Some liberal pundits have labeled Black Republicans as racists solely based on the political party they represent. 

The most recent example came Thursday when late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel mocked Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., saying the senator, who recently made headlines for his response to President Biden’s address before Congress, “let the American people know the Republican Party isn’t racist.”

Scott said in his Wednesday night rebuttal to the president that America is “not a racist country,” sparking backlash from some Democrats on social media.

However, prominent Democrats including Biden himself, Vice President Kamala Harris and House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., agree with Scott, arguing that while the nation itself is not racist, it can improve its institutions and attitudes.

Kimmel mocked the South Carolina senator on his late night TV show.

“Every Black Republican senator got together to let the American people know the Republican Party isn’t racist,” Kimmel said, “and then Tim promptly returned to the sensory deprivation egg he calls home.”

While Kimmel criticized Republicans for the party’s low Black representation in the Senate, there are only two Black Democratic Senators: Cory Booker of New Jersey and Raphael Warnock of Georgia. There have been only 11 Black Senators in U.S. history, among them Harris of California and former President Barack Obama of Illinois.

Kimmel, who has previously apologized for donning blackface to mock NBA star Karl Malone, received some criticism from right-leaning social media users following his show, but his comments were not unique.

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“Uncle Tim” trended on Twitter after Scott’s speech Wednesday, a play on the “Uncle Tom” slur for Black people viewed as overly deferential to White people.

The term isn’t new to Scott.  The Vermont newspaper, Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus, published a cartoon by Jeff Danziger last August titled “Uncle Tim’s Cabin,” portraying Scott sitting outside a cabin with a Trump sign planted in his yard.

The slur has also been used against other prominent Black Republicans.

MSNBC’s Joy Reid, who is Black, referred to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as “Uncle Clarence” while discussing the 2020 presidential election.

“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin, who is Black, said she was disappointed to see Scott “used” on Wednesday, and her co-host Joy Behar, who is White, said Scott didn’t “understand” the difference between a racist country and systemic racism.

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“Yes, maybe it’s not a racist country. Maybe Americans, the majority, are not racist. But we live in a country with systemic racism,” Behar said on the show. “The fact that Tim Scott cannot acknowledge this is appalling. How can you go out there and say that when you just said two minutes ago that you were the object and the victim of discrimination?”

During his rebuttal speech, Scott discussed his many experiences with discrimination and specifically mentioned the names he has been called by liberals, including “Uncle Tom” and the “N-word.” 

Behar took heat from former GOP congressional candidate Kimberly Klacik on “The View” in September when hosts engaged Klacik, a Baltimore native, in a heated discussion about former President Donald Trump’s admission to veteran journalist Bob Woodward of wanting to “downplay” the severity of COVID-19 early on and whether it “cost lives.”

“First of all, I think that we didn’t handle the pandemic as a country great as a whole,” Klacik said. “This is why I talk about bringing the biotech industry right back to the Baltimore city port. We’ve allowed a lot of jobs and manufacturing to go overseas thanks to NAFTA in the Bill Clinton administration and that’s why [Trump’s] pulling it back.”

Behar wasn’t satisfied with her response.

“Excuse me, I have to say something to you,” the co-host said. “He told Bob Woodward that it was a very serious issue and it’s airborne and that it was terrible. And then he went out and told the American people, ‘Don’t wear masks, it’s all going to go away.’ You have to put some blame on your president. I’m sorry, you’re putting it on something extraneous here. Talk to the point, please.”

Klacik responded: “Is this the same Joy that paraded in blackface not too long ago? C’mon, Joy, I don’t think you should be asking these questions.”

“That’s not true,” Behar said. “Excuse me, excuse me! The Black community had my back. They know that that was not blackface, that was a homage.”

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Nearly a year earlier, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron — the first Black Republican elected statewide — was blasted by the Kentucky Herald Leader during his race in 2019.

