Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro given ankle monitor for alleged coup attempt
July 18 (UPI) -- Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was ordered by his country's supreme court to wear an ankle monitor, stay home most hours and to stay away from foreign embassies.
He is considered a flight risk after he and his son lobbied President Donald Trump to help him with his legal troubles.
Bolsonaro faces prison time for charges that he attempted a coup after he lost the 2022 election.
Brazilian police now accuse Bolsonaro of working with his son, Brazilian lawmaker Eduardo, to lobby the Trump administration in Washington, D.C., and ask the president to impose sanctions on Brazil. The court told Bolsonaro to cease all communication with Eduardo and stay off social media.
Trump has threatened a 50% tariff on Brazilian exports starting Aug. 1, if they don't end what he calls a "which hunt" against Bolsonaro.
Brazil president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Brazil will not cede to an American president, whom he says wants to be an "emperor."
Thursday night, Trump posted online that police should drop the charges against Bolsonaro. This morning, police raided Bolsonaro's home and office.
In a statement, Bolsonaro's legal team said it was "surprised and outraged" by the new precautionary measures "despite the fact that he has always complied with all the orders of the judiciary."
Bolsonaro's lawyers expressed "surprise and indignation" at what they called "severe precautionary measures imposed against him."
The court didn't agree.
"An attempt to subject the functioning of the federal Supreme Court to the scrutiny of another state constitutes an attack on national sovereignty," Justice Alexandre de Moraes said in his order.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Bolsonaro called the ankle monitor the "ultimate humiliation." He said he "never thought of fleeing" Brazil. He repeated that the case against him is a politically motivated effort to remove him from the 2026 election. The New York Times reports that some polls suggest he could narrowly win if eligible.
Last week on Truth Social, Trump said that Brazilian authorities have "done nothing but come after [Bolsonaro], day after day, night after night, month after month, year after year!"
"He is not guilty of anything, except having fought for THE PEOPLE," he wrote.
Brazilian Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet released a 517-page document on Monday that called for Bolsonaro to be convicted for his alleged crimes. Bolsonaro could spend decades in prison.
"The evidence is clear: the defendant acted systematically, throughout his mandate and after his defeat at the polls, to incite insurrection and the destabilisation of the democratic rule of law," Gonet said in the document.
While Trump has maintained a close friendship with Bolsonaro, Brazil and the Lula administration don't speak highly of Trump.
On Thursday Lula said Trump's tariff threat lacked logic.
"We cannot have President Trump forgetting that he was elected to govern the U.S., not to be the emperor of the world," he said.
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Indianapolis Star
24 minutes ago
- Indianapolis Star
This isn't the first time Trump's been parodied on 'South Park'
Whether you're a long-time "South Park" fan or just have heard of the show in passing, you've probably heard about that episode by now. The Season 27 premiere of "South Park" started off with a fiery take on President Donald Trump's widespread attacks on media. The episode, which aired on Wednesday, July 23, shows a character with Trump's face on a cartoon body crawling into bed, naked, with Satan. The episode referenced Paramount's $16 million settlement with the president, Trump's claims that he'll receive $20 million worth of ads on the network and the cancellation of CBS' "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert." In response to the episode, the White House told USA TODAY on Thursday, July 24, that the scene was a "desperate attempt for attention," calling the series a "fourth-rate" show. During a panel about the show at San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday evening, July 24, "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone sarcastically said they were "terribly sorry" for the episode. 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USA Today
41 minutes ago
- USA Today
Trump's golf trip to Scotland reopens old wounds for some of his neighbors
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Trump versus the families Three families still live directly on or adjacent to Trump's Balmedie golf resort. They say that long before the world had any clue about what type of president a billionaire New York real estate mogul and reality-TV star would become, they had a pretty good idea. Forbes is one of them. He said that shortly after Trump first tried to persuade him and his late wife to sell him their farm, workers he hired deliberately sabotaged an underground water pipe that left the Forbes – and his mother, then in her 90s, lived in her own nearby house – without clean drinking water for five years. Trump International declined to provide a fresh comment on those allegations, but a spokesperson previously told USA TODAY it "vigorously refutes" them. It said that when workers unintentionally disrupted a pipe that ran into an "antiquated" makeshift "well" jointly owned by the Forbeses on Trump's land, it was repaired immediately. 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I would need Greenland, Denmark − you name it," he said, running through some of the places toward which Trump has adopted what critics view as aggressive and adversarial policies. Dunes of great natural importance Martin Ford was the local Aberdeen government official who originally oversaw Trump's planning application to build the Balmedie resort in 2006. He was part of a planning committee that rejected it over environmental concerns because the course would be built between sand dunes that were designated what the UK calls a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to the way they shift over time. The Scottish government swiftly overturned that ruling on the grounds that Trump's investment in the area would bring a much-needed economic boost. Neil Hobday, who was the project director for Trump's course in Balmedie, last year told the BBC he was "hoodwinked" by Trump over his claim that he would spend more than a billion dollars on it. Hobday said he felt "ashamed that I fell for it and Scotland fell for it. We all fell for it." The dunes lost their special status in 2020, according to Nature Scot, the agency that oversees such designations. It concluded that their special features had been "partially destroyed" by Trump's resort. Trump International disputes that finding, saying the issue became "highly politicized." For years, Trump also fought to block the installation of a wind farm off his resort's coast. He lost that fight. The first one was built in 2018. There are now 11 turbines. Ford has since retired but stands by his belief that allowing approval for the Trump resort was a mistake. "I feel cheated out of a very important natural habitat, which we said we would protect and we haven't," he said. "Trump came here and made a lot of promises that haven't materialized. In return, he was allowed to effectively destroy a nature site of great conservation value. It's not the proper behavior of a decent person." Forbes, the former quarry worker and fisherman, said he viewed Trump in similar terms. He said that Trump "will never ever get his hands on his farm." He said that wasn't just idle talk. He said he's put his land in a trust that specified that when he dies, it can't be sold for at least 125 years.
