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Democrats aren’t ‘breaking from Israel’—they’re rebranding the status quo

✇The Real News Network
By: Adam Johnson
James Talarico speaks onstage during "Raging Moderates" at the Vox Media Podcast Stage at SXSW on March 14, 2026 in Austin, Texas. Photo by Rick Kern/Getty Images for Vox Media

Are top Democrats actually “shifting” on Israel, or is the PR simply getting more sophisticated? 

After the midterms wrap up and the race for the Democratic 2028 nominition for president kicks off in earnest, this will be a central question those concerned with the US role in the genocide in Gaza must grapple with clearly, honestly, and with—it turns out—a high degree of skepticism and media literacy. That’s because the forces committed to keeping the weapons flowing to Israel quickly adjusted their tactics to meet the mood of the public, and the mood of Democrats in particular. 

Last year for TRNN, I detailed the three main ways AIPAC Democrats will seek to look critical of Israel while assuring that the pro-Israel status quo remains fundamentally unchanged. Since I wrote that breakdown, a fourth talking point—and one that seems inevitable in retrospect—has emerged as a favorite of liberals who want to seem “tough on Israel,” but don’t want to upset the Israel Lobby. This line, which I documented last April, commits to “ending US aid to Israel” which, despite seeming like a meaningful break or a move left, is a policy that first emerged from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the late US Sen. Lindsey Graham. And, as I noted, it was planned out by far-right think tanks Foundation for Defence of Democracies and Heritage Foundation—specifically designed to blunt the primary argument against support for Israel. Last January, Netanyahu told the Economist that he wants to “taper off” formal US military funding. Pro-Israel lobbying organization J-Street then took this right-wing idea and  proceeded to sell the “cut off aid to Israel” line to liberals as something they could take to their constituents as evidence that they are in line with Democratic voters’ overwhelming dislike of Israel, while not changing the status quo. Indeed, as IMEU documented in their critique of the plan, the effort would actually further entrench US-Israeli military alignment. 

The US can “cut off aid to Israel” and still very much continue to arm them. The only thing that has changed in this scenario is that Israel pays for it rather than the US government, but from the perspective of those being starved and maimed in Gaza this distinction matters about as much as the color of the bombs.

Much like the Biden White House’s slippery and misleading rebranding of “ceasefire,” the “ending aid to Israel” line relies on popular misunderstanding of what the load-bearing word means, in this instance, “aid.” In colloquial or common usage, it’s a word for general support—military, diplomatic, and financial. In reality, it simply means subsidizing—e.g. paying for—Israel’s weapons. The US can “cut off aid to Israel” and still very much continue to arm them. The only thing that has changed in this scenario is that Israel pays for it rather than the US government, but from the perspective of those being starved and maimed in Gaza this distinction matters about as much as the color of the bombs. 

As predicted, this “cut off aid” statement is fast becoming the go-to line for Democrats seeking to assure their increasingly anti-Israel base without upsetting the Israel lobby or the Democratic Senate and House leadership they are aligned with. Recently, after receiving criticism for inviting in AIPAC-linked consultants to steer his campaign, Maine Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson released a statement calling Gaza a “genocide” and pledging to “stop funding of Israel’s military”:

Troy Jackson’s public statement yesterday expressing his commitment to end the genocide in Gaza and stop funding Israel’s military was driven by a host of supporter letters sent directly to the campaign on those issues. pic.twitter.com/FMrMBPcU2W

— Nathan Bernard (@nathanTbernard) September 26, 2026

This is a perfect example of a J-Street-curated statement that, to the untrained eye, seems critical of Israel and committed to justice for Palestine, but actually says little of substance. There’s a lot of window dressing and gesturing, but ultimately Jackson’s policy is consistent with that of Benjamin Netanyahu’s. 

Rep. Ro Khanna, who very much appears to be running for president in 2028 and making Gaza central to his pitch for progressives, is similarly muddled in his stance. Despite supporting partial and temporary embargos here and there, Khanna told Hasan Piker in July that a full arms embargo on Israel would be “probably too far.” He has instead focused on the “cutting off aid” line that emerged out of the Israeli security apparatus and found its way into “progressive” circles via J Street.  

Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, James Talarico, likewise gave a similarly underwhelming answer when asked about his position a few weeks later. Asked about Gaza last August on The Breakfast Club Show, he refused to label it a genocide, instead deferring to the “international criminal court” (and ignoring the overwhelming consensus of human rights groups and genocide scholars). Then he promised to “condition military aid” followed by two minutes of Obama-esque vapid empathy-speak. 

That isn’t to say all Democrats are simply rebranding the status quo. It seems, despite his campaigning with central defender of the genocide Kamala Harris, Abdul El-Sayed is expressing a firm commitment to an arms embargo on Israel. Obviously, this is also the case for DSA-endorsed candidates who are not splitting hairs or letting J-Street manage their Israel policy. But these firm commitments are the exceptions. Increasingly, what we’re seeing is a squishy mix of empathy-speak, vague gesturing, highly conditional pledges to “condition aid” and other such abstractions with little in the way of firm commitments. 

The only actions Democrats have, at scale, taken to “break from Israel” is recent spattering of Congressional votes over the past year designed to signal disapproval but change nothing of substance. These bills vary between genuine, if partial, arms embargo and the aforementioned “end aid” framework endorsed by Netyanhau and Graham. It’s complicated, but worth dissecting, because it can help illustrate how much energy and effort is going into these pseudo “breaks,” namely those being pushed by Israel lobbying group J-Street. One House bill from last July sought to “end aid” to Israel. The bill had some merit as it isolated Israel as such. But, like all of these bills, it was effectively a “messaging vote” because it had zero chance of passing, and because it aligned with the Netyanhau-approved “ending aid” framework. Almost half of Democrats in Congress supported it, including long-time reliable Israel ally Nancy Pelosi. 

A few months later, we saw the slightly more substantive, but ultimately performative, partial arms embargo bills in both the House and Senate. Though different, they both involved preventing further sales of certain weapons to Israel given certain conditions. In the House, 104 Democrats backed the measure, and in the Senate, all but seven Democrats, including major Israel supporters, backed the measure. 

These votes, in effect if not intent, end up serving as little more than anti-Israel thingamajigs that liberal zionists in Congress can point to when confronted on the issue as evidence that they are not a rubber stamp for Israeli violence.

But these bills, as everyone involved in their drafting, lobbying, and counter-lobbying know, were totally DOA. They have zero chance of actually passing, much less getting a President Trump veto-proof majority. Thus—despite many activists’ best intentions—they functionally serve as little more than a mechanism for reputation laundering for liberals who’ve backed Israel’s genocide and its broader regional violence, but who can read a poll as well as anyone else. These votes, in effect if not intent, end up serving as little more than anti-Israel thingamajigs that liberal zionists in Congress can point to when confronted on the issue as evidence that they are not a rubber stamp for Israeli violence. Indeed, suspiciously enough, the Senate version last April garnered the support of staunch Israel advocate and AIPAC-money sponge Cory Booker, who grinningly met with Israeli defensive minister Yoav Gallant after Gallant was indicted by the ICC for crimes against humanity. Does anyone think for a second Booker would have backed a bill to prevent weapons sales to Israel if it had a remote chance of passing? Does anyone think his vote in support is evidence he’s “breaking from Israel”? Or is it evidence of something a bit more subtle, and sinister, which is Democrats realize they need to appear as if they’re breaking from Israel without the messiness of actually doing so? 

