Fans in Philadelphia are starting to wonder if their team can go 17-0 this season. That confidence is due in no small part to the poise of their quarterbackWith more than nine minutes left in the game on Sunday – still plenty of time to pad his superb stat line – Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts stayed on the sideline and pulled on a headset, done for the day. Gardner Minshew, his backup, got to mop up a lopsided victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers.Hurts was shut down early in large part because the Eagles, the NFL’s only unbeaten team at 7-0, are to play again on Thursday, at Houston. They will need Hurts to keep playing the way he has this season: Not spectacularly, but with conviction, poise and intelligence. Continue reading...
In a swing district in a swing state, Michiganders will vote on whether to protect abortion rightsIt’s true that Carl Marlinga doesn’t have name recognition. Despite running for a hugely competitive seat, in a district where he lives and has been a judge for 30 years, not a single one of his yard signs is visible on a day spent following campaigners in Sterling Heights, Michigan. And when you ask him why he isn’t polling as well as his opponent, John James – the Trump-backed candidate who lost two recent campaigns for US Senate and doesn’t even live in the district – Marlinga says it himself.“It’s name recognition, that’s what my pollsters are telling me,” Marlinga replies at a packed campaign event on an inconsiderately cold October day. Continue reading...
Rightwingers are laughing about an attack that left an 82-year-old in hospital. It’s a watershed moment in politicsWhat do you do when an 82-year-old man is attacked at his home with a hammer? You laugh about it, of course. A number of Republicans – people who like to preach to others about family values and civility – seem to find the recent attack on Paul Pelosi very amusing indeed.Donald Trump Jr, for example, posted a meme on Sunday night showing a pair of underwear and a hammer next to the caption: “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.” On Monday night, the self-proclaimed “Meme Wars General” doubled down on his post, which referenced a baseless conspiracy theory about Pelosi and put up another crude meme mocking the attack. Continue reading...
Kash Patel’s close relationship with ex-president could provide information on how documents ended up at Trump’s resortThe justice department is weighing whether to grant immunity to the Trump adviser Kash Patel and force his testimony about claims that highly sensitive government documents the FBI seized from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort were declassified, according to sources familiar with the matter.The status of the documents has emerged as relevant to the criminal investigation surrounding Trump’s mishandling of national security materials since it could strengthen a potential case that the former president was in violation of state secrecy laws. Continue reading...
by Dani Anguiano in Los Angeles and agencies on (#65BT9)
David DePape appeared in San Francisco court where he pleaded not guilty to charges including attempted murderThe man accused of breaking into Nancy Pelosi’s home and attacking her husband with a hammer made his first courtroom appearance on Tuesday, where he pleaded not guilty to charges including attempted murder.David DePape was arraigned in San Francisco, where he is also charged with assault with a deadly weapon, burglary, elder abuse and threatening a public official. He appeared with his arm in a sling due to a dislocated shoulder, his public defender said. Continue reading...
Control of the Senate could hang on results in a handful of states while votes for governor and secretary of state could affect the conduct of future electionsHobbs is currently secretary of state in what used to be a Republican stronghold. Lake is a former TV news anchor who relishes sparring with the media and promoting Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Victory for Lake – who has appeared with figures linked to QAnon on the campaign trail – would be a major boost for the former president and ominous for 2024. Continue reading...
Voters in five states will dramatically shape abortion policies for millions of women this NovemberWhen the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in June, it put the matter of regulating abortion entirely in the hands of the states. This November, voters will weigh in on ballot initiatives that will decide the future of abortion in five of those states: California, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont.Reproductive rights proponents are hoping to replicate their historic win in Kansas, where a reliably conservative state successfully defeated an anti-abortion ballot initiative in August. Continue reading...
Joe Biden’s name won’t be on ballots, but this year’s midterms on 8 November will be voters’ first opportunity to render a verdict on his presidencyAmerican elections are like Olympics. Presidential votes happen every four years in step with the summer Games: 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, 2004 and so on.Midterms, meanwhile, happen every four years in line with the winter Games: 2022, 2018, 2014, 2010, 2006, 2002 and so on.All 435 seats in the House of Representatives.Thirty-five seats in the 100-member Senate. This is made up of the standard 34 seats plus a special election to fill the four years remaining in the term of retiring senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma.Thirty-six state governorships, and three US territory governorships.Numerous city mayorships and local officials.One hundred and twenty-nine ballot measures in 36 states including laws on abortion in California, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont. Continue reading...
