Powerful American groups linked to the Trump administration are expanding across the Atlantic, opening up offices in the U.K. and Europe, fighting climate action, waging religious right culture wars and aligning with far-right political movements.

But as organizations including the climate-denying Heartland Institute, abortion-fighting Alliance Defending Freedom and Project 2025-backing Heritage Foundation build influence overseas, one U.S. power broker has been noticeably absent.

That is the conservative activist Leonard Leo, the co-chairman of the Federalist Society who is credited with orchestrating the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. Following a $1.6 billion gift from Chicago industrialist Barre Seid to put toward conservative causes, Leo backs a vast network of advocacy organizations pushing a stridently right-wing agenda. 

Until now, Leo’s efforts have largely played out in American statehouses and courts. Groups backed by his network have pushed measures into law blocking banks and companies from considering Environmental, Social or Governance (ESG) factors in their investment decisions. His network has also backed measures that critics describe as restricting voting access.

But at this year’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference, a global far-right gathering held in London from June 23-25 during a record-smashing European heatwave, Leo’s culture war operation surfaced on an international stage.

Numerous operatives close to Leo and his network pushed their messaging to a global audience whose attendees included politicians from far-right parties across Europe, including Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, Vlaams Belang from Belgium, Spain’s VOX, and the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom.

At a time when the Trump administration is openly seeking through its National Security Strategy to undermine the European Union by supporting “patriotic European parties” and “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations,” watchdog groups are paying careful attention to any signs that Leo’s network is expanding abroad.

There’s a real danger that conservative Leo groups backed by anonymous billionaires will begin “to export their model of distorting public policy to other countries,” according to Lisa Graves, executive director of the nonprofit True North Research. 

“We hope that the UK and the EU can develop stronger laws to secure transparency and defend against the onslaught of dark money in politics than the U.S. has been able to achieve,” she told DeSmog.

‘Put the Screws to Them’

A key fight for the Leo network in recent years has been pressuring Wall Street executives and leaders of large corporations to abandon factoring environmental concerns into their investment decisions.

One of the top architects of that strategy provided tactical insights into what persuades corporate leaders to ditch climate pledges during a speech at the London ARC conference. “You just need the will to really put the screws to them,” explained Will Hild, executive director of the Leo-backed advocacy group Consumers’ Research.

Appearing at the event alongside speakers including Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreesen and Toby Rice, CEO of the gas fracking company EQT, Hild explained that “we have run seven-figure ad campaigns calling out corporations for this type of bad action.”

The goal when it comes to companies that support climate-focused investing, he went on, “is to torture them psychologically until they stop doing it.” 

Hild has previously described Leo as “a good friend and adviser to Consumers’ Research” and a “supporter” of the group. True North Research found that funding to the group was linked to Barre Seid.

Hild’s remarks were delivered to a room full of backers who could potentially gain financially from his agenda. Two American energy companies — Howard Energy Partners and Heyco Energy Group — sponsored this year’s ARC conference, according to materials obtained by Unearthed and DeSmog. Fossil fuel companies like those stand to benefit from Hild and his group’s crusade pressuring banks and asset managers to drop net-zero and climate commitments.

Leo’s Religious Right Allies

Several other operatives with close links to Leo were on the ARC conference program.

Heather Higgins, chair of the Independent Women’s Forum, an organization that has received more than $1.6 million dollars from the Leo co-founded entity 85 Fund, was named as a donor and supporter of this year’s conference. Higgins, who noted this was not her first time at ARC, spoke at a panel entitled “Strengthening the Social Fabric.”

Another speaker at the event, Carl Trueman, is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), where Leo serves as a board member, and has received financial support from Leo’s network.

Speaking on a panel entitled “Strengthening the Social Fabric,” Trueman characterized teenage girls identifying as lesbian as a symptom of social breakdown rather than authentic identity. Trueman cited a dubious secondhand claim that “80 percent of the girls” at one school identified as lesbian, and tied the statistic to a broader loss of friendship among young people that he claimed was “intensified” by “pornography” and “online engagement.”

Robert George, who has been described as a confidant of Leo and shares a board membership with him on the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, was listed as a speaker at the ARC conference for a panel entitled “Our Civilisational Story.” According to the project Supreme Transparency, the Becket Fund is a nonprofit law firm that takes on cases to “erode reproductive freedom, LGBTQ+ rights, and contraception access.”

Becket is mainly a U.S. operation but has done some work aboard, occasionally intervening in European cases. 

None of the Leo groups represented at ARC responded to DeSmog’s request for comment.

For the time being, most of the Leo network’s grant making is going toward American-based organizations. But there is a high level of interest among Trump-aligned groups and interests, several of which were represented at ARC, in growing their European influence.

“We are now seeing more evidence of how their ambitions are not solely focused on the U.S.,” Graves said.