Lobbying

Do No Harm presents itself as a grassroots association of doctors against gender-affirming care and diversity efforts in the medical profession. The group, which was founded in 2022, does not disclose its donors. But newly disclosed tax filings provided to HuffPost by Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog, show that the Concord Fund, the funding arm of Leo’s network, donated $750,000 in 2022 to Do No Harm Action, the group’s official lobbying effort.

Do No Harm also received more than $1.4 million from a nonprofit, the Project on Fair Representation, run by conservative activist Edward Blum, new records show. Blum, a conservative activist who helped engineer two Supreme Court cases that struck down affirmative action and major sections of the Voting Rights Act, is now a Do No Harm board member.

HuffPost previously revealed that Do No Harm received $1 million in seed funding from Joseph Edelman, a billionaire hedge fund CEO, and his wife, Suzy Edelman, who has said she considers “transgenderism” “a fiction designed to destroy.”

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The medley of conservative groups channeling money to Do No Harm underscores the growing belief on the right that attacking trans rights is “a political winner.”

The scale of the contributions also helps illuminate how Do No Harm became a successful influence operation so soon after its launch. Last year, the group deployed lobbyists to more than a half-dozen states to advocate for restrictions on gender-affirming care, and at least two states passed laws using its model legislative language. In Montana, Do No Harm provided the blueprint for a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, which sparked furious local protests. 

“It just made the worst of the worst people here more bold in their bigotry, and that trickles down to our kids,” Darcy Saffer, the parent of two transgender nonbinary children in Bozeman, Montana, told HuffPost last year. The law is blocked while the Montana Supreme Court weighs whether it is unconstitutional.

The group succeeded in their demands to water down the pollution standard despite overwhelming evidence showing the devastating impact that vehicle exhaust pollution has on human health and climate, as well as polling showing overwhelming support for the proposed standard.

Such policy “compromise” is often portrayed as important to the cost of living for the average “punter”. But there is no disguising the winners here.

The exemptions, or “re-categorisation” of luxury SUVs into the “light commercial class” included such everyman vehicles as the Mercedes AMG-G 63 (price range $180,000 to $350,000), and the Lexus LX (around $200,000). Most of the other models included have variants that cost well over $100,000.

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In a sign of just how low expectations of government are in Australia, most organisations, including environmental groups, welcomed the changes announced on Tuesday, which have garnered the support of the fossil fuel giants such as Toyota, if not the federal Coalition or the Greens.

These groups were at pains to point out how remarkable it is, given Australia’s political situation, that we now stand the chance of actually having vehicle emissions standards. But it is equally remarkable, and testimony to the power of the fossil fuel lobby, that – apart from Russia – Australia is the only western country in the world that doesn’t have them.