Tea Celebration 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 Celebration rally in Oshkosh, Wis., in 2009 because the motion was choosing up steam, mentioned he noticed parallels when attending Trump rallies in recent times by way of 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 slicing authorities spending by empowering billionaire Elon Musk to slash federal contracts deemed wasteful, and he has seized on the identical type of populist grassroots vitality seen within the Tea Celebration motion.
Probably the most highly effective man within the Home, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), additionally has ties to the Tea Celebration motion. He spoke at a Tea Celebration rally in 2009 and attended an occasion on Inauguration Day hosted by Tea Celebration Patriots Motion, a serious 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 Celebration motion launched in 2009 as a backlash to then-President Obama’s election and insurance policies. Supporters have 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 Celebration.
Trump himself spoke at a 2015 rally organized by Tea Celebration Patriots Motion to protest the Iran nuclear deal, and he periodically praised the Tea Celebration throughout his 2016 marketing campaign.
However the motion and its main causes fizzled throughout Trump’s first time period as Republicans signed off on large spending agreements and added to the federal deficit.
As Trump’s second time period has gotten underway, those that have been there for the Tea Celebration’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 dimensions of presidency in addition to federal spending, largely via the Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE). His administration has recognized billions of {dollars} price of contracts, lots of them via 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 Celebration Patriots.
Martin argued the Tea Celebration motion and its grassroots supporters have tailored through the years 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 instances in latest weeks about his need to steadiness the federal price range, a purpose that will be music to the ears of Tea Celebration supporters, at the same time as it could require main cuts to Medicaid and different social security internet 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 deal with to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday.
In the meantime, even some Democrats have invoked the Tea Celebration in latest weeks, however in reference to their very own occasion.
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 residence 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 vitality that helped Republicans make positive aspects in the course of the midterms once they have 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, advised The Bulwark.
