Bolsonaro Supporters Wreak Havoc on Brasília

Brazilian authorities are investigating recent riots aimed at restoring the former president to power.

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Happy Thursday! When we were nine years old, our Christmas lists featured things like PlayStations and American Girl dolls. This year, Molly Sampson asked for “insulated chest waders” so she could hunt for shark teeth in Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs State Park.

Within a few days, she had found one—and it was five inches long, 15 million years old, and from the mouth of a 50-foot megalodon. Best Christmas present ever!

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • Tigrayan rebels have reportedly begun handing over tanks, artillery units, and armored vehicles to the Ethiopian national army, a sign the peace deal brokered in South Africa last November to end the country’s civil war is holding. The disarmament was a major component of that agreement, and a senior Tigrayan official said he hoped the move would “go a long way in expediting the full implementation” of the accord.
  • Russia’s Defense Ministry announced Wednesday Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu was shaking up the country’s military leadership yet again, appointing General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian General Staff, as the overall commander of the “special military operation in Ukraine.” The previous commander, Gen. Sergey Surovikin, was only installed in that role in October; he will now serve as one of Gerasimov’s three deputies.
  • Days after CBS News reported on the discovery of classified material at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington last November, NBC News reported aides to President Joe Biden discovered “at least one additional batch” of classified documents in a separate location. Citing a “person familiar with the matter,” the NBC report reveals aides have been searching since November for any additional classified material that might be in other locations Biden used after leaving the vice presidency. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to answer multiple reporter questions yesterday about the circumstances surrounding the documents’ discovery.
  • The Federal Aviation Administration ordered airlines to pause domestic departures for nearly two hours Wednesday morning due to the agency’s Notice to Air Missions system—which provides real-time safety information regarding flight operations—being knocked out. The agency later said it found “no evidence” of a cyber attack, attributing the outage to a damaged database file.
  • The House voted 220-210-1 on Wednesday to pass the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, legislation that would mandate health care providers try to save the life of an infant in the rare scenario the baby is born alive during or after an attempted abortion. One Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, voted for the bill—which is highly unlikely to be taken up in the Senate—and another, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, voted present. The House also voted 222-209 to pass a resolution condemning the recent attacks on pro-life facilities, organizations, and churches. Three Democrats—Reps. Gonzalez, Chrissy Houlahan, and Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez—supported the resolution. Three Democratic representatives introduced a counter-resolution condemning violence and threats primarily against abortion clinics and providers.
  • Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra announced Wednesday the Biden administration was extending the COVID-19 public health emergency another 90 days, marking the twelfth time the declaration has been renewed since January 2020. “There’s still a lot of COVID out there,” White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said, referencing an increase in cases that has come with the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant.
  • A growing number of New York Republicans—including Nassau County GOP leaders and U.S. Reps. Anthony D’Esposito, Nick LaLota, Nick Langworthy, and Brandon Williams—have called on Rep. George Santos to resign from Congress amid allegations the freshman representative fabricated large portions of his resume. “He’s disgraced the House of Representatives and we do not consider him one of our congresspeople,” Nassau County Republican Party Chairman Joseph Cairo said Wednesday. Santos remained adamant yesterday that he “will NOT resign,” and Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters he won’t urge him to step down or withhold his committee assignments. “The voters elected him to serve,” McCarthy said. “If there is a concern and he has to go through the Ethics [Committee], we’ll let him move through that.”
  • One day after Democratic Rep. Katie Porter of California announced she was running for the 89-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat in 2024, Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee reportedly told colleagues she will also mount a bid for the seat—but that she isn’t announcing yet out of respect for Feinstein. Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Ro Khanna are also reportedly weighing bids.

The Blow Up in Brazil

Supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro didn’t succeed in returning him to power last weekend, but their storming of Brazil’s federal seats of government may have curtailed his Orlando vacation.

Though Bolsonaro hasn’t impeded the transition to a new government, he never formally conceded his October presidential election loss to leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—known as Lula—even as courts rejected his party’s evidence-free fraud claims. And when Lula was set to be sworn in on January 1, Bolsonaro skipped town, decamping to Florida where he has been spotted swanning through the aisles of a Publix grocery store, signing fans’ shirts, and chowing down on KFC.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Peter_Shalen

    A few years ago, if there had been riots in Brazil over the result of an election, we would have said it was typical of what goes on in underdeveloped countries (now often called Third World countries). But now that something very similar has happened in our country, the events in Brazil remind us of events at home. So it's not that Brazil is becoming like us. It's that we are becoming like Brazil.

