Groundswell group

SOURCE:  Wikipedia, captured 2020-06-15

Disambiguation

Note that there are two "Groundswell" groups:

• The Groundswell group, a shadowy coalition of conservative activists and journalists attempting to make political change within the United States from behind the scenes -- which is relevant to this article.

• The non-affiliated Groundswell  501(c)3 nonprofit organization whose mission is building community power. Groundswell's programs focus on clean energy and energy efficiency, and the organization engages economically diverse communities by helping them to switch to clean power and participate in local energy efficiency incentives. Groundswell develops community solar projects and subscriber management programs that connect solar power with economic empowerment for marginalized communities. ...

Another organizer of the 2021-01-06 uprising  2021 United States Capitol attack] who has been subpoenaed by the congressional committee [United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack], Ali Alexander (born Ali Abdul-Razaq Akbar), also has long-standing ties to Ginni Thomas. Like Kimberly Fletcher, Ali Alexander spoke at a rally in Washington, D.C. the night before [2021-01-05] the riot, leading a chant of "Victory or death!" A decade ago, Ali Alexander was a participant in the Groundswell group, a secretive, invitation-only network that, among other things, coordinated with hard-right congressional aides, journalists, and advocacy groups to launch attacks against President Barack Obama and against less conservative Republicans. As recently as 2019, Ginni Thomas described herself as the chairman of Groundswell, which, according to documents first published by Mother Jones, sees itself as waging "a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation." As Karoli Kuns, of the media watchdog Crooks and Liars, has noted, several Groundswell members - including Steve Bannon  [Steve Bannon] and Sebastian Gorka  [spouse: Katharine Gorka], the fringe foreign-policy analyst - went on to form the far-right flank of the Trump administration. (Both Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka were eventually pushed out.) According to Ginni Thomas' biography in the Council for National Policy's membership book, she remains active in Groundswell. A former participant said that Ginni Thomas chairs weekly Groundswell meetings.

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Traditionally, judges have not been particularly fastidious about potential conflicts of interest connected to amicus briefs. But that standard may be changing, too. As the number of partisan political issues facing the judicial branch has grown, so has the number of these briefs. Many of them are being filed by opaquely funded dark money groups, whose true financial sponsors are concealed, thus enabling invisible thumbs to press on the scales of justice. Paul M. Collins, Jr.  [local copy], a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who has studied the use of amicus briefs, said, "There's been an almost linear increase in the number of them since the World War Two era. Now it's the rare case that doesn't have one." The reason, Paul Collins said, is that, "more and more, the courts are seen as a venue for social change." Collins explained that political groups, many with secret donors, are "using the courts the way they used to use Congress - basically, amicus briefs are a means of lobbying."

The problem has become so widespread that in 2018 the rules for appellate-court judges were amended to make it possible for judges to strike any amicus brief that might force them to recuse themselves. There has been no such reckoning at the Supreme Court - not even when close political associates of Ginni Thomas' have filed amicus briefs. One such associate is Frank Gaffney, a defense hawk best known for having made feverish claims suggesting that Barack Obama is a Muslim, and that Saddam Hussein's regime was involved in the Oklahoma City bombing. Leaked documents show that Frank Gaffney was a colleague of Ginni Thomas' at the Groundswell group as far back as 2013. Frank Gaffney was a proponent of President Trump's reactionary immigration policies, including, most vociferously, of the Trump administration's   Muslim travel ban. As these restrictions were hit by lawsuits, Gaffney's nonprofit, the Center for Security Policy, signed the first of two big contracts with Liberty Consulting. According to documents that Gaffney's group filed with the Internal Revenue Service, in 2017 and 2018 the Center for Security Policy paid Ginni Thomas a total of more than two hundred thousand dollars.