Shocking! Study Shows Tea Party Was Decades In The Making, A Creature Of The Tobacco Industry & The Koch Brothers

A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Party movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene. Far from a genuine grassroots uprising, this astroturf effort was curated by wealthy industrialists years in advance. Many of the anti-science operatives who defended cigarettes are currently deploying their tobacco-inspired playbook internationally to evade accountability for the fossil fuel industry’s role in driving climate disruption.

The study, funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institute of Health, traces the roots of the Tea Party’s anti-tax movement back to the early 1980s when tobacco companies began to invest in third party groups to fight excise taxes on cigarettes, as well as health studies finding a link between cancer and secondhand cigarette smoke. Published in the peer-reviewed academic journal, Tobacco Control, the study titled, ‘To quarterback behind the scenes, third party efforts’: the tobacco industry and the Tea Party, is not just an historical account of activities in a bygone era. As senior author, Stanton Glantz, a University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) professor of medicine, writes:

“Nonprofit organizations associated with the Tea Party have longstanding ties to tobacco companies, and continue to advocate on behalf of the tobacco industry’s anti-tax, anti-regulation agenda.”

However, the Quarterback study reveals that in 2002, the Kochs and tobacco-backed CSE designed and made public the first Tea Party Movement website under the web address www.usteaparty.com. Here’s a screenshot of the archived U.S. Tea Party site, as it appeared online on Sept. 13, 2002:

CSE describes the U.S. Tea Party site, “In 2002, our U.S. Tea Party is a national event, hosted continuously online, and open to all Americans who feel our taxes are too high and the tax code is too complicated.” The site features a “Patriot Guest book” where supporters can write a message of support for CSE and the U.S. Tea Party movement. Sometime around September 2011, the U.S. Tea Party site was taken offline. According to the DNS registry, the web address www.usteaparty.com is currently owned by Freedomworks. The implications of the UCSF Quarterback report are widespread. The main concern expressed by the authors lies in what they see happening overseas as the Tea Party movement expands internationally, training activists in 30 countries including Israel, Georgia, Japan and Serbia.

Here’s a link to the full article.

https://www.desmog.com/2013/02/11/study-confirms-tea-party-was-created-big-tobacco-and-billionaires/

And will he take Republican candidates with him?

 

During the 2024 campaign, Trump told one audience “Be sure to vote because you won’t have to vote any more.”  He is well on his way to ending elections in the US.  Oh, we may still hold elections but the results will be pre-determined for Republicans.

While millions of Americans peacefully protested for “No Kings Day” this weekend, Donald Trump’s administration was busy working to undermine the upcoming midterm elections. Late Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that prominent election denier Kurt Olsen has joined the White House to focus on investigating the 2020 election and voting machines. This is just the latest step in the administration’s ongoing war on free and fair elections.

Though less well-known than some of the more high-profile election deniers, Olsen is no less committed to spreading false conspiracy theories about voting equipment and election results. His emergence as a government employee is just more evidence of Trump’s planned assault on the midterms.

Olsen has a rich election denier backstory. He was part of the 2020 post-election legal effort that asked the Supreme Court to throw out the election results in four states. When that failed, he tried to convince the Department of Justice to file its own lawsuit — an effort that even Trump’s DOJ refused.

His work since then has been no less dangerous.

In 2022, he represented Arizona’s Republican candidate for governor, Kari Lake, in a series of cases surrounding her failed election. In one case, the Arizona Supreme Court sanctioned Olsen and Lake’s other lawyers for making claims that were “unequivocally false.” In another case, a federal court sanctioned Olsen and another attorney for making “false, misleading, and unsupported factual assertions” and acting “in bad faith.”

In the run-up to 2024, Olsen was once again in Trump’s orbit, reportedly laying the groundwork to challenge the results if Trump lost. Despite being considered a “fringe figure” in the past, he is now a federal government employee seeking access to sensitive information about voting equipment and the 2020 election.

Olsen’s latest gig in Trump’s White House isn’t surprising. The president loves to surround himself with election denialists who are sure to be loyal soldiers for his cause. Recall that after losing in 2020, Stephen Miller — now Trump’s top aide — founded a legal organization deeply involved in efforts to alter voting rules and curtail voting rights in 2022 and 2024.

Now-Attorney General Pam Bondi likely caught Trump’s eye when she was promoting election denialism in the aftermath of the 2020 election. And, of course, it’s hard to imagine Kash Patel would be in his current position as head of the FBI if he had not been such a vocal proponent of the Big Lie.

From top to bottom, this administration is staffed with vocal election deniers and committed vote suppressors eager to help Trump cling to power — no matter how illegal or unethical.

And now, with election conspiracists taking center stage, Trump is slowly but surely desensitizing the public to a brand of authoritarianism aimed at subverting the will of the electorate.

His election-related executive order is designed to make voter registration more difficult and mail-in voting more restrictive. The administration is trying to decertify voting equipment and take control of key federal agencies. Most troublingly, Trump is asserting a presidential power over election administration that does not exist.

And just when you think it can’t get worse, it does. Trump is defunding and firing key parts of the government that ensure elections are free of foreign interference — while deploying the National Guard and masked federal law enforcement in major U.S. cities with large Democratic-leaning populations. He has promised to expand those efforts.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has been turned into a weapon of war against Trump’s perceived opponents. He is normalizing direct presidential control over hiring and firing decisions within the DOJ, including who gets investigated and prosecuted.