But if the above bills are largely superficial and performative, why would Hakeem Jeffries write a letter in opposition, one may ask? For the same reason Jeffries agreed to let the vote happen and not discipline those supporting it: it’s all part of an intramural scrimmage between zionist allies who disagree on how best to “rein in” Israel. On substance, nothing fundemental is permitted to change, and the idea of ending military support was never on the table. Jeffires and AIPAC both understand that this is a 80/20 issue against them and are allowing their members more latitude in rhetorical and ideological distance, so long as the weapons flow remains unabated which it, of course, securely remains. 

One of the more difficult tasks for an activist of good faith is being able to tell the difference between genuine, if incremental, progress, and counterinsurgency—that which appears like incremental progress but is, in fact, a move to the right with better PR.

In his urging of support for the bill earlier this year, Rep. Greg Casar, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said that “American people are crying out for an end to US tax dollars subsidizing Israel’s military.” But American people are not so much crying out for this, and certainty Palestinians aren’t, as they are an end to the genocide and occupation. It doesn’t matter if this genocide is “subsidized” by “US tax dollars” or not—the source of military funding is mostly arbitrary and inconsequential. What activists are demanding, what Democratic voters are demanding, is not a “message” bill or limited to “defensive weapons” with 18 qualifiers and carveouts, but support for a total arms embargo in principle and as a long term strategy of ending US support for the dispossession and killing of Palestinians. 

One of the more difficult tasks for an activist of good faith is being able to tell the difference between genuine, if incremental, progress, and counterinsurgency—that which appears like incremental progress but is, in fact, a move to the right with better PR. Sorting out the difference in the coming months is going to be essential to make sure we don’t just elect a whole new crop of liberals who, despite more convincing crocodile tears and more sophisticated handwringing, just go back to shipping weapons systems and scrambling the sixth fleet to defend Israel’s next “defensive war.” 

As voters concerned with the full-scale destruction of Gaza analyze the statements of politicians seeking to appear “good on Gaza” in the coming months, there are two central commitments they must attempt to pin down: (1) support for a full arms embargo without any conditional statements or tortured caveats and (2) support for the Boycott Divestment and Sanction movement, which seeks to economically isolate Israel. These are the positions that would logically follow from a belief that the country in question is committing genocide—as top progressives likely seeking the White House, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ro Khanna—said they believe. These measures—not nickel and diming “offensive” versus “defensive,” not singling out “Netanyahu,” not making vague promises to “condition aid” if Israel meets some unknown, arbitrary benchmark of humane mass killing—are the only thing that will move the needle and compel Israel to temper its exterminationist policies and plans. Only one member of Congress, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, unequivocally supports BDS, but certainly far more are capable of committing to a full arms embargo. If they cannot do even this bare minimum, and do so clearly, then the only logical conclusion one can reach is they are simply saying nice-sounding words, and checking the rhetorical box of “genocide,” so they can get elected then go back to enforcing and maintaining the genocidal status quo. 

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The real crisis for men is capitalism: A conversation with Dr. Mark Anthony Neal

✇The Real News Network
By: Maximillian Alvarez

From the heinous crimes of the Epstein class to the Cornell 7, from the toxic cultures of the “manosphere” to the increase of antisocial relationships with online pornography and AI bots, we need to talk about what is going on with men in our society. We speak with renowned scholar, author, and commentator Dr. Mark Anthony Neal about his new book Save a Seat for Me: Notes on American Fatherhood, and about the ways American capitalism damages everyone and trains boys to become monstrous men.

Credits:

  • Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I’m here at Red Emmas at the Baltimore Book Festival, and I’m sitting with Dr. Mark Anthony Neal. Brother Mark, it’s so great to have you back here in Baltimore, man. I know I only got you for a second, and we’re talking about your incredible new book, Save a Seat for Me, Notes on American Fatherhood. And I was thinking as another father in America in 2026, I wanted to ask you, it doesn’t take PhDs like we have to know that we’ve got a real fricking crisis in this country with men and masculinity and masculine culture and fatherhood, or we have a whole lot of crises that men are experiencing but aren’t dealing with well. So what do you make of all this? What do we do about it? And how can your book help us get there?

Dr. Mark Anthony Neal:

I think we have tried, America has tried to raise generations of warriors, if you will, to be on the front lines of American imperialism. And you can’t be human to do that. You can’t think, you can’t question, you can’t be vulnerable. So what we have done is raise two or three generations of men in America who don’t know how to be human, who don’t know how to lead into full range of who they are. We’ve been socialized to show up only certain kinds of ways, anger, rage, the ability to follow directions. Things like vulnerability are made fun of at the highest levels.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And those of us who are very vulnerable people have been made fun of.

Dr. Mark Anthony Neal:

Because of that.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Because of that.

Dr. Mark Anthony Neal:

We’ve been made to think that our responsibility in a capitalist system has literally been reduced to only making money, that our only value. And I think about this a lot as a Black father, my own father, that I’m sure he thought that his only value to me was making sure that I was fed and clothed and taken care of. And I get all of that, but I needed much more from him. As a father, I needed to be more than that for my daughters. And so I think when we look at young men who are clearly feeling so much with no outlet, their outlets become dangerous behaviors, self-directed violence,

Maximillian Alvarez:

Toxic online cultures,

Dr. Mark Anthony Neal:

All kinds of addictions, alcohol, Percocet, weed, porn. I mean, we can name all these things and understand it. And the fact that so many of the young men in the world today, their lives are what they can connect with on their handheld device. They don’t actually have relationships with people in the real world, don’t see a value in that. And I don’t know how we sustain that. I don’t know how we sustain our humanity in a situation where we don’t value human relationship anymore.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and it’s like you see that the path that we’re on as a society or what’s left of a society is being driven by the sociopathic, psychopathic, bloodthirsty –

Dr. Mark Anthony Neal:

Or just plain evils.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Just plain evil maniacs who want a future where they get all the benefits of human society, but don’t have to deal with any of the humans in it. Whether they’re thinking of like, oh, AI is going to replace all their jobs and we’re going to get all the money. They’re not thinking about what the heck that’s going to mean for us. They’re just going to push us into slums and prisons and police us, hunt us, surveil us. That’s their big goddamn plan. And I think you put it so powerfully that it’s like so many men out there have the same human needs that we all have and we’re feeling them so acutely the more isolated we are, but we’re looking to find, we’re seeking inhuman avenues.

Dr. Mark Anthony Neal:

I mean, think about all the folks who are in relationships with chat bots. I mean, it’s surreal. I can’t have a relationship with an actual person. I don’t desire a relationship with an actual person. I need to have a relationship with some facsimile, some avatar that somehow that’s more meaningful to me than having a relationship with a person.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah. And I think even as a editor in chief and co-ED of a media network, as a media star, we recognize there’s only so much you can do online. You got to get the hell offline and you got to meet each other back on that level of shared humanity and shared reality because that’s the only way we’re going to deal with anything, anything in this country.

Dr. Mark Anthony Neal:

And that’s why the Baltimore Book Festival is really important. First of all, not only just a reminder, someplace that’s celebrating the written word, obviously, but folks coming together in community. We have to get back to a culture where we share in community. We read together, we listen together, we debate together instead of these media silos. I’m going to have this debate over here on this network and you’re going to have this debate over there and never the twain shall meet.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and final question, but it goes really to the heart of your book. Here in Baltimore, I see this every day. I feel it as a father, but right down the street from where I live in Mondamin, earlier this summer, there were six youth who were caught on camera just beating the hell out of an elderly member of the community, a former Black Panther. It was horrific. I’ve interviewed this man and the community that’s trying to help him, but clearly everyone who is showing up to help is seeing in that video the deficit of guidance, of fatherhood, of love.