Victims’ families address Nikolas Cruz in court before he is sentenced to life in prison for attack that left 17 dead in 2018Family members of the 17 children and adults Nikolas Cruz murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school on Valentine’s Day 2018 cursed him to hell, wished him a painful death and called him a coward on Tuesday, as they got their one chance to address him directly before he is sentenced to life in prison.For hours, parents, wives, siblings, children and some of the 17 Cruz also wounded stood 20ft from him. They looked the shackled killer in the eye and gave vehement, angry and sometimes tearful statements. Continue reading...
The late musician saw overdue appreciation for his bold, pioneering 70s gay country album when he was in his golden years• Lavender Country’s Patrick Haggerty, pioneering gay country musician, dies aged 78The last thing Patrick Haggerty expected was fame. In the early 2010s, the Washington native had put the pioneering gay country album he made as Lavender Country in the early 70s to the back of his mind and was contentedly performing covers of Doris Day and Que Sera Sera at local retirement homes. But after an anonymous YouTube user uploaded his groundbreaking music, a flurry of streams and blogs led to 1973’s Lavender Country being unleashed anew. A reissue from North Carolina label Paradise of Bachelors heralded a wave of accolades and interest for the self-declared “screaming Marxist bitch”. In the autumn of his life, Haggerty’s world turned upside down. And no one was more shocked than Haggerty himself. “It catapulted way further than I expected,” he said in 2014, of the album’s overdue embrace. “Lavender Country is going down in fucking history, and I lived to see it.”The music of Haggerty, who died this week at age 78 after complications from a stroke, is a cornerstone of Gay lib-era creativity, a testament to bootstraps activism and among the smartest country songwriting to come out of the 1970s. Today’s LGBTQ+ country stars such as Trixie Mattel and Jake Blount credit him as a foundational artist; Orville Peck, who performed with Haggerty in 2019, calls him the “grandfather of queer country”. Over see-sawing fiddle and honky-tonk piano on Lavender Country, Haggerty boldly told the story of his own life with eccentric and poetic flair. Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears is a pride anthem rooted in rage, calling out macho hypocrisy and phallocentric bullshit, while Waltzing Will Trilogy takes on police brutality and the electroshock conversion therapy that was despicably inflicted on gay men. “They call it mental hygiene,” Haggerty sings, as his voice curdles into a snarl. “But I call it psychic rape!” Continue reading...
Right-dominated court will weigh the former president’s appeal against release sought by Democratic-controlled HouseThe US supreme court’s chief justice, John Roberts, on Tuesday put a temporary hold on the handover of Donald Trump’s tax returns to a congressional committee.Roberts’s order gives the supreme court time to weigh the legal issues in the former president’s emergency appeal to the high court, filed on Monday. Continue reading...
Takeoff, best known for his part in the popular rap trio Migos, has died aged 28 after being shot at a bowling alley in Houston. The 28-year-old rapper, real name Kirshnik Khari Ball, was born in Lawrenceville, Georgia, in 1994. Raised with fellow Migos member Quavo – his uncle but only three years older than him – by Quavo’s mother Edna, he began rapping from an early age
Senate candidate risks mockery after saying, ‘We don’t have a Republican senator north of North Carolina on the Atlantic coast’Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Pennsylvania, risked mockery on Monday by giving the impression he believes the state, which is landlocked, has an Atlantic coastline.“Pennsylvania is way is too important,” the celebrity doctor told the Fox News host Sean Hannity. Continue reading...
Herschel Walker and Mehmet Oz criticized for not publicly condemning remarks by West and Doug MastrianoAfter a wave of antisemitic comments as the 8 November midterm elections loom, Jewish politicians and leaders are calling on Republican candidates to condemn such remarks made, in many cases, by high-profile supporters and associates.A recent example centered on Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who faced criticism for not condemning support he received from Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, the Washington Post reported on Monday. Continue reading...
