It is not misinformation, disinformation, or a crime to echo Democrats’ longheld view that election machines are vulnerable to manipulation.

The Democrats’ leading practitioner of weaponizing the government to attack political opponents, Marc Elias, recently called for my prosecution because I wrote on X that President Trump should exercise existing federal authority to make sure that electronic voting machines are not hacked or compromised in the midterm elections.

I argued on X that those who are demanding that President Trump declare a national emergency regarding the voting machines are asking him to do something he’s already done. On May 15, 2019, he invoked the National Emergencies Act of 1976 as the basis for issuing Executive Order 13873. That order authorizes the commerce secretary, after consultation with other federal officials, to restrict certain information and communications technology and services (ICTS) transactions involving foreign adversaries, including China, when they pose specified national security risks. It aimed to eliminate or mitigate vulnerabilities in various categories of technology and U.S. critical infrastructure, which includes elections.

Since then, the U.S. Department of Commerce developed and promulgated regulations implementing the order, which became effective in February 2024.

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has authority under ICTS regulations to require mitigation of threats to critical infrastructure. Elections are “critical infrastructure” thanks to President Obama and his secretary of Homeland Security in 2017. Because all electronic voting systems used in America’s elections are made in whole or in part in China, the ICTS regulations most certainly apply to voting machines.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, in an Aug. 24 letter to the White House, specifically noted the urgent need to mitigate threats to America’s elections infrastructure. That action, along with statements from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and President Trump’s primetime speech on election security in July 2026, provide all the necessary conditions for Commerce Secretary Lutnick to take action.

Democrats’ Reaction to My Post

So what was the reaction of the pro-corrupt election crowd to my post on X? Democracy Docket and its principal, Elias, screamed that I had called for Lutnick to “seize the voting machines.” The next day, Elias and Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney’s former chief strategist, publicly declared that I should be indicted on RICO charges because of my X post on this topic.

Media Matters included my comments in its article headlined “Election Denial Movement Sets Stage for Chaos on Election Day and its Aftermath.”

What is wrong with these people?

Why are they opposed to taking steps to protect against potential manipulation or exploitation of electronic voting machines? I have never said, nor do I believe, that anyone should “seize” the voting machines — or inspect any parts. I merely reiterated the mitigation plan that DHS outlined earlier this year.

DHS has tied mitigation of vulnerable voting machines to its 2027 FEMA grants. The grants require inclusion of a plan for how the state will mitigate the vulnerabilities of the electronic voting systems. “[S]tates must conduct a manual audit of at least 5% of all ballots cast [in federal races in randomly selected precincts]. This common-sense process involves physically reviewing a random selection of ballots to confirm that the machine reported results match results on the paper ballots. This will ensure accuracy and detect any machine errors or manipulation.”

Secretary Lutnick has legal authority to require the implementation of such a mitigation program on a nationwide basis. Requiring a hand count of a percentage of the voting precincts’ federal races to compare to the machine results and confirm their accuracy is not difficult and it is not “extreme.” Nor is it some wild-eyed Trumpian policy.

Democrats Before Trump Derangement Syndrome

In fact, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., delivered a speech on the Senate floor on July 15, 2019, warning that the nation’s voting infrastructure is woefully outdated and is vulnerable to hacking and external manipulation.

Back in 2019, before Trump Derangement Syndrome resulted in collective Democrat amnesia on the topic of voting machine vulnerabilities, Wyden and 14 Senate Democrats introduced the “Protecting American Votes and Elections Act of 2019” (the PAVE Act) “to protect American elections from foreign interference by mandating hand-marked paper ballots and setting new cybersecurity standards for all federal elections.”

“I have been pushing hard for hand-marked paper ballots and risk-limiting audits as key defenses against the hackers,” said Wyden in 2019, citing the National Academies of Science and its proposed protocols to ensure the accuracy of the results of electronic voting machines: hand counting a percentage of paper ballots in randomly selected voting precincts.

It is not misinformation or disinformation, nor is it a crime, for me to echo Democrats’ long-held view that the election machines are vulnerable to manipulation and require mitigation of those vulnerabilities.

As Wyden said in 2019, “I don’t think this has anything to do with Democrats or Republicans. I believe [failing to act to secure elections] is an out-and-out scandal … that does a disservice to our country and particularly the sacred right to make sure that all Americans can vote and have their vote counted.”

