Out with the Fascists. Out with the autocrat dictators. Out with the criminals. Out with the racists.
The Bolsonaros were booted out in Brazil yesterday.Anti-Trump and Nobel Prize winner Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has returned home.
Next week, the American people will kick Trump and his savage goons in the butt and out of our lives.
There was never anything wrong with democracy, but because it pushes aside the billionaires, the corporate swindlers, the racist supremacists, the warmongers, the ultra-religious barbarians, the parasitic capitalist scammers and the dictatorial imbecile so-called "great men", the latter have tried over the past two decades to reverse the march of equality, solidarity, pacifism and human rights that has lifted millions out of poverty, hunger and ignorance. The wealthy criminals of this world (Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro and their clones) have used fear and religion to fool people for a while, but people have now seen and experienced what a bunch of crooks and corrupt felons the whole lot of them is, and as long as elections remain the key to effecting change, people are voting with their brains and no longer with their emotions.
President Lula: Congratulations.
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Lula is declared winner of Brazil's election as Bolsonaro rejects results
ELÉONORE HUGHES, MAURICIO SAVARESE and ANNA-CATHERINE BRIGIDA
Updated Sun, October 25, 2026
Supporters of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva celebrate after he won the presidential runoff in Rio de Janeiro, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Lucas Landau) (AP Photo/Lucas Landau)
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a vocal critic of U.S. President Donald Trump, was reelected Sunday in a result that provides relief to critics of widening U.S. influence in Latin America.
With 100% of the vote counted, Brazil's electoral court announced that the soon to be 81-year-old Lula had a lead of nearly 4.4 million votes over opponent Flávio Bolsonaro, giving him 51.8% of the total vote. Bolsonaro quickly refused to concede defeat and asked for the election results to be annulled after an evening of chaos at some polling places that followed a last-minute decision to extend voting by two hours.
Lula's triumph bucks a regional trend of victories for right-of-center presidential candidates allied with Trump. It also means Latin America's largest economy, with a GDP of $2.6 trillion per year, will likely continue defying Trump's demands, despite the pressure of increased tariffs.
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Lula is declared winner of Brazil's election as Bolsonaro rejects results
ELÉONORE HUGHES, MAURICIO SAVARESE and ANNA-CATHERINE BRIGIDA
Updated Sun, October 25, 2026
Supporters of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva celebrate after he won the presidential runoff in Rio de Janeiro, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Lucas Landau) (AP Photo/Lucas Landau)
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a vocal critic of U.S. President Donald Trump, was reelected Sunday in a result that provides relief to critics of widening U.S. influence in Latin America.
With 100% of the vote counted, Brazil's electoral court announced that the soon to be 81-year-old Lula had a lead of nearly 4.4 million votes over opponent Flávio Bolsonaro, giving him 51.8% of the total vote. Bolsonaro quickly refused to concede defeat and asked for the election results to be annulled after an evening of chaos at some polling places that followed a last-minute decision to extend voting by two hours.
Lula's triumph bucks a regional trend of victories for right-of-center presidential candidates allied with Trump. It also means Latin America's largest economy, with a GDP of $2.6 trillion per year, will likely continue defying Trump's demands, despite the pressure of increased tariffs.
Lula's win confirmed by electoral court
A video published by Lula's campaign shows the veteran leader celebrating with First Lady Rosângela da Silva and allies after his runoff victory was confirmed by Brazil's electoral court. Wearing star-shaped red glasses, he kissed his wife. Hundreds of his supporters began gathering on Sao Paulo's main artery to celebrate the victory.
In Rio de Janeiro, cars beeped their horns and a woman dressed in red — the color of Lula supporters — shouted "You lost! Cry harder!" to four men in yellow and green sipping beers, Bolsonaro's signature colors. A huge roar echoed in the street as the result was confirmed.
Rodrigo Valentim, a 51-year-old businessman and supporter of Bolsonaro, said that another Lula government would harm the economy. He pointed to financial markets' positive reaction to the result of the first round, when Bolsonaro bested Lula.
"I don't understand how people can vote for Lula," he said. "The country is collapsing."
Lula is set to begin his fourth non-consecutive term as president on Jan. 5, 2027.
A video published by Lula's campaign shows the veteran leader celebrating with First Lady Rosângela da Silva and allies after his runoff victory was confirmed by Brazil's electoral court. Wearing star-shaped red glasses, he kissed his wife. Hundreds of his supporters began gathering on Sao Paulo's main artery to celebrate the victory.
In Rio de Janeiro, cars beeped their horns and a woman dressed in red — the color of Lula supporters — shouted "You lost! Cry harder!" to four men in yellow and green sipping beers, Bolsonaro's signature colors. A huge roar echoed in the street as the result was confirmed.
