Tea Party Movement in the context of "United States federal budget"

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⭐ Core Definition: Tea Party Movement

The Tea Party movement was an American fiscally conservative political movement within the Republican Party that began in 2007, catapulted into the mainstream by Congressman Ron Paul's presidential campaign. The movement expanded in response to the policies of Democratic president Barack Obama and was a major factor in the 2010 wave election in which Republicans gained 63 House seats and took control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Participants in the movement called for lower taxes and for a reduction of the national debt and federal budget deficit through decreased government spending. The movement supported small-government principles and opposed the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), President Obama's signature health care legislation. The Tea Party movement has been described as both a popular constitutional movement and as an "astroturf movement" purporting to be spontaneous and grassroots, but alleged to have been influenced by outside interests. The movement was composed of a mixture of libertarian, right-wing populist, and conservative activism. It sponsored multiple protests and supported various political candidates since 2009. The movement took its name from the December 1773 Boston Tea Party, a watershed event in the American Revolution, with some movement adherents using Revolutionary era costumes.

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Tea Party Movement in the context of Nativism in United States politics

The ideology of nativism—favoring native inhabitants, as opposed to immigrants—has been very common and contentious within American politics for centuries. In this context "native" does not mean Indigenous Americans or American Indians, but refers to European settlers and their descendants. Nativist movements have existed since before American independence, and have targeted a wide variety of nationalities. Historically, nativism was present even in colonial America. During that era, anti-German feelings, particularly towards the Pennsylvania Dutch, ran deep. Later on, when the U.S. became its own nation, the Federalist Party expressed opposition to the French Revolution, and also passed the 1798 anti-immigrant Alien and Sedition Acts. When immigration rates to the nation exploded in the 1840s and 1850s, nativism returned with a renewed fervor, with the word nativism itself coined by 1844, and the formation of the Know Nothing Party.

In the late 19th century, going into the early 20th, nativism began to reappear. Contemporary laws and treaties included the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1907 Gentlemen's Agreement (preventing Japanese immigration), the 1921 Emergency Quota Act, and the 1924 Immigration Act. Nativists and labor unions also argued for literacy tests, arguing that it would stop illiterate immigrants from Southern or Eastern Europe. In the 1970s, the immigration reductionism movement, which exists to this day, was formed. In the 2010s, the Tea Party Movement, which split off from the Republican Party, brought a new form of nativism. Donald Trump introduced several nativist policies, such as the 2017 Trump travel ban. Racially, American nativists have focused on a wide variety of ethnicities. Historically, targets have included Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans, German Americans, Irish Americans, and Hispanic Americans.

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