Dr. Mark Anthony Neal:

Of respect. Basic respect.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So what can we do about that in our everyday lives at the person to person level?

Dr. Mark Anthony Neal:

We have to be willing not just to be witnesses to these experiences or commentators.

We have to intervene and feel comfortable enough to intervene. Whoever sat down with those young men, first of all, to explain, because the easy part is to say, no, this man was important to our movement in the past. The more difficult thing is like, no, this man is important because he’s another human being and you should value life and his humanity. But if they are young men who do not value their own humanity, don’t see their own humanity, they’re going to reproduce that behavior over and over again. And so we have to have the willingness because it’s real easy to go, I’m just going to build my life in this silo and protect my family and I get it. But to take that next step to say, okay, I might not be able to talk to all six of these brothers, try to talk to two of them.

Begin that process, that one-on-one conversation that can blossom into something that’s much more significant.

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“America has tried to raise generations of warriors to be on the front lines of American imperialism… So what we have done is raise two or three generations of men in America who don't know how to be human.”
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Amazon is deploying AI to spy on its workers and bust unions before they form

✇The Real News Network
By: Jonathan Rosenblum
A worker walks inside Amazon's LCY3 Fulfillment Centre in Dartford, east of London, on June 4, 2026, on the second day of company's 'Delivering the Future EMEA '26' event. Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP via Getty Images

This article was originally published by Truthout on Sept. 30, 2026. It is shared here under a  Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.

The 18th-century notion of the panopticon — a circular prison design with a guard station in the middle, allowing a single officer to enforce discipline by keeping watch over all the prisoners — has become real in the 21st century through AI-driven surveillance against workers: It’s the Amazon warehouse.

It should be no surprise that the company that harnessed technology to create a vast, $2.7 trillion empire would employ the same sophistication to enforce workplace discipline and tamp down insurgent unionization efforts. A recent disclosure of Amazon’s internal “employee relations” documents reveals just how extreme Amazon’s methods of warehouse surveillance and control have become.

Amazon employs what it calls the “Atlas” model, inputting into a computerized model a staggering amount of information on workers, their thoughts and behaviors, the workplace environment, and myriad other factors — “hundreds of data points,” according to the company. Atlas produces not just a granular measurement of ongoing worker unrest, worksite by worksite around the world, but also a prediction model for future organizing. It’s like the “precrime” police in the film Minority Report who use psychic powers to identify and apprehend would-be criminals before they act — except in this case, it’s an AI-driven tool used by the billionaire owners of one of the richest companies in history to head off rebellion among its low-wage workforce. And this is not Tom Cruise play-acting; it’s very real.

Workers anywhere who have endured anti-union campaigns can relate to stories of overbearing surveillance by management; the Atlas model, however, takes the spying to an entirely new level.

Details of the Atlas model came to light recently as a result of a legal dispute between Amazon and Unifor, the Canadian private sector union. Last year, British Columbia’s Labour Relations Board awarded union certification to Unifor at Amazon’s YVR2 warehouse outside Vancouver, finding that the company had broadly interfered in the union drive. It was the second union certification at Amazon in North America — the other being the 2022 union win at JFK8 in Staten Island, New York. But in contrast to the U.S., where Amazon has managed to stall bargaining for four and a half years because of weak labor laws, the B.C. Labour Relations Board ordered Amazon to recognize the union and negotiate. Contract bargaining commenced last December.

Not surprisingly, Amazon has dragged its feet in negotiations, prompting the union to file unfair labor practice charges with the Labour Board. Following a series of hearings earlier this year, the Labour Board found that Amazon violated provincial law. In August it ordered a remarkable step — first-contract arbitration at YVR2. That fight remains in play, but as a result of the legal proceedings, Amazon was required to turn over documents to the Labour Board and Unifor. Unifor has shared them with Truthout, and they can be viewed here.

Atlas produces not just a granular measurement of ongoing worker unrest, worksite by worksite around the world, but also a prediction model for future organizing.

In addition to the Atlas model revelation (beginning on Page 19 of the document), the material includes more than 100 pages that reveal in great detail how Amazon trains its frontline managers in union-busting. My colleague at the Center for Work and Democracy, Ben Fong, has written about this other portion of the disclosed material.

“Amazon’s own documents pull back the curtain on what workers have been telling us for years,” said Justin Gniposky, Unifor’s organizing director. “Behind the friendly PR, Amazon sees workers as property and treats their fundamental right to unionize as a threat to be managed and then eliminated.”

Amazon did not respond to Truthout’s request for comment on the Atlas model.

The documents describe the Atlas model as “a labor risk framework to clarify how Amazon evaluates emerging workforce issues, labor union targets, and internal or external labor threats.” The Atlas model ingests hundreds of data points: employee trainings completed; health and safety incidents, from simple first-aid cases to serious injuries; feedback from workers on management; worker tenure and turnover; the proximity of a warehouse to another workplace experiencing union activity; local minimum wage rates and other area economic conditions; and even the temperatures inside and outside of the warehouse.

Amazon seems especially thorough about scraping data from worker communications channels to plug into the Atlas model — the company’s internal “Voice of the Associate” (VOA) electronic bulletin board, the answers to digital questions posed daily to workers, and externally, forums including Reddit — “to understand the tenor of the discussion at the site level,” according to the documents.

“Behind the friendly PR, Amazon sees workers as property and treats their fundamental right to unionize as a threat to be managed and then eliminated.”

Atlas uses AI to identify phrases and “common keywords” to allow managers to do a “deep dive into the worker population driving the discussion.” Atlas also looks at the upvotes or other responses — positive, negative, or neutral — that the comments elicit, and the volume of those worker reactions. All of these data points go into Atlas and let managers “look around corners to identify developing themes” so they can “tailor strategic responses for addressing emerging risk.”

Amazon also tracks and documents all organizing activities that managers detect, and records them under the category of “employee relations events.” Each activity is assigned a severity score. “High severity” events include employees signing union cards, delegations of workers approaching management with demands, protests, sickouts, and work stoppages.

Atlas uses mathematical modeling to create a point system for all these data points, assigning a “labor score” to each workplace. The scale is further broken down into tiers, with the Tier 5 designation applied to facilities with high scores, where there is “no immediate perceived risk,” and Tier 1 applied to facilities where “future activity is imminent.” Amazon’s union busters focus largely on Tier 1 and 2 facilities.

Atlas produces extensive spreadsheets ranking different facilities and looking not just at raw “labor scores” but also at monthly trends. In 2024, the year the documents date from, Amazon was most concerned about union activity at 16 warehouses it had ranked as Tier 1. For instance, at LDJ5, a Staten Island sortation center across the street from JFK8, Atlas noted that leading issues of worker concern were “bathroom breaks, equipment, rest breaks, leadership/management, temperature.” The spreadsheet noted that “internal activists” — workers — were organizing, and that by looking at month-over-month trends, LDJ5 was experiencing “Risk Increase,” with the phrase placed inside a bright red box. At four of these Tier 1 facilities, the spreadsheet noted, the threat of union activity was sufficiently high to justify deploying Amazon’s “rapid response” team: union busters who travel to hotspots of organizing throughout Amazon’s global network.

Union organizing at Amazon is not just a battle over economics; it’s also a fight for basic freedom and democracy.

