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IN the wake of the financial crisis that swept the globe in 2008, populist sentiment was on the rise - which gave birth to the Tea Party.

Here we explain what GOP means and what the Tea Party stands for.

GOP stands for The Grand Old Party which is the Republican Partys nickname.

Founded in 1854, the party was given the monitor in the 1880s which is a little strange considering the organisation was about 30 years old at time.

The partys first President was Abraham Lincoln who was in the White House from 1861 till 1865 when he was assassinated while attending the theatre.

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Started in 2009, following Barack Obamas inauguration, this wide-ranging political movement advocates traditional conservative policies such as smaller government, reduced state spending and lower taxes.

Despite its name, the movement is not a political party although it has had a big impact on the Republican Party and has even been credited with paving the way for Donald Trump to run as president in 2016.

The movement takes its title from the Boston Tea Party in 1773 in which American colonists staged a protest against their British imperial masters.

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But it wasnt just Obamas liberal policies which sparked the revolution on the political right.

The Tea Party also rebel against Wall Street banks, crony capitalism and the political establishment including many members of the GOP.

Former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin is a leading figure in the movement and was the keynote speaker at their convention in 2010.

Continued here:
What does GOP stand for and what does the Tea Party mean? - The Sun

Kamala Harris is on the brink of making history. She wont just be the first woman to occupy the second-highest office in America, she will also be the first person of colour to do so. While her mixed heritage is being celebrated in both Jamaica and India, she is part of a group of trail-blazing Indian Americans who have risen to prominence in American public life: The Samosa Caucus.

The caucus is a group of four other Democrats in Congress who have been re-elected in 2020. Congressmen Ami Bera and Ro Khanna from California, Congressman Raja Krishnamoorti of Illinois, and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington State.

They have fascinating, sometimes painful, personal histories. They share heritage, but more importantly, values. They are formidable opponents of the Trump cult, and are happy to destroy the Tea Party.

Jayapals family moved to the US in 1982, Jayapal lost her green card because of the premature birth of her child when on a visit to native Chennai and she was unable to return on time to meet the requirements for permanent residents. She eventually became a US citizen in 2000.

During a house judiciary committee hearing on the Equality Act, legislation that aimed to prevent discrimination against the LGBTQ, Jayapal delivered a moving speech in support of the bill. She knew intimately the burdens society placed on the group, said Jayapal she was the mother of a gender non-binary child.

Jayapal wiped her tears as she spoke, but she made her point.

At other times, like her interrogation of William Barr, Trumps Attorney General, she displayed her ability to shred the slipperiest of customers. Barr seethed through the hearing as he was schooled and scolded. At one point, tired of his shameless attempts to interrupt her questions, she came back with a simple assertion that had connotations well beyond the limited context of that hearing: Excuse me, Mr Barr, this is my time, and I will control it.

Others in the caucus have impressive track records of combating the corruption that Trump has infected institutions with. Some of the issues they have dealt with are relevant at this very moment. Trumps attempts to put sabotage the postal system to benefit in the elections was surgically exposed by Rep Krishna last year.

As for Khanna, hes Silicon Valleys congressman. He advocates policy that keeps a check on big tech, fighting for the rights of people gain more knowledge and control of their data. Another part of his job is to educate Congressmen. The tech illiteracy of the very people who have to pass the laws is appalling, according to Khanna. When Google CEO Sundar Pichai appeared before a committee, a Congressmen kept holding up his iPhone and accusingly asking Pichai if he could crack it. Pichai had to patiently explain to the gentleman, that Google wasnt Apple.

While this bunch of Congressmen has gained prominence nationally, they have fellow travellers down ballot.

Indian-American women seem to be doing particularly well a win in more than one way. Led by Kamala Harris, theyre piling up firsts. Jennifer Rajkumar is the first South Asian woman elected to the New York State Assembly. While Padma Kuppa is the first Indian-origin woman in the Michigan Assembly.

More than half a dozen men were also elected in various parts of the country.

