Brazil's Bolsonaro Supporters Protest Against Supreme Court, President Lula
The protesters called for 'amnesty' for those involved in the alleged coup attempt days after Lula's inauguration in January 2023.
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Yahoo
41 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Why Canada Isn't Sweating Trump's Mob Tactics
Keeping a straight face has been perhaps the greatest achievement of Mark Carney's brief tenure as the prime minister of Canada. For months, Donald Trump has railed against Canada, threatening to turn America's ungrateful northern neighbor into the 51st state, come what may, an achievement worthy of his visage gracing Mount Rushmore — in the same way Trump will annex Greenland, reclaim the Panama Canal, free Brazil's corrupt former President Jair Bolsonaro, repeal the laws of climate change and gravity, and then impose tariffs on all of America's nefarious trading partners, like the evil-doer Canada. The only hitch, as the canny Carney has known all along: America has a thing called a 'treaty' with Canada. Not one of Trump's 'deals,' the chaotic, almost certainly worthless and delusional transactions that involve the president imagining himself astride the world, TV remote in hand, a colossus of reactionary stupidity and cruelty finally delivering his promised revenge. As a true-crime writer, it's long been evident to me that Trump has modeled himself on a Queens rich kid's idea of a real New York City gangster, only the stupid variety, the version of a tough guy who fools like Vice President J.D. Vance and FBI Director Kash Patel and Texas Senator Ted Cruz cosplay as they genuflect to their dullard old man boss like the morons in Jimmy Breslin's classic portrait of Mafia idiocy The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight. In the 2000s, I wrote my first book about the worst crimes in the history of Brooklyn — The Brotherhood: The True Story of Two Cops Who Murdered for the Mafia. During the trial of two NYPD detectives for multiple murders as paid assassins for the mafia, Breslin sometimes sat next to me as we watched the most depraved and corrupt figures in the history of New York law enforcement finally face justice. Breslin was getting older, and he occasionally caught a few winks on my shoulder as a parade of witnesses proved beyond doubt that 'Gaspipe' Casso had indeed paid 'Downtown Burt' Kaplan to slip money to the two detectives to whack gangsters suspected of snitching — until the idiot dirty detectives wound up gunning down the 'wrong' Nicky Guido, murdering an innocent kid, not the flat-nosed gangster they were contracted to kill. Stupidity, as Breslin knew all too well, is always lurking nearby when it comes to the mob — real and imaginary. If he were alive today, Breslin would have Trump's number, I'm sure, seeing through the fake bravado to reveal the chubby spoiled brat who has always relied on Daddy's billions to live out his fantasy as a suave Fifth Avenue real estate genius and author of The Art of the Deal, when he's really a bloated bald nepo baby boob. Geopolitically, I feel sure Breslin would also be the first to laugh at the way Trump is trying to use tariffs to mercilessly leverage an American future with not a friend in the world — exactly like Trump himself. Decades-long strategic endeavors, like the burgeoning alliance with India, are being destroyed in the same penny ante way Trump has always ripped off contractors at his fifth-rate golf clubs and casinos. Starving children in Gaza and AIDS patients in Africa, research scientists, elite universities, hardworking immigrants suddenly treated like criminals, century-old mutually beneficial trade arrangements — all receive the same bully-boy, lawless disrespect Trump paid to the small family-owned businesses he stiffed for decades. As America's erstwhile closest friend, a relationship that means nothing to Trump, Canada seemed doomed to a similar fate — in fact, if you listen to Trump, Canada is already little more than a dependent vassal of the United States. When Canada announced last week that it would finally recognize the state of Palestine, in light of Israel's unconscionable campaign of collective punishment and starvation in Gaza, the offended Trump declared that he would impose a mind-boggling and devastating 35 percent tariff on all goods from Canada — an apparently catastrophic blow to my homeland and yet another display of Trump's all powerful global rule. BUT THE DEVIL is in the details — only in this case, the details aren't really details, they're the sum and substance of the trade relationship between Canada and the United States. When Trump announced the new tariffs on Canada, along with a dizzying and seemingly random array of other countries, the American media noted the existence of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (the new name Trump gave to NAFTA in his first term), without pausing to