North by Northwestern

From hypothesizing about her potential third run for the presidency to following her treks through the woods, one question has been on everyone’s minds: What will Hillary Clinton do next? Well, she’s finally emerged from the forest to tell us. On May 15, Clinton announced the start of her new political group, Onward Together. The group will work to advance progressive causes by assisting grassroots organizations forming the opposition against President Trump, working with Governor Howard Dean and others.

In an email to her supporters and donors, Clinton states the organization will begin by getting involved with five organizations: Swing Left, a grassroots network with experts in several fields to help support the election of Democratic House candidates in swing states; Emerge America, an organization training new Democratic women to run for office; Color of Change, a group that focuses on criminal justice reform; Indivisible, the effort mobilizing people and protestors to reach out to their members of Congress; and Run for Something, the organization created by former Clinton campaign staffers that motivates young people to run for local offices.

In some cases, Onward Together will provide direct funding to these organizations and for others, it’ll help expand their outreach. The group will be registered as a 501(c)(4), which is a political nonprofit, with a connected PAC. All the money raised through this organization will be dark money, meaning the organization will not disclose any of it's donors. However, the idea of unaccountable money in politics was criticized by Clinton on the campaign trail. On her website, one of her main issues under campaign finance reform was to “end secret, unaccountable money in politics. We need federal legislation to require outside groups to publicly disclose significant political spending.” However, in a rally in 2015 given in Iowa she said, “I and others have said we’re not going to unilaterally disarm while the Republicans and the Koch brothers are out there raising money that they don’t even tell you where it came from.” So it appears Clinton decided to fight fire with fire by creating a PAC of her own.

Many of the details of who exactly will be involved with the organization are still unclear, so for now we’ll wait and see what Clinton has up her sleeve. We can expect to read all about it in her book set to publish in the fall.