One race that got a lot of media attention in India was in Texas, where Sri Preston Kulkarni was running for national Congress. Kulkarni lost by a moderate margin, but the fight might have been closer if he didnt have to deal with the Desi Dilemma (Desis include Pakistanis and Bangladeshis).

Kulkarnis congressional district is in the diverse greater Houston area. Houston is where the triumphant Howdy Modi event was held, but his constituency also has a fair number of Muslims.

During the campaign it emerged that RSS-backed organisations and individuals had donated to Kulkarnis campaign. Muslims in Texas have their own democratic caucus, and a member told me: That put our whole community off.

Whether that would have made a difference to the outcome is difficult to tell. But even though they have little to do with what is at stake, issues like Kashmir subdivide desis when they compete in smaller elections costing them wins.

At a national level, the minimum cost is being trolled. As Jayapal, a fervent human rights advocate, was because of her anti-national, anti-Modi stand on Article 370.

Jayapal survived, and has thrived. As have other Indian-Americans entering public life. Maybe their time has come, and they are, as Jayapal put it, beginning to control it.

See the rest here:
US election 2020: The Samosa Caucus that spoils the Tea Party - India Today

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A rapidly growing Facebook group falsely accusing Democrats of scheming to steal the election with a plot to nullify Republican votes appears to be part of a coordinated campaign by Republican operatives, and has ties to the tea party.

The Stop the Steal group on Facebook, which was only created on Wednesday but already has almost 300,000 members (and is growing quickly), prompts new users to its page to navigate to a website off of Facebook to sign up for email updates in the event that social media censors this group.

The domain that the group pushes its members to, StolenElection.us, is registered to the Liberty Lab, a firm that offers digital services to various conservative clients, according to its website, and Scott Graves, who lists himself as the firms president on LinkedIn.

Its unclear if Graves and the Liberty Lab are running the site alone or were hired by a client. According to its website, the Liberty Lab has been employed by a range of organizations, with a notable track record of working on Republican projects, including Newt Gingrichs 2012 campaign, a push to recall Californias Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, and several pro-Trump projects.

The Facebook group and the website also appear to be linked to Women for America First, a group organized in 2019 to protest against Donald Trumps impeachment. In StolenElection.uss html code, Women for America First shows up repeatedly. Facebook displays a header on the Stop the Steal Facebook page showing that it was created by the Women for America First Facebook page.

Women for America First is a nonprofit co-founded and led by Amy Kremer, a former tea party activist. Mother Jones Stephanie Mencimer wrote about Kremer and her work boosting Republicans last year:

A former Delta flight attendant who calls herself one of the founding mothers of the tea party movement, Kremer was the longtime chief executive of the Tea Party Express, which organized bus tours across the country and worked on a variety of campaigns in 2010 and 2012 to help Republicans retake Congress. One of the best known tea party groups, the Tea Party Express was also well known for being run by a political action committee that raised tons of money from small donors and spent most of it on the political consultants who started the PAC rather than on candidates.

While the tea party did turn out large amounts of conservatives, it was famously the result of a successful astroturf campaign spearheaded by wealthy conservatives, including the Koch brothers.

Excerpt from:
A Massive Stop the Count Facebook Group Has Ties to Republican Operatives - Mother Jones

Conservative advocacy groups Tea Party Patriots Action and FreedomWorks are dispatching their activists in key battleground states to protect the vote.

Tea Party Patriots Action is marshaling its supporters to rallies in Phoenix, Arizona; Atlanta, Georgia; Detroit, Michigan; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Tea Party Patriots Jenny Beth Martin said her groups supporters are going to voice support for transparent and honest ballot counting.

In order for Americans to trust the election process, we must ensure that there are clearly defined laws surrounding our elections, and that those laws will be faithfully and consistently enforced, Ms. Martin said in a statement. We are coming together today and in future days to show our support for the Constitution, the rule of law, and election integrity. Fair and honest elections are an essential pillar of a free society.

