Connect with us

News

‘No Labels Is a Lethal Scam’ Warns Top Constitutional Law Attorney

Published

on

One of the nation’s top constitutional law attorneys, the well-known University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, Laurence Tribe, blasted the dark money group No Labels on Monday, calling it a “lethal scam.”

No Labels, which insists it is not a political party while attempting to get a potential candidate on the 2024 presidential ballot, reportedly is now “openly floating” a plot to throw the November election into the U.S. House of Representatives, which would mostly likely hand the White House back to Donald Trump.

“Yet as it works to gain ballot access, it has to ask voters in some states to identify themselves as members of the No Label party,” The Wall Street Journal reported in November, noting that since it technically is not a political party it does not legally have to identify its donors.

Last week, Esquire‘s Charles P. Pierce took a look at No Labels, concluding it “claims to be born from the horrible divisiveness of our current politics. In reality, it is a fully begotten child of Citizens United. Mother Jones ran through the roster of the people funding No Labels and found that it is thickly infested with bet-hedging plutocrats.”

The New Republic earlier this month observed, “far from coming together to defeat a fascist threat, as one might expect, the Democratic Party is splintering into factionalism. This begins with the centrists behind the No Labels movement. Just before Christmas, they did something absolutely gobsmacking, which got very little attention because of the timing. In a December 21 briefing for reporters, No Labels officials floated the possibility of forming a ‘coalition government’ with one of the major parties in the event that no candidate for president receives 270 electoral votes.”

RELATED: ‘Biggest Threat to Our Survival’: Experts Blast No Labels and Third Party Candidates as Manchin Tests the Waters

“Put that way, it sounds relatively benign,” TNR editor Michael Tomasky explained. “It is, however, anything but. No Labels chief strategist Ryan Clancy explicitly mentioned, according to NBC News’s account, the possibility that the election could be tossed to the House of Representatives, where deals could be cut to determine a winner. This has happened before, in 1824 (also in 1800, but 1824 is the relevant case). Those who know their history will recall that this exercise in horse-trading, in which Henry Clay threw his support to John Quincy Adams and became his secretary of state, has gone down in political lore by the name the ‘corrupt bargain.’ And No Labels is bragging about emulating it!”

Highly-popular Boston College professor of history Heather Cox Richardson on Saturday served up more insight into the House of Representatives gambit.

“I am exceedingly concerned about the Twelfth Amendment,” she wrote. “John Eastman suggested using it in 2020, and it could be central to stealing the 2024 election by throwing the vote to the House, where each state has a single vote. South Dakota would have as much power as California.”

There’s been talk that both U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) have been considering presidential runs on a No Labels ticket. Congressman Phillips has been running in the Democratic primary but has not gained much traction.

Phillips is polling at just over 3% among Democrats, a little more than half of where Marianne Williamson is, according to FiveThirtyEight.

READ MORE: ‘Jailing and Killing Americans’: Expert Issues Warning on Trump’s Latest Claim

Meanwhile, noting the Minnesota Democratic congressman’s “long-shot” primary bid against President Biden, The New York Times reported, “if it appeared the general election would be a rematch between Mr. Biden and Donald J. Trump,” Phillips said “he would consider running on the ticket of No Labels.”

“It would have to be a Joe Biden-Donald Trump rematch that shows Joe Biden is almost certain to lose,” Phillips told The Times. “That is the only condition in which I would even entertain a conversation with any alternative.”

Pointing to Manchin and Phillips, political commentator Lindy Li alleged, “No Labels is a pro-Trump PAC designed to fracture Democrats.”

“It’s funded by GOP billionaires like Clarence Thomas’s sugar daddy, Harlan Crow,” she added, warning: “Stay the hell away from this scam to get Trump back in power.”

Professor Tribe responded to Li’s remarks, writing: “No Labels is a lethal scam. It could end democracy if it tosses the 2024 presidential election into the House, where each state has exactly one vote.”

READ MORE: E. Jean Carroll Trial Postponed Over Illness After Trump’s Courthouse Arrival

The Atlantic’s Norman Ornstein, an Emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), responded to Richardson’s warning with one of his own: “Because of the red tint of so many small rural states, Republicans usually have more state delegations than Democrats, even if they lose the majority. This is a path to a Trump presidency engineered by the vile No Labels.”

Tribe weighed in on Ornstein’s warning by adding, “Even if ‘No Labels’ fails to carry any state, it might shift a close state into Trump’s column or win a single district in Maine or Nebraska, the two states that don’t use a winner-takes-all system, and thus toss the whole election into the House, where Trump would have the edge.”

 

There's a reason 10,000 people subscribe to NCRM. You can get the news before it breaks just by subscribing, plus you can learn something new every day.
Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

News

Trump ‘Laser-Focused’ on Affordability Says White House After Calling It a ‘Hoax’

Published

on

The White House says President Donald Trump has been “laser-focused on making America affordable” since taking office. Just one month ago, President Trump called affordability a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats.