Rodrigo Valentim, a 51-year-old businessman and supporter of Bolsonaro, said that another Lula government would harm the economy. He pointed to financial markets' positive reaction to the result of the first round, when Bolsonaro bested Lula.
"I don't understand how people can vote for Lula," he said. "The country is collapsing."
Lula is set to begin his fourth non-consecutive term as president on Jan. 5, 2027.
Bolsonaro rejects results after confusion at polling places
The electoral court's announcement ended an evening of confusion at polling places after Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin ruled three minutes before the scheduled end of voting to keep polls open for two more hours, following requests by both candidates. Lula's request came after issues with buses that provide transportation to polls in Sao Paulo and Salvador, two cities that tend to favor the incumbent. Bolsonaro's request was due to heavy rains in Brazil's south, where he is favored.
The decision delayed tallying the votes by two hours. It was unclear how many polling stations stayed open after the scheduled closing time. Polling stations in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro closed shortly after the original 5 p.m. deadline, reporters for The Associated Press observed.
Bolsonaro, whose father is serving a 27-year prison sentence for attempting a coup after he lost the 2022 presidential election to Lula, pointed out that Zanin is Lula's former lawyer and criticized him for "changing the rules of the game in the middle of the game."
"It's impossible to recognize the results of the election in the context of these things that happened," he said.
The electoral court's announcement ended an evening of confusion at polling places after Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin ruled three minutes before the scheduled end of voting to keep polls open for two more hours, following requests by both candidates. Lula's request came after issues with buses that provide transportation to polls in Sao Paulo and Salvador, two cities that tend to favor the incumbent. Bolsonaro's request was due to heavy rains in Brazil's south, where he is favored.
The decision delayed tallying the votes by two hours. It was unclear how many polling stations stayed open after the scheduled closing time. Polling stations in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro closed shortly after the original 5 p.m. deadline, reporters for The Associated Press observed.
Bolsonaro, whose father is serving a 27-year prison sentence for attempting a coup after he lost the 2022 presidential election to Lula, pointed out that Zanin is Lula's former lawyer and criticized him for "changing the rules of the game in the middle of the game."
"It's impossible to recognize the results of the election in the context of these things that happened," he said.
Lula overcame concerns about security and cost-of-living concerns
Bolsonaro bested Lula by more than 2.2 million votes in the first round of the election earlier this month. Sunday night's apparent victory by Lula marked the first time since Brazil's military dictatorship ended in 1985 that the second-highest vote-getter in the first-round elections won the presidency.
Lula faced a tough reelection battle because of concerns about the cost of living and security. Bolsonaro made a tough-on-crime approach the cornerstone of his campaign and pledged to bring down food costs while Lula, trying to lure undecided voters, has invested in costly incentives.
Both have been hit by corruption suspicions involving family members and allies, with Bolsonaro implicated in a sprawling scandal rocking Brazil. Lula previously spent more than a year in prison on corruption convictions that were eventually annulled.
This will likely be the last victory of the veteran leader's political career. Lula began his political career in the 1970s as a union leader. He then helped found the Workers' Party, which he represented as a presidential candidate three times until he finally won it in 2002. He was reelected four years later and was succeeded by one of his cabinet ministers, Dilma Rousseff, in 2010. She was reelected in 2014.
Rousseff was impeached for accounting maneuvering in 2016 amid a sprawling corruption probe, which also ensnared Lula. He tried to run for president again in 2018 but was jailed in March after being convicted.
Lula was released from prison after 580 days and saw Brazil's Supreme Court annul his sentence after police found messages that showed the judge who convicted him was biased. He quickly became one of former President Jair Bolsonaro's biggest critics and narrowly beat him in 2022.
Since he lost the first round, Lula reorganized his campaign, appealed to young voters, put millions of Brazilians on the streets to defend democratic values and his legacy, raised fears of another Bolsonaro administration and boosted several government initiatives.
He joins Trump and Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega — all aged 80 — as one of the oldest presidents in the Americas.
___
Savarese reported from Sao Paulo. Brigida reported from Brasilia.
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Bolsonaro bested Lula by more than 2.2 million votes in the first round of the election earlier this month. Sunday night's apparent victory by Lula marked the first time since Brazil's military dictatorship ended in 1985 that the second-highest vote-getter in the first-round elections won the presidency.
Lula faced a tough reelection battle because of concerns about the cost of living and security. Bolsonaro made a tough-on-crime approach the cornerstone of his campaign and pledged to bring down food costs while Lula, trying to lure undecided voters, has invested in costly incentives.
Both have been hit by corruption suspicions involving family members and allies, with Bolsonaro implicated in a sprawling scandal rocking Brazil. Lula previously spent more than a year in prison on corruption convictions that were eventually annulled.
This will likely be the last victory of the veteran leader's political career. Lula began his political career in the 1970s as a union leader. He then helped found the Workers' Party, which he represented as a presidential candidate three times until he finally won it in 2002. He was reelected four years later and was succeeded by one of his cabinet ministers, Dilma Rousseff, in 2010. She was reelected in 2014.
