Today’s HC-R:
October 28, 2026 (Wednesday)
The story of how Flávio Bolsonaro arrived in the United States was odd and is becoming odder. After losing the election to become Brazil’s president on Sunday, he suggested he would contest the results of the election, and Brazilian authorities asked him to give up his Brazilian passport because he is under investigation for laundering more than $1 billion through an online gambling scheme, and for financial irregularities involving a bank regulators shut down for fraud. And then he disappeared.
When he didn’t turn in his passport, authorities canceled it and barred Bolsonaro from leaving the country. Ana Ionova, Edward Wong, Alice Maciel, and Lucía Cholakian Herrera of the New York Times reported today that Bolsonaro, his wife, and his two daughters crossed from Brazil to Argentina in a van across a bridge between the countries. In Argentina they boarded a plane owned by a private company used by Argentina’s president Javier Milei, an ally of Trump, and flew to Ecuador. In Ecuador they boarded another private jet for Miami.
A senior U.S. State Department official said the U.S. will issue visas for Bolsonaro and his family, allowing them to enter the country.
Flávio Bolsonaro is the son of Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year sentence after being convicted of launching a coup against the duly elected Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. On social media this afternoon, the younger Bolsonaro claimed he faced political prosecution in Brazil and declared himself the “legitimate president-elect” of Brazil, later changing that language to “leader of Brazil.” He claimed the legal investigation against him was a “witch hunt.”
Bolsonaro’s defeat strikes a blow at Trump’s evident plan to install right-wing leaders across Latin America as part of a move to create a U.S.-dominated Western Hemisphere. Evidently, Trump intends to shelter Bolsonaro in the U.S.
Yesterday Terrence McCoy, Marina Dias, and Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post reported that a justice on the Brazilian Supreme Court ordered Brazilian police to investigate whether Rockbridge, a donor network co-founded by Vice President J.D. Vance, illegally helped to finance Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign.
The Rockbridge Network rejected the suggestion, saying: “The Brazilians made false representations about their relationship with Rockbridge and created documents representing or referencing Rockbridge without Rockbridge’s knowledge or consent.”
While Trump allies are supporting those who share their authoritarian vision of government abroad, MAGA is showing signs of collapsing at home.
In Status yesterday, Oliver Darcy reported a dramatic decline in the numbers of people watching the Fox News Channel. October’s numbers will be down 27% in total viewers and 32% in the age group between 25 and 54 since October of last year. In contrast, MS NOW and CNN are picking up viewers.
Brendan Rascius of The Independent reported that stores featuring Trump merchandise are shutting down around the country as interest in them flags. An owner of a Trump store told Rascius: “The store has kind of run its course.”
A sign of just how deep rejection of MAGA has reached in society was the October 19 article by New York Times chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman offering advice to a man who wrote in, concerned that his Brioni suit made people think he was MAGA. “Do I need to be concerned that what I’m wearing is sending the wrong message about my political proclivities?” he asked. Friedman suggested a number of tweaks “to avoid being confused for a MAGA man,” including the possibility of “dress sneakers, which would give the whole look a more casual vibe than the one Team Trump usually conveys, which leans more toward New York in the 1980s."
Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico is running ads featuring Republicans crossing the aisle to vote for him rather than Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton. “I truly believe that he is the most corrupt politician Texas has ever seen,” Republican former Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley says in one that features five former Republican officials. “James Talarico is by far, without a doubt, the best person in the race for the U.S. Senate,” former Texas state representative Bennett Ratliff continues.
“I’m a lifelong Republican, and I know it’s hard to go in and vote for a Democrat,” Whitley says. “We need to support the best person, not look at their party label, not look at what jersey they’re wearing, but who is going to represent us,” Ratliff adds. The Republicans urge voters to back Talarico.
In South Carolina, two former governors—Democrat Jim Hodges and Republican David Beasley—cut an ad together to urge voters to support Democratic candidate Dr. Annie Andrews for the U.S. Senate rather than Republican candidate Darline Graham, the late Senator Lindsey Graham’s sister. “This country is too divided,” they say, “and the political rhetoric has gotten way, way out of hand.” Andrews “understands that leadership isn’t about making people angrier. Well, it’s about making things better. She’s willing to put people ahead of politics.” “South Carolina deserves more than the same political fighting,” they say, “so join the two of us in supporting Dr. Annie Andrews. Let’s send her to the United States Senate.”
In Alaska, Senator Lisa Murkowski has endorsed Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins in the Alaska governor’s race. Saying that “[o]ur future is too important to be hamstrung by partisan divisions” and that Kreiss-Tomkins “understands that governing requires listening to people with different perspectives and finding common ground to solve the problems all of us face,” Murkowski urged “Alaskans of every political stripe” to consider voting for him.
Today Calder McHugh of Politico reported that OpenAI has created an “Election Operations Center” to identify misinformation and efforts to disrupt the upcoming midterm elections. McHugh writes that the company is trying to “position itself as a defender of the democratic process,” positioning that suggests it expects such a defense, rather than support for MAGA, will put it on the right side of politics in the future.
Katie Rogers of the New York Times reported tonight that the “increasingly unpredictable” president is isolated and angry and, as one official put it, “feasting on a media diet of fawning press coverage, disparaging clips about his perceived enemies, and helpings of flattering photos and ‘A.I. slop’” served up by a small group of loyalists. As Lisa Lerer of the New York Times noted on Tuesday, his multiple rallies in states that until recently have been reliably Republican underscore “Republicans’ growing alarm over a political map that leaves Democrats with multiple paths to Senate control.”
And, finally, it appears that authorities have found some voter fraud. Today, as Mark VanCleave and Rebecca Boone of the Associated Press reported, right-wing activists James O’Keefe and Cam Higby were charged with voting unlawfully and stealing an identity after they gave false names to poll workers in Minnesota during the state’s primary election.
The men say they were testing the “vouching” process available in the state that enables voters who lack proof of their current address to vote in a new precinct after another voter in that precinct vouches for them.
The process is rarely used, and poll workers reported the men, who posted a video to YouTube of their attempt to vote fraudulently. O’Keefe and Higby claimed they were simply exposing the “lunacy” of the system.
But it turns out the system worked, and they are now charged with a felony.