But the main value of Atlas seems to be predictive. For the Tier 2 worksites (“future activity is highly probable”), the spreadsheet poses these questions: “Which sites are showing the most future risk that are not Tier 1 sites yet?” and “What is the risk in each business line and which has the most risk, is it increasing or decreasing? What is driving the risk?” Tier 2 spreadsheets in the document look at the number of investigations of workers that management has handled in the last month, whether that number is trending up or down, the number of worker appeals of those investigations, and — notably — the percentage of negative worker comments on internal bulletin boards.

Voice of the Associate and other internal bulletin boards are key focal points. Charts in the document track how often workers raise particular topics, like weather, time off, breakroom amenities, management treatment, and restroom cleanliness. They also analyze the “vector” of each issue: “What are the top drivers of negative Sentiment and change MoM [month over month]?” is one question posed in the document. “What Sites are spiking MoM in negative sentiment? What themes are driving the sentiment? What anecdotes can we pull?”

Atlas is not strictly a North American tool. One chart analyzes trends for warehouses globally, documenting “employee relations events” — worker organizing — and cataloguing the number of worker comments on Voice of the Associate and the percentage of those comments that were negative. Two warehouses in the English Midlands where workers have been organizing with the GMB union — both Tier 1 sites in Atlas’ taxonomy — showed high volumes of negative VOA posts. A warehouse in Melbourne, Australia, also showed mostly negative Voice of the Associate posts, while posts were mostly not negative in some of the warehouses in Poland, Germany, and Italy.

All this is surely a tiny sliver of Atlas’s output. The former head of Amazon’s HR platforms, Bud Cashatt, boasted on LinkedIn recently about how his department created “predictive site-risk ML touching every building in Amazon’s global network.” (“ML” stands for machine learning, where programmers train AI to learn patterns and build predictions based on analyzing vast quantities of data.)

Did Jeremy Bentham, the 18th-century British philosopher who dreamed up the panopticon, anticipate Atlas? Nearly 250 years ago, he imagined his panopticon as a useful tool for prisons, “madhouses,” and also “to the business of manufactories,” the industrialized manufacturing plants then just emerging in England. Speaking of his watchman in the center of the operation — the human Atlas of his time — Bentham wrote, “The concealment of his person will be of use.”

The documents uncovered at the B.C. Labour Board shine a light on Amazon’s concealed watchman. Atlas illustrates just how far Amazon will go to try to rule the warehouse floor. And its scope also underscores just how terrified Amazon’s masters are of their own workforce rising up and claiming their due.

Bentham theorized that the panopticon would facilitate social control: He imagined that incarcerated people would behave, not knowing at any moment whether they were being watched by the guard. It was, he wrote, “A new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind.”

But what happens when prisoners — or workers — resist such attempts at social control? There’s no level of AI sophistication that can erase the reality that Amazon’s workers move millions of packages every day, and without their labor, the Amazon supply chain collapses.

Peter B. Olney, the retired organizing director of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, calls Atlas “a promethean tool for union busting and the thwarting of any employee organizing.”

To fight back against this “existential threat” to basic worker rights and unions, Olney says, “we have to get real about deploying massive resources towards organizing the workforce and finding their serious vulnerabilities and choke points.”

Today we see emerging fights everywhere against a billionaire class intent on harnessing AI and technology to undermine basic democracy and impose authoritarianism, both in the workplace and throughout society: in revolts against the algorithmically driven content we are force-fed on the internet; protests against and sabotage of the Flock cameras on neighborhood lampposts; and resistance against the replacement of workers with bots and computers. The Atlas model places Amazon workers at the center of this global fight against the AI billionaires. And it highlights that union organizing at Amazon is not just a battle over economics; it’s also a fight for basic freedom and democracy.

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Trump’s plan to swing Brazil’s election for Bolsonaro | Ep. 15

✇The Real News Network
By: Michael Fox
A supporter of far-right lawmaker and presidential candidate for the Social Liberal Party (PSL), Jair Bolsonaro, wears a mask of US President Donald Trump as he celebrates after Bolsonaro won Brazil's presidential election, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on October 28, 2018. Photo by Miguel SCHINCARIOL / AFP via Getty Images
https://www.spreaker.com/show/5958129/episodes/feed

Brazil votes this Sunday, and the Trump administration has spent months trying to tilt the outcome toward far-right presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro. Tariffs. Terrorist designations. Revoked visas. Frequent meetings with the Bolsonaro family. Taken alone, each move looks random. Put the pieces together, and a picture emerges: U.S. interference in Brazil’s 2026 elections. 

Over the last year, Trump has met frequently with members of the Bolsonaro family. In June, the State Department put two Brazilian gangs on the terrorist list. Just a few weeks later, Trump shared an article on Truth Social that said Brazil was his next big challenge. Less than a month later, in July, Trump imposed new 25% tariffs on Brazilian goods. In August, Trump revoked the U.S. visa of the Brazilian ambassador.

The Brazilian Intelligence Agency recently raised the risk of external influence and interference by the United States in Brazil’s 2026 elections to a quote, “critical level.”

This is Episode 15 of Under the Shadow, Season 2. 

Under the Shadow is an investigative narrative podcast series that walks back in time, telling the story of the past by visiting momentous places in the present. Season 2 responds in real time to the Trump administration’s onslaught on Latin America.

Follow Under the Shadow on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Hosted by Latin America-based journalist Michael Fox.
This podcast is produced in partnership between The Real News Network and NACLA.
It is supported, in part, by Global Exchange.

VOTE by October 15: Under the Shadow has been nominated for three podcast Signal Awards. Please consider voting for Under the Shadow and The Real News:

Panamerican Dispatch

You can check out Michael Fox’s new reporting project on Brazil. 

It’s called Panamerican Dispatch. It’s a project of The Real News in partnership with Global Exchange. The website is www.panamericandispatch.org

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Theme music by Michael Fox’s band, Monte Perdido. Monte Perdido’s 2024 album Ofrenda is available on Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you listen to music.

Other music from Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound.

Script editing by Heather Gies. Hosted, written, produced, mixed, and edited by Michael Fox.

Guests: 

Resources: 

Support Under the Shadow

Please consider supporting this podcast and Michael Fox’s reporting on his Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also see exclusive pictures, video, and interviews.

You can subscribe to Michael Fox’s new free speech podcast, The Battle for Free Speech on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Michael Fox:

Hi folks. This is your host, Michael Fox. Before I get started, I wanted to let you know that I have big news. First, this season of Under the Shadow has been nominated for three podcast Signal Awards. It’s really exciting, and you can help us by heading over to signalaward.com and voting for Under the Shadow. I’ll add direct links in the show notes that will take you straight there. Second, last week I launched a new website called Pan American Dispatch. It’s a project of the Real News. We’re translating daily articles from Portuguese and Spanish into English for a US audience. Over the next two months, we’ll be exclusively focused on covering the Brazilian elections and Trump’s attempts to sway them. That is what this entire episode is about. And if you want to get all of the news about what’s happening in real time, please consider subscribing to our Substack.

You can find us at panamericandispatch.org. We’re also on X, Blue Sky, Instagram, and TikTok. Our handle is @PAdispatch. Okay, that’s it. I hope you enjoy the show. On May 26th, 2026, a 45-year-old Brazilian senator named Flavio Bolsonado met with US President Donald Trump at the White House. Flavio is the presidential candidate for the far right in Brazil in the upcoming elections in October. This is what he had to say at the annual conservative political action committee meeting in Texas earlier this year.