“This is what the @HeraldLeader — a “tolerant,” left-leaning newspaper — thinks about black folks who dare to be Republican. You’re a racist following the KKK unless you hate @realDonaldTrump,” he tweeted in response to a comic by illustrator Joel Pett published in the newspaper depicting Trump as a KKK member and Cameron holding his robe.

“Let’s make history on [Nov. 5] and show we don’t take orders from the elites anymore,” he added.

Courier-Journal columnist and Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Joseph Gerth echoed that same narrative in a Friday op-ed targeting Cameron.

“Good news for all the racists out there who claim they’re not racists and for those who claim the system hasn’t been set up to benefit white people. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron has their backs,” he wrote.

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Gerth noted that Cameron “says there is no such thing as systemic racism in America,” adding: “I’m not sure what America he lives in or what kind of Pollyanna world he resides, but Cameron’s reality clearly doesn’t reflect what those who open their eyes to the truth see.”

In another recent example, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson told The Washington Examiner that local news outlet WRAL crossed a line when it published a February cartoon by cartoonist Dennis Draughon depicting Republican members of the North Carolina State Board of Education on which Robinson serves as KKK members.

“This depiction of me and other Republican board members was done by a news outlet here in North Carolina that says it prides itself [on] delivering fair, balanced news and providing a service to the people, where they’re trying to get information that’s valuable to their readers in understanding policy issues that are important to them,” Robinson told the Examiner.

He continued: “In other words, WRAL has said that they stand against bigotry, that they stand against racism, that they stand against inaccuracies. Then, they post a cartoon that is not only bigoted but also historically inaccurate.”

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Robinson said he would have left the image “alone” had it “been done by some private individual on Facebook” or Instagram, but the public nature of the cartoon published by a major news outlet, he is “holding WRAL to their standards.”

Seth Effron, opinion editor for Capitol Broadcasting Company, issued a statement saying cartoons are meant to be “creative and provocative, u sing hyperbole and satire.”

“The editorial cartoon by Dennis Draughon is meant to point out that these members of the State Board are trying to wipe out from the social studies curriculum the record of racism which includes the Klan and the segregationist practices that were imposed in our state and nation’s history,” Effron said.

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Robinson told the Examiner that portraying members of the GOP, “which is the party that is responsible for ending slavery and for ending Jim Crow,” as the KKK “is blatantly, historically inaccurate.”

“The Republican Party … was formed partly to stand up against the evils of slavery,” he said. “To depict us, GOP members of the state school board, as racist because we are diametrically opposed to these standards, it is historically inaccurate. What’s more, it’s just wrong. It’s wrong in every way that you can think of.”

Fox News’ David Rutz and Joseph Wulfson contributed to this report.

Eli Broad, the billionaire philanthropist, contemporary art collector and entrepreneur who co-founded homebuilding pioneer Kaufman and Broad Inc. and launched financial services giant SunAmerica Inc., died Friday in Los Angeles. He was 87.

Suzi Emmerling, a spokeswoman for the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, confirmed his death to The Associated Press. Emmerling said Broad died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after a long illness. No services have been announced.

The New York Times first reported his death.

“As a businessman Eli saw around corners, as a philanthropist he saw the problems in the world and tried to fix them, as a citizen he saw the possibility in our shared community, and as a husband, father and friend he saw the potential in each of us,” Gerun Riley, president of The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, said in a statement Friday.

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It was Broad (pronounced brohd) who provided much of the money and willpower used to reshape Los Angeles’ once moribund downtown into a burgeoning area of expensive lofts, fancy dining establishments and civic structures like the landmark Walt Disney Concert Hall. He opened his own eponymous contemporary art museum and art lending library, the Broad, in 2015 in the city’s downtown next to Disney Hall.

“Eli Broad, simply put, was L.A.’s most influential private citizen of his generation,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said on Twitter. “He loved this city as deeply as anyone I have ever known.”

As a young accountant in the 1950s, Broad saw opportunity in the booming real estate market. He quit his job and partnered with developer Donald Kaufman and began building starter homes for first-time buyers eager to claim their slice of the American Dream. The company eventually became KB Home, one of the most successful home developers in the nation.