FreedomWorks has mobilized its activists to rallies in the same locations in Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania as well.

The result of the 2020 Election is at stake, and our nation cannot afford to jeopardize the integrity of our electoral process, a FreedomWorks spokesperson said.

The rallies occurred outside facilities where election officials are counting votes, including the Philadelphia Convention Center, the TCF Center in Detroit, and at Phoenix City Hall.

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Tea Party Patriots Action, FreedomWorks rally to 'protect the vote' in key battleground states - Washington Times

The groups other administrators were even more prominent conservative activists with close ties to Steve Bannon, the former manager of Trumps 2016 campaign and the ex-chair of the conservative news organization Breitbart, according to data collected by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that tracks online extremism and misinformation.

The pages rapid surge in membership was also helped by promotion from conservative activists and pro-Trump Facebook groups online. And for a group that existed for just over a day, it had an outsized, real-world impact.

As incoming results from multiple battleground states put Biden on the verge of winning the presidency, the baseless allegations of election-rigging are only getting louder, and some groups are working to organize countrywide rallies this weekend.

At the White House Thursday night, Trump boasted about the spirit he was seeing from people angered over voter fraud, although he did not cite any specific movement.

I've never seen such such love and such affection and such spirit as I've seen for this, he said during remarks in the press briefing room. People know what's happening, and they see what's happening, and it's before their eyes.

Yet the affiliation between the #StopTheSteal groups and Trumps camp show that this spirit is supported, encouraged and occasionally manufactured by Trumps own allies. Its part of Trumpworlds broader attempt to gin up outrage about misleading and false claims of voter fraud, thus giving Trump a way to claim the public is behind him.

This is definitely not just organic, up-from-the-grassroots disinformation, said Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and Facebooks former security chief. There are professionals here who are pushing some of this stuff based upon exactly what is going on in the polls and in the real-world arguments over the election.

Along with Kremer, administrators for the invite-only Facebook group included Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lawrence, two political operatives and former Breitbart writers affiliated with other high-profile MAGA projects, according to research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Stockton and Lawrence had recently been working on We Build The Wall, a Bannon-linked operation where Stockton served as a strategist and Lawrence as communications director. The group, a crowdfunding operation to raise money to build a border wall, counted major Trump allies on its board, such as former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, Sheriff David Clarke, Academi CEO Erik Prince, and Bannon himself.

Neither Stockton or Lawrence returned requests for comment.

#StopTheSteal quickly grew beyond Facebook and into on-the-ground action. It was spurred on by MAGA influencers like Mike Cernovich, who helped the group organize a Wednesday night demonstration in Arizona, where more than 100 people flooded the Maricopa County tabulation center where volunteers were processing mail-in ballots. The demonstrators, several of whom had guns, got into a heated confrontation with journalists on-site, prompting security to escort them from the building.

The incident was then amplified and reinforced online. Social media posts tagged #StopTheSteal, including those showing protestors chanting MAGA slogans, quickly went viral after Wednesdays protest helped by far-right influencers promoting the videos. The posts garnered thousands of retweets on Twitter and shares across Facebook, based on data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned social media analytics firm.

Some of the prominent conservative groups involved with #StopTheSteal have also organized rallies to get attention for the cause. Tea Party Patriots, one of the most influential political organizations in the original Tea Party movement, served as one clearinghouse, posting scheduling details for rallies in Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada on its pages.

It is important that election officials see the public pressure to ensure that we have a valid and legitimate count of the vote, the group said in a notice on its site. If the public is deemed to not care, it will be immensely easier for nefarious things to happen.

The presence of organizations like Tea Party Patriots has raised the profile of armed demonstrations held by far-right fringe groups, said Alex Newhouse, a researcher at Middlebury Colleges Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism.

They don't usually get into these really far-right campaigns, Newhouse said. So seeing FreedomWorks do it, seeing a verified Tea Party group pushing it, and seeing them push actual events with dates and times saying, Get out there, get on the ground and protect the vote that was surprising to me as well, and also a big reason why this took off as fast as it did.