Flávio Bolsonaro:

And let me look you in the eyes and tell you, we will win.

Michael Fox:

Flavio is the son and political heir of the former far right president Jair Bolsonado, a close ally of the US president. In the meeting at the Oval Office in May, Flavio Bolsonado reportedly asked Trump to designate the Brazilian drug gangs, Primero Commando de Capital and the Commando Vermelio as foreign terrorist organizations. After the meeting, Flavio spoke to the press.

He said, “I asked President Trump emphatically to designate as soon as possible the PCC and the Commando Vermelio as foreign terrorist organizations.” This might not seem like such a big deal, but it is. The United States has sometimes used that very designation as the pretext to invade or interfere in foreign countries. The US placed the Venezuelan gangs, Trende Aragua and Cartel de los Soles on the list back in 2025, and fighting those alleged terrorists was one of the excuses the United States used for invading Venezuela and kidnapping President Nicholas Maduro on January 3rd of this year. In other words, this designation carries weight.

Trump agreed to Flavio’s request. Just three days after meeting with Flavio Bolsonaro, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that those two Brazilian gangs would be added to the list of foreign terrorist organizations. Flavio responded in a letter to Rubio, thanking him for the classification and offering to place his transition team at the disposal of the White House if he’s elected. For months, the United States has been escalating the pressure on Brazil in the lead up to the presidential elections with the goal of helping to lift Flavio Bolsonaro to the top office. Just a few weeks after the State Department put the Brazilian gangs on the terrorist list, Trump shared an article on Truth Social that said Brazil was his next big challenge. Less than a month later in July, Trump imposed new 25% tariffs on Brazilian goods. In August, Trump revoked the US visa of the Brazilian ambassador.

It was an apparent tit for tat after Brazil denied visas to two US State Department officials who planned to travel to Brazil to meet with former President Jair Bolsonaro. I could go on. The point here, as many people have pointed out, is that there isn’t just one thing that Trump is doing to try and sway the vote in favor of Bolsonaro. It’s a whole combination of moves, like a jigsaw puzzle with many pieces taken alone, and it’s just a random assortment of colors and shapes. But when you start to put the pieces in place, a picture begins to emerge. See, Trump allies have won big elections across Latin America. In recent years, right-wing candidates have taken back or held onto power in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Bolivia, and Peru. And they’ve done so with the help of US President Donald Trump, who’s thrown his weight around to boost right-wing candidates, and also with the support of bot farms and shady electoral campaign practices linked to Washington and Mar-a-Lago, as we looked at in the last episode.

Donald Trump:

But on this historic day, we come together to announce a brand new military coalition to eradicate the criminal cartels plaguing our region.

Michael Fox:

Many of those countries have now joined forces in Trump’s shield of the America’s alliance, but there are a few holdouts, and Brazil is one of the most important.

Alexander Main:

The upcoming election in Brazil is really going to be extremely consequential for the entire region.

Michael Fox:

Alexander Main is the director of international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Alexander Main:

Brazil is the country with the largest economy, biggest population in Latin America, and it’s also one of the few countries that is still holding out against US pressure, pressure to align with the Trump administration’s agenda in the region.

Michael Fox:

The first round election is on October 4th in just a couple of days, and the runoff will take place three weeks later on October 25th. Bolsonaro is facing off against the longtime workers’ party icon, Luis Ignacio Lula de Silva. He’s the current president and he’s running for reelection. I have been covering the campaigns here in Brazil in recent weeks. I’ve attended rallies for both Lula and Bolsonaro. Today, I’m going to walk you through what’s at stake, and most importantly, how Trump is exerting underhanded pressure on the country ahead of the vote. As a leak document showed last week, the Brazilian Intelligence Agency has raised the risk of external influence and interference by the United States and Brazil’s 2026 elections to a “critical level.” According to the report, there is a trend of escalating pressure on Brazil and a quote, “selective intensification and reconfiguration of the pressure exerted by the United States.” It’s a textbook example of foreign election interference today, a multifaceted jigsaw.

People are concerned, but they’re also standing up, and that’s what makes this episode so interesting. It’s happening in real time. You have Trump attempting to sway the vote, and you also have people pushing back.

Like Lula’s recent speech at the United Nations where he told the US president that Brazil will not be the backyard of any country.

Or this woman, a small farmer who I spoke with at a Lula rally in Southern Brazil. “We’re not afraid of Trump, “she said. “We know what he wants to do and we’re not going to let him. We are the resistance. We’re not afraid of him, just like Lula isn’t afraid. Lula showed us that we are not less than any country,” she said. That and so much more in a minute. This is Under the Shadow, an investigative narrative podcast series that looks at the role of the United States abroad in the past and the very present. This podcast is a co-production in partnership with The Real News and NACLA. I’m your host, Michael Fox, longtime radio reporter, editor, journalist, the producer and host of the podcast’s Brazil on Fire: Stories of Resistance and my new series, The Battle for Free Speech. I’ve spent the better part of the last 20 years in Latin America.

I’ve seen firsthand the role of the US government abroad, and most often sadly, it is not for the better. Invasions, coup, sanctions, support for authoritarian regimes. Politically and economically, the United States has cast a long shadow over Latin America for the past 200 years. It still does. This is season two of Under the Shadow Trump’s attack. Episode 15, election meddling in Brazil.

Okay, before we dive into the allegations of election interference, let me set the scene. To do that, I want to take you back to a month and a half ago to the launch of the campaigns here in Brazil. I was in Sao Paulo covering Lula’s kickoff. Some of this section of the episode is based off of reporting I did at the time for the world and the real news. It’s August 16th, 2026. Tens of thousands of supporters of President Luis Idnacio Lula de Silva are packed into May 1st stadium in Sao Paulo. Among them is Sida Maya. She’s the secretary of women’s public policies in the nearby municipality of Maua.

“This is living history,” she says. “I’m participating in a historic moment. It’s a great feeling and we’re going to elect Lula.” Next to her, her husband Valmirmaya holds back tears. “It’s emotional, “he says. Lula’s campaign chose this stadium to kick off his run for a fourth and final term as president. This is where Lula got his start. In 1979, Lula was a young leader at the ABC Medal Workers Union. He led an iconic strike and rally at this same stadium. The workers won and it marked the beginning of the end of the country’s military dictatorship. Valmir Maya was there then and he’s here now.

“We wanted what we got,” he says, “to transform Brazil into a democratic country. That was our struggle, and Lula was the expression of this.” Inside the stadium, President Lula strode onto a long stage wearing a Panama hat and a white shirt. From the bleachers, he seemed to float above the sea of supporters in red, the color of Lula’s workers’ party. Lula’s top campaign promise has always been about battling hunger. Over the years, he’s lifted millions from poverty, increased access to education, health, and infrastructure, in particular in impoverished Northeastern Brazil. Lula told the crowd that there was much work left to be done, that they had to think of the future. He said they had to invest even more in education, that he wanted to continue to develop jobs and industry for Brazil. 300 miles to the east, Lula’s challenger, Flavio Bolsonaro, launched his campaign on Copacabana Beach in his hometown of Rio de Janeiro.

“Come with me and rescue our nation,” he said, “God above everyone, Brazil above all.” Flavio Bolsonaro has attacked the left and promised to fight crime and insecurity, cut bureaucracy, promote private business and privatizations, and develop close ties with the United States. Much of his rhetoric and that of his supporters is wrapped in a religious language of good versus evil.