Nearly 30 years later, Broad spotted opportunity once more and transformed the company’s insurance arm into a retirement savings conglomerate that catered to the financial needs of aging baby boomers.

In the process, Broad became one of the nation’s wealthiest men, with a financial net worth estimated by Forbes magazine Friday at $6.9 billion.

He also gained a reputation for being a driven, tenacious dealmaker.

“If you play it safe all of the time, you don’t get very far,” Broad told Investor’s Business Daily in 2005.

Outside work, Broad used his wealth and status to bring about civic, educational, scientific and cultural improvement projects, particularly in Los Angeles. The New York native had moved to the city’s tony Brentwood section in 1963. His charitable foundations donated millions to such projects, particularly those aimed at improving public education, and established endowments at several universities across the nation.

In the 1990s, Broad led the campaign to help raise money to build the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall and was a major underwriter of Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art, among other institutions. An avid art hound since the 1960s, Broad had a collection estimated to be worth $500 million in 2003.

In 1984, he established the Broad Art Foundation to lend works from his collection for public viewing.

A decade later, he famously purchased Roy Lichtenstein’s “I … I’m Sorry” for $2.5 million at an auction with a credit card and donated the more than 2 million frequent flier points he racked up to students at the California Institute for the Arts. In 2008, with his money, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art opened its new Broad Contemporary Art Museum featuring works from Broad’s collection.

Broad also exercised considerable political muscle. A Democrat, he led the push to lure the party’s national convention in 2000 to Los Angeles. He sometimes split with his party, however, most notably in 1972 when, disillusioned with Sen. George McGovern’s campaign, he served as co-chair of Democrats for Nixon.

Years after Nixon resigned the presidency in disgrace, Broad told Los Angeles Magazine that his efforts on Nixon’s behalf were something “I hate to admit to.” But it wasn’t the last time he would support a Republican. He also backed his close friend, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, with whom he shared a mutual vision of public school reform.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) lauded Broad and his wife, Edythe, for their philanthropic efforts.

“Their leadership to support our schools, advance scientific and medical research and ensure that all have access to the arts leaves a lasting and remarkable legacy,” Pelosi said in a statement. “Our entire nation is particularly indebted to the Broads for their commitment to supporting the arts, which they knew to be an essential, unifying force in the world.”

The son of Lithuanian immigrants, Broad was born June 6, 1933, in New York City but raised in Detroit. His father was a house painter and small business owner.

Broad earned his undergraduate degree from Michigan State University in 1954. In 1991, he endowed the university’s Eli Broad College of Business and Eli Broad Graduate School of Management.

At 20, he passed Michigan’s certified public accountant exam, becoming the youngest person at the time to do so. The following year, he married his hometown sweetheart, Edythe. The couple had two sons, Jeffrey and Gary. His wife and sons survive him, according to The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.

Eager to leave school and start his career, Broad began working for several clients, including Kaufman. Soon Broad took note of the real estate market and began studying the field, reading industry journals and using his accounting know-how to analyze the business. He gradually became convinced there was money to be made.

In 1957, at the age of 23, he went into business with Kaufman, selling homes in the suburbs of Detroit. The first homes sold for about $12,000, about 10 percent less than competitors because they were built without customary basements and in about half the time.

Kaufman and Broad took their approach West, first to Arizona then California. They relocated the company’s corporate headquarters to Los Angeles in 1963, two years after it became the first homebuilder to go public.

In 1971, Broad bought an insurance company as a hedge against the boom and bust cycles of the housing market. As he had done prior to venturing into real estate, Broad began doing research on the insurance market and saw financial planning for retirees as a better business. He began shifting the subsidiary’s focus toward selling annuities and other retirement savings products.

The company was renamed SunAmerica in 1989, with Broad as its chairman and chief executive. In 1998, New York-based American International Group acquired SunAmerica for $16.5 billion.

Two years later, Broad stepped down as chief, but retained the title of chairman.

