the names Judicial Education Project and Honest Elections Project. The 85 Fund gets most of its money from another organization called DonorsTrust, which functions as a dark money pass through. Wealthy conservatives write big checks to DonorsTrust, which then anonymously routes the money to groups like The 85 Fund, which then funds the lawsuits.
Public tax filings show Students for Fair Admissions, Blum’s organization that took down affirmative action, received over 8.5 million dollars from this exact network between 2015 and 2020. In 2018 alone, DonorsTrust recommended roughly 7 million dollars to The 85 Fund for “general operations.” In 2020, DonorsTrust sent The 85 Fund 20 million more.
The kicker. The Fearless Fund lawsuit that shut down 20,000 dollar grants for Black women business owners? Same network. The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation scholarship lawsuit filed earlier this month? Same network. The pending suit against the National Minority Supplier Development Council’s Minority Business Enterprise certification? Same network.
Every single major legal attack on Black wealth building programs in the last decade has been funded by money that flows through Leonard Leo.
What Else The Money Does
Killing affirmative action and Black scholarship programs is just one front. Leo’s network also runs a project called Teneo Network, which one ProPublica investigation called “a Federalist Society for everything.” Teneo is building a parallel universe of conservative influence across business, media, technology, and culture, with the explicit goal of reshaping every institution in American life.
Leo is also personally funding Republican candidates in the 2026 midterms. He is moving money into state attorney general races, state supreme court races, and federal congressional races. The same playbook he used to pack the federal courts, he is now running on state courts and state governments.
And here’s a twist that tells you everything about how much power Leo actually has. In May 2025, Donald Trump, the man Leo helped install three Supreme Court justices for, publicly called Leo a “sleazebag” and “a bad person who in his own way probably hates America.” Why? Because a Trump appointed federal judge, picked by Leo, ruled against one of Trump’s tariff executive orders.
Trump thought he was getting loyal soldiers. Leo gave him ideologues who answer to the movement, not the president. That beef tells you who actually has the leverage.
What It’s Cost Us
Let’s tally what this money has taken from Black America just in the last decade.
The Voting Rights Act. Gutted in 2013 by Shelby County v. Holder, a case brought by Blum and funded by Leo’s network.
Race conscious college admissions. Killed in 2023 by Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. Blum as counsel, Leo’s network as funder, Leo’s justices casting the deciding votes.
The Fearless Fund. Shut down in 2024 after Blum’s lawsuit, also Leo network funded. Twenty thousand dollar grants for Black women entrepreneurs, gone.
The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation scholarships. Under legal attack right now.
Minority Business Enterprise certification. Under legal attack right now.
Federal DEI programs across every agency. Being dismantled right now by judges Leo put on the bench.
And coming next, based on the lawsuits already filed and the cases queued up for the Supreme Court: minority owned business certification programs, federal contracting set asides, HBCU specific funding streams, and race conscious provisions in the Civil Rights Act itself.
The Bottom Line
The story has never been Edward Blum. Blum is the recruiter. He finds the plaintiffs, founds the organizations, picks the targets, and hires the attorneys who file the briefs and show up in court. But every one of those moves is paid for, planned for, and protected by a network of billionaires and anonymous trusts that Leonard Leo has spent his entire adult life building.
When you see the next lawsuit drop against a Black scholarship, a Black venture fund, a Black business certification, or a Black focused program of any kind, do not give Blum the credit. The credit belongs to Leo. Write it down.
And understand what this actually is. It is not a disagreement about policy. It is not a debate about the best way to help underserved communities. It is a forty year, half a billion dollar project designed to strip every remedy, every program, every inch of ground Black people in this country have gained since 1964. And it is working.
The 1.6 billion dollar war chest Barre Seid handed Leo in 2022 is nowhere near spent. The judges are still young. The lawsuits are still coming. And the next phase of this war, according to Leo’s own public statements about Teneo Network, is cultural. Not just the courts. The boardrooms, the newsrooms, the campuses, the corporate suites.
You have been told for years that Trump is the problem. Trump is a symptom. Leonard Leo is the infection.
Know his name.