‘Apparently [Nancy Pelosi’s] house doesn’t have a lot of protection,’ says Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake at campaign eventThe Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, Kari Lake, drew laughter at a campaign event in Scottsdale on Monday with a remark about the attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of the Democratic US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.“Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in DC,” Lake said. “Apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection.” Continue reading...
Some very vocal people were outraged by the video for the new single Anti-Hero. But when you’re dealing with eating disorders, sometimes there’s no escaping the f-wordWant to watch Taylor Swift magically lose fat overnight? No, of course you don’t – you’re not a weirdo. But if you are just a little curious about what I am talking about, then have a look at Swift’s music video for the single Anti-Hero from her new album, Midnights. There is a scene in it in which the musician steps on some scales and looks up sadly as her doppelganger shakes her head in disgust. This visual would be unremarkable were it not for the fact that it was hastily swapped in a week ago, just days after the video’s initial release, to replace the controversial original. In the first version, Swift gets on the scales and, instead of numbers, she sees the word FAT pop up. This upset a lot of people who decreed that, by using the word “fat”, Swift was being “fatphobic”. Swift decided not to risk cancellation or prolong the controversy by explaining herself or defending her artistic choices; instead, she just quietly altered the video.Perhaps you are confused by all the fuss over the word fat. You don’t need a degree in Swiftian studies to glean that the singer, who has described the video for Anti-Hero as a depiction of her insecurities, was referencing her own body issues, not trying to offend people. While Swift has never explicitly said she has suffered from an eating disorder, she has been open about her experiences with disordered eating. In her 2020 Netflix documentary Miss Americana, she talks about how constant media scrutiny caused her to have an unhealthy relationship with her body. “It’s not good for me to see pictures of myself every day,” she says in a voiceover during the film. There were times, she says, when the constant media commentary on her body would trigger her to “just starve a little bit – just stop eating”.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Miguel Gonzalez, 25, blames ‘my own stupidity’ for tantrum that led him to post fake sexist and racist headlines on paper’s websiteThe New York Post employee who was fired after publishing a slew of phony, sexist and racist headlines on the newspaper’s website and Twitter account has apologized for what he described as a tantrum and the “utmost betrayal”.“I let my own stupidity get the best of me,” Miguel Gonzalez told the Daily Beast’s Confider newsletter in a piece published late on Monday. “I deserved to get fired for a very volatile, irresponsible and disgusting action and an utmost betrayal of the New York Post. Continue reading...
All political violence is a problem, but in terms of sheer numbers, rightwing extremism is a much more significant problem than leftwing radicalismMuch of American life has gotten coarser, uglier and crueler in the years since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. Even with Trump out of office, his legacy persists, and it erodes American life every day.On Friday, in a grisly act of political violence, a man broke into the home of the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, one of the US right’s most vilified political figures, and attacked her husband with a hammer, fracturing his skull and leaving him with serious injuries. The attacker, 42-year-old David DePape, was reportedly carrying zip ties and duct tape and yelling: “Where’s Nancy?”Jill Filipovic is the author of OK Boomer, Let’s Talk Continue reading...
Don Bolduc, who is running in New Hampshire against Democrat Maggie Hassan, spreads anti-trans rightwing tropeA New Hampshire school has rebuked the Republican US Senate candidate Don Bolduc for claiming schoolchildren were identifying as “furries and fuzzies” in classrooms, using litter trays and licking themselves and each other.“I wish I was making it up,” Bolduc, a retired special forces general, said last week. Continue reading...
Suspect said he viewed Nancy Pelosi as the ‘leader of the pack’ of lies told by the Democratic party, according to a federal affidavit. Plus, victory for Everett’s bikini baristas
Eunisses Hernandez, an incoming council member, is grappling with what it means to gain power in an unequal systemIn 2014, Eunisses Hernandez, a young Latina activist, watched as a Los Angeles politician was sworn in as the first Latino leader of California’s state senate in more than a century.“I got chills the whole time,” Hernandez recalled on a recent Monday afternoon at a restaurant in Highland Park. The background of Kevin de León, the child of working-class immigrants who had now won serious political power in the state, reminded her of her own family, and of herself. She was confident that De León, a longtime activist for immigrants’ rights, was “going to help us pass better laws”. Continue reading...