Associated Press
an hour ago
- Associated Press
How views of the Supreme Court have changed since 2022 abortion ruling, according to AP-NORC polling
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans' views of the Supreme Court have moderated somewhat since the court's standing dropped sharply after its ruling overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, according to a new poll. But concern that the court has too much power is rising, fueled largely by Democrats. The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about a third of U.S. adults have 'hardly any confidence at all' in the court, but that's down from 43% three years ago. As the new AP-NORC polling tracker shows, about half of Americans have 'only some confidence' in the court, up from 39% in July 2022, while a relatively small number, about 1 in 5, have 'a great deal of confidence,' which hasn't shifted meaningfully in the past few years. The moderate increase in confidence is driven by Republicans and independents. Still, views of the nation's highest court remain more negative than they were as recently as early 2022, before the high-profile ruling that overturned the constitutional right to abortion. An AP-NORC poll conducted in February 2022 found that only around one-quarter of Americans had hardly any confidence in the court's justices. Persistent divide between Republicans and Democrats The partisan divide has been persistent and stark, particularly since the Dobbs ruling, when Democrats' confidence in the nine justices plummeted. The survey shows Republicans are happier than Democrats and independents with the conservative-dominated court, which includes three justices appointed by President Donald Trump, a Republican. Few Republicans, just 8%, view the court dimly, down from about 1 in 5 in July 2022. For independents, the decline was from 45% just after the Dobbs ruling to about 3 in 10 now. The views among Democrats were more static, but they are also slightly less likely to have low confidence in the justices, falling from 64% in summer 2022 to 56% now. In recent years, the court has produced historic victories for Republican policy priorities. The justices overturned Roe, leading to abortion bans in many Republican-led states, ended affirmative action in college admissions, expanded gun rights, restricted environmental regulations and embraced claims of religious discrimination. Many of the court's major decisions from this year are broadly popular, according to a Marquette Law School poll conducted in July. But other polling suggests that most don't think the justices are ruling neutrally. A recent Fox News poll found that about 8 in 10 registered voters think partisanship plays a role in the justices' decisions either 'frequently' or 'sometimes.' Last year, the conservative majority endorsed a robust view of presidential immunity and allowed Trump to avoid a criminal trial on election interference charges. In recent months, the justices on the right handed Trump a string of victories, including a ruling that limits federal judges' power to issue nationwide injunctions. Katharine Stetson, a self-described constitutional conservative from Paradise, Nevada, said she is glad that the court has reined in 'the rogue judges, the district judges around the country' who have blocked some Trump initiatives. Stetson, 79, said she is only disappointed it took so long. 'Finally. Why did they allow it get out of hand?' she said. Growing concerns the court is too powerful Several recent decisions were accompanied by stinging dissents from liberal justices who complained the court was giving Trump too much leeway and taking power for itself. 'Perhaps the degradation of our rule-of-law regime would happen anyway. But this court's complicity in the creation of a culture of disdain for lower courts, their rulings, and the law (as they interpret it) will surely hasten the downfall of our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise,' Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote when the court ruled on nationwide injunctions. The July AP-NORC poll found a growing similar sentiment. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults now say the court has 'too much' power in the way the federal government operates these days. In April, about 3 in 10 people were concerned about the court's power. The shift is largely due to movement among Democrats, rising from about one-third in April to more than half now. Debra A. Harris, a 60-year-old retired state government worker who now lives in Winter Haven, Florida, said the court's decisions in recent years 'just disgust me to my soul.' Harris said the court has changed in recent years, with the addition of the three justices appointed by Trump. 'I find so much of what they're doing is based so much on the ideology of the Republican ticket,' Harris said, singling out last year's immunity decision. 'We don't have kings. We don't have dictators.' George Millsaps, who flew military helicopters and served in Iraq, said the justices should have stood up to Trump in recent months, including on immigration, reducing the size of the federal workforce and unwinding the Education Department. 'But they're bowing down, just like Congress apparently is now, too,' said Millsaps, a 67-year-old resident of Floyd County in rural southwest Virginia. ___ The AP-NORC poll of 1,437 adults was conducted July 10-14, using a sample drawn from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