Rousseff was impeached for accounting maneuvering in 2016 amid a sprawling corruption probe, which also ensnared Lula. He tried to run for president again in 2018 but was jailed in March after being convicted.
Lula was released from prison after 580 days and saw Brazil's Supreme Court annul his sentence after police found messages that showed the judge who convicted him was biased. He quickly became one of former President Jair Bolsonaro's biggest critics and narrowly beat him in 2022.
Since he lost the first round, Lula reorganized his campaign, appealed to young voters, put millions of Brazilians on the streets to defend democratic values and his legacy, raised fears of another Bolsonaro administration and boosted several government initiatives.
He joins Trump and Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega — all aged 80 — as one of the oldest presidents in the Americas.
___
Savarese reported from Sao Paulo. Brigida reported from Brasilia.
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Hugo Albuquerque
Mon, October 26, 2026
Lula has once again reached the masses. But this fourth term must entail governing in a different way. (Alexandre Schneider / Getty Images)
Following a stunning, inspiring turnaround driven by mass mobilization of the Brazilian people, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won his fourth presidential election. This achievement marks an unprecedented shift in Brazilian political history: never before has a candidate who trailed in the first round managed to come back and win.
The election — which pitted Lula against Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently imprisoned for an attempted coup d'état following his defeat in the 2022 elections — was marked by obscene interference from the Trump administration, with Big Tech companies like Meta acting shamelessly in favor of the far right. All this in a context where other interventions in the region by Trump were successful, leading to the election of far-right presidents — most notably in Colombia — which created the sense of an invincible Trumpist wave across Latin America.
Defeated by about two million votes on October 4, Lula gained more than ten million new votes on October 25, while Flávio Bolsonaro received just over three and a half million more than in the first round. Lula increased his vote share in virtually every Brazilian municipality after having been written off just three weeks ago. What changed in such a short time provides a lesson for socialists the world over.
How a Victory Is Built
While pro-Lula demonstrations began immediately after the defeat in the first round, driven largely by student organizations, the Workers' Party campaign sought to connect with a new generation on the left wing. At the same time, it triggered a genuine earthquake in the party's communication strategy, brought about by the arrival of Congressman André Janones, recently reelected as a candidate for the center-left party Rede.
While pro-Lula demonstrations began immediately after the defeat in the first round, driven largely by student organizations, the Workers' Party campaign sought to connect with a new generation on the left wing. At the same time, it triggered a genuine earthquake in the party's communication strategy, brought about by the arrival of Congressman André Janones, recently reelected as a candidate for the center-left party Rede.
Lula, who is eighty, invited an entirely new generation of newly elected congresspeople to Brasília immediately following the first round of voting. Despite the growth of the far right at the expense of the traditional right and center in the legislative elections, held concurrently with the first round of the presidential race, the Left made gains in the National Congress, bringing in young figures who are adept at social media and communication and who brought fresh energy to the campaign.
Among these rising stars are twenty-one-year-old representative Ana Elisa — hailing from Minas Gerais, Brazil's quintessential swing state; Erika Hilton, a trans woman reelected with a record number of votes; Jones Manoel, a communist from Pernambuco (Lula's home state); and Guilherme Cortez, a representative who identifies as a twink. They all represent a generation of young people with millions of Gen Z fans in Brazil; they are social media stars, despite the platform algorithms favoring right-wing content.
But the campaign's most notable figure was forty-two-year-old Janones, who created a WhatsApp group dubbed Exército de Lula (Lula's Army) that grew to over ten million followers, through which he carried out organized and disciplined agitation and propaganda. Nearly one in every ten Brazilian voters joined a single group in just three weeks. Janones is often snubbed by the old intellectual left-wing elite, yet he has always been popular with the masses. Now he has become a true celebrity.
Working from the assumption that Meta's algorithm was biased against the Left, Janones orchestrated major social media campaigns, such as encouraging Lula's supporters to post Instagram photos of themselves wearing the Brazilian national soccer team jersey, a garment once a symbol of unity but subsequently co-opted by the far right. This action was joined by countless Lula supporters and made a major splash on social media one day before the failed demonstration organized by Flávio Bolsonaro on
Avenida Paulista, a vital hub in the city of São Paulo.
The strategy was a success, with Janones playfully repurposing the far right's military vocabulary, referring to his followers in Lula's Army as "soldiers." Beyond the algorithms, this move by Janones subverted the semiotics of recent years, during which the Bolsonaro family mobilized its vast base using military terminology — a natural enough approach, given that Bolsonaro and many of his key behind-the-scenes figures are or once were military men.
