They Helped Topple Roe v. Wade. Now Their Sights Are Set on Britain.

For nearly three hours, Nigel Farage, the leader of Britain’s once-fringe populist Reform U.K. Party, commanded an audience in Congress on Sept. 3 as he testified against his own country’s free-speech rules.

The presence of Mr. Farage, a longtime Trump ally, as the Republicans’ star witness in Washington was not merely a symbol of his growing political clout or the power of conservative populism.

Rather, it was the result of a discreet, monthslong campaign by one of America’s most influential conservative Christian groups, famous for being an architect of the effort that helped overturn Roe v. Wade and end the constitutional right to an abortion.

The group, Alliance Defending Freedom, has taken its playbook to Britain and has rapidly established itself as a power broker between the country’s rising populist movement and President Trump’s Washington. They are catalyzing Reform U.K., Britain’s fastest growing political party that is seeking to upend the Conservative Party with an agenda centered on anti-establishment and anti-immigration sentiments. The A.D.F. is guiding its leadership even further to the right, on a conservative Christian agenda similar to the one that is sweeping through the United States.

The A.D.F.’s British arm orchestrated Mr. Farage’s appearance in Congress, reaching out to ask if he would like to give evidence on censorship and passing on his interest to the House Judiciary Committee, which formally invited him, according to both a Reform U.K. and a Republican official. An A.D.F. lawyer testified alongside Mr. Farage in the hearing, together building a case against what they saw as growing government censorship in Europe. A.D.F. officials have also quietly arranged briefings in Britain with visiting congressional leaders. They brokered a secret meeting between Mr. Farage and top State Department officials in London. And in private briefings, they have supplied the Trump administration with attack lines that cast the British government as hostile to free speech.

In Britain it is highly unusual for advocacy groups to hold influence the way they do in the United States.

In a statement, Paul Sapper, a spokesman for A.D.F. International — the global counterpart to its U.S. operation — said that the group is “non-politically partisan” and has “engaged with every major political party in the U.K.” A Labour Party spokesperson, however, said there was no record of the A.D.F. having any contact with the party.

Britain is, in many ways, an unlikely place for an American anti-abortion organization to build a base and leverage influence. Abortion rights hold overwhelming cross-partisan support and, unlike in the United States, religion plays little role in national politics.

But the A.D.F. believes that British politicians, and the public, can be swayed and wants abortion rights to be rolled back, its lawyers said in an interview. More broadly, the group wants to empower conservative Christianity in Europe, and it sees Britain as a key bridgehead.

The A.D.F. has begun its effort with a topic it believes will resonate with British voters: free speech. The group is spearheading an alliance of organizations that argues that Britain’s center-left government is too restrictive on political and religious speech.

“What’s emerging in the U.K. is a free-speech alliance of disparate groups who are all, for various reasons, shocked that we’ve ended up in the position we are here now,” Lorcán Price, a lawyer for the A.D.F. who has been at the center of the group’s efforts in Britain, said in an interview.

The question of censorship has rocketed to the top of the political agenda in Britain this year. Groups on the right have raised alarms about the arrests of people who posted inflammatory anti-migrant messages online during riots last summer, while those on the left have criticized the arrests of hundreds of peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters under terrorism laws. In the United States, the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk propelled the Trump administration to promise to punish people they accuse of hateful speech.

For the A.D.F., freedom of speech is intrinsically tied to religious freedom. Its task force of lawyers in Britain has challenged the prosecutions of Christians who were arrested for praying silently outside abortion clinics, and taken up the case of a student midwife who was suspended after making anti-abortion comments on social media. Abortion “buffer zones” — protected areas around clinics designed to prevent harassment — have been cited by conservative groups like the A.D.F. to declare a free speech crisis in Britain.

Despite its growing presence in Britain, the A.D.F. has remained relatively obscure, unlike in America, where it has grown powerful through high-profile Supreme Court cases that have carved out more space for Christianity in public life. The group has represented clients in the United States who are opposed to abortion, gay and transgender rights and contraception coverage in health care. Its allies include Vice President JD Vance and Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, who is a former A.D.F. lawyer.