Restoring the trust and confidence every American ought to be able to have in our elections — including the electronic voting systems — requires proactive leadership.

It shouldn’t be a trigger for demanding that I be prosecuted for suggesting a reasonable and heretofore Democratic proposal for addressing the very real concerns about voting machines.

Cleta Mitchell, The Federalist

After practicing psychotherapy professionally for over 40 years, one can’t help but notice patterns. Problems may take different forms, but the core issues often fall into just a few categories. Life doesn’t need to be as hard as some people make it, so I’ve come up with a Top Ten List of things people do to bring problems onto themselves:

1. Having kids without thinking. Some people have kids because it’s the thing to do, or because they feel it’s what they should do. Surprisingly few have carefully thought it out in terms of whatever else they might want to do with their lives.
2. Waiting for things to happen automatically. We live in an age where a lot of things get done quickly. This has created a sense that competence and achievement are to be expected. That’s OK, but it must be matched with the resolve to create your own achievements. Good things don’t just happen; we have to make them happen.
3. Expecting (or needing) to please others. It’s impossible to please everyone. And it doesn’t matter anyway. Most of the time others are too busy caring about their own lives to worry about what you’re doing.

Sometimes the need to please others starts in childhood. Most kids aim to please, and some parents make themselves hard to please. This is fine for kids, but once you’re an adult it makes no sense. In your job or business there are standards to meet, but it’s not your duty to please people other than to do what your customer or your boss pays you to do. If you like what you’re doing, then you’ll like yourself. And when you like yourself, it’s easy to make others happy.

4. Trying to change others. This should really be #1! People insist that they don’t want to change others, but then they behave as if they can. This is particularly true with loved ones and co-workers. You can try to persuade, but only if you have first earned attention and respect. Use or abuse of power will never force anyone into lasting behavioral change.
5. Acting on impulse. In other words, acting without thought. If/when things turn out badly, you have only yourself to blame. “I had a bad day” doesn’t cut it.
6. Overestimating what thought can do. Some of us expect that thinking gives us certainty. You can be certain that one plus one equals two, but there are other things that require experimentation. You might think you’ll enjoy a certain thing, but you won’t know until you try. Thinking is great, but you also have to take action.
7. Expecting things to stay the same. Change depends in part on other people. Just because something works well for you doesn’t mean it will work well for others. One man’s comfort is another’s impediment. Always have a back-up plan in case something changes.
8. Expecting things to change. This is the reverse of #7 and is similar to #2. Imagine just passively waiting for something to happen. Sometimes waiting makes sense, but you need a back-up plan. Life goes on, and your “ship won’t come in” unless you make it come in.
9. Thinking that kindness and reasonable behavior will lead to the same from others. Sorry, but it’s a fact of life that people do what they choose. Kindness on your part may bring it out in those who are already kind, but if somebody is not reasonable, your behavior will make little difference. This expectation can make people resentful and angry. Save yourself the hurt by avoiding unrealistic expectations.
10. Don’t fall for the myth of “intrinsic value.” There is nothing wrong with you that corrected thinking can’t change. Your thinking might be flawed, but fundamentally you are not. We are all subject to error, but the good thing about errors is that they’re almost always correctable. And we live a better life by learning from them.

Michael J. Hurd, Life’s a Beach

Once socialism is embedded in our laws and institutions, the march to communism begins. 

Luis Gonzalez | October 29, 2026

Imagine you own an apartment building and need to sell it. The mortgage comes due, insurance premiums keep climbing, repairs cannot wait, and you have found a willing buyer. You have negotiated a price and are ready to close. Then New York City tells you to wait.

Your financial obligations do not wait. Your buyer may not wait. But under New York City’s Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, known as COPA, the government can insert a lengthy process between you and the sale of your own property. What should be a private transaction becomes subject to a timetable designed to give selected organizations an opportunity to purchase the building first.

This is the kind of incremental change worth examining. Socialism does not always announce its arrival with bullets and revolution. Sometimes it arrives as a statute that sounds reasonable, addresses a genuine concern, and changes the rules one transaction at a time.