The magisterial football commentator opens up about his long, strange American trip and the steady rise of soccer in the USRay Hudson will always be a Geordie, but America claimed his heart long ago.As a kid growing up in Tyneside, Hudson, was drawn to the pop culture of the United States, its movies and television. He loved Motown, but he also loved listening to his father, who worked for Ford Motor Company, share stories about Michigan and the Great Lakes region. Continue reading...
Democratic candidate Elissa Slotkin says abortion is a top issues in the state and fear of a ban will motivate voters to re-elect her: ‘I’ve never seen anything like it’Elissa Slotkin is a straight shooter. She doesn’t miss a beat when asked a tough question. She speaks up often, and forcefully, against things she perceives as unjust – whether perpetrated by her opponents or her own Democratic party. But when asked what she’ll think if the proposal to enshrine abortion rights in Michigan’s state constitution doesn’t pass this November, she clams up.Slotkin fidgets, stroking one thumb over the other, in a repetitive, soothing motion. Continue reading...
by Presented by Michael Safi with Oliver Laughland; p on (#65AQX)
Florida used to be seen as a swing state but in recent years it has lurched further and further to the right. Now there are worries democracy itself is under threatAhead of the US midterm elections, Oliver Laughland travelled around Florida to find out what really mattered to the people getting ready to vote. He told Michael Safi how he travelled to Disney World, and found the “happiest place on Earth” had become a political battleground thanks to a controversial bill curtailing the teaching of sexuality and gender identity in schools.Elsewhere he met Charlie Crist, the politician trying to take on Ron DeSantis – the Florida governor who is seen by many as the successor to Donald Trump. And he heard how the Democrats are hoping the backlash against the scrapping of Roe v Wade, which protected the right to abortion in the US, could help their party. Continue reading...
A week out from US midterm elections, president pleads with energy firms to invest profits in lowering costs for American consumersPresident Joe Biden has accused oil companies of “war profiteering” as he raised the possibility of imposing a windfall tax if companies don’t boost domestic production.In remarks on Monday, just over a week away from the 8 November midterm elections, Biden criticised major oil companies for making record profits while refusing to help lower prices at the pump for American people. The president said he would look to Congress to levy tax penalties on oil companies if they don’t begin to invest some of their profits in lowering costs for American consumers. Continue reading...
by Chris Stein in Washington, Gabrielle Canon in Oakl on (#65ABJ)
Suspect who faces state and federal charges told police he wanted to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage and ‘break her kneecaps’The man accused of attacking Paul Pelosi, the husband of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, told police he wanted to hold the congresswoman hostage and “break her kneecaps”, authorities in California said on Monday afternoon.David DePape, 42, confronted a sleeping Paul Pelosi in the couple’s San Francisco townhouse bedroom shortly before 2.30am last Friday morning, according to a federal affidavit filed in court on Monday. Continue reading...
Hecklers were attacking a policy providing affordable housing for LGBTQ+ peopleThe progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said she will stand up for LGBTQ+ rights after an attack by hecklers caused chaos during a recent speaking event in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York.The Democrat from New York met the heckles at the back of the Boys and Girls Club with dancing, the video of which has gone viral on social media. Continue reading...
If too many abstain in the election on 1 November, the way could be clear for a coalition featuring Jewish supremacistsOn 1 November, Israel votes in a general election for the fifth time since spring 2019. Recent polls show that the country’s former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his rightwing coalition are just shy of clinching victory. Sixty-one seats in the Knesset, the 120-seat parliament, is the magic number. As fate would have it, Israeli Arab voters may determine the outcome.In 2021, Israeli Arabs were instrumental in ousting Netanyahu from office. This time, however, they may give him a boost by simply sitting on their hands: if they stay at home, the odds of Netanyahu and his allies returning to power markedly improve. Reports are already pointing to an expected low turnout.Lloyd Green is a New York attorney, and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 Continue reading...
