Madison Cawthorn’s “alarming” behaviour should be censured by Republicans, his home town paper has written.

       The congressman from North Carolina has been widely condemned after he said that there could be “bloodshed” over elections in the future.

       The remarks were slammed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and branded “insane” by Representative Adam Kinzinger, who is a fellow Republican.

       Mr Cawthorn has also been criticised for describing those arrested after the 6 January pro-Trump insurrection in Washington DC as “political prisoners”.

       Now the editorial board of The Charlotte Observer has called for Republicans in their state to censure the first term lawmaker.

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       “His fellow Republicans, including those in North Carolina, should respond,” the paper stated.

       “They should join Democrats in condemning Cawthorn and, in a bipartisan effort, censuring him in the US House.”

       The newspaper also pointed to Mr Cawthorn’s “antics” such as his “formal request that the US cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment” to remove Joe Biden as president.

       A member of Congress cannot “formally” make such a request and Cawthorn even misspelled the name of vice president Kamala Harris in his letter.

       The newspaper added that Mr Cawthorn’s election to Congress is a sign of such national polarisation that GOP supporters would rather vote for a person “with a glaringly thin resume and a bloated history of lying” than for a Democrat.

       “Republicans surely would rather not target one of their own and face the possible wrath of their base, not to mention the former president,” the board wrote.

       “But Cawthorn can no longer be dismissed as a silly Congressman braying from the mountains of North Carolina. His rhetoric is dangerous, not only to his party but his country.

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       “It’s time to stop ignoring him.”

       Luke Ball, a spokesman for Cawthorn, has said that the “bloodshed” comment was meant as a call to restore election integrity and that the lawmaker “strongly states that election integrity issues should be resolved peacefully and never through violence”.