CBS News
Social welfare organization or political party? Why No Labels may need a label
For months, the group No Labels has mounted an aggressive ballot access drive, aiming to put a candidate on the 2024 presidential ballot in as many states as possible. No Labels says it wants to give American voters “a better choice” than what seems increasingly likely to be available from the major parties: a rematch between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.
Though the group has succeeded in obtaining a ballot line in 14 states, critics have raised questions about how No Labels, which is not a political party, plans to run a candidate in the 2024 presidential race.
What is No Labels?
No Labels was founded in 2009 by Nancy Jacobson — the wife of Mark Penn, who was Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist on her Senate and first presidential campaigns — as a 501(c)(4) organization. This tax designation means No Labels is a social welfare organization, a group that “may engage in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to candidates for public office provided that such intervention does not constitute the organization’s primary activity,” according to the IRS. Initially, No Labels aimed to unite Democrats and Republicans trying to solve some of Congress’ most intractable problems.
But by 2021 its mission had evolved. No Labels began working on a nationwide ballot access project to “enable the potential nomination of an independent Unity ticket in 2024,” its website says.
In pursuing ballot access in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., No Labels has raised a backlash from Democratic leaders and groups that fear the group’s candidate could take votes from President Biden and hand the presidency to Trump.
Some Democratic members of Congress and groups have also accused No Labels of acting like a political party, despite its tax-exempt social welfare organization status.
No Labels chief strategist Ryan Clancy told CBS News it’s possible that the group may transition into another kind of entity, given its presidential ballot efforts, but he argued that it’s currently not acting like a party because it is “not specifically advocating for or against [a] candidate.”
“A group like No Labels has a right to get on the ballot without being considered a political committee,” he said.
But in some states where it has obtained a ballot line, No Labels has already been recognized as a political party. Maine’s secretary of state recently recognized it as an official political party early this year after it reached the signature threshold necessary, the state’s election commission said.
William Galston, one of the group’s co-founders, told CBS News that he decided to part ways with the movement when its “mission shifted” and started working on its possible independent presidential movement for 2024.
“I decided that this was such an important issue for me that I can no longer in good conscience remain in a fairly senior and visible advisory position inside No Labels,” Galston said.
Two No Labels donors accused group of “bait and switch”
That alleged shift in mission is already the subject of a lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court. In January, two members of the Durst family, one of New York City’s most prominent real estate families, accused the group of a “bait and switch,” contending No Labels diverged from its original mission of encouraging bipartisan legislation to pursue a possible 2024 third-party presidential bid.
The lawsuit says No Labels solicited funds nearly a decade ago pitching “bipartisan activism aimed at achieving common-sense solutions that appeal to the average American.” It was a goal that convinced Douglas and Jonathan Durst to donate $145,000 to the group. But the Durst cousins now regret it, claiming No Labels “has lost its way, abandoned its original mission, and fundamentally betrayed its donors’ trust in the process.”
No Labels’ finances have also been questioned in recent months because its organization as a social welfare organization means it is not required to disclose its donors. Political parties, however, must regularly disclose who their donors are and how much they donated.
The group says it will address this. In a press briefing last year, Clancy said once a campaign with a candidate is announced, No Labels would be “subject to every campaign finance requirement.”
When will No Labels announce its presidential candidate?
No Labels is still considering whether it should proceed with its presidential unity ticket. Clancy says the group should reach a decision on this “somewhere in mid-March.”
Although No Labels has offered scant information about its candidate selection process, it has said it will hold a virtual convention and then announce a nominee. The group has not said who, if anyone, would be eligible to run but has mentioned that the selection process will be conducted by its own members.
Galston believes that although the group claims to be bipartisan, the influence of former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan over No Labels shows that the group prefers “to put a Republican on the top of the ticket, [rather] than a Democrat.” Hogan resigned from the board of No Labels early this year and endorsed GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley. He announced Friday that he’s running for Senate.
Haley was commended by No Labels founding chairman and former independent Sen. Joseph Lieberman as someone who “really deserves serious consideration” when asked by CBS News about putting her at the top of a No Labels ticket.
“If we decide to put forth a ticket, we’ll have full details on exactly how that ticket will be selected,” Clancy said. “Our focus is making sure we can just get on the ballot, because that’s really everything if you’re not on the ballot, this whole discussion is academic,” he added.
Where has No Labels qualified for the ballot?
No Labels has been able to qualify for the ballot in 14 states so far: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Dakota and Utah.
But Clancy says No Labels will only be able to obtain ballot access in 32 states because some states will only allow the group to qualify “as a placeholder” for a candidate. For this reason, No Labels will fail to get a ballot line in 13 states. In other cases, No Labels has found the signature threshold to be too high to obtain ballot access. Overall, there are 18 states in which No Labels is not likely to gain ballot access.