“You are the son of hope,” said a pastor at his campaign launch. “You are the first born. You received the legacy of representing your father, and now for everything that is sacred on the face of the earth, honor your father. “The savior trope goes over well with his evangelical supporters, an important base for Bolsonaro and other far-right politicians in Brazil, as we looked at in depth in my 2022 podcast, Brazil on Fire. Blase Narujo is a youth pastor at an evangelical church in a working class neighborhood of Sao Paulo. He joined others on the streets in mid-August to promote Bolsonaro and other far-right candidates running for local office.

He said,” I believe that Flavio Bolsonado is the only viable candidate who can beat Lula and the workers’ party. “I’m a Christian here,” he told me. “I behave as a Christian, but I’m also a political activist here on the streets to defend my beliefs,” he said. Flavio Bolsonado also has powerful support in high places, in particular, as we heard earlier from Donald Trump. If you remember, the US president is a longtime ally of Flavio’s father, Jair Bolsonado. Jair is currently on house arrest. He was first barred from running for office for spreading lies about the country’s electoral system. Last year, the Supreme Court convicted him of plotting a coup to return to power. Before his rise as the leader of Brazil’s far right, Jair Bolsonaro was a backbench congressman for decades, outlandish, but mostly obscure. And then he ran for president.

Speaker 5:

There are a few things that drew inspiration for you.

Jair Bolsonaro:

Very special guy. Turned out to be a great friend of mine.

Michael Fox:

Bolsonaro fashioned himself after Trump. In fact, in Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral campaign in 2018, international media often called him the Trump of the tropics. He and Trump met a number of times while they were both president.

Jair Bolsonaro:

And I think we can say that Brazil and the United States are as close or closer as they’ve ever been.

Michael Fox:

Last year, Trump imposed 50% tariffs on Brazil in part because of the country’s criminal trial against the former president.

Donald Trump:

They’re treating President Bolsonaro very unfairly. He’s a good man. I know him well. I negotiated with him.

Michael Fox:

And let me be honest, there are many supporters of Bolsonaro who look up to Trump and want him to use his leverage to help their candidate, Jair Bolsonaro’s son and protege Flavio Bolsonaro. On September 7th, members of the far right in Brazil hit the streets across the country to rally for Flavio. I covered the march in the southern Brazilian city of Florianopolis. There, numerous people told me how much they admired Trump and how grateful they were for his support. Adalberto Luis de Santos is marching with a blue hat with the insignia of the United States. He and his wife are draped in Brazilian flags. “We’re hoping for support from the United States,” he said. “I believe Trump can help us. All Brazilians need the support of someone from abroad. “. “Trump is really important,” another man in the march told me. “The external pressure is very important.

“. A woman in the march carrying a flag and a yellow hat told me,” Just the simple fact that Trump is in power and acts democratically in favor of freedom makes all of the difference for our people. “.

“We don’t want Brazil to turn into another Venezuela,” she said. “I’ve heard that narrative countless times in Brazil and during elections in countries across Latin America for years. It’s the ever-present boogeyman of so-called communist Venezuela, but fear of the Venezuelan fate took on an even more serious dimension after the US invasion of Caracas earlier this year. The sentiments of so many Bolsonaro supporters are a sign of just how polarized the political debate is and how much the far right in Brazil looks up to the US president. Two weeks later, I covered another rally in the same city, this one in support of President Lula.

People had a lot to say about Trump and his efforts to influence their presidential decisions. I asked them, “Are you afraid of what Trump and the United States could do during this election to try and support Bolsonaro?” “Yes, I’m really afraid of that, “said one man carrying a Lula flag. “They want to take away our sovereignty. They want to invade our lands. They want to take what is ours and let Brazil be a colony of another country.” “Of course we’re afraid, “said someone else,” but we believe that Lula is well ahead in the election and we won’t allow Trump to destroy the election. “What do you think about Trump and are you concerned that Trump might try and do something with the elections here in

Speaker 7:

Brazil? Yeah, we’ve seen a lot of his work here in Latin America that we are very scared. Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, Argentina. So we are very scared because Latin America is being contaminated by him and his work, so it’s very scary and we don’t want him in here or anything with him.

Michael Fox:

People have a lot to be concerned about. When I was in Sao Paulo in August, I sat down with Igor Fusser at a cafe near Palista Avenue. We’ve known each other for years. He’s a professor of foreign relations at Brazil’s ABC Federal University. I asked him how he sees the US actions against Brazil at this moment.

He said, “This is not just about the United States trying to remove the government of a left-wing party, the workers’ party, or a left-wing leader, which is Lula. It’s about subjecting Brazil to the policies of the United States, and Brazil being the largest country in Latin America is precisely the biggest obstacle to the American project of global dominance of the Western hemisphere,” he said. Remember, over the last year, as we’ve looked at throughout this podcast, Trump has pushed the United States into a new era of dominance over Latin America, the likes of which the region has not seen in decades. Boat strikes in the Caribbean, the US invasion of Venezuela, and the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro, the oil blockade on Cuba, and Trump throwing his weight around and meddling in elections across Latin America. It’s all justified by a renewed Monroe doctrine. Here’s Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, underlining that point.

Pete Hegseth:

President Trump has established the Trump corollary of the Monroe Doctrine, the Don Roe doctrine, and the war department is implementing it as fast as we can.

Michael Fox:

Brazil is the latest battleground. It’s playing out in the open and behind the scenes. It’s early August. The Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism is meeting in Sao Paulo. At the meeting circulating in the crowd are staff from the US Consulate in Sao Paulo, their mission to woo Brazilian journalists into conversations about the country’s electoral process and the state of “freedom of expression” in the country. This was reported by several independent journalists at the conference and then published by independent journalist Leandro DeMori, the former executive editor of The Intercept Brazil. According to Demorti, three journalists at the event confirmed the actions of the consular officials. Two journalists said they were offered assistance with US visas if they needed them, even though the meetings with the officials about the country’s elections were to be held in Sao Paulo.

Washington has leaned on two key narratives to demonize Brazil in recent years. One, that freedom of expression is under attack in Brazil because of its attempts to reign in social media disinformation, and two, that the country’s electoral system is faulty and prone to errors. Both of those claims are false. Brazil has long held certified free and fair elections, and freedom of speech is alive and well, although Brazil embraces a more inclusive harmonious definition of how the freedom of speech fits into the country’s other laws. Episode 12 of this series goes deeper into those claims and their fallout. DiMorti’s reporting about the recent journalism forum brings up more questions than answers. What were the consular officials trying to achieve? Did some journalists take the bait? If so, how will this be weaponized? We don’t have answers, but it’s another piece of the scrambled jigsaw puzzle.

Here’s another, and it’s just one example of how the meddling campaign has been building. In mid-September, less than two weeks ago, Flavio Bolsonaro’s brother, Eduardo, met with President Donald Trump at the White House. As we looked at in the last episode, Eduardo is a former congressional representative who now lives in the United States. The Brazilian Supreme Court sentenced him earlier this year to four years in prison for his actions in the US, lobbying the Trump administration to intimidate the Brazilian judiciary amid the trial against his father. According to reports, Eduardo traveled to Washington to ask Trump to impose sanctions on members of the Lula government and the Supreme Court, including Justice Alexandre Morais. If you’ve been following Brazil or my reporting, you might remember that Morais was the justice that led the trials against the dissemination of fake news in the country and also against Jair Bolsonaro.

Jair Bolsonaro:

Also developing this morning, the Trump administration placing sanctions on a Brazilian Supreme Court justice over concerns of human rights violations and politicized prosecutions.