“I will do the things that I enjoy doing and things that I could have the most value with rather than doing the day-to-day things,” Broad told The Associated Press at the time. “I like to work. Right now I probably work 80 hours a week. … I still see myself working close to 40 hours at SunAmerica/AIG and maybe 40 hours at other things.”

In recent years, Broad spent much of his time engaged in philanthropic work through his foundations, advocating for public education reform, promoting the rebirth of Los Angeles’ downtown as a commercial and residential center and other causes.

In 1999, the Broads founded the Broad Education Foundation, with the goal of improving urban public education. The foundation committed more than $500 million toward the cause in its first five years.

Broad took a CEO’s approach, believing that troubled schools often could be vastly improved if they were better managed by their principals.

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“These are huge enterprises,” Broad said of urban school districts in an interview with Forbes magazine in 2003. “You don’t start at the bottom. You start at the top.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom will address the Democratic Party faithful Saturday as he mounts a campaign to keep his job.

His address to thousands of activists at the California Democratic Party’s annual convention, held virtually, comes on the heels of state elections officials announcing that a preliminary count shows the recall effort against him has enough signatures to make the ballot.

Voters will get the chance in the all-but-certain election this fall to decide whether the first-term Democrat should be booted from office before his term ends. Delegates at the convention are some of the party’s most hardworking organizers, who can knock on doors, make phone calls or provide a cheering section at rallies for Democratic candidates.

“The governor can speak and remind everyone why we supported him to be governor and why he won with an overwhelmingly majority,” said Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a fellow Democrat. To the party activists, Republicans are trying to sabotage Newsom and “that is what will ultimately create the organizational support to defeat the recall.”

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Vice President Kamala Harris also is set to deliver remarks, an exciting moment for Democrats who helped her rise through California’s political ranks, from San Francisco district attorney to state attorney general to U.S. senator, before she was chosen by Joe Biden for his presidential ticket.

The annual gathering, which began Thursday, serves as a forum to debate policy, endorse candidates and otherwise energize party members. With no other major contests on the state ballot this year, Newsom’s expected fall recall election will be one of the highest profile races in California and the nation.

“Being prepared to organize against and defeat a Republican recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom is going to be an important part of our conversation,” California Democratic Party Chairman Rusty Hicks said of the weekend activities.

Hicks, just reelected as party chair, said the convention will stay focused on California’s emergence out of the pandemic, including efforts to vaccinate millions of people, get schools reopened and support small businesses.

Newsom’s political fate will depend in part on how people feel about his handling of the pandemic and whether schools and businesses remain open by election time.

Republicans have blasted him over school and business closures, though recent polling shows the majority of voters support his handling of schools and the economy.

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In the recall, voters will be asked two questions: Should Newsom be recalled and who should replace him? He cannot run on the second ballot. Votes for that question will only be tallied if more than half of voters want Newsom gone.

Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, businessman John Cox, former congressman Doug Ose and reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner are among the Republicans running to replace him.

For now Democrats are united behind Newsom. The governor has depicted the recall as an attack by former President Donald Trump’s supporters on California’s progressive values, an argument that is proving salient among Democrats.

Christine Pelosi, the outgoing chair of the state party’s women’s caucus and the daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said Democrats are excited to defend the state’s progressive ideals. But she said Democrats have to show people what they are for and stay focused on how they will help people recover from the pandemic.

“Our concern is that people won’t vote if they don’t think we’re speaking to the realities of their lives,” Pelosi said.

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Beyond Newsom and Harris, delegates will hear Saturday from former Gov. Jerry Brown, Pelosi, former Sen. Barbara Boxer and Sen. Alex Padilla, who Newsom appointed to replace Harris.

Padilla will be up for election in 2022.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who infrequently attends state party conventions, will not deliver remarks. She’s faced heightened criticism and scrutiny about her fitness for office and she’s never been beloved by the party’s progressive activists. In 2018, they endorsed her challenger.

Prosecutors are asking a judge to give Derek Chauvin a more severe penalty than state guidelines call for when he is sentenced in June for George Floyd’s death, arguing in court documents filed Friday that Floyd was particularly vulnerable and that Chauvin abused his authority as a police officer.

