The right-wing influence group "Groundswell" is alive, well, and thriving. Just last week, Virginia "Ginni" Thomas went to the White House and paid Donald J. Trump a visit, specifically to yell at him about transgender people and also to complain that he wasn't appointing her friends fast enough.

It must be nice to have the ear of a Supreme Court Justice, eh? Just last week the Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump's transgender ban could be upheld while the case moved through the courts. I'm sure Ginni had nothing to do with that.

But it wasn't just Ginni who marched into the Oval Office with a list of demands. She brought her posse with her, to demand that Trump immediately bend the knee to her demands, according to The New York Times.

Louie Gohmert's Chief of Staff was one of the friends Ginni brought along, though she claimed Connie Hair was just a conservative columnist, nothing to see there at all. Nope, not a thing.

A central focus for Ms. Hair and Ms. Thomas was administration appointments that they wanted made, and that they accused the president’s aides of blocking. People familiar with the situation indicated that the people Ms. Hair and Ms. Thomas wanted hired were rejected for a range of reasons, and in at least one case, someone was offered a job and declined it because the position was not considered senior enough. Another complaint was that Ms. Thomas had not actually shared the full list of people to be hired, said those familiar with the meeting.

Others attending the meeting included Frank Gaffney, the founder of the Center for Security Policy who has advocated curtailing immigration and has repeatedly denounced Muslims, and Rosemary Jenks, who works for the anti-immigration group NumbersUSA, according to the people familiar with the events.

OH. So in the middle of a government shutdown, the spouse of a Supreme Court Justice marches into the Oval Office with her entourage of like-minded wingnuts for the sole purpose of spreading hate against women and transgender persons in the military, demanding crony appointments, and bringing Islamophobic, immigration-hating white supremacists before the White Supremacist-in-Chief.

They prayed. A lot. Because that's what these leftover freaks from the Council for National Policy specialize in: Standing before power and claiming it in the name of Jesus. Their entire goal is to co-opt power, create a theocracy, and bow before the cult of President Jesus. And make no mistake, Ginni Thomas just traded the LIfespring cult she was part of in the 70s for the Cult of Power she is part of today.

It isn't like her Groundswell group hasn't had a number of high level placements. Here are a few: Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, and Jeff Sessions. Some of the bloggers she uses to elevate her messaging now also have the ear of White House officials, as well as Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter.. Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton bangs the drum for His Hero in the White House now, after helping to destroy Hillary Clinton with bogus email stories for all of 2015 and 2016, and True the Vote's Catherine Engelbrecht has been hard at work suppressing the vote anywhere they can get a toehold.

It's easy to forget that before Donald Trump was Their Leader, Ted Cruz was that guy. And Ted Cruz shut down the government in 2013 because they wanted it shut down: That was their plan, executed by their guy, just as it's likely this current shutdown was also engineered by their people.

Yet. After getting Their Hero at long last, all is not well in Groundswell. Not well at all, if Madame Thomas has to march up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with her retinue of knuckle rappers and prayer warriors? We see trouble in paradise, especially after Donald Trump caved on the wall.

At the very least, Clarence Thomas ought to have to recuse himself from all immigration and transgender cases that make it to the Supreme Court. Clearly he cannot be objective when he's got Ginni haranguing him, the so-called President of the United States, and anyone else who can't escape her praying, preying presence.