Britain has no similarly prominent political figures who push for the Christian faith to have a central role in government. The A.D.F. has cultivated an unlikely ally in Mr. Farage, who has previously described himself as a supporter of abortion rights and does not attend church, following a high-profile spat with the Church of England, which he described as “woke.”

As the A.D.F.’s influence in Britain has grown since Mr. Trump’s re-election, Mr. Farage has suddenly started speaking out against abortion. The New York Times could find no previous record of him campaigning against abortion during his 31-year political career — in fact, in 2019, as the leader of the Brexit Party, Mr. Farage stated he had no official party stance on abortion. In November, he called for British lawmakers to debate rolling back the abortion limit. He went further in May, calling the current limit of 24 weeks “utterly ludicrous.”

Until now, public knowledge about the relationship between Reform U.K. and the A.D.F. was limited to a single quote Mr. Farage gave to the group, which they pushed out in a press statement. But the A.D.F. has quietly been courting the party since at least 2024.

When asked in a brief phone interview with The Times about his relationship with the A.D.F., Mr. Farage said that his party talks with “all sorts of groups.” He denied speaking against abortion, telling a reporter that she was “talking utter bollocks,” a crude British slang term for nonsense that he repeated six times.

He said that abortion was “No. 468” on Reform U.K.’s agenda and noted he had “hardly ever spoken about it in 30 years.”

“My point was that the 24-week limit was looking in serious jeopardy given that we actually spend a fortune saving babies at 22 weeks,” he said. “Maybe we need to rethink all of that because there is clearly a legal inconsistency.”

The A.D.F. and other American anti-abortion groups used a similar argument — incrementally rolling back the cutoff on abortion from about 24 weeks to earlier gestational limits — to ultimately end the constitutional right to abortion.

For the A.D.F., the relationship with Mr. Farage appears to be a pragmatic one, similar to its dynamic with Mr. Trump. A disrupter with no consistent personal stance on abortion, Mr. Trump provided critical support for the A.D.F. and its broader conservative Christian alliance to win their half-century-long campaign to topple Roe v. Wade.

“Our primary objective is to try and ensure that the human-rights framework applies as robustly as possible to Christians. And then the wider society,” Mr. Price said.

In the United States, the A.D.F. worked with conservative lawmakers and strategically used the courts to eventually overthrow the right to abortion. But in England, abortion access is legislated through Parliament and cannot be overturned through a judicial decision.

To succeed in Britain, the A.D.F. would have to adapt its playbook.

Shaping Public Opinion

Since 2020, the A.D.F. has quietly added more staff to its British operation. It increased the size of its team fourfold to 12 employees and quadrupled the money it sends to its British arm to more than 1 million pounds, or $1.35 million.

Its lawyers tried to get officials to notice free speech issues through clients it called “victims of censorship,” but were largely unsuccessful.

That changed when Mr. Vance, a Catholic who shares similar values as the A.D.F., became vice president. Almost immediately the organization’s message reached a global audience.

At the Munich Security Conference in February, one of the biggest international stages in politics, Mr. Vance used his platform to criticize an ally.

“In Britain, and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” he said. He highlighted the case of Adam Smith-Connor, an A.D.F. client who had been convicted after silently praying within an abortion clinic buffer zone in southwest England.

Mr. Price, the A.D.F. lawyer, privately credited the A.D.F. for getting Mr. Vance to mention the case in his speech, according to two British and U.S. officials he briefed. Mr. Price told the Times that he did not personally speak to anyone from Mr. Vance’s team and was “as surprised as anyone” by the mention in Munich.

Such a diplomatic and publicity win was important for the A.D.F. Drawing attention to cases like Mr. Smith-Connor’s is part of a long-term strategy to shift public opinion around abortion. In the United States, more than a decade ago, anti-abortion activists challenged similar buffer-zone laws as part of their long-term strategy to shift political discourse with the goal of rolling back abortion rights.

“The debate is in Parliament,” Mr. Price said. “And the parliamentarians are elected by the people, and so their priorities will only change when the public mood changes. And the public mood is changing.”