Defense attorney Eric Nelson is opposing a tougher sentence, saying the state has failed to prove that those aggravating factors, among others, existed when Chauvin arrested Floyd on May 25.

Chauvin, who is white, was convicted last week of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for pressing his knee against Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes as the Black man said he couldn’t breathe and went motionless.

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Even though he was found guilty of three counts, under Minnesota statutes he’ll only be sentenced on the most serious one — second-degree murder. While that count carries a maximum sentence of 40 years, experts say he won’t get that much.

Prosecutors did not specify how much time they would seek for Chauvin.

Under Minnesota sentencing guidelines, the presumptive sentence for second-degree unintentional murder for someone with no criminal record like Chauvin would be 12 1/2 years. Judges can sentence someone to as little as 10 years and eight months or as much as 15 years and still be within the advisory guideline range. To go above that, Judge Peter Cahill would have to find that there were “aggravating factors,” and even if those are found, legal experts have said Chauvin would likely not face more than 30 years.

In legal briefs filed Friday, prosecutors said Chauvin should be sentenced above the guideline range because Floyd was particularly vulnerable with his hands cuffed behind his back as he was face-down on the ground, and that he was intoxicated. They noted that Chauvin held his position even after Floyd became unresponsive and officers knew he had no pulse.

Prosecutors also said Chauvin treated Floyd with particular cruelty during the lengthy restraint, saying Chauvin inflicted gratuitous pain and caused psychological distress to Floyd and to bystanders.

“Defendant continued to maintain his position atop Mr. Floyd even as Mr. Floyd cried out that he was in pain, even as Mr. Floyd exclaimed 27 times that he could not breathe, and even as Mr. Floyd said that Defendant’s actions were killing him,” prosecutors wrote. They added that he stayed in position as Floyd cried out for his mother, stopped speaking and lost consciousness.

“Defendant thus did not just inflict physical pain. He caused Mr. Floyd psychological distress during the final moments of his life, leaving Mr. Floyd helpless as he squeezed the last vestiges of life out of Mr. Floyd’s body,” prosecutors wrote.

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They also said that Chauvin abused his position of authority as a police officer, committed his crime as part of a group of three or more people, and that he pinned Floyd down in the presence of children — including a 9-year-old girl who testified at trial that watching the restraint made her “sad and kind of mad.”

Nelson disagreed, writing that “Mr. Chauvin entered into the officers’ encounter with Mr. Floyd with legal authority to assist in effecting the lawful arrest of an actively-resisting criminal suspect. Mr. Chauvin was authorized, under Minnesota law, to use reasonable force to do so.”

Nelson said Floyd was not particularly vulnerable, saying he was a large man who was struggling with officers. He wrote that courts have typically found particular vulnerability if the victims are young, or perhaps sleeping, when a crime occurs.

Nelson also said Floyd was not treated with particular cruelty, saying that there is no evidence that the assault perpetrated by Chauvin involved gratuitous pain that’s not usually associated with second-degree murder.

“The assault of Mr. Floyd occurred in the course of a very short time, involved no threats or taunting, such as putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger … and ended when EMS finally responded to officers’ calls,” Nelson wrote.

He also said the state hasn’t proven that any of the other officers actively participated in the crime for which Chauvin was convicted. Those officers are scheduled to face trial on aiding and abetting charges in August. He also wrote that the presence of children in this case is different from cases in which children might be witnessing a crime in a home and unable to leave.

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And, he said, the state failed to prove that Chauvin’s role as a police officer was an aggravating factor, saying that Floyd’s struggle with officers showed that Chauvin’s authority was irrelevant to Floyd.

Cahill has said he will review the attorneys’ written arguments before determining whether aggravating factors exist that would warrant a tougher sentence.

No matter what sentence Chauvin gets, in Minnesota it’s presumed that a defendant with good behavior will serve two-thirds of the penalty in prison and the rest on supervised release, commonly known as parole.