Michael Fox:

Last year, the US sanctioned Mordice for supposedly carrying out human rights abuse, including arbitrary detention. Those sanctions were lifted four months later, but they were a thinly veiled retaliation for the trial against Bolsonaro and also Morais’s fight with ex-owner Elon Musk, which we looked at in depth in episode 12. There is no question the battle over Brazil right now is also taking place online and Silicon Valley is playing its part.

On Wednesday, September 23rd, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, took down President Lula’s Facebook page and blocked his campaign from running political ads. The platform gave no justification for the move. Lula’s workers’ party and his electoral coalition demanded answers. Lula’s campaign asked for the immediate return of the account. The campaign’s lawyers told the platform that the restriction “poses a serious risk to the candidate’s level playing field in the election.” The head of the Workers’ Party national communications team, Eden Valadaris, said they hadn’t ruled out taking the case to the superior electoral court. He wrote on X, “Brazil’s electoral contest, its campaigns, and its vote cannot be left to the mercy of the political preferences of the big tech companies whose supposed programming errors only hit and harm one campaign and one candidate.” One candidate, meaning Lula. By the next morning, the page was back up, but Lula’s electoral coalition said Meta’s actions harm the presidential campaign.

Remember that Meta was founded and is run by Mark Zuckerberg. He’s a close ally of President Donald Trump.

Jair Bolsonaro:

Thank you very, very much.

Michael Fox:

In fact, he was at Trump’s inauguration for his second term alongside the heads of Apple, Google, Amazon, and of course, Tesla and ex – CEO, Elon Musk. I want to talk about something important today because it’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram. Zuckerberg got rid of fact-checking at Meta in early 2025, just before Trump came into power last year, and that’s important because there are now fewer constraints on the spread of fake news or misinformation on the platform. In late August, Amnesty International tested this lack of guardrails in Brazil. It sent 15 different AI-generated election-related political disinformation ads to Facebook to see if the platform could discern between truth and falsehood. Meta failed to block most of them. A similar test run by the eco movement in Brazil in mid-September showed that nearly 90% of the disinformation ads it attempted to run on Meta were approved, including “AI ads depicting execution style threats against lawmakers and calling for a stop the steal style coup.” And I want to say one more thing about the role of Silicon Valley’s big tech platforms.

They are paying attention to what’s happening in Brazil. Here’s just one example. Last year, lawmakers and a congressional committee in Brazilia were discussing a bill on AI regulation. According to the fact-checking agency, Ausfatos, big tech lobbyists visited committee members more than 80 times over a five-month period. The tech company that met with members in Brazilia the most was Meta, which made more than a third of those visits.

There’s another layer to all of this, another puzzle piece if you like. In the last episode of this podcast, I took an in-depth look at the work of the Argentine political strategist, Fernando Cerimedo. Remember, Serimedo has led right-wing digital campaigns across Latin America, and he did so with the help of Washington and Trump’s former campaign manager and digital strategist, Brad Parscali. This is what he had to say earlier this year in Mar-a-Lago when he was presented an award for best Hispanic Political Consultant of the Year.

Jair Bolsonaro:

I want to say something in English. Thank you to Brad Parscale for believing me all the time and give me your technology and Tim Don for the fighting in Latin America against socialism. Thank you, Brad.

Michael Fox:

Serimedo is now in prison on charges that he tried to kill his girlfriend. According to her, he hired the hitman to silence her. Serimedo also faces charges of illicit enrichment and other crimes, but his digital campaigning and the bot farms that he’s deployed in elections up and down the hemisphere haven’t necessarily gone away, nor have his deep ties to the right in the region. Remember who presented that award to Cerimedo? It was Eduardo Bolsonaro, the brother of Flavio Bolsonaro. They reportedly have known each other for more than 15 years. Now, just this week, Washington sanctioned Bolivian Attorney General Roher Mariaka, who is prosecuting the Serimero case,

He defended his country sovereignty and vowed to continue the investigation despite the apparent attempt to intimidate him. I mention all of this to say that just because Serimedo is now in jail, it doesn’t mean that these types of digital influence campaigns heavily fueled by an inter International far right aren’t happening. As I mentioned last time, Serimedo is just one piece in a puzzle, a cog and a wheel, albeit one very important cog. But actions pushing disinformation online are still happening. We just don’t necessarily know from who or where. Here’s one example. About a week ago, the Brazilian journalistic outlet Ajencia Publica reported in conjunction with Aos Fatos that AI farms were fueling the far right agenda in the lead up to the elections. The bots had created 255 profiles and made over a thousand posts. Agencia Publica reported that the network had “achieved 58 million views, expanding the reach of posts supporting the Bolsonaro family and attacking the Supreme Court.” It’s a strategy known as astroturfing, using artificial engagement to give the impression of a real surge in grassroots support.

All of this happened over one month between August and September. According to the investigation, one of the main nodes of this AI campaign was linked to the Instagram account Leo Indio Bolsonaro. That is managed by Leonardo Rodriguez de Jesus. He is Flavio and Eduardo Bolsonaro’s cousin. He was investigated by Brazilian officials for his role in the 2023 attempted coup. A warrant for his arrest was ordered in 2025. He fled the country. He’s reportedly now in Argentina. The point is this, these campaigns are happening. We often just don’t hear about them until after the fact.

Maria Marta Bruno:

Well, I’ve been voting since 1998 and I have never seen such level of interference of foreign interference in Brazilian elections.

Michael Fox:

Maria Marta Bruno is a journalist with Agencia Publica, the outlet I mentioned earlier. If you remember, I spoke with her in the last episode as well about Serimedo.

Maria Marta Bruno:

It reminds me a lot of what I have read in history books and what I have learned on the Brazilian dictatorship and the very clear role that the US developed from 1964 to 1985 when the military dictatorship in Brazil took place. There was never since the end of the dictatorship such open intervention.

Michael Fox:

Maria says there have been a lot of headlines lately mentioning diplomatic tension between Brazil and the United States, but she says what we’re seeing goes far beyond that.

Maria Marta Bruno:

Because given the gravity and the timing of the recent facts, I would say that it constitutes a clear interference in our process.

Michael Fox:

She highlights Trump’s tariffs on Brazil both last year and this year, which she says are wrapped into defending former President Jair Bolsonaro. She points to the numerous meetings between Flavio and Eduardo Bolsonaro with top officials in Washington over the last year, the US sanctions against Supreme Court Justice Alexandre Morais and so much more. And she says there are two other big reasons why the United States is so interested in Brazil. The first is China.

Maria Marta Bruno:

The US intentions to reduce China influence in Latin America. We all know that China, it’s a key partner for Brazil and for other countries in the region.

Michael Fox:

The second is rare earth minerals, stuff like neodymium, dysprosium, or terbium. Yeah, I don’t know what they look like either, but they’re used in EV motors, green energy technologies, military equipment, and other industries. Brazil is home to somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of the total rare earth reserves in the world. It’s second only to China. In April, a US company bought up the Brazilian firm Ceja Vergi, which mines rare earth minerals in Brazil. After his meeting with Trump in May, Flavio Bolshinaro promised to work with the United States on mineral extraction. “We are the only real alternative to China for a free world,” Flavio Bolsonaro said. “Under my government, there will be long-term strategic partnership with the United States in this sector with protected investment and shared reindustrialization between the two countries. Flavio also promised that if he is elected in his first month, Brazil would join President Trump’s Shield of the America’s regional coalition.

