Tea Social gathering stalwarts who’ve seen their motion fizzle are discovering a brand new champion in President Trump and see his second administration as a fruits and validation of their efforts.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who gave his first political speech at a Tea Social gathering rally in Oshkosh, Wis., in 2009 because the motion was selecting up steam, mentioned he noticed parallels when attending Trump rallies in recent times when it comes to enthusiasm and the kind of supporters it attracted.
“The Tea party sort of went dormant or atrophied after 2014, ‘15, ‘16,” Johnson mentioned in an interview. “Until Trump came on the scene, and he reignited it in a different form.”
Trump has prioritized reducing authorities spending by empowering billionaire Elon Musk to slash federal contracts deemed wasteful, and he has seized on the identical type of populist grassroots power seen within the Tea Social gathering motion.
Probably the most highly effective man within the Home, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), additionally has ties to the Tea Social gathering motion. He spoke at a Tea Social gathering rally in 2009 and attended an occasion on Inauguration Day hosted by Tea Social gathering Patriots Motion, a significant advocacy group related to the motion.
“Unfortunately for the Tea Party movement, the establishment did a pretty good job of marginalizing it, turning the Tea Party into a pejorative,” Johnson mentioned. “But the people that were attracted to the Tea Party movement, they found a new champion in President Trump, and he took it to a whole new level with MAGA.”
The Tea Social gathering motion launched in 2009 as a backlash to then-President Obama’s election and insurance policies. Supporters had been largely animated by opposition to what grew to become the Reasonably priced Care Act, and to ballooning authorities spending and deficits. Republicans received the bulk within the Home and gained seats within the Senate within the 2010 midterms thanks largely to the passion of the Tea Social gathering.
Trump himself spoke at a 2015 rally organized by Tea Social gathering Patriots Motion to protest the Iran nuclear deal, and he periodically praised the Tea Social gathering throughout his 2016 marketing campaign.
However the motion and its major causes fizzled throughout Trump’s first time period as Republicans signed off on massive spending agreements and added to the federal deficit.
As Trump’s second time period has gotten underway, those that had been there for the Tea Social gathering’s rise see a president who’s lastly delivering on what energized their supporters roughly 16 years in the past.
Trump has prioritized slashing the scale of presidency in addition to federal spending, largely by way of the Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE). His administration has recognized billions of {dollars} price of contracts, lots of them by way of the U.S. Company for Worldwide Improvement (USAID), deemed wasteful that don’t align with Trump’s agenda.
“What we’re seeing right now, what Elon Musk and President Trump are alluding to, it is not just is this a proper function and should we be spending at all, but who benefits and is there corruption? That’s exactly the kind of thing we envisioned when we began the Tea Party movement,” mentioned Jenny Beth Martin, founding father of Tea Social gathering Patriots.
Martin argued the Tea Social gathering motion and its grassroots supporters have tailored over time and located methods to raise their most popular causes..
“The first protest we did in Atlanta in February of 2009, it was raining, it was cold…We didn’t even have a sound system,” Martin mentioned in an interview. “We didn’t know how to protest, we didn’t know how to picket. We’ve learned how to protest, we’ve learned how to make our voices heard. But it’s not enough to be angry…you have to be able to take that passion that people feel and turn it into meaningful action.”
The president himself has spoken a number of occasions in current weeks about his want to stability the federal funds, a purpose that may be music to the ears of Tea Social gathering supporters, whilst it will require main cuts to Medicaid and different social security web applications.
“In the near future I want to do what has not been done in 24 years — balance the federal budget, we’re gonna balance it,” Trump mentioned throughout an tackle to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday.
In the meantime, even some Democrats have invoked the Tea Social gathering in current weeks, however in reference to their very own social gathering.
Republican lawmakers have handled outraged constituents at city halls amid backlash to layoffs of presidency staff and freezes on authorities spending that aided at-risk communities at house and overseas.
Trump and different Republicans have dismissed these as outdoors agitators coming in to trigger a scene. However some distinguished Democrats see it as a harbinger of the identical type of grassroots power that helped Republicans make features throughout the midterms after they had been within the minority.
“It’s the Tea Party movement that we saw in 2010 beginning to gather in 2025 on the Democratic side,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D), a possible presidential candidate, informed The Bulwark.