consider the implications. The new tariffs seemed to fulfill one of Trump's central campaign pledges, as he swept the swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in 2024, promising to put America first. Always adopting the role of victim, Trump portrayed the rest of the world as predators feasting on the carcass of the poor lamb-like American working family — and Canada, of all places, was one of the most exploitative trading partners. So it is that Trump's 35 percent tariffs on Canada sound like the revenge so many Americans seem to desire. But that isn't how things work in the grown-up world that fake mob boss Trump has long pretended doesn't exist — or at least doesn't apply to him. The treaty with Canada isn't a handshake or a shakedown or another of the extortionate deals that Trump is now imposing on the world. The USMCA is a treaty ratified by Congress, an agreement with the force of law — and a legally enforceable agreement that Canada will most certainly enforce if it is required to do so. For months, Trump has given the impression that he can rip up any law, from habeas corpus and birthright citizenship to demanding thinly veiled bribes from supine media corporations, enabled by a cowardly and corrupt Supreme Court clearly afraid to confront the president. But the courts and more importantly the markets wouldn't stand idly by if Trump attempted to unilaterally disregard a foundational, legally binding element of the North American economy like the USMCA — or at least that's a dare that the president doesn't seem willing to risk. In other words, by calling his bluff and asserting an independent policy on Palestine, despite Trump's threats, Canada has dared to speak in the only language Trump understands: leverage. The pervasive terror displayed by American institutions has disguised the fact that it is actually possible to stand up to a bully — as unassuming Canada just proved with its support for a Palestinian state. The truth is that under the terms of the USMCA, 95 percent of the goods and services that Canada exports to the United States arrive duty free, leaving a relatively small five percent subject to Trump's imperial 35 percent tariff. But even that doesn't capture the absurd reality. While Trump imposes across-the-board tariffs on countless countries, for reasons that escape any rational economic explanation, Canada is now perhaps the single most favored trading nation on earth. While scores of countries face Trump's punitive tariffs, Canada largely trades tariff free with the United States because it doesn't need a 'deal' — it has a treaty. Examined further, the truth is even more abject — or ridiculous depending on your point of view. Under the USMCA, Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum are outside the ambit of the trade agreement because of the fake national emergency Trump has conjured, falsely claiming that Canada is a cause of massive fentanyl imports — when illegal imports from Canada amount to at most one percent of the drug in the United States. But it turns out that even those specific tariffs are almost certain to be illusory as American industry requires huge amounts of Canadian materials to function — the very products that Trump claimed America didn't need. To take the most recent example, Ford desperately needs Canadian aluminum to manufacture its F-150 pickup, but that material is subject to a crippling tariff of 50 percent, making Ford's American production line uneconomical, and perhaps in danger of closing. Nobel economist Paul Krugman pointed out an economic impact of Trump's tariffs that is so obvious it is astounding no one in the White House had the cajónes to mention to the wannabe emperor the consequence of putting huge tariffs on parts like steel and aluminum used by American automakers. Japanese and Korean vehicles are now subject to a 15 percent import tax, but that is small when compared to the 50 percent Trump vig American companies have to pay to import many of the components essential to any automobile — including Canadian steel and aluminum. It follows that Japanese and Korean cars enjoy a relative advantage because they don't have to pay Trump's tariff for their steel and aluminum — hardly the result the red cap-wearing throngs were promised. The world is now being treated to a tutorial in Economics 101 at Trump University. While billionaires like Trump get a giant tax break, the consumption tax Trump has renamed 'tariffs' will disproportionately fall on working-class voters. Despite the bluster, Trump's supposed archenemy Canada now faces the lowest tariffs in the world, and those that have been imposed are causing severe damage in America, making them self-destructive and likely to be quietly revoked. CANADA'S PRIME MINISTER CARNEY possesses degrees in economics from Harvard and Oxford, and they likely provided him with sufficient education to see the truth behind Trump's nonsense — and ensure