Several protests are planned in key swing states this week, and were initially promoted on the #StopTheSteal Facebook page before it was removed from the platform.

The content they oversaw and cultivated was heated, and sometimes stoked violence.

In the #StopTheSteal Facebook group, users voiced their anger over what they said, without clear evidence, were efforts to steal the election from Trump. Others called for violence against what they perceived as widespread voter fraud across the country, even though such allegations have been widely debunked.

In one post, reviewed by POLITICO, a Facebook user posted an image with the text: I dont know why we are surprised about the vote, we all saw it coming and we know how it will end. Neither side is going to concede. Time to clean the guns, time to hit the streets.

Facebook users also responded to peoples posts with similar call-to-arms. Civil war! We are sick of this. Its about time, wrote one in the private group. There will be a war and the folks with guns will win, said another.

Several other Facebook messages in the invite-only group also promoted false allegations that the Democratic Party was stealing the election. God help our country!!! Im literally sick at my stomach. This election is very much rigged!!! said one Facebook user whose post was shared 185 times and received almost 2,000 comments.

Facebook deleted the group because of its rules against using the platform to promote violence or undermine the electoral process. We saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the group, Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesperson, said in a statement.

But even with the disappearance of #StopTheSteals official Facebook page, other groups have continued to promote similar rallies through their own social media channels, and through conservative influencers advertising events on their own pages, according to an analysis from Media Matters, a progressive group monitoring far-right media. The bulk of these events are focused in swing states that are still counting ballots including Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania and are planned for locations where votes are being tabulated.

Within hours of the first #StopTheSteal Facebook groups being removed, at least 20 other groups with the same name with a combined membership of over 320,000 people had sprouted up on the social network, though Facebook removed some of these groups.

Some of the groups which are organizing protests in battleground states subsequently changed their names to pro-Biden topics to avoid detection, leading to pushback from their members, based on a review of their Facebook posts by POLITICO.

We have to avoid being in the open as much as possible. Our goal should be to fly under the radar, said the administrator of one of those groups with roughly 93,000 members. Facebook eventually removed that group.

High-profile conservatives are also now using other avenues to reach out. Women for America Firsts private Facebook page is advertising nationwide demonstrations for Saturday, according to data pulled by Media Matters for America, a progressive group monitoring right-wing media.

We will be sharing the locations where the vote counts will be happening in the contested states, wrote the groups coalitions director, Cindy Chalian. If you cant make it to any of those locations, we encourage you to organize a local rally to demand transparency and to count the LEGAL votes. We support President Trump and we demand our elections be honest and fair. End the fraud now!!!

Other MAGA personalities with large social media followings are hosting additional events, according to a new website, StopTheSteal.us, operated by Ali Alexander, an ex-Tea Party political strategist, current MAGA internet personality. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and Cernovich will be holding rallies in Arizona. Jack Posobiec, a correspondent for the Trump-friendly OAN outlet, and conservative activist Scott Presler will be in Pennsylvania. Kremer the #StopTheSteal group founder will be in Wisconsin. Many of these events were marketed online as grassroot uprisings to defend democracy.

Newhouse, the researcher from Middlebury, said the combination of social media, shared conservative messaging and the far-reaching influence of these MAGA forces, has created the perfect storm for a quickly spreading campaign.

He called SharpieGate a debunked but prominent conspiracy theory circulating on far-right forums claiming that Arizona used Sharpie markers to disenfranchise voters a prime example of a small local quirk that Trump allies quickly made into a nationalized MAGA flashpoint.

It took a few hours for SharpieGate to appear, and then to appear on protest signs that people are holding up in Arizona, he said. There's definitely a direct throughline there, and the amplification of online material and online campaigns in this area I'm pretty confident in saying that it's had an effect on actual on the ground activism.

Steven Overly contributed to this report.

See the original post here:
Trump-linked figures have boosted #StopTheSteal movement - POLITICO