The Brazilian Far Right Cornered for the First Time
Even after its defeat in 2022, the far right remained a powerful force on social media, driven by a combination of effective communication and preferential treatment by the platforms' parent companies. During the Lula administration, posts by pro-Bolsonaro Congressman Nikolas Ferreira garnered higher engagement than those of global pop stars. This was used to wage a dirty yet highly effective opposition campaign against the third Lula administration.
While Lula appeared mired in a series of political missteps upon his heroic return to the presidency in 2022, leading a complex Broad Front coalition, his opponents seemed unbeatable on social media and effectively connected with the Brazilian people. Obviously, the criticisms from the far right had little to do with the problems facing Lula's third administration; rather, Bolsonaro allies leveraged the government's relative unpopularity to advance their own agenda of dismantling Brazilian democracy.
After defeating Bolsonaro in 2022, a victory that echoed his own political comeback from his time as president in the 2000s, Lula seemed trapped in a Groundhog Day scenario, where every government crisis was amplified by mass agitation from the far right. Curiously, this state of stagnation only came to an end in the last three weeks. Janones's strategy brought fresh air, pulling millions of activists out of a potentially deadly depression, given the imminent return of fascism, as veteran journalist Luiz Carlos Azenha stated. Janones's insane twenty-four-hour live stream before the elections was preceded by a live stream with millions of views featuring testimonials from many Brazilian artists, showcasing perhaps the very best of Lula and Brazil. From that point on, the Right lost its comfortable monopoly on communication.
Lula has once again reached the masses, for the first time since returning to the presidency. But this fourth term must entail governing in a different way. It will require an approach closer to his first two terms, in which Lula was able to set the terms of debate within the country, yet with a need for more intensive dialogue and action with the masses of Brazilians who delivered this election for him. All of this is taking place in a world that is, quite literally, on fire. The economy will be a problem, and Lula will have to confront a bourgeoisie that desires a more savage capitalism than anything seen before, even in Brazil.
For those who saw Flávio Bolsonaro acting as if he were already president on October 25, Lula's surprise victory was a historic relief. For those who have lived through the last few weeks in Brazil — attending massive demonstrations, unprecedented in the country's electoral history, and growing furious at every debate between Lula and Flávio, as well as at the cruel and boundless arrogance of the right-wing leader — the operative word is, finally, hope.
This article originally appeared in Jacobin, a democratic socialist magazine publishing long-form essays and analysis on politics, economics, and culture. Subscribe to the print edition for $20 a year.
Even after its defeat in 2022, the far right remained a powerful force on social media, driven by a combination of effective communication and preferential treatment by the platforms' parent companies. During the Lula administration, posts by pro-Bolsonaro Congressman Nikolas Ferreira garnered higher engagement than those of global pop stars. This was used to wage a dirty yet highly effective opposition campaign against the third Lula administration.
While Lula appeared mired in a series of political missteps upon his heroic return to the presidency in 2022, leading a complex Broad Front coalition, his opponents seemed unbeatable on social media and effectively connected with the Brazilian people. Obviously, the criticisms from the far right had little to do with the problems facing Lula's third administration; rather, Bolsonaro allies leveraged the government's relative unpopularity to advance their own agenda of dismantling Brazilian democracy.
After defeating Bolsonaro in 2022, a victory that echoed his own political comeback from his time as president in the 2000s, Lula seemed trapped in a Groundhog Day scenario, where every government crisis was amplified by mass agitation from the far right. Curiously, this state of stagnation only came to an end in the last three weeks. Janones's strategy brought fresh air, pulling millions of activists out of a potentially deadly depression, given the imminent return of fascism, as veteran journalist Luiz Carlos Azenha stated. Janones's insane twenty-four-hour live stream before the elections was preceded by a live stream with millions of views featuring testimonials from many Brazilian artists, showcasing perhaps the very best of Lula and Brazil. From that point on, the Right lost its comfortable monopoly on communication.
Lula has once again reached the masses, for the first time since returning to the presidency. But this fourth term must entail governing in a different way. It will require an approach closer to his first two terms, in which Lula was able to set the terms of debate within the country, yet with a need for more intensive dialogue and action with the masses of Brazilians who delivered this election for him. All of this is taking place in a world that is, quite literally, on fire. The economy will be a problem, and Lula will have to confront a bourgeoisie that desires a more savage capitalism than anything seen before, even in Brazil.
For those who saw Flávio Bolsonaro acting as if he were already president on October 25, Lula's surprise victory was a historic relief. For those who have lived through the last few weeks in Brazil — attending massive demonstrations, unprecedented in the country's electoral history, and growing furious at every debate between Lula and Flávio, as well as at the cruel and boundless arrogance of the right-wing leader — the operative word is, finally, hope.
This article originally appeared in Jacobin, a democratic socialist magazine publishing long-form essays and analysis on politics, economics, and culture. Subscribe to the print edition for $20 a year.
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