Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, has staged a dramatic election fightback, defeating his far-right opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, to claim a historic fourth term in power.
With nearly 99% of votes counted the 80-year-old leftist received 51.75% of the vote to his 45-year-old rival’s 48.25%.
Lula narrowly lost the first round of the election to Bolsonaro in early October, casting his political future into doubt and plunging progressive Brazilians into three weeks of despair. Never, since the return of democracy in the 1980s, has the first round runner-up won the second vote.
But Lula did precisely that on Sunday, prompting joyous scenes on the streets of São Paulo, where he had been following the count, and at the hotel where he was watching the count.
As the result was confirmed, Reginaldo Lopes, a key Lula ally, told the Guardian: “I feel incredible … This is Brazil telling the world that the extreme right is fascist, that the extreme right is against black people, is against the poor, against the state, against gay people ... We are going to reorganize the democratic forces [in this country].”...
The long-serving leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, has conceded defeat, ushering in a seismic political shift after a historic election that saw the increasingly authoritarian leader pitted against a student-led movement that had spent two years protesting against his government.
As people waited for the election results to come in, speculation had begun to swirl online about whether Vučić would seek to hold on to power regardless. His swift admission of defeat, however, was reminiscent of his ally, Viktor Orbán, in neighbouring Hungary six months ago, fuelling hopes of a democratic resurgence to central Europe...
Vučić pointed to preliminary results that suggested voters had overwhelmingly backed the students, potentially giving them a majority in the country’s 250-seat parliament.
“We still do not have final results,” Vučić told supporters at his party headquarters in Belgrade. “On the basis of a sample … it is clear that we have lost these elections, the Student List has won, they will have between 135 and 140 seats and we will have 105.”
A representative sample by the CESID-IPSPS pollsters suggested that the Student List’s candidate list will have 138 deputies, while Vučić’s rightwing Serbian Progressive party (SNS) garnered 104 seats. The remaining seats were likely to be shared between ethnic national minority parties, said the pollsters.
As news broke that Vučić’s 12 years in power had come to an end, celebrations erupted on the streets of Belgrade and other cities. [snip]
Two important victories for democratic movements over right-wing authoritarianism. Next are elections in Israel tomorrow, then our mid-terms. Keep the momentum going!
US forces in the Middle East are prepared to launch new, potentially major, military operations against Iran "within 96 hours of receiving" an order from President Donald Trump, according to two US officials.
Sufficient forces are now deployed in the region to carry out the potential attacks, the sources said. The scope of new US military operations would likely go beyond efforts to simply "mow the lawn" or maintain the status quo by striking radars, launchers and other Iranian assets that can be quickly reconstituted — as has been the case since Trump halted full combat operations earlier this year, the sources added.
"It will be a big effort," one of the officials told CNN. That view has been echoed by other current and former US officials familiar with internal military planning discussions — some of whom say it is a question of when, not if, Trump will issue a go-order. They believe it could come any time before the end of the year, though most likely after the US midterm elections.
Iranian forces are now more familiar with US tactics, and it would therefore be harder for the American military to effectively destroy all potential intended targets. However, leaders in US Central Command and the Pentagon have been developing a wide-ranging target list, which includes Iranian energy infrastructure, military sites and nuclear facilities.
Officials say that Trump has not made up his mind on what he will do after the midterms but that he appears to be leaning toward ordering major action. But officials also caution that Trump has appeared in the past to lean toward certain actions only to back off at the last moment...
TACO keeps telegraphing a major escalation in his war of choice with Iran, a war that he keeps insisting we won after Iran was obliterated. He wants something "big" to distract from his upcoming mid-terms defeat. The period between the election and when a new Congress is seated on January 3 is bound to be one of the most dangerous times in our history.
President Donald Trump intensified his anti-Muslim rhetoric against Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed on Sunday, portraying him as a threat to national security and questioning his loyalty to the United States in remarks that drew a sharp rebuke from a former top Arab American ally.
Trump called El-Sayed, a former Detroit health official, a "jihadist" who was "on the side of the terrorists" and would "have to go through a metal detector before he's allowed to go into the Senate." He also repeatedly invoked the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, drawing a comparison between stopping El-Sayed from entering the Senate chamber and the passengers who fought back against the hijackers aboard United Flight 93.
El-Sayed, who would become the nation's first Muslim senator if elected, has called attacks on his loyalty to the country "shameful" and repeatedly denied any ties to extremist groups. The Republican president's remarks were condemned by Bishara Bahbah, a founder of Arab Americans for Trump, the group that helped lead the president's outreach to Arab American voters in 2024.
"The president's statements are out of line," he said in a phone interview. "They are crossing a red line. They are racist."
With Republicans on the defensive over inflation, soaring fuel prices and the Iran war, the president has been trying to generate turnout by claiming that El-Sayed and other Democrats are existential threats to America, instead of electoral rivals. Michigan's Senate race between El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers is among a handful of contests that could determine control of the chamber...
The Scoundrel-in-Chief, to whom no slur is off limits, has firmly established himself as a racist, a bigot, and a white nationalist. His desperation to save the Senate (and most importantly to him, himself) is leading to him campaign in swing states and red states alike, where the dotard is just as likely to comment on a man's ass as he is to smear Americans whose religion or race or ethnicity he doesn't like. He's not a president of all the American people and never was; he's a moron MAGAt white nationalist cult leader and rabble-rouser. How far we've fallen.