Thirteen states require a named candidate: Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.
CBS News
2 shot dead, 4 wounded by Mexico’s National Guard on migrant smuggling route near U.S. border
Mexico’s National Guard fatally shot two Colombians and wounded four others in what the Defense Department claimed was a confrontation near the U.S. border.
Colombia’s foreign ministry said in a statement Sunday that all of the victims were migrants who had been “caught in the crossfire.” It identified the dead as a 20-year-old man and a 37-year-old woman, and gave the number of Colombians wounded as five, not four. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy. The victims were identified by the foreign ministry as Yuli Vanessa Herrera Marulanda and Ronaldo Andrés Quintero Peñuelas.
Mexico’s Defense Department, which controls the National Guard, did not respond to requests for comment Monday on whether the victims were migrants, but it said one Colombian who was not injured in the shootings was turned over to immigration officials, suggesting they were.
If they were migrants, it would mark the second time in just over a month that military forces in Mexico have opened fire on and killed migrants.
On Oct. 1, the day President Claudia Sheinbaum took office, soldiers opened fire on a truck, killing six migrants in the southern state of Chiapas. An 11-year-old girl from Egypt, her 18-year-old sister and a 17-year-old boy from El Salvador died in that shooting, along with people from Peru and Honduras.
The most recent shootings happened Saturday on a dirt road near Tecate, east of Otay Mesa on the California border, that is frequently used by Mexican migrant smugglers, the department said in a statement late Sunday.
The Defense Department said a militarized National Guard patrol came under fire after spotting two vehicles — a gray pickup and a white SUV — in the area, which is near an informal border crossing and wind power generation plant known as La Rumorosa.
One truck sped off and escaped. The National Guard opened fire on the other truck, killing two Colombians and wounding four others. There was no immediate information on their conditions, and there were no reported casualties among the guardsmen involved.
One Colombian and one Mexican man were found and detained unharmed at the scene, and the departments said officers found a pistol and several magazines commonly used for assault rifles at the scene.
Colombians have sometimes been recruited as gunmen for Mexican drug cartels, which are also heavily involved in migrant smuggling. But the fact the survivor was turned over to immigration officials and that the Foreign Relations Department contacted the Colombian consulate suggests they were migrants.
Cartel gunmen sometimes escort or kidnap migrants as they travel to the U.S. border. One possible scenario was that armed migrant smugglers may have been in one or both of the trucks, but that the migrants were basically unarmed bystanders.
The defense department said the three National Guard officers who opened fire have been taken off duty while the incident is being investigated.
Former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who left office Sept. 30, gave the military an unprecedentedly wide role in public life and law enforcement; he created the militarized Guard and used the combined military forces as the country’s main law enforcement agencies, supplanting police. The Guard has since been placed under the control of the army.
But critics say the military is not trained to do civilian law enforcement work. Moreover, lopsided death tolls in such confrontations – in which all the deaths and injuries occur on one side – raise suspicions among activists whether there really was a confrontation.
For example, the soldiers who opened fire in Chiapas – who have been detained pending charges – claimed they heard “detonations” prior to opening fire. There was no indication any weapons were found at the scene.
A Kenyan man was convicted Monday of plotting a 9/11-style attack on a U.S. building on behalf of the terrorist organization al-Shabab.
A federal jury in Manhattan found Cholo Abdi Abdullah guilty on all six counts he faced for conspiring to hijack an aircraft and slam it into a building, according to court records.
He’s due to be sentenced next March and faces a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison.
Handout / Criminal Investigation and Detection Group
Abdullah represented himself during the trial, which opened last week. He declined to give an opening statement and did not actively participate in questioning witnesses.
In court papers filed ahead of the trial, prosecutors said Abdullah intended to “merely sit passively during the trial, not oppose the prosecution and whatever the outcome, he would accept the outcome because he does not believe that this is a legitimate system.”
Lawyers appointed to assist Abdullah in his self-defense didn’t respond to an email seeking comment Monday.
Federal prosecutors, who rested their case Thursday, said Abdullah plotted the attack for four years, undergoing extensive training in explosives and how to operate in secret and avoid detection.
He then moved to the Philippines in 2017 and began training as a commercial pilot.
Abdullah was almost finished with his two-year pilot training when he was arrested in 2019 on local charges.
He was transferred the following year to U.S. law enforcement authorities, who charged him with terrorism-related crimes.
Prosecutors said Abdullah also researched how to breach a cockpit door and information “about the tallest building in a major U.S. city” before he was caught.
The State Department in 2008 designated al-Shabab, which means “the youth” in Arabic, as a foreign terrorist organization. The militant group is an al Qaeda affiliate that has fought to establish an Islamic state in Somalia based on Shariah law.
CBS News
The remains of 28 Civil War soldiers were found in a funeral home’s storage. They’ve now been laid to rest.