The shameful scenes at Manston will be repeated as long as asylum seekers are scapegoated by ministers avoiding scrutinyActions have consequences. Britain’s political elite has for a long time decided to pander to – or deliberately stoke – bigotry against migrants and refugees. This is a joint enterprise with rightwing media outlets that have sought to portray some of the world’s most vulnerable people as a marauding mob, undeserving drains on resources and incompatible with British culture. It has reaped rich political dividends: justified public anger at a lack of affordable housing and secure work, declining living standards and austerity has been redirected, crudely, at the caricatured foreigner. To achieve this aim, it has been necessary to strip migrants and refugees of their humanity: after all, most human beings do not tolerate harm being committed against those we see as “people like us”.This brings us to the Manston migrant processing centre, in Kent, and the petrol bombs that were lobbed on Sunday at a Dover Border Force immigration centre. Most people would find the conditions at Manston intolerable if it were housing cats and dogs, let alone people. Around 4,000 people seeking asylum – way more than double the official maximum capacity – sleep on blankets on floors. It is supposed to be a short-term holding facility, where checks are conducted before the people there are moved on to detention centres or accommodation. But these human beings are being effectively imprisoned for up to four weeks. In these bleak overcrowded conditions, there has been an outbreak of diphtheria, while scabies is said to run rampant.Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Former vice-president says meeting at which advisers led by Giuliani urged Trump to not accept election defeat was ‘a new low’A post-election meeting at which advisers led by Rudy Giuliani attacked campaign lawyers and urged Donald Trump not to accept his election defeat was “a new low” for a president “well acquainted with rough-and-tumble debates”, Mike Pence writes in a forthcoming memoir.Of the meeting in November 2020, the former vice-president writes: “In the end, that day the president made the fateful decision to put Giuliani and [attorney] Sidney Powell in charge of the legal strategy … The seeds were being sown for a tragic day in January.” Continue reading...
America’s multi-million dollar meeting will overshadow the Melbourne Cup and the jumps racing at Aintree this weekWith all due respect to Australia, where the Melbourne Cup is due to stop the nation at around 4am GMT on Tuesday, the attention of the racing world this week will focus squarely on the Kentucky bluegrass, and the 14 Grade One events that make up the 39th running of the Breeders’ Cup at Keeneland in Lexington this weekend.This news may also grate with diehard fans of the jumps, who will argue that the Grand Sefton Chase over the National fences at Aintree will generate far more betting turnover in the UK on Saturday than any of the events in Kentucky. But the simple fact remains that jumping is a niche activity in the global racing industry, enjoyed almost exclusively in Britain, Ireland and France, while the Breeders’ Cup is the richest and most prestigious meeting of the year in the country which has, by several measures, the biggest racing and breeding industry on the planet. Continue reading...
Research by #WeCount shows a 6% decline, with fall of 22,000 in most restrictive states partially offset by 12,000 rise elsewhereThere have been at least 10,000 fewer abortions since the nationwide abortion rights established by Roe v Wade were repealed by the US supreme court in June.New research from the national research project #WeCount shows that with federal abortion protections rolled back, there have been 10,570 fewer legal abortions – a 6% decline – than estimates in April before the June ruling. Continue reading...
The former president’s son spread an image of a hammer and references to the baseless conspiracy theory about the attackerIn the aftermath of the attack on Paul Pelosi, amid rising concern over rightwing figures stoking violence against political opponents, Donald Trump Jr posted online a crude meme featuring a hammer, the weapon used to attack the husband of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, on Friday.“OMG,” the former president’s son wrote next to the picture, which also had the caption “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready”. Continue reading...
Republican Brian Kemp and Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams spar in final gubernatorial debate before midtermsIn the final televised debate with Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams before their November election, Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, refused to say whether he would support harsher abortion restrictions if re-elected to a second term and if fellow Republicans dominating the state legislature sent them to his desk.At WSB-TV’s Channel 2 Action debate Sunday, Kemp, a Republican, said it was not his “desire to go move the needle any further” on abortion restrictions in Georgia, adding that he would look into additional restrictions passed by state lawmakers “when the time comes”. Kemp at a previous debate had said he “would not” support new abortion limits. Continue reading...