Brazil will join the shield of the Americas together with the United States, “he said,” and countries across the region, forming a great hemispheric alliance against terrorism and organized and transnational crime. “This is Brazil’s place. It is the protagonist of the security of the Americas side by side with free and sovereign nations, he said.

Maria Marta Bruno:

And we know that the US is very interested in what we have and the reserves that we have. So it’s very significant, it’s very important, and we know that the US is following closely the development of the presidential elections here because they will certainly determine what will be the future of the diplomatic relation between US and Brazil in the upcoming years.

Michael Fox:

In the face of all of this, Brazilians are responding none louder than President Luis Idnacio Lula de Silva.

Jair Bolsonaro:

The assembly will now hear and address by his excellency, Luis Inacio Lula Da Silva, president of the Federated Republic of Brazil.

Michael Fox:

The day is September 22nd, 2026, New York City. Brazilian President Luis Idnacio Lula de Silva walks to the podium at the United Nations to kick off the 81st General Assembly meeting. Without mentioning him, Lula speaks directly to US President Donald Trump. “Brazil does not fit into anyone’s backyard,” he says. Lula denounces Trump for attacking democracy, interfering in elections and using military force to acquire material resources across Latin America. He closes his speech with a nod to the upcoming high stakes elections in Brazil. On October 4th, he says, “Millions of Brazilians go to the polls to decide their future. They will not just elect the president of the republic, state governors, and representatives of the legislative power. They will decide between democracy and denialism, between if Brazil is going to move toward a future of more opportunities or return to a past of exclusion.”. He says Brazil will have free and transparent elections as it always has with broad freedom of speech.

He denounces the spread of disinformation online, in particular coming from outside the country, which he says is an attempt to “disrupt the debate.”.

“We have a modern and robust electoral system,” he says. “We have a plural citizenship and a free press. We will not allow the enemies of democracy, both internal and external, to attack the popular will. Brazilian democracy belongs to Brazilians. Brazil will continue to be a sovereign country. No one, no one will take us away from this path, “he says. It’s Lula’s response to Trump and the world as the country faces incredibly important elections, elections that Trump and the United States have been attempting to influence. Brazilians have been vocal online and in the streets against Washington’s pressure, and recently they actually got some support from a group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. On September 24th, just last week, Senator Bernie Sanders and 30 Democratic members of the US House of Representatives sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. They accused the Trump administration of waging a pressure campaign against Brazil ahead of the first round vote.

Illinois Congresswoman Delia Ramirez led the congressional effort. They write, “We are writing to express our grave concern regarding the administration’s coordinated effort to threaten our strategic alliance with Brazil and undermine the Western Hemisphere’s second largest democracy ahead of its upcoming presidential election in October 2026. Over the course of President Trump’s second term,” they write, “We have seen US officials engage in a sustained multifaceted campaign of interference and destabilization in Brazil. They point to the shocking 50% tariffs Trump levied on the country last year amid the country’s trial against Jair Bolsonaro. They also underscored Trump’s appointment last year of Darren Beattie as a senior advisor on Brazil issues in the State Department. Beattie, a noted far-right extremist and white supremacist,” they write, “came into this post with a clear record of public statements signaling an overt ideological commitment to undermining Brazil’s democratic institutions.” The congressional representative singled out Trump’s current tariffs, his meeting with Flavio Bolsonaro at the White House, and his designation of the Brazilian drug gangs as foreign terrorist organizations.

They write, “Given the Trump administration’s repeated military strikes in the region, justified in part by alleged foreign terrorist organization threats to US security, the designation has also fueled fears of potential US military intervention.” They recall comments from White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt last year that threatened Brazil could potentially face the United States’ military might.

US military action in Brazil isn’t likely, but it’s not out of the question. Nothing is under Trump’s Dunro doctrine. The lawmakers highlight that Brazil is just the latest in a quote, deeply troubling pattern of interference by the United States in foreign elections, including in Argentina, Honduras, and Columbia. Rather than helping defend democracy, they write, the United States is acting as an agent of interference and destabilization using diplomatic economic and political pressure in ways that risk weakening the country’s democratic institutions, undermining confidence in Brazil’s electoral process and inflicting further damage on our relationship with a strategic US ally and trading partner. They demand that Washington commit to recognizing the certified election results. Here’s the thing, the stakes are high. Remember Igor Fusser? He’s the professor I met at the Sao Paulo Cafe. He told me, “It’s clear that the United States is doing everything and will do everything possible to prevent the reelection of Lula in the next elections.” And Igor told me there was a reason for that, because if Flavio Bolsonaro wins, he will bow to Trump and the United States.

Igor says, “Brazil will become a country under the tutelage of the United States, a colony or almost a colony of the US as already happened with Argentina, Columbia, Venezuela, and many others. And if Lula is victorious in these elections, we will live a very intense period of confrontation between the two countries,” he says. And Igor has a really interesting analysis here. He says, “The US dominance over Latin America imposed by Trump is analogous to the control of the Soviet Union over the Eastern block countries during the Cold War under a Russian foreign policy imposed by Soviet leader Leonid Brezniv in 1968.” He says, “Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, all of those countries were formally independent nations with their own government, their own laws, their own representation in the United Nations, but these countries were not autonomous. They didn’t have sovereignty. Any movement that they made that clashed with the interests of the Soviet Union was repressed.

Some of them were even invaded,” he says. “So we’re living in Latin America, a Breznev doctrine, capitalist, imperialist, dictated by Donald Trump. “That is why this election is so important. Brazil is the outlier, the counterweight to the United States and the region, and the US is fighting hard to bring it to heel.

We’re going to see this all unfold not in a couple of months or weeks, but in just a few days. The first round of the election is on October 4th. Brazilians are voting for their president and vice president. They’re also voting for all of the country state governors, all 513 members of the Chamber of Deputies, two-thirds of senators, and more than a thousand state assembly seats. Lula is ahead in the race, but he appears shy of the 50% needed to win outright. If no presidential candidate wins more than half of the vote, it’ll go to a second round. There, polls show the margin between Lula and Bolsonaro even tighter, and it will undoubtedly be a tough campaign. The second round, if it’s needed, is on October 25th.

That is all for this episode of Under the Shadow. Things are going to get intense in the coming days. Please consider following our new website, Pan-American Dispatch and our social media accounts for ongoing reporting on Brazil and these elections. Some of the reporting in this episode was based off of stories I produced recently for the world and The Real News. Many thanks to those outlets for all that they do. Let me remind you that if you’re craving even more backstory here, you can always go back and listen to episode 12 of the second season of Under the Shadow about Brazil’s fight against fake news in the country and the US attempt to roll it back. And please also consider checking out my 2022 podcast about Brazil under Bolsonaro. It’s called Brazil on Fire. It’s still totally relevant today. You can find that wherever you listen.

As always, you can find me at patreon.com/mfox.

There you can also support my work, become a monthly sustainer, or sign up to stay abreast of all the latest on this podcast and my other reporting across Latin America. You can find a ton of content there exclusively also for my supporters. If you’re looking for more information, news and reporting on Trump’s onslaught, both in communities within the United States and abroad, please check out The Real News and NACLA. Both of them are publishing daily indispensable reporting. The theme music is by my band, Monte Perdido. You can find us on Spotify or wherever you stream music. This closing song playing right now is off our 2024 album, Ofrenda. I hope you check it out. Under the shadows of co-production of The Real News and NACLA, it’s produced in partnership with Global Exchange. This episode was written, researched, reported, and produced by me, Michael Fox. The script was edited by Heather Geis.

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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