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Photo illustration by Vanessa Saba
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It happened almost by accident, over cocktails. Exactly the kind of accident that Leonard Leo intended to happen at his Federalist Society’s annual conference — a three-day gathering of the conservative tribe and a strategy session for right-wing lawyers, officials and judges that drew both big names and those who had lower profiles but were no less ambitious.
Nine days after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, the halls of the Mayflower Hotel, just blocks from the White House, were adorned with twinkling Christmas lights and abuzz with the possibilities of a future that had changed overnight. Hillary Clinton, the woman the anti-abortion movement feared more than perhaps anyone, had failed to win the presidency. And Leo and the conservative legal movement that he worked for years to create were about to reclaim power. With that power would come the chance to do what seemed unthinkable until this moment: strategize to take down Roe v. Wade.