If Musk’s tweet doesn’t raise bright red warning signs all over the world about his judgment and character, I don’t know what willJust three days after Elon Musk bought Twitter, he posted a tweet promoting the baseless allegation that Paul Pelosi, the husband of the speaker of the House, who was assaulted on Friday at the couple’s home, had been drunk and in a fight with a male prostitute.The police found Paul Pelosi, 82, attacked with a hammer inside his home by a man, David DePape, who had entered through the back door, seeking the speaker.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...
The Brooklyn Nets star’s promotion of a documentary that espouses bigoted tropes comes at a time of rising prejudice against Jews in AmericaIn the wake of Kanye West’s recent antisemitic rhetoric – that Diddy is “controlled by the Jews” and that he’s going “def con 3 on the Jews,” for example – brands have dropped the rapper in droves.As displays of antisemitism continue to rise, people from all walks of life have denounced West and offered support and compassion. During Sunday’s slate of NFL games, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, himself a Jew, aired a powerful PSA in partnership with the Foundation for Combatting Antisemitism. Fighting hate of all forms, including antisemitism, should be an easy lane to take. Continue reading...
New book by Australian reporter Paddy Manning hints at Succession-style feud with ramifications for US rightwing politicsIt’s long been thought that the succession plan for Lachlan Murdoch to take control of Fox Corporation and News Corp was set in stone for when his 91-year-old father, Rupert Murdoch dies.But a new book is stoking speculation that Murdoch’s oldest son might be ousted in a Succession-style feud with his family, in a move with potentially huge ramifications for Fox News, the TV network that dominates US rightwing politics, according to a new biography of the Anglo-Australian media heir. Continue reading...
According to the US Capitol police, there were 9,621 threats against members of Congress in 2021. It’s surprising that there aren’t moreSurely I’m not the only person haunted by visions of 82-year-old Paul Pelosi, the husband of House speaker Nancy Pelosi, struggling with an intruder in the early hours this past Friday. It’s not hard to imagine the terror that Pelosi must have felt as he made his coded phone call to the police, telling them that someone had broken into his San Francisco home. And it’s all too easy to picture his assailant, David DePape, calling out, “Where’s Nancy?”, the same cry that went up from the insurrectionists roaming the halls of the US Capitol on 6 January.In fact, the only thing that’s hard to comprehend is why, given the current political climate, incidents like this one don’t occur more often. According to the US Capitol police, there were 9,621 threats against members of Congress in 2021, and the frequency of those disturbing emails and phone calls appears to be increasing. Republican and Democrats alike have been warned that they and their families will be killed, and some have wisely taken advantage of the provision that allows them to use their campaign funds to pay for private security teams.Francine Prose is a former president of Pen American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Continue reading...
Judge dismisses case against British former trader Tom Hayes, who was jailed over interest rate scandalA New York court has dismissed a criminal indictment against Tom Hayes, the British former trader at UBS and Citigroup who served five and a half years in a UK prison for rigging the Libor lending benchmark.Prosecutors in the US filed a motion to dismiss the case against Hayes and another former UBS trader, Roger Darin. Continue reading...
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva takes over a deeply divided country, and a congress dominated by rightwing partiesThe Workers’ party (PT) supporters were out in force last night in the centre of São Paulo, pretty much as they were 20 years ago when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva first won the Brazilian presidency. Then, as now, convoys of celebrating Lula-supporting Petista drivers honked their horns, with their chanting, flag-waving passengers precariously hanging out of car windows.That win – which followed three unsuccessful runs – was sweet. This victory – Lula’s third – is perhaps even more gratifying because the former trade union leader has come back from imprisonment, defied his political enemies and condemned his nemesis, Jair Bolsonaro, to defeat. And last night there was an element of relief in the joyous mood because, for the moment at least, the incumbent rightwing populist’s dark threats to overturn the result had failed to materialise.Richard Lapper is author of Beef, Bible and Bullets: Brazil in the Age of Bolsonaro Continue reading...
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