The A.D.F. is also focusing its efforts on raising support on university campuses and social media platforms, like X, which can magnify fringe views. Mr. Price said that Elon Musk, X’s owner, has personally posted about some of A.D.F.’s cases, and that X was amplifying the group’s concerns about Britain and freedom of speech in a “way that probably didn’t attract the same amount of attention in the past.”

It has achieved such success through deliberately framing its cases as being about protecting free speech, rather than restricting abortion.

A.D.F. employees, who are not registered lobbyists in Britain, don’t lobby but do “offer briefings to anybody who wishes to access it,” Mr. Price said. Until recently, the group was a stakeholder of one of the biggest interest groups of cross-party lawmakers in Westminster, the All-Parliamentary Group on International Freedom of Religion or Belief. It provided the A.D.F. with access to Parliament and politicians like Fiona Bruce, a former Conservative lawmaker who was the prime minister’s special envoy on religion until 2024.

The A.D.F. is not focused on Britain only because of its free speech issues. It also recognizes the political and legal influence that Britain holds abroad.

“What the U.K. says matters internationally,” Mr. Price said. “If things change for the better here, it has an effect more widely.”

By Mr. Price’s telling in the interview, A.D.F. International relies simply on social media and public outrage to amplify its work. He played down his organization’s political influence in both Britain and the United States and rejected the notion that it acts as a power broker.

When later asked about briefings and meetings that The Times reported that the A.D.F. had brokered, Mr. Sapper, the spokesman for the group, declined to discuss the matter.

“It is our policy to not publicly disclose the details of private conversations or whether they have occurred,” he said.

A Secret Meeting

A private area for members of the Old Queen Street Cafe, a brasserie steps away from Parliament that’s often abuzz with lunching politicians, was usually closed at 8:15 in the morning. But a manager had been persuaded to open early for a confidential, high-level meeting in March that, messages show, the A.D.F. had brokered.

The group’s aim was to get Mr. Farage in a room with Samuel Samson, a young Trump political appointee and senior adviser for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, a U.S. official with knowledge of the events said. Mr. Price wanted the American right to forge its relationship with Britain through Reform U.K., as he believed they were the only credible party taking censorship in Britain seriously, according to the U.S. official and a Reform U.K. source.

Mr. Samson was in Britain as part of a State Department delegation he was leading that addressed free speech, following concerns that Mr. Vance raised. The U.S. Embassy in London oversaw the visit, but at that point its diplomats did not have a significant relationship with Reform U.K. Back in March, Mr. Farage’s party did not have a single elected council member in municipalities and also was not yet topping public opinion polls. (Today, it is consistently leading the Labour Party in the polls, had 677 council members elected in May’s local elections, but still has only five elected national lawmakers).

Mr. Price suggested the Old Queen Street Cafe meeting and knew exactly whom to contact to make it happen. He was the middleman for the visit, liaising with Mr. Farage’s team and confirming his attendance to U.S. officials, according to messages and two officials with knowledge of the meeting.

Over breakfast, Mr. Farage and Mr. Samson discussed abortion buffer zones, censorship cases and online safety laws, according to the officials. Also present were aides and two of the embassy’s top diplomats, who had joined for oversight of the issues, which were high priorities for the new Trump administration, one of the officials said.

A State Department official said such a meeting was standard procedure for the department, which said in a statement that it does not comment on the contents of those meetings. A spokesman for the United States Embassy in London said officials regularly meet with those from different faiths and “elements of the political spectrum” in Britain and “anywhere else where freedom of expression is under threat.”

The A.D.F. isn’t targeting only Trump-aligned conservatives and populists. Its lawyers are eager to point to supporters it has recruited from different political and religious areas — like Claire Fox, an independent peer in Parliament’s House of Lords and an avid supporter of abortion rights who also shares the A.D.F.’s opposition to buffer zones.

“You don’t have to be anti-abortion to oppose buffer zones,” she said. “I despise the people protesting outside abortion clinics, but I don’t agree with banning them,” she added, describing herself as a “free speech absolutist.”

But the A.D.F.’s most powerful allies remain in the Trump administration. On two occasions this summer, the A.D.F. was invited to brief senior U.S. officials. In May, they provided the State Department with a private briefing of examples of government efforts to restrict free speech in Britain, communications show.

