Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.com.
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Rep. Ted Budd, left, and Cheri Beasley
On Tuesday, North Carolina Republicans selected Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC), a far-right extremist who has pushed false claims about the 2020 election, to be their Senate nominee. He will face Democratic nominee Cheri Beasley, a former chief justice of the state's Supreme Court.
As of Wednesday morning, Budd had received more than 58 percent of the GOP primary vote. Former Gov. Pat McCrory received just below 25 percent of the vote, while former Rep. Mark Walker received about nine percent of the vote.
Budd was a vocal backer of efforts to overturn President Joe Biden's victory over former President Donald Trump, baselessly claiming that Americans had no faith in the results due to "legitimate concerns over voter fraud, machine irregularities, and mail-in ballots."
Budd voted to overturn North Carolina's Electoral College results, citing "irregularities & constitutional violations" and defended that move as recently as Monday.
Though Budd did once admit that Biden was the legitimate president, Trump endorsed Budd anyway, telling supporters he was "someone you’ll be very proud of. He'll fight like hell."
Since getting elected to the U.S. House in 2016, Budd has repeatedly embraced extreme positions. He joined the far-right Freedom Caucus, voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, urged the Supreme Court to reject LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections, and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as "a very intelligent actor."
In 2019, Budd refused to say that it was inappropriate for a U.S. president to ask other countries to meddle in American elections, calling it a "tricky question."
The following year, he suggested that stay-at-home orders to curb the COVID-19 pandemic were being pushed by Democratic politicians with a "socialist bent."
Last June, Budd pushed to cut $111 million in transportation funds earmarked for his own state, calling it "pork-barrel spending."
As a candidate, Budd has presented himself as an outsider who "can't be bought by the swamp," despite receiving significant funding from lobbyists and lobbying firms.
Democratic voters selected Beasley as their nominee. After years of working as a public defender and a judge, she was appointed to lead the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2019 — becoming the first Black woman to hold that post.
Her campaign has focused on justice for all, affordable health care, women's rights, and safeguarding the right to vote. Unlike Budd, she strongly supports codifying Roe v. Wade.
North Carolina has been a swing state in recent elections. The state narrowly voted for Trump in 2020 (49.9 percent to 48.6 percent), while also re-electing Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper (51.5 percent to 47 percent).
The seat is open because Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) is retiring. The Cook Political Report and Sabato's Crystal Ball both list the seat as leaning Republican in November.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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Stephen Colbert
It seems we can't go even a week in America without some deranged white nationalist shooter taking the lives of decent people. Of course, this type of violence is propagated on a daily basis by the far-right sh*tweasals at Fox News and, worse yet, in the ranks of the Republican Party.
After returning to the Late Show helm, Stephen Colbert weighed in on the real culprit behind the mass shootings -- the Replacement Theory popularized by Tucker Carlson.
"Where does anyone get an idea that monstrous?” Colbert wondered. “Well, it used to be only from the farthest rightwing fringe organizations – your StormFronts, your neo-Nazis. But these days, you can see it every night on TV,” thanks to Fox News and host Tucker Carlson, who has advanced the idea that a “cabal of elites wants to force demographic change through immigration” in more than 400 episodes of his show.
Colbert also made sure to mockthe ridiculous lie that Democrats are somehow super radicalized.
“Oh, and you know what those liberals will do with their powerful permanent majority?” he mocked. “Beg Joe Manchin for paid family leave, and then when he doesn’t vote for it say, ‘oh, OK then, is there something else we could do for you? What if we fed coal directly to dolphins?’”
Watch the clip below:
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