For several decades, the cremated remains of more than two dozen American Civil War veterans languished in storage facilities at a funeral home and cemetery in Seattle.
The simple copper and cardboard urns gathering dust on shelves only had the name of each of the 28 soldiers – but nothing linking them to the Civil War. Still, that was enough for an organization dedicated to locating, identifying and interring the remains of unclaimed veterans to conclude over several years that they were all Union soldiers deserving of a burial service with military honors.
“It’s amazing that they were still there and we found them,” said Tom Keating, the Washington state coordinator for the Missing In America Project, which turned to a team of volunteers to confirm their war service through genealogical research. “It’s something long overdue. These people have been waiting a long time for a burial.”
Most of the veterans were buried in August at Washington’s Tahoma National Cemetery.
In a traditional service offered to Civil War veterans, the historical 4th U.S. Infantry Regiment dressed in Union uniforms fired musket volleys and the crowd sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Names were called out for each veteran and their unit before their remains were brought forward and stories were shared about their exploits. Then, they were buried.
Among them was a veteran held at a Confederate prison known as Andersonville. Several were wounded in combat and others fought in critical battles including Gettysburg, Stones River and the Atlanta campaign. One man survived being shot thanks to his pocket watch – which he kept until his death – and another deserted the Confederate Army and joined the Union forces.
“It was something, just the finality of it all,” Keating said, adding they were unable to find any living descendants of the veterans.
While some remains are hidden away in funeral homes, others were found where they fell in battle or by Civil War re-enactors combing old graveyards.
Charles Lawrence / AP
Communities often turn reburials into major events, allowing residents to celebrate veterans and remember a long-forgotten war. In 2016, a volunteer motorcycle group escorted the remains of one veteran cross country from Oregon to the final resting place in Maine. In South Carolina, the remains of 21 Confederate soldiers recovered from forgotten graves beneath the stands of a military college’s football stadium were reburied in 2005.
Sometimes reburials spark controversy. The discovery of the remains of two soldiers from the Manassas National Battlefield in Virginia prompted an unsuccessful attempt in 2018 by several families to have DNA tests done on them. The Army rejected that request and reburied them as unknown soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.
Along with those buried at Tahoma, Keating said, several others will be buried at Washington State Veterans Cemetery and a Navy veteran will be buried at sea. The remains of several more Civil War veterans were sent to Maine, Rhode Island and other places where family connections were found.
“Would have been lost to history”
Among them was Byron Johnson. Born in Pawtucket in 1844, he enlisted at 18 and served as a hospital steward with the Union Army. He moved out West after the war and died in Seattle in 1913. After his remains were delivered to Pawtucket City Hall, he was buried with military honors at his family’s plot in Oak Grove Cemetery.
Pawtucket Mayor Donald R. Grebien said Johnson’s burial service was the right thing to do.
“When you have somebody who served in a war but especially this war, we want to honor them,” he said. “It became more intriguing when you think this individual was left out there and not buried in his own community.”
Grebien said the burials recall important lessons about the 1861-1865 war to preserve the Union, fought between the North’s Union Army and the Confederate States of America at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.
“It was important to remind people not only in Pawtucket but the state of Rhode Island and nationwide that we have people who sacrificed their lives for us and for a lot of the freedoms we have,” he said.
Bruce Frail and his son Ben – both long active in the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War – were on hand for service. Ben Frail was also a re-enactor at Johnson’s service, portraying a Union Army captain.
Charles Lawrence / AP
“It’s the best thing we can do for a veteran,” said Bruce Frail, a former commander-in-chief with the Sons of Union Veterans and state coordinator for Missing In America Project.
“The feeling that you get when you honor somebody in that way, it’s indescribable,” he said.
The Missing in America Project says it has identified the remains of over 7,000 veterans and has buried over 6,800 soldiers.
The task of piecing together Johnson’s life story was left to Amelia Boivin, the constituent liaison in the Pawtucket mayor’s office. A history buff, she recalled getting the call requesting the city take possession of his remains and bury them with his family. She got to work and Johnson’s story became the talk of City Hall.
She determined Johnson grew up in Pawtucket, had two sisters and a brother and worked as a druggist after the war. He left to make his fortune out West, first in San Francisco and eventually in Seattle, where he worked nearly up until his death. It doesn’t appear Johnson ever married or had children, and no living relatives were found.
“I felt like it was resolution of sorts,” Boivin said. “It felt like we were doing right for someone who otherwise would have been lost to history.”
Earlier this year, two Union soldiers were posthumously honored by President Biden with the Medal of Honor for their courage in the “Great Locomotive Chase,” in which they went deep behind Confederate lines and stole a train in Marietta, Georgia. They ran the train north, tearing up tracks and cutting telegraph wires as they went.