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    Dave T

    I don't know when you guys fixed the comments section and notifications thereof, but I just wanted to jump in and say thank you very much!! It makes interacting in the comments so much better and totally worth it.

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    1. Karin

      Alas, the fix is still not complete. If you click on Continue Thread, you will be taken right back out to the beginning of the article. Very discouraging to anyone who wants to engage in respectful back-and-forth discourse.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Dave T

        Well, one step at a time, I reckon! I was delighted to see that email notifications work.

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  3. Avatar photo
    SD

    I used to work at the National Archives. Presidential classified documents are found on the loose all the time. My guess is that they are passed around in the super fast pace of the Executive Office and then forgotten about as a new issue or crisis appears. It is good that these cases are bringing this carelessness to light, but I don't necessarily see any malfeasance with either Trump or Biden. (Although Trump's behavior after being told he had classified documents improperly stored is another story.)

    The US Census is much better at putting up safeguards and protecting their info than any other part of the government that I am aware of. I think they should be giving lessons to the rest. The difference, of course, is that the Executive Branch doesn't need to access the personally identifiable Census information immediately to do its job in the way that they need to access nationally security classified information.

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      Magpie

      Interesting. It's good to hear a perspective from someone familiar with NARA and governmental record keeping. It really looks like active and semi-active records management processes really need to be tightened up. I'm thinking we shouldn't necessarily expect elected officials to be thinking about that; it should be the aides and administrators.

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  4. Trumeau

    I would say there is consistency in how the mainstream media portrays right wing protesters in the US and all over the world with left wing protesters. For right wing, they will emphasize "Far Right", "Rioters", "Insurrectionists", "Threat to Democracy" etc... For left wing protesters, they will call them "Protesters," "Unrest", "Peaceful Protests", "Underprivileged groups" etc... They will fell sympathy for the protesters listing all the grievances that led to the protests.

    You can see that real time in how the insurrection in Brazil is portrayed as a threat to Democracy, while what's happening in Peru is just protesters fighting for their rights. In both cases, I think both groups are completely wrong but the disparate reporting just makes it hypocritical.

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  5. R. James

    How in hell is Brazil riots the headline today? 2nd tranche of documents found, third set of documents now from Garland's statement....

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      Magpie

      The current headline at NYTimes is "Garland Names Special Counsel in Biden Documents Case."

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      1. R. James

        Yeah it was edited after my post.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Manleys

    Wait. I haven't been following the news today. So this second bunch of documents were found in Biden's _garage_? Did I read that right?

    "All but one of these documents were found in storage space in the President’s Wilmington residence garage,” White House lawyers wrote in a statement. "

    https://www.nationalreview.com/news/another-batch-of-classified-documents-found-in-bidens-garage/

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    1. R. James

      Based on Garland's statement the second set of documents was found in Biden's garage on December 20th and a third document(s) was found in his Delaware home yesterday. So it's three sets

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  7. Avatar photo
    Mister D

    Re: The Vermeule Review

    Oh snap!

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  8. Avatar photo
    KAM

    "Do those comparing what happened in Brazil last weekend to the January 6 attacks have a point, or are they projecting American divisions onto another country unnecessarily?"

    Option 3: Or do some people just look for any excuse to keep talking about Jan 6?

    (Which is actually about Epiphany, for many people paying attention to what matters in life.)

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  9. Michael.Terrien

    QOTD: There certainly appear to be a lot of parallels. Differences, yes. We're different countries with somewhat different systems. But a lot of similarities.

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  10. Mary Stine

    RE: LUK of the day: It might make more sense to ask if our current evil plotters here (looking at you, Steve Bannon and Steve Miller) have studied South American politics and realized it could be re-enacted here with Trump or some other charismatic narcissist. This is not exactly out of the ordinary history in South America.
    And we'd do well to remember how many Nazis escaped to South America after WWII and flourished there, rarely being brought to justice.
    And that is probably the more important point to ponder: how damaging has it been to both the US and Brazil to have allowed the Nazi Party to remain undisturbed and active lo these many decades? Could these groups be the real force behind the current rise in anti-semitism?
    And while I do not wish to hamper free speech, I think we citizens need to determine where the red line is between free speech and inciting violent abuse, before it is too late.

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