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. 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", 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, repealing the Affordable Care Act, working behind the scenes to enact voter ID laws, and blocking Obama administration nominees. (Not to be confused with the clean energy advocacy organization, see Groundswell (organization)).