President Trump has recently attempted to preserve his sweeping tariffs amid Supreme Court review, has engaged in foreign policy messaging involving Venezuela, Iran, and Greenland — including promoting himself as the “acting President of Venezuela” — and has responded sharply to protests involving federal officers.

The president campaigned on lowering the cost of living on “day one,” but nearly 51 weeks into his second term, inflation remains high.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that the president would travel to Detroit on Tuesday to deliver a speech about “all of the positive economic news that we continue to see as a result of his agenda.”

READ MORE: ‘Organized Gangs of Wine Moms’ Are Impeding Federal Agents Says Fox Columnist

“So tomorrow, he looks forward to traveling to the great state of Michigan, a state he won big, to not only tour a factory that produces Ford F-150s, and is going to be hiring more, and producing more trucks right here in the USA because of President Trump’s effective tariff policies,” Leavitt said.

Trump narrowly won Michigan, taking less than half of the vote and besting Vice President Kamala Harris by 1.4 percentage points.

Leavitt said that “mortgage rates that are falling under 6% for the first time in years,” “the national average of gasoline is the lowest that it’s been in five years,” and core inflation is “at its lowest level in five years.”

She suggested that “with a little bit of patience, the American people are going to continue to see that the best is yet to come,” and claimed that Trump “has a proven economic formula that works.”

Leavitt also said that Trump has a housing plan “in the works” and a healthcare plan “in the works,” and vowed that Americans will “continue to hear from the president, and he’ll continue to hit the road across the country to speak directly with the people he loves most, the American people.”

READ MORE: Trump ‘Losing Political Fight’ to Fed Chair: Analyst

 

Image via Reuters

Continue Reading

News

Trump DOJ Fires Attorney Who Refused to Prosecute James Comey

Published

on

The Trump Department of Justice has terminated a 64-year old attorney, the number-two official in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, after he refused to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey in a highly-controversial case.

MS NOW on Monday reported that Robert McBride, a senior DOJ prosecutor and former Navy lawyer, “was brought into the prominent satellite office of the Justice Department to serve as first assistant to U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan and took a more prominent role as her status was in question and after a judge ruled in late November that she was not legally appointed to run the office.”

McBride reportedly had held private meetings with judges, MS NOW reported, calling it a move that was “viewed as undermining the Administration.”

He had declined to prosecute Comey, sources said, reportedly telling top Justice Department officials that it would be difficult to do that and also run the office.

MS NOW’s Carol Leonnig added that McBride was also suspected of “gunning for” the top job.

The New York Times reported that there was a “disagreement about whether he would take charge of the Trump administration’s effort to re-indict James B. Comey,” and called McBride’s firing “the latest development in the fallout in the Justice Department over President Trump’s effort to punish Mr. Comey, the former F.B.I. director and his longtime nemesis, whom the president blames for past investigations of his conduct.”

The Times added that meeting with judges is considered “commonplace.”

 

Image via Reuters 

Continue Reading

News

‘Screwed’: Trump Warns Supreme Court on Tariffs

Published

on

With many Americans awaiting a Supreme Court decision on the sweeping Trump tariffs and some experts believing the Court will rule on them any day nowpossibly as soon as Wednesday — the president is once again sending a clear warning to the justices: allow the tariffs or America is “screwed.”

During the November oral arguments, liberal and conservative justices appeared skeptical of the administration’s claim it has the power to impose global tariffs by declaring a national emergency.

President Trump has repeatedly said the tariffs are necessary for national security, and said that if the court does not allow them the U.S. would be in no position to give refunds of billions of dollars. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent late last week said refunds “won’t be a problem.”

Trump on Monday appeared to disagree.

READ MORE: ‘Organized Gangs of Wine Moms’ Are Impeding Federal Agents Says Fox Columnist

“The actual numbers that we would have to pay back if, for any reason, the Supreme Court were to rule against the United States of America on Tariffs, would be many Hundreds of Billions of Dollars,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday afternoon. It is possible the Court could rescind the Trump tariffs and not require refunds.

The president then added that “the amount of ‘payback’ that Countries and Companies would require for the Investments they are making on building Plants, Factories, and Equipment, for the purpose of being able to avoid the payment of Tariffs. When these Investments are added, we are talking about Trillions of Dollars!”

He claimed any negative ruling would create “a complete mess,” and make it “almost impossible for our Country to pay.”

Despite his Treasury Secretary’s remarks, Trump added, “Anybody who says that it can be quickly and easily done would be making a false, inaccurate, or totally misunderstood answer to this very large and complex question.”

“It may not be possible but, if it were, it would be Dollars that would be so large that it would take many years to figure out what number we are talking about and even, who, when, and where, to pay,” he claimed.

And he warned point-blank, “if the Supreme Court rules against the United States of America on this National Security bonanza, WE’RE SCREWED!”

READ MORE: Trump ‘Losing Political Fight’ to Fed Chair: Analyst

 

Image via Reuters

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2020 AlterNet Media.