Just as he is using the threat of criminal prosecution as a hammer against his foes, he is also using the pardon power to reward his political allies. The combined effect is to force Democrats and their supporters to act with excessive caution while emboldening Republicans to behave with reckless aggression.

And that’s only what Trump has done so far. The midterms are still more than a year away — it’s going to get worse.

He is already threatening to go after funders of Democratic candidates and causes. We should expect those efforts to expand and intensify as the midterms approach. He aims to target the critical infrastructure that allows Democrats and progressives to raise funds to oppose him. He will undoubtedly continue to pressure private companies — including media organizations — to tilt the playing field in Republicans’ favor.

He has claimed that additional executive orders are in the works. He says he plans to ban most mail-in voting, impose strict photo ID requirements, and mandate only using paper ballots. Most ominously, he wants to usurp the power to count and tabulate election results by turning states into his vassals.

Then there are the voting laws being enacted by the states. Trump has demonstrated his dominance over Republican-controlled legislatures as they enact grotesque new gerrymanders at his direction. When the architect behind Texas’s new map testified in court, he confirmed that he took his direction from the White House — not the Texas legislature.

This will not end with Texas, nor will it stop at redistricting. As we approach 2026, Trump will begin dictating specific voter registration, voting, counting, and certification laws, policies, and actions to compliant state Republicans.

To help him, the DOJ is already seeking to collect sensitive voter data on every single American. States that refuse to turn this information over willingly are being sued. I predict that those who cooperate will be rewarded.

In short, the Republican voter suppression and election subversion machine will have both state and federal components. It will have civil, criminal, and administrative tools at its disposal. It will have masked federal agents and the military. It will be ruthless and act as if it is above the law.

I am laying this out today — immediately following No Kings Day — because I want us to understand what the fight against authoritarianism means for the future of free and fair elections. When we marched, we were not only protesting Trump’s assaults on civil liberties and the rule of law; we were standing up for the right of citizens to choose their own leaders.

This morning, two things stuck out as I was scrolling around the ‘net.

The first was the results of new Trump approval rating polls. Sure, his overall approval is incredibly low, with 93% of Democrats and 75% of Independent voters disapproving of the job Trump is doing. But what is nevertheless unfathomable is that 77% of Republicans approve of the job he’s doing; 80% specifically approve of masked, plainclothes ICE agents abducting people off the streets in front of their families and young children and disappearing them to who-knows-where. 71% of them approve of the skyrocketing costs for everyday items like groceries (3% up from a year ago), coffee (21% up from a year ago), beef (up 14% from a year ago), school supplies (up 7% from a year ago), due in no small part to Trump’s wildly erratic tariff policies (to even call them policies seems overly generous). 65% of Republicans approve of a health care policy that will increase family premiums by anywhere from $840 extra (for those earning already just barely above the poverty rate) to $3200 extra, something that only 16% of Independents and 5% of Democrats approve of.

The second thing that caught my eye though, just a few posts below, was this heartwarming message from the Governor of Minnesota and former Democratic nominee for VP, Tim Walz (who I thought was a terrific pick for VP).

A lovely thought, and it would be great if it were true. But frankly, it’s giving “very fine people on both sides” vibes to me. Because Republicans–both those elected to public office and those showing up to vote–have shown us time and time again that they are not, in fact, good people. That some of our neighbors are, in fact, the problem.

I wish like hell it weren’t true. I always assumed that George W. Bush, John McCain, even possibly Mitt Romney (well maybe that’s a stretch) truly wanted the best for the country–all of her people–and just believed in different solutions to get there. I wish we all cared about “the least among us” and simply had alternate visions of what tide would lift all boats.

But I think it’s been pretty clear, certainly since the rise of Trump in 2015 (and maybe since the “Tea Party” starting in 2009) that it’s time to stop believing in that fairy tale, and it’s time to stop repeating this false rhetoric — there are NOT “good people on both sides” . . . THERE ARE NO GOOD REPUBLICANS. In fact, it is actually downright dangerous–to our democracy, but more importantly to those least among us–to keep putting our faith in the “good people” in the Republican Party to join us in doing the right thing, or even in engaging in any serious way in genuine policy discussions and negotiations to find the right thing to do. Whatever is left in this Republican Party is entirely obeisant to the dictator Donald Trump and his band of Nazis.

This is the world we now live in, and the sooner we learn how to operate in this new world, the better our chances of survival.

 

 

How about some nepotism served with a side of fraud, Barron Trump has apparently decided to follow in Daddy’s slimy footsteps. The boy isn’t even old enough to legally rent a car, but somehow he made eighty million dollars shorting Bitcoin right before hi9s father announced a policy that made crypto value plummet.

You know what that’s called? Insider trading. It’s illegal. It’s also not being investigated, because corruption apparently comes with a family discount.

And now there’s talk that he’s being considered for some top position at TikTok. Because when you’re rich and unqualified, you just fail upwards like it’s a generational sport.

Remember when Republicans spent years losing their collective minds over Hunter Biden’s art sales? I do. But sure, Barron can rake in millions overnight from crypto and line up a TikTok gig, and that’s just fine. The double standard is so blinding it should come with a warning label. The rest of America is out here juggling bills, paying more for groceries thanks to Grandpa Trump’s tariffs, and watching their jobs evaporate—while the Trump kids keep treating federal crimes like family game night.