Groundswell is a coalition of prominent American conservative activists, including Virginia Thomas, who began meeting in 2013 in order to fight progressivism in the United States and the Republican Party (GOP) establishment. [1] [2] [3] Groundswell went on to be influential in the White House of former president Donald Trump, conducting an effort to rid the White House and other government agencies of so-called "deep state" opponents of Trump. [4] [5] [3]
According to leaked documents in 2013, the group had started staging "a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation", [1] by such goals as undermining the power of former GOP strategist and Fox News analyst Karl Rove, [6] along with the 2012 Benghazi attack and the Operation Fast and Furious's gun-running issue, [7] repealing the Affordable Care Act, working behind the scenes to enact voter ID laws, and blocking Obama administration nominees. [1]
In 2021, Barbara Ledeen was named as a member of Groundswell in connection with her involvement in an undercover campaign by Project Veritas to discredit H. R. McMaster when he served as Trump's national security adviser in 2017 and 2018. Ledeen, longtime staffer for Senator Chuck Grassley on the Senate Judiciary Committee and wife of neoconservative foreign policy analyst Michael Ledeen, said she passed on information about McMaster's social calendar to Project Veritas which then used the information to plan an operation to secretly record McMaster making comments that would cause him to resign or be fired. Ledeen admitted passing on the information but said "I am not part of a plot." [4]
Michael Arthur Ledeen is an American historian and neoconservative foreign policy analyst. He is a former consultant to the United States National Security Council, the United States Department of State, and the United States Department of Defense. He held the Freedom Scholar chair at the American Enterprise Institute where he was a scholar for 20 years, and now holds the similarly named chair at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He was very close to Italian politician Antonio Martino.
The Republican Party in the United States includes several factions, or wings. During the 19th century, Republican factions included the Half-Breeds, who supported civil service reform; the Radical Republicans, who advocated the immediate and total abolition of slavery, and later advocated civil rights for freed slaves during the Reconstruction era; and the Stalwarts, who supported machine politics.
The Council for National Policy (CNP) is an umbrella organization and networking group that advocates for conservative and Republican Party initiatives in the United States. It was launched in 1981 during the Reagan administration by Tim LaHaye and the Christian right, to "bring more focus and force to conservative advocacy". The membership list for September 2020 was later leaked, showing that members included prominent Republicans and conservatives, wealthy entrepreneurs, and media proprietors, together with anti-abortion and anti-Islamic extremists. Members are instructed not to reveal their membership or even name the group.
Leonard Anthony Leo is an American lawyer and conservative legal activist. He was the longtime vice president of the Federalist Society and is currently, along with Steven Calabresi, the co-chairman of the organization's board of directors.
The Republican Party, also known as the GOP, is one of the two major political parties in the United States. It is the second-oldest extant political party in the United States after its main political rival, the Democratic Party.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is an American coalition of more than 240 national civil and human rights organizations and acts as an umbrella group for American civil and human rights. Founded as the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) in 1950 by civil rights activists Arnold Aronson, A. Philip Randolph, and Roy Wilkins, the coalition has focused on issues ranging from educational equity to justice reform to voting rights.
Erik Dean Prince is an American businessman, investor, and former U.S. Navy SEAL officer, and the founder of the private military company Blackwater. He served as Blackwater's CEO until 2009 and as its chairman until its sale to a group of investors in 2010. Prince heads the private equity firm Frontier Resource Group and was chairman of the Hong Kong-listed Frontier Services Group until 2021. Prince is the son of engineer and businessman Edgar Prince, and the brother of former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
Scott Jennings is an American political strategist and writer. He is an on-air contributor for CNN and writes for CNN.com, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times.
Virginia "Ginni" Thomas is an American lawyer and conservative activist. In 1987, she married Clarence Thomas, who became an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1991. Her conservative commentary and activism have made her a controversial figure, especially because spouses of Supreme Court justices typically avoid engaging in political activity.
Karl Christian Rove is an American Republican political consultant, policy advisor, and lobbyist. He was Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff during the George W. Bush administration until his resignation on August 31, 2007. He has also headed the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public Liaison, and the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. Rove was one of the architects of the Iraq War.
James Edward O'Keefe III is an American political activist who founded Project Veritas, a far-right activist group that uses deceptively edited videos and information gathering techniques to attack mainstream media organizations and progressive groups. Both O'Keefe and Project Veritas have produced secretly recorded undercover audio and video encounters in academic, governmental, and social service organizations, purporting to show abusive or illegal behavior by representatives of those organizations; the recordings are often selectively edited to misrepresent the context of the conversations and the subjects' responses. O'Keefe served as chairman until he was fired from the organization in February 2023.
The Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) is a right-wing United States–based advocacy group, founded in 1997, in order to affect policy debate at the United Nations and other international institutions. It was formerly known as the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. The 501(c)(3) organization is anti-abortion and anti-LGBT.
Clarence Thomas is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 1991. After Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Supreme Court and has been its longest-serving member since Anthony Kennedy's retirement in 2018. Since Stephen Breyer's retirement in 2022, he is also the Court's oldest member.
The Faith and Freedom Coalition is a conservative political advocacy 501(c)(4) non-profit organization in the United States.
Project Veritas was an American far-right activist group founded by James O'Keefe in 2010. The group produced deceptively edited videos of its undercover operations, which use secret recordings in an effort to discredit mainstream media organizations and progressive groups. Project Veritas also used entrapment to generate bad publicity for its targets, and propagated disinformation and conspiracy theories in its videos and operations.
The Conservative Victory Project was a political initiative launched in 2013 by Karl Rove, the prominent Republican political activist, and the super-PAC American Crossroads. Its purpose was to support "electable" conservative political candidates for political office in the United States. The effort was prompted by embarrassing failures of several Tea Party and independent conservative candidates in the elections of 2012. The project was strongly criticized by some other conservative activists, including Newt Gingrich who described it as a "terrible idea."
Austin Ruse is an American conservative political activist, journalist and author. He is the president of a nonprofit NGO, Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM), which has been listed as an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Through C-FAM and his writings, Ruse advocates anti-LGBT and anti-abortion conservative positions and has advocated for the criminalization of homosexuality.
Turning Point USA (TPUSA) is an American nonprofit organization that advocates for conservative politics on high school, college, and university campuses. It was founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk and Bill Montgomery. TPUSA's affiliate groups include Turning Point Endowment, Turning Point Action and TPUSA Faith. TPUSA has been described as the fastest growing organization of campus chapters in America, and according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, is the dominant force in campus conservatism.
The Never Trump movement is an ongoing conservative movement that opposes Trumpism and former U.S. president Donald Trump. It began as an effort on the part of a group of Republicans and other prominent conservatives to prevent Republican front-runner Trump from obtaining the 2016 Republican Party presidential nomination.
The 85 Fund, also known as the Honest Elections Project, and formerly known as the Judicial Education Project, is a 501(c)(3) organization based in Washington D.C. It is among a network of conservative organizations associated with Leonard Leo, a longtime prominent figure in the Federalist Society, that are funded mostly by anonymous donors. The 85 Fund had revenue of over $65 million in 2020 and, with the Concord Fund, acts as a funding hub for other organizations in the Leo network.
Ginni Thomas has been involved in an ad-hoc coalition known as 'Groundswell,' touted as a plan to wage a '30-front war' on left-wing activists and the GOP establishment.