On October 22, the New York City Council passed COPA by a vote of 38 to 9, with two members abstaining. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has championed the measure. The revised bill is narrower than earlier proposals and is expected to cover roughly 2,100 multifamily buildings meeting specified conditions involving serious housing violations, city enforcement programs, or affordability restrictions. Qualifying owner-occupied buildings with five or fewer units are exempt. The law is scheduled to take effect one year after enactment.

Under COPA, owners of covered properties are mandated by to inform the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development when they intend to sell. Qualified nonprofit organizations have 20 days to express interest and another 70 days to submit an initial offer. Additional procedures can give a qualified organization the right to match an outside buyer’s offer. A legal analysis by Cullen and Dykman estimates that the process can delay a transaction by approximately 130 days when the applicable stages are triggered. The final timetable depends on the transaction and the rights exercised. Owners may apply for an exemption based on undue financial hardship, but that exception does not eliminate the underlying process.

For an owner facing mounting expenses, those delays are not abstractions. Mortgage payments, taxes, insurance, utilities, and repairs continue regardless of what the city requires. A willing buyer may move on. A deal that could have helped an owner meet financial obligations may disappear while the government process runs its course. Ann Korchak, president of Small Property Owners of New York, has warned that COPA could contribute to the extinction of small property owners. Her concern deserves attention. A policy intended to preserve affordable housing can impose new costs and risks on the people responsible for maintaining the buildings in the first place.

The final bill is more limited than earlier versions, but its scope does not erase its significance. The government has established a special process that gives selected organizations a privileged opportunity to acquire privately owned property. That changes the relationship between ownership and control, even when the owner retains the deed.

COPA’s history also illustrates how incremental change works. An earlier version passed the City Council in December 2025 but was vetoed by Mayor Eric Adams. The Council failed to override the veto. Advocates revised the proposal, reduced the number of potentially covered buildings from roughly 10,000 to approximately 2,100, and returned with a narrower bill that passed in October 2026. The campaign was led by the NYC Community Land Initiative, alongside a coalition of more than 200 community, tenant, and affordable housing groups. The coalition included the Democratic Socialists of America’s Queens Housing Working Group.

The political connection matters. Mamdani championed COPA, and his administration includes Democratic Socialists of America members in influential positions, including Chief of Staff Elle Bisgaard-Church and Cea Weaver, whom he appointed to lead the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants. COPA will be administered by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development under this administration. The connection is clear. A mayor who openly identifies with democratic socialism is advancing a housing policy that gives government-certified organizations a privileged opportunity to acquire private property, consistent with the broader direction of the socialist housing agenda.

The issue is not whether every nonprofit involved in COPA shares the same ideology. The issue is whether the policy advances a broader movement whose stated goals deserve to be taken seriously. The DSA’s own Housing Justice Commission advocates moving housing away from treatment as a market commodity and toward social housing, community control, and the redistribution of land. Its stated program discusses expropriation from capitalists and presents incremental reforms as steps toward a broader transformation.

COPA does not abolish private property. It establishes a statutory preference for selected organizations to acquire certain privately owned buildings. That is a meaningful connection between a specific law and an ideological project that seeks to transform how property is owned and controlled.

The relevant comparison is not to a revolutionary seizure of property, but to the gradual expansion of administrative control over private transactions. COPA does not confiscate buildings, and New York City is not a revolutionary state. But the law does establish a new principle: the government may give selected organizations priority in deciding who can purchase certain private property and when a sale may proceed. Each restriction can be defended as a limited response to a particular problem. Once accepted, it becomes the foundation on which the next restriction can be built.

That is how socialist and communists ideas can become embedded in ordinary administration. A law creates a new preference. Agencies write the procedures. Organizations learn to operate within the new system. Future officials inherit the authority and can argue that expanding it is simply the logical next step.

COPA’s immediate scope is limited, and future expansion is not inevitable. But the precedent is real. Government can influence who gets to buy, when a sale can proceed, and which organizations receive privileged access to private property. The definitions of eligibility, the administration of deadlines, and the use of hardship exemptions will help determine how much power the law places in the hands of city officials and favored organizations.

The question is not whether every nonprofit will abuse the system. It is whether government should create special rights for selected organizations in transactions involving property that belongs to someone else. A worthy objective does not settle that question, and a limited law today does not guarantee a limited law tomorrow.

