Brazil is fertile ground for authoritarian politics, no matter who wins this election.
Page A2From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 6 October 2026
Trump administration diverts human rights funds to fight Brazil's court, suspends its consulate, gets credit for 'global appeal.'
As it ran on the front
Call it Exhibit A: a filing clock. On September 30, with hours left before the state department's human rights fund expired, officials rushed through more than $175 million in last-minute awards. Line two: support for a campaign promoting white Afrikaner rights in South Africa. Line three, the one that matters here: money for a campaign against Brazil's supreme court, filed under "human rights."
That same week, Brazil's spy agency said it had confirmed the existence of interference from the United States as well as Russia in the race Flavio Bolsonaro was about to win the first round of. The son of a former president who was jailed over the Brazilian version of the January 6 storming of the US Capitol was leading a field that includes other Bolsonaros, elected further down the same ballot.…
…(cont) Two days before the vote, the US Embassy in Brazil suspended in-person consular services at every one of its posts in the country, citing "security concerns" in a security alert that did not say what the concern was, or how many there were of it. Americans were told to stay away from US diplomatic facilities in the country where the embassy is supposed to protect them. Two days before the vote, the Lula campaign asked Brazil's top election court to open an inquiry into the shutdown as interference.
Sunday came. Flavio Bolsonaro finished ahead of the sitting president. By Tuesday, the New York Post had the headline: Brazil's right turn reflects the global appeal of Trump's American pride, as if the whole region were voting the way America voted, on its own, for its own reasons.
The fund that bankrolled a campaign against Brazil's top court is called a human rights fund. The suspension that emptied the embassy two days before the vote was called a security measure. The runoff is October 25th. The paperwork is dated, filed, and public; the headline calls the result Trump's global appeal.
“They call it a human rights fund and then spend forty million of it fighting a court, call it a security alert and then lock Americans out of their own embassy two days before a vote — same move, different stamp on the form. The money finds the court it doesn't like, the door finds the citizens it doesn't need, and Flavio Bolsonaro gets to call the result "global appeal." Brazil's just the test run.”
“Look, the consulate thing was strictly a security call, had nothing to do with the vote — I mean, the timing, sure, two days out, but that's — okay, that does sound bad when I say it out loud. And the human rights money, that's anti-communism funding, which, historically, is basically a human right, somewhere, probably. Did I say that? That doesn't sound like me.”
The receipts
Just two days before Brazil's closely watched presidential election, the campaign of its left-wing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has asked the nation's top election court to examine the sudden shutdown of US consular services as part of a broader investigation into alleged election "interference" by the Trump administration. On…
Brazil's electorate is moving in synchrony with voters throughout Latin America — as if the whole region has been going through its own version of Trump’s 2024 victory over the past two years.
Do voters care about attempted coups? Brazil's Flavio Bolsonaro on the cusp of unseating Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the October 25th presidential runoff, Bolsonaro whose father was jailed over the Brazilian version of the January 6th storming of the US Capitol. Up and down the ballot, there are other Bolsonaros elected in the first…
Conservative Senator Flavio Bolsonaro pulled off a surprise on Sunday in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election by finishing ahead of the incumbent left-wing President Lula, whom he will face in the runoff on October 25. Suspicions of U.S. interference have been hanging over the campaign, even as Donald Trump has never hidden…
· Alarm Grows Over 'Clearly Illegal' Trump-Rubio Election Meddling in Brazil from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· Trump administration diverts human rights funds to push far-right agenda abroad from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· US suspends consular services in Brazil due to security concerns from the morgue, 3 Oct 2026
· Brazil’s Presidential Election Is Going Down to the Wire from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.