Secretive ‘dark money’ network launches anti-critical race theory campaign

A deep-pocketed “dark money” group is spending “well over $1 million” on an ad campaign against the inclusion of racial justice topics in K-12 curricula. 

The Concord Fund is a conservative dark money group better known as the Judicial Crisis Network. It registered Free to Learn Action as a “fictitious name” — or legal alias — on June 21, the Daily Poster reported Thursday. Free to Learn’s website does not disclose its relationship with the Concord Fund and describes itself as a “nonpartisan” group dedicated to promoting education without “pressure or requirements to subscribe to a singular worldview and activist curriculum with a political agenda.” 

The Concord Fund’s latest identity comes in the midst of the GOP’s furor over critical race theory, a much-discussed but little-understood academic theory that suggests the legacies of slavery and segregation influence institutional and systemic racism today. Some Republican lawmakers have said critical race theory is “anti-American” and promotes discrimination against white people. 

The debate over how school children are taught about slavery, civil rights and racism has become the most recent battle in the culture war between conservatives and progressives. And Republicans are gearing up to use the controversy as political fodder during the 2022 midterms.

On June 24, the Republican Study Committee circulated a memo authored by Committee Chair Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) to its members urging them to “lean into the culture war.”

“Because the backlash against Critical Race Theory is real,” Banks wrote. “We are beginning to see an organic movement from parents across the country …  who are fed up with the lessons their kids are being taught. As House conservatives, we should be sending a signal to these concerned parents: We have your back.”  

While parents across the country have objected to the teaching of critical race theory in schools, a network of established dark money groups funded by secret donors are stoking the purportedly “organic” anti-CRT sentiment Banks describes. 

Last week, Free to Learn announced it will air four TV ads “advocating for classrooms independent from political influence.” One clip addresses a national audience while another takes aim at elite New York City private schools including Grace Church, Dalton and Brearly. The other two ads target school districts in Arizona and Virginia, both states with upcoming congressional elections featuring vulnerable Democrats. 

The Virginia-focused ad highlights a headline from the conservative publication the Federalist decrying a Fairfax County school district’s decision to hire social justice consultants to help build “Critical Race Theory curricula” in May. 

Free to Learn is led by Alleigh Marré, a political consultant who worked as the national press secretary for the National Republican Senatorial Committee and a consultant for the 45Committee, a dark-money group that spent more than $21 million boosting former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. However, Free to Learn’s website only boasts her time as a senior adviser and chief of staff to the secretary of the Air Force. 

The Concord Fund is a part of a shape-shifting network of dark-money conservative groups that includes the Honest Elections Project and the Judicial Education Network, which changed its name to the 85 Fund in 2020, when the Judicial Crisis Network began its rebrand. The ecosystem of corporations and nonprofits is infamously opaque, but its few known sponsors include the 45Committee, Marré’s former employer, which donated at least $3 million to the Network at the end of Trump’s tenure in office. 

OpenSecrets reporting revealed that the 45Committee received initial funding from the Wellspring Committee, a dark money group that contributed tens of millions of dollars to the Judicial Crisis Network over the course of several years. 

The Daily Poster reported Tuesday that the Concord Fund raised more than $14 million from a single anonymous donor between July 2019 and June 2020. The fund has been credited with helping confirm Trump’s slate of conservative judges, and it is closely tied to Leonard Leo, a one-time Trump adviser who served as an executive of the conservative Federalist Society.

Free to Learn isn’t the only dark money group looking to keep racial justice curricula out of classrooms. A report by NBC News identified more than 165 groups involved in anti-CRT activism. Unlike Free to Learn, which is registered as a non-stock corporation, most of these groups are 501(c) nonprofits that aim to support parents who sue school districts over curricula they deem inappropriately progressive and boosting anti-CRT school board candidates. Republican lawmakers cast these groups as grassroots organizations led by concerned parents, but many of them have close ties to well-established conservative networks. 

One group — SchoolhouseRights.org — helps connect disgruntled parents with legal services “in defense of students’ freedom of conscience in public education and the rights of parents.” It is a project of the International Organization for the Family, a nonprofit designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Another group, Parents Defending Education, is led and incorporated by Nicole Neily, a long-time conservative writer and researcher. Neily also heads Speech First Inc., a charitable nonprofit with ties to the Koch Network that promotes conservative speech on college campuses. 

In late May, Axios reported that a Republican consultant and commentator founded the 1776 Project PAC, dedicated to supporting anti-CRT school board candidates across the country. The committee registered with the FEC in January but only began soliciting donations late this spring. The PAC’s name refers to a conservative counterargument to the 1619 Project, a reporting project published by the New York Times Magazine in 2019 that argues America’s real founding occurred in 1619 with the start of slavery in the U.S.