Leonard Leo speaks to media at
Trump Tower in
New York. Earlier this month, an advertisement began appearing on TV stations across the nation. Featuring foreboding
music and an urgent-sounding voiceover, the ad presented statistics about content glorifying eating disorders and self-harm on TikTok, the Chinese-owned
Social Media giant that boasts 170 million
American users to date. “We can’t go on like this,” the ad implores. “Stop the poison. Stop TikTok.” TikTok’s list of adversaries is long. President Biden, former
President Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and former House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi have all called for TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to divest from the app or face a ban in the
United States. TikTok’s primary competitor, Meta, paid a Republican-aligned political consultancy to malign it in 2022 , and
China hawks with ties to the U.S. defense industry are now referring donors to the same firm to raise money for lawmakers who would support a ban. But this ad was created by a new opponent — a recently birthed political organization called the American Parents’ Coalition, whose stated mission is to protect children from “ideologues and activists.” The group's name was recently registered by the Lexington Fund, a
Virginia nonprofit incorporated last year by an attorney who works for advocacy organizations tied to conservative activist and fundraiser Leonard Leo. Leo's ties to Skinner and the Lexington Fund, and the Lexington Fund's registration of the name American Parents Coalition, were previously reported by Rolling Stone. Leo and his organizations have come under
fire in recent years for their efforts to impose conservative leadership on institutions from the
Supreme Court to schools, newspapers,
Hollywood and Wall Street . He has been among the most powerful supporters of former President
Donald Trump, and drawn scrutiny for potential self-dealing and allegedly urging
police to violate First Amendment protestors’ rights . This is the first report of a Leo-linked organization engaging in tech-related advocacy. Alleigh Marre, the executive director of the American Parents’ Coalition, is a former
Republican Party spokesperson who also leads the Free to Learn Coalition, another Leo-backed group that pushes schools to restrict discussions of racial and gender inequities, which it characterizes as critical race theory or CRT. Marre’s pinned tweet on X shares a new television ad targeting TikTok with the caption, “TikTok poses one of the greatest threats to our children. It is leading to major physical and psychological harm.” Reached for comment, Marre declined to speak for Leo or the Lexington Fund, but offered the following statement: “TikTok lacks adequate parental controls for minors and promotes content that glorifies self-harm and eating disorders. Studies have revealed this content is pushed to young audiences within minutes of using the app, all while collecting vast amounts of personal data from its users. TikTok is poison." The lawyer who incorporated the Lexington Fund did not respond to a request for comment by press time. Unlike the push against discussion of systemic inequities in schools, TikTok has been an unusually bipartisan issue for lawmakers, uniting them across party and ideology over long shared anxieties about TikTok’s ownership by the Chinese tech giant, ByteDance . They fear that the Chinese government could use TikTok to surveil and gather information about Americans , or use the TikTok recommendations algorithm to influence our civic discourse, altering what entertainment, news, and commentary we see. Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would force TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest its stake in TikTok or face a ban of the app in the U.S. The bill garnered overwhelming bipartisan support, passing by a vote of 352-65. President Biden has said that he will sign the bill if it makes it to his desk; the fate of the legislation now rests with the
Senate, which is currently in recess. Former President Trump, despite leading his own quest to force ByteDance to sell — or face a TikTok ban — now says he opposes the effort. TikTok has lambasted the House bill as an unconstitutional restriction of its users’ speech and vowed to fight it in court, should it become law. The company declined to comment on the American Parents’ Coalition’s ties to Leo.