And once socialism is embedded in our laws and institutions, the march to communism begins, and reversing it may require the very bullets and revolution its advocates never needed to achieve it.

Luis Gonzalez, American Thinker

A new European pilot fatigue report says more than three out of four pilots experienced a microsleep in the cockpit over the previous month. Read the survey device, though, and it also counts pilots who were fighting to keep their eyes open. That’s not good! But it’s not actually the same thing.

What’s useful is that it helps us understand when flying becomes fatiguing, why a legal schedule can still be a bad schedule, and where American pilot rules still fall short.

What The Survey Actually Asked

The original is A fatigue survey of European Pilots – 2026, prepared by aviation consultancy Baines Simmons for the European Cockpit Association, which represents pilot associations. In other words, this is meant to bolster pilots who want stricter work rules (both for their quality of life, but also to increase demand for pilots and drive up wages).

About 7,200 pilots across 32 countries responded. Participation was voluntary, through a survey promoted by ECA from August 4 through September 7. That may not be a representative sample. The association’s announcement reports:

38.8% usually or always lacked enough recovery time to prevent cumulative fatigue.

24.2% said their usual response when unfit due to fatigue was to skip reporting it and fly anyway.

38.3% had used the captain’s discretion to extend a duty at least once in the previous four weeks.

69.1% expressed at least some concern about consequences if they refused an extension.

The promoted headline 76.8% comes from a question combining microsleeps with “head nodding, or fought to keep your eyes open.” And these are self-reported recollections, not any kind of independent sleep measurements or a per-flight exposure rate.

Inflight Cockpit Naps Are Actually Allowed In Europe

European rules also permit controlled cockpit rest under procedures, while the U.S. doesn’t authorize the same in-seat naps. When adopting Part 117, the FAA said it needed more evidence before allowing controlled rest. A 2024 field study found better reaction time performance before descent among pilots who took controlled rest.

The Problems Aren’t Evenly Distributed

Five or more occurrences of the combined sleep/sleepiness symptoms were reported by 34.1% of low cost pilots, 30.7% of charter pilots, and 19.6% of network airline pilots. Malta was at 39.3%, Ireland 36.2%, and Spain 33.1%.

The reporting figures also suggest an incentive problem. If calling in fatigued means losing money, getting a reputation as unreliable, or facing management scrutiny, some pilots will keep flying. The airline then sees their practices entail little fatigue.

A Short Flight Can Come At The Worst Possible Time A European field study published in 2020 followed 392 aircrew members from 24 airlines, using sleep diaries, wrist activity monitors and sleepiness ratings. At the start of descent, the estimated probability of high fatigue was:

15% on daytime duties.

19% on early-start duties.

31% on late finishes.

34% on night duties.

Duties spanning the full 2 a.m. to 5:59 a.m. low point in the body clock reached 42%. Prior sleep and working through that low point were major predictors. That can be not good, but it isn’t nearly the 76.8% actually falling asleep that the pilot union group reports.

A subsequent EASA-commissioned assessment found that both duty length and the number of flight segments independently contributed to fatigue. Repeated takeoffs and landings matter, along with extended duties and overnight returns from the Americas to Europe.

Short and long haul aren’t enough of a distinction here, but short hops that return to base, allowing a pilot to sleep at home and not adjust their body clock, is certainly going to entail less fatigue and risk than long haul flying.

Two aircraft crew-rest bunks separated by a privacy curtain

Is It Too Much Flying, Too Little Rest, Or Pilots Wasting Their Layovers? Long workdays, repeated sectors and badly timed schedules can leave less opportunity for sleep. Required ‘time behind the door’ can still include eating, showering and winding down in front of the TV. The new European survey doesn’t tell us what share of the problem comes from personal choices or even just not being able to sleep. Just telling someone to sleep doesn’t make their body clock cooperate.

There is evidence that personal choices sometimes matter. In the 2013 UPS flight 1354 crash in Birmingham, the NTSB identified the first officer’s fatigue as a contributing factor, tracing it to acute sleep loss from poor management of time off and circadian factors.

NASA researchers described a U.S. field study this year involving 159 pilots at four airlines. They collected sleep information and thousands of reaction-time tests, comparing trips with and without overnight flying or shifts between early starts and late finishes. The pilots averaged roughly 17 hours off between duties.

