Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed to the newsmaker line Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots and columnist for The Washington Times, to discuss the recent EPA ruling, principles of the Tea Party movement, and the importance of a strong state attorney general.
Leahy: We are delighted to welcome to our newsmaker line, good friend Jenny Beth Martin, one of the founders of the Tea Party Patriots and now the honorary chairman of the Tea Party Patriots. Known her for a long time. Welcome, Jenny Beth, how are you this morning?
Martin: I am great. It’s so good to be with you, Michael.
Leahy: You know the history of the Tea Party movement. You and I both were involved in the founding of the Tea Party movement way back in 2009.
And the first time we met was back, I think in May of 2009, when you came in from Atlanta, Georgia, and we did a series of programs on the old PJTV in Los Angeles.
We were involved in the founding of a movement where on April 15, 2009, Jenny Beth, 1,000 different rallies [were held] to support the principles of the Tea Party movement – which were fiscal responsibility, free markets, and constitutionally limited government. Just at a broad pace here now, 13 years later, how are we doing as a country, Jenny Beth?
Martin: Well, I think that when it comes to economic freedom and a debt-free future, we still have so much work to do. And we’re seeing the effects of it personally right now because we’ve got such terrible economic policies coming out of the Biden administration.
We see it at the gas pump, we see it in our grocery prices, we see it in every single thing that we are purchasing.
But I do think there’s reason, the Supreme Court gave us a little bit of reason to have hope that we might be able to rein some of this government overreach, which has created so much government spending, back in when they ruled in favor of West Virginia and against the EPA last week.
For those who are not completely familiar with all of the details of this Supreme Court case, because it’s not one of the big ones that you may have heard as much about, Chief Justice Roberts said if he ruled in this decision, there was a 6-3 decision, “a decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself.” Meaning this decision that the Environmental Protection Agency had created what they called the Clean Power Plan to address climate change.
“The decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from the representative body.”
And I think that’s important because we have so many unelected bureaucrats working in various government agencies and departments around and in the federal government, and they create these plans like the Clean Power Plan that have massive impact economically, financially, and from a freedom perspective on businesses and on individuals around the country.
It’s very difficult to hold them accountable, because they’re not elected. So you can’t go vote them out at the ballot box. You don’t even know who they are. They’re just nameless, faceless bureaucrats.
And the Supreme Court is saying when you’re making such important decisions, the people have to have a way to check that. The people have to have a way to know who made that decision so we can hold them accountable. The Supreme Court may not have said it exactly in that manner, but I as a voter, that’s how I’m interpreting it.
Leahy: Absolutely correct. And it was, I think, a huge decision, basically paring back the usurpations of power that the administrative agencies have taken.
Congress has the authority under our Constitution to define what the rules are in various industries. The EPA went beyond the authority of Congress, the Supreme Court said, and started making up rules that Congress did not support.
And it was a real slapdown of the EPA in a 6 to 3 decision. And I think it’s a harbinger of more good things to come in terms of reining in the administrative state.
What’s interesting I found about this is it took a very aggressive attorney general in Patrick Morrissey in West Virginia to pursue this.
And it gets back to the importance of having a strong attorney general in every state that pursues the Tenth Amendment rights of the citizens in the state. Your thoughts on that?
Martin: I think that is exactly right. You have to have a strong attorney general who is willing to defend their state and what their state has the right to do, because that’s how our country was founded.
And each state has a lot of individual power. But it also creates what we have heard called incubators of freedom, incubators of liberty. You can test new ideas in different states, and one state can try.
We see the huge differences between Florida and California. We see the impact of those differences, and we see voters going from one state to another because of those differences. And we want that kind of power within each state.
And, Michael, that first meeting that we had, that’s one of the things that you mentioned when we were talking about what are the things that Tea Party movement is going to stand for?
And we decided we weren’t taking on social issues like abortion and life issues. Not because they’re not worthy of a battle, but because there are other organizations that were already doing those things.
But you mentioned something, you said, what we ultimately want is for the decision about whether it’s going to be pro-life or not, for that to fall within the state, and not at the federal level.
And we just saw that happen from the Supreme Court as well. And you were right then, focusing on the rights of the state. That was 13 years ago, and you continue to do that today.
Leahy: Jenny Beth, tell us what your agenda is for the next foreseeable months. We got big midterm elections. What do you focus on at Tea Party Patriots?
Martin: Our super PACs, will be engaging in the general election, working to get out the vote in a few key states. The big thing that we are focusing on at the grassroots level is working on election integrity.
We are training people to become poll watchers and poll workers, or workers may be called inspectors of elections or judges of elections or election workers.
Whatever your state may call it, we’re training people and are doing supplemental workshops to the official training that the state may have for that, urging people to be involved and active, and watch what is happening as your elections are conducted in your state.
And I think it is incredibly important that we do that. In Georgia, we had over 1,500 people engaged in that as poll watchers and over 300 poll workers during our primary.
We’re helping recruit people in Arizona and Wisconsin who still have primaries coming up, and then in the general election would be involved in those three seats, with Nevada and Pennsylvania helping recruit in Michigan, and then in North Carolina.
Listen to the interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Jenny Beth Martin” by Jenny Beth Martin.