he has the social graces and political intelligence to not laugh out loud when the president imposes symbolic tariffs like a carnival barker. Leading the Bank of Canada during the global financial crisis of 2008 and the Bank of England through the Brexit catastrophe of 2016 certainly have endowed Carney with the fortitude to quietly keep an eye on the larger prize and persist through times of economic lunacy. In recent months, Canada has come to occupy a unique place in the world. Sent as a canary into the coal mine of Donald Trump's addled mind, Canada has emerged from the toxic subterranean atmosphere alive and with the urgent news that it is possible to survive the craziness that has besieged the American body politic. Lay low and say as little as possible is Canada's message, denying Carney the cheap political thrill of telling Canadians how incredibly fortunate they are that Trump is so stupid — and risk riling the vengeful and easily humiliated Trump. In Canada there's a way of describing what is quickly becoming the global strategy for dealing with Donald Trump. In hockey, the term for what Carney is doing is called 'ragging the puck.' The idea is simple: When you're ahead, don't give the other team any opportunity to win. Hold on to the puck, skate backward away from the play, making it seem like you're still playing the game when you're really playing the clock. When the losing team realizes that the winning team is ragging the puck, it usually provokes an admixture of righteous fury followed by sullen submission, while the clock ticks down to the inexorable end — or 35 months and counting. THE WHOLE WORLD is now following some form of Canada's strategy, countries ragging the tariff puck and playing for time by agreeing to whatever unenforceable concessions Trump wants to announce to the gullible American media and the even more credulous public. A Democratic win in the midterm elections might bring a modicum of relief, perhaps, but the most important thing Canada is showing the world is to not laugh in the face of Trump's idiocy — and to let the clock and his power run out. On some level, Trump's supporters seem to intuitively understand the nature of the deal the boss of the gang who couldn't govern straight has struck for America. The great Jimmy Breslin of course had Trump's measure all the way back in the early '90s, when the would-be casino king was going bankrupt over and over again. Breslin wrote then that the seemingly indestructible Trump survived by dint of the little-known 'Corum's Law.' This obscure but telling insight into human nature comes from a New York sports columnist recruited in the 1950s to run the then notoriously sleazy Kentucky Derby. A keen observer of the self-harming psychology of compulsive gamblers, as well as an old-time, hard-boiled New Yorker in the manner of Damon Runyan, Bill Corum understood that for some fools, getting ripped off was part of the allure of going to the louche Kentucky Derby. The same seems to be true for his supporters in the age of Trump, with the president's P.T. Barnum blarney and winking humor the attraction to his followers, even as he leads the economy off the cliff in pursuit of crackpot theories. Trump's supporters have to know they're getting fleeced by transparently idiotic scams like tariffs — but for true believers, the scam is part of the perverse pleasure of playing the game, as Corum observed decades ago. 'Because, gentlemen, this is the rule,' Breslin wrote, quoting Corum's Law. 'A sucker has to get screwed.' More from Rolling Stone Trump Praises 'HOTTEST' Sydney Sweeney Ad, Bashes Taylor Swift Donald Trump Tries to Spin and Purge His Way to Declaring Economic Victory Poll Shows Widespread Disapproval and Suspicion of Trump's Handling of Epstein Files Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
Fox News
44 minutes ago
- Fox News
Brazil's ex-president and major Trump ally Bolsonaro placed on house arrest
On Monday, Brazil's Supreme Court ordered former President Jair Bolsonaro to be placed under house arrest amid ongoing legal proceedings over his alleged attempt to overturn the 2022 presidential election results. The case has gripped the nation since its inception in 2023 and has intensified international scrutiny, especially as it unfolds under the authority of a Supreme Court justice recently sanctioned by the Trump administration in the United States. Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the case, accused Bolsonaro, 70, of violating court-imposed restrictions. According to the ruling, first reported by the Associated Press, Bolsonaro used a Sunday protest in Rio de Janeiro to publicly address supporters using a cellphone owned by one of his three sons, all of whom are lawmakers. Bolsonaro's brief message, "Good afternoon, Copacabana, good afternoon my Brazil, a hug to everyone, this is for our freedom," was deemed a violation of his release conditions. Bolsonaro's legal team announced plans to appeal, arguing that the statement was symbolic, not criminal, and did not justify additional restrictions. The political stakes have now extended well beyond Brazil. The case triggered backlash from President Trump, a longtime Bolsonaro ally, who tied newly imposed U.S. tariffs on Brazilian imports to what he called an ongoing "witch hunt." His remarks have further strained the already delicate diplomatic relationship between the two nations. In a pointed statement on X, the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs condemned the Brazilian court's actions, writing: "Putting even more restrictions on Jair Bolsonaro's ability to defend himself in public is not a public service. Let Bolsonaro speak!" The bureau also warned that individuals involved in what it described as "sanctioned behavior" would be held accountable. The statement marked a sharp escalation, particularly as it followed closely on the heels of sanctions imposed by the U.S. Treasury Department, under Trump's administration, against Justice de Moraes. He was designated a "U.S.-sanctioned human rights abuser" and accused of weaponizing the judiciary to silence political opponents. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent accused de Moraes of leading an unlawful crackdown: "Alexandre de Moraes has taken it upon himself to be judge and jury in an unlawful witch hunt against U.S. and Brazilian citizens and companies. He is responsible for an oppressive campaign of censorship, arbitrary detentions, and politicized prosecutions—including those against former President Jair Bolsonaro," Bessent said. These sanctions were imposed under Executive Order 13818, issued during Trump's first term in 2017. The order declared a national emergency concerning global human rights abuses and corruption and expanded upon the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act passed in 2016. The law empowers the U.S. government to impose financial and travel sanctions on foreign officials accused of human rights violations. Despite growing international pressure, the Brazilian government has yet to issue a formal response. Brazilian prosecutors allege that Bolsonaro led a coordinated effort to delegitimize, and ultimately overturn, the results of the 2022 election, including planning violent acts and even an alleged assassination plot targeting President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Justice de Moraes. Bolsonaro lost the election by a narrow margin. A panel of Supreme Court justices accepted the charges in March, ultimately ordering Bolsonaro to stand trial. Monday's house arrest ruling builds on earlier restrictions: an ankle monitor, a nighttime curfew, and a travel ban keeping the former president confined to Brasília despite his deep political roots in Rio de Janeiro. A former army captain and deeply polarizing figure, Bolsonaro now joins a short but consequential list of former Brazilian presidents arrested since the country's return to democracy in 1985, a system he has frequently criticized and linked to the military dictatorship he once praised. Justice de Moraes, defending the court's decision, wrote: "The judiciary will not allow itself to be mocked. Justice applies equally to everyone. A defendant who knowingly violates precautionary measures—especially for the second time—must face legal consequences." Stepheny Price is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. She covers topics including missing persons, homicides, national crime cases, illegal immigration, and more. Story tips and ideas can be sent to
San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Division among Brazilians over Bolsonaro house arrest order could set the tone for next election
SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazilians were divided Tuesday over a house arrest order against former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is on trial for allegedly masterminding a coup plot to remain in office. The division could set the tone for next year's general election. Brazil's Supreme Court on Monday issued the order in a case that has gripped the South American country even as it faces a trade war with the Trump administration. Supporters of the far-right leader and some moderates see the ruling as harsh, while allies of incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and other moderates want to move on and leave the issue for the judiciary. Creomar de Souza, a political analyst with Dharma Political Risk and Strategy, a political consultancy firm based in Brasilia, said that could be the dynamic of next year's election. 'One is the effort of Bolsonaro supporters to keep strong on the right, no matter if it is pushing for amnesty in congress or putting themselves physically out there,' the analyst said. 'The second is how the Lula administration will try to show that the country has a government.' Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who put Bolsonaro on trial for his alleged role in the coup plot to keep him in office despite his defeat in the 2022 election, ordered the 70-year-old former president's arrest for violating precautionary measures imposed on him by spreading content through his three lawmaker sons. That decision followed one from the court last month ordering Bolsonaro to wear an electronic ankle monitor and to obey a curfew while the proceedings are underway. The polarization between supporters and critics of the former president took Brazil's congress by storm Tuesday and was also reflected in figures from pollster Quaest, which say 53% are favorable to the order against the far-right leader and 47% against it. Analysts expect another narrow election next year, with Lula running for reelection and Bolsonaro barred. The political repercussions in Brazil are getting attention from the U.S. government as President Donald Trump directly tied a 50% tariff on imported Brazilian goods to his ally's judicial situation. Late on Monday, the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs condemned the far-right leader's order for house arrest and attacked de Moraes. Bolsonaro blockade Since de Moraes' order, Bolsonaro allies are pledging to stop congress unless an amnesty bill is passed in favor of the far-right leader and his supporters involved in the coup plot probe. Early on Tuesday, a group of 40 pro-Bolsonaro lawmakers told journalists in the capital Brasilia they will push hard for the former president's release. Altineu Cortes, the conservative deputy speaker of the lower house, said he will put the amnesty bill to a vote if he gets the chance. 'I've already told speaker Hugo Motta that I will do that in the first moment I am working as the speaker of the house during one of his trips abroad,' Cortes said. Later, many of the same lawmakers protested in the lower house and the senate by blocking access to the presiding tables. "This is an arbitrary action,' said Sen. Davi Alcolumbre, the president of Brazil's senate. 'I call for serenity and spirit of cooperation. We need to start working with respect, civility and dialogue so congress can fulfill its mission in favor of Brazil and our population.' Members of Brazil's opposition say such a move would also allow Bolsonaro to run in next year's election, from which he was barred by the country's top electoral court for abuse of power in 2022. That claim is denied by many legal experts and also by Supreme Court justices. Moving on Meanwhile, Lula and his allies initially showed they wanted to move past the issue of Bolsonaro's house arrest and focus on trade negotiations with Trump, who imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian import goods starting Wednesday. Trump's justification for the measure was what he called unfair treatment of the far-right leader. 'I don't want to speak about what happened to that other Brazilian citizen who tried to stage a coup,' Lula said during a long speech in Brasilia on Tuesday. The leftist leader added he will not call Trump to talk about trade 'because he doesn't want to" speak about it. Lula said he might instead 'invite him to attend (November's climate summit) COP in Belem.' 'I came here with the compromise of not wasting much time speaking about tariffs. I will just say the least I can. If I didn't (say anything) you would go: 'Why didn't Lula speak about it? Is he afraid of Trump?' And I don't want you to leave with that impression," he said. Members of Lula's Cabinet have also avoided discussing Bolsonaro's future. A Brazilian government staffer told The Associated Press that Lula told his ministers that his reelection depends on governing, not on his predecessor's future. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the matter publicly. Moderates speak If the next Brazilian election has the same standard of the previous face off between Lula and Bolsonaro, the winner will be decided by turnout and a very slim number of moderates. Gov. Eduardo Leite, a moderate from the Rio Grande do Sul state, embodied the split among many Brazilian voters who will likely have to chose one of the two camps in 2026. A critic of de Moraes' actions against Bolsonaro, Leite does not condone the former president's actions either. "I don't like the idea of a former president not being able to speak, and even less see him get arrested for that before he is put on trial at the Supreme Court,' Leite said. 'Our country does not deserve to remain hostage to this legal-political tug of war that only hinders us all.' Gilberto Kassab, the chairman of the centrist Social Democratic Party, has both Bolsonaro and Lula supporters in his party's ranks and said 'exaggeration on both sides are contaminating Brazil.' 'I express my solidarity to the former president, I regret his arrest without discussing the merits of the issue. This is all that the country did not need,' Kassab said in a statement.