Pilots on disrupted trips slept about half an hour less and showed small but statistically significant increases in fatigue and sleepiness, along with worse reaction time performance. Performance was poorest around 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. on their home clock.

Did U.S. Changes After Colgan Air Actually Reduce Fatigue?

The U.S. implemented Part 117 in January 2014. The reform increased minimum rest from eight hours to ten, required an eight hour uninterrupted sleep opportunity, and increased recurring time off from 24 hours to 30. It also made duty limits more sensitive to the body clock, while allowing nine hours of flying instead of eight for favorable reporting times.

An early survey of 92 self-identified pilots, conducted months after implementation, found 35% thought the rule improved their fatigue situation and 33% thought it worsened it. That was a small voluntary survey. And I’ve never seen a real national estimate of the reduction in fatigue caused by Part 117.

“One Level Of Safety” Doesn’t Answer Which Rules A Flight Needs I’ve argued before that safety requirements should match the operation. A daytime regional trip and a flight across the Pacific pose different demands. The fatigue evidence supports that.

An equal commitment to passenger safety can require different staffing, schedules, rest facilities and training. ALPA’s “one level of safety” slogan doesn’t establish that identical requirements produce identical outcomes. In fact, ALPA itself asked for longer rest when pilots enter a new time zone during the Part 117 rulemaking. Even the union’s proposals recognize that different circumstances call for different protections.

JSX regional jet parked on the ramp

ALPA does have a reasonable argument for extending commercial fatigue rules to cargo pilots. It protects far fewer people on board, but people on the ground are at risk too

Gary Leff, View from the Wing

I have read, over the past two weeks, the following things about the election:

There will be a massive blue wave.
There will be a huge red wave.

Jews favor Republicans two to one (unprecedented).
Jews are still Democrats.

More urban voters are Republican than before. More blacks are Republican.
Democrats are ahead in every group.

Record numbers of Hispanics like Trump.
Hispanics are going two to one for Democrats.

California will go Republican. California will sweep Democratic.

Unprecedented numbers of Democrats are abandoning Democrats because of the explicit socialism and antisemitic views.

Unprecedented numbers of Republicans are abandoning Republicans and voting straight blue for the first time in their lives.

I have never seen such a contradictory and convoluted mess of desperate propaganda and impossible to objectively critique information. Frankly, on both sides.

Survivors of dictatorships (like the former Soviet Union, Maoist China) have told me that you could never believe what you read — ever — in those societies.
It seems that America has become the same.

It’s deeper than politics. It’s what the death of reason looks like. No intellectual honesty, no objectivity.

No truth.

When reason goes, liberty is not far behind because liberty depends upon truth and integrity.

We have to find a way to get reason back.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

David Jolly, a former Republican congressman who is now running as a Democrat against U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds to replace Ron DeSantis as Florida governor, is raising eyebrows in the Sunshine State with his suggestion that boys have a constitutional right to play on girls’ sports teams.

His comments came during the “To the Contrary” podcast Charlie Sykes last year, and were unearthed Wednesday by Libs of TikTok.

Florida Gov candidate David Jolly (D) suggests boys have a constitutional right to play on girl’s sports teams:

“Their constitutional rights… It’s pretty disgusting what we’ve seen from Republicans on this..”

“Be supportive of them and allow them to play in youth sports.”… pic.twitter.com/77xDjCUy3j

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 28, 2026

Sykes had asked Jolly outright: “How do you navigate that issue?”

“I fundamentally think it’s an issue for the courts,” the Democrat replied. “And I don’t think one rule should apply to everything.”

“I think some latitude among the sports leagues to make decisions, but ultimately, it’s a constitutional question that the courts are gonna have to decide.”

Jolly continued: “I think where I fundamentally diverge from Republicans on this issue is you can immediately see where leaders and voters are either working in good faith towards equity or in bad faith against it. This is a new and novel moment for us as a country.

“It’s OK to wrestle with it. But you’re either wrestling to resolve it on behalf of all Americans, their fundamental and constitutional rights, their respect and their dignity, or you’re working to humiliate them. And I think it’s pretty disgusting what we’ve seen from Republicans in the past several years on this.