And in June, Mr. Price and a colleague met with Mr. Trump’s new ambassador to Britain, Warren Stephens, a wealthy investment banker from Arkansas with longtime ties to anti-abortion politicians like Mike Huckabee.

Shortly afterward, U.S. officials asked for Mr. Price’s help organizing a second meeting between officials and free speech organizations to discuss censorship issues they felt were pertinent for the Trump administration to be pressing the British government on.

‘Under the Radar’

On July 29, the congressional delegation from the House Judiciary Committee, led by Representative Jim Jordan, a Republican, filed into the Grand Committee Room inside Westminster Hall. The lawmakers were there for a “Civil Society Round Table,” as it was listed on the delegation schedule, as part of their fact-finding mission on free speech and censorship in Europe.

But Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, had a surprise as he entered. Sitting on a dais was Mr. Farage, seemingly presiding over the event.

“I did not know he was going to be there until I was in the room,” Mr. Raskin said in an interview. Some participants had been told he might pop by, others had no idea. Even U.S. officials who had helped organize the visit were informed only days before that Mr. Farage would be speaking.

He was not just participating — he was hosting the event. It was a big moment for the A.D.F., which had secured his participation, according to two officials with knowledge of the event. The group had worked behind the scenes for months to shape the agenda of the Congressional visit, privately briefing the U.S. lawmakers in Brussels just before the London round table, helping organize precursor briefings between congressional staffers and British free speech organizations, and inviting speakers who were presenting arguments alongside Mr. Farage against technology legislation and abortion clinic buffer zones.

In his opening remarks, the Reform U.K. leader said that the United States and Britain shared a commitment to not only free speech, but also the promotion of “Judeo-Christian values,” according to six people present.

It was a phrase foreign in British politics, but common in the United States, where the Christian right has sought for years to elevate America as a Christian nation. Yet Mr. Farage has occasionally cited a need to return to Judeo-Christian values as a way to promote his populist message.

“To be honest I don’t think Farage does religion,” said Bryn Harris, chief legal counsel for the Free Speech Union, who was present. “I think the main thing is that the buffer zone cases have really caught the imagination of some people in the U.S., and therefore when you want to talk about free speech to an American audience, that’s often a good shorthand.”

To many present, the A.D.F.’s role as an essential trans-Atlantic conduit was undeniable — as was the developing alliance between the group and Reform U.K.

“I had a clear sense that we were also there to help Nigel Farage,” Mr. Raskin said of the trip. “We were there to bolster his political fortunes and to make him the free speech hero of Europe.”

But ultimately, Mr. Raskin said, “the political themes and the legal cases that the A.D.F. invoked were the dominant messaging of our entire trip.”

“The trip solidified my impression that A.D.F. has been shaping Trump administration and MAGA policy toward Europe,” he said.

Two days after testifying to Congress in Washington on Sept. 3, Mr. Farage was back in Britain for his first Reform U.K. party conference as leader, telling a rapturous audience in Birmingham, “We are the party on the rise.”

A British MAGA undercurrent ran through the event, as seen in the “Make Britain Great Again” baseball caps, and heard in Mr. Farage’s nationalistic speech, in which he railed against mass immigration, “society breakdown with law and order” and “sky high” taxes.

Mr. Farage made no mention of abortion, as he had in Congress, to his British audience. But he did attack the government for doing “everything they can to crush free speech online,” and claimed that Britain refuses “to acknowledge publicly the Judeo-Christian culture and heritage that we have and that underpins everything that we are.”

His words signaled that the inroads of the American Christian right are strengthening, both in and out of public view.

That same weekend, some 120 miles away in London, A.D.F. staff members took part in the March for Life U.K., an anti-abortion rally led by one their clients.

On a stage at the event, Fiona Bruce, the former conservative lawmaker whom the A.D.F. had long courted, introduced one of its lawyers. Perhaps the crowd had never heard of the A.D.F., she said, but that was not all that surprising.

“Very often A.D.F. has operated under the radar,” she said, “quite discreetly.”