Right-wing U.S. groups have put more than $280 million into campaigns against LGBT+ rights and abortion worldwide since 2007, almost $90 million of which focused on Europe, according to a report on Tuesday. Many of the 28 groups - most of which are Christian - have close links with U.S. President Donald Trump, who is campaigning for re-election on Nov. 3, investigative website openDemocracy found, amid the rising popularity of the far-right in Europe.
"These findings show how Trump-linked groups have built a frightening global empire," Mary Fitzgerald, openDemocracy's editor-in-chief, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in emailed comments. One of the main groups is the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), whose chief counsel Jay Sekulow is Trump's personal lawyer. It supported a ruling in Poland last week banning abortion in cases of foetal defects, the report said.
The ACLJ - shown through its financial records to have spent $18 million globally since 2007, 80% of it in Europe - did not respond to a request for comment. Another major player is the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), whose international arm filed legal briefs against same-sex marriage in Italy and backed a Northern Irish bakery that refused to make a cake with "Support Gay Marriage" on it.
It also opposed same-sex adoption in Austria and trans women in France seeking to legally change their gender by submitting arguments in cases at the European Court of Human Rights. Read more via Reuters
Revealed: $280m ‘dark money’ spent by US Christian right groups globally
Claire Provost; Nandini Archer
US Christian right groups, many with close links to the Trump administration, have spent at least $280m in ‘dark money’ fuelling campaigns against the rights of women and LGBTIQ people across five continents, openDemocracy can reveal today.
Organisations led by some of Donald Trump’s most vocal allies and supporters have spent increasing amounts of money globally to influence foreign laws, policies and public opinion in order “to stir a backlash” against sexual and reproductive rights.
Today openDemocracy has released the first-ever dataset detailing the global scale of this spending. Human rights advocates and transparency campaigners from around the world have called it “alarming”, and a “wake-up call” for democracies.
None of the Christian right groups we studied reveals who its donors are, or discloses details of how exactly it spends its money overseas.
“This is a form of interference in our political and judicial system which is as harmful to human rights as Russian meddling in democratic elections,” said Neil Datta, head of the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF), which includes dozens of MEPs and national MPs from across Europe.
Irene Donadio at the International Planned Parenthood Federation European Network (IPPF EN) said there has been a clear increase in campaigns against reproductive and sexual rights across the region, and described the scale of the funding revealed by openDemocracy today as “staggering”. Read more via Open Democracy