“I don’t think we need to knock down that youth soccer player who is working with their family and their doctor on whatever their current crisis is personally. I think it can be supportive of them to allow them to play in youth sports.

“If it’s a question of Olympic trials, obviously I think you get too far down the road there saying, Maybe it’s a bridge too far to let trains athletes in certain sports, but let’s leave it to the sports leagues.”

Donalds is a staunch opponent of biological males competing in girls’ or women’s sports, and his campaign posted video Wednesday of the Republican blasting Jolly’s stance.

“My opponent’s somebody who says it’s OK for boys to be in girls’ sports. It’s just him and the WNBA,” Donalds said.

“They’re the only two that think this is OK. Everybody else has said, ‘No, that’s actually quite stupid.’ Even the Europeans are realizing that’s dumb. But this is where the radical Democrats have gone in America today, and it’s sad to see.”

🤣🤣 “Only David Jolly and the WNBA think it’s okay for men to participate in girls’ sports.

Everyone else has said, ‘No, that’s actually quite stupid.’” –@ByronDonalds pic.twitter.com/tG4LpkffY2

— Byron War Room (@ByronWarRoom) October 28, 2026

Joe Kovacs, The Liberty Daily

Basketball player Sophie Cunningham waved the checkered flag at the Formula 1 Grand Prix auto race, and the left had a cow.

Eric Utter | October 28, 2026

Basketball player Sophie Cunningham waved the checkered flag at the Formula 1 Grand Prix auto race, and the left had a cow.

So-called “progressives” are ignorant, bitter, nasty, wannabe tyrants who contribute nothing to the society that they so wish to destroy.

And nothing escapes their claw-like grasp and fetid commentary, no matter how mundane and benign.

WNBA basketball player Sophie Cunningham, for example, causes them to explode into fits of demented rage, seemingly by simply existing. This is largely because she is white, attractive, likely heterosexual, and believes that men should not be allowed into women’s locker-rooms and bathrooms … or onto their sports teams.

So, when she was given the honor of waving the checkered flag at the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix (road) race in Austin, Texas, recently, many leftist nutcases took to social media to melt down.

One such yahoo opined, “Yet again the U.S. races proving that F1 is still not a safe space for the LGBTQIA+ community with Sophie Cunningham waving the flag and Ted Cruz giving out trophies.”

Egads! I can see why you were so traumatized!

The yahoo continued with her tweet, “I thought we were keeping politics out of the sport? Do better for our community and help us feel welcome.”

Ironically, that poster brought the politics into “the sport,” where there were no ideological pronouncements from Sophie. But liberals always do just that. Their “community,” whatever it may be, has to be feted, welcomed, and worshipped above all others.

Yet another wrote, “sophie cunningham waved the flag? wtf are we doing she’s not even a relevant basketball player. the shock about f1 isn’t that they are right wing but my God when they go low it’s always in the sleaziest cheapest way.”

Huh? Letting a female athlete wave “the flag” is “going low,” “sleazy” and “cheap?” And so on, and so on, and so on.

Hey, morons, it wasn’t the American flag she was waving, so why so upset? If she had waved a Palestinian flag, you guys would have done an abrupt 180 and sung her praises.

But progressives melt down faster than a stick of butter on a Texas sidewalk on the Fourth of July. They’re now, comically, upset with Formula 1.

Want to know the formula for upsetting progressives? Just disagree with them … or be someone they aren’t.

Forget “Antifa,” is there a better definition of fascist than that?

(Full disclosure: I have a bit of a crush on Cunningham, as, besides being cute, she seems to be comfortable in her own skin, sane, courageous, truthful, and fun-loving. In short, she doesn’t seem to be bitter or entitled, even though she is a “bench” player who is incessantly criticized by the mob. She seems to love her life. And so I do, too.)

Eric Utter, American Thinker

Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro declared himself the leader of Brazil’s opposition Wednesday after arriving in the United States with his family, accusing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government and Brazil’s powerful Supreme Court of orchestrating political persecution following a disputed presidential election.

In a defiant statement resembling the declaration of a government-in-exile leader, Bolsonaro vowed to direct Brazil’s opposition from American soil, comparing his struggle to historic resistance movements led by Charles de Gaulle and Venezuelan opposition figures.

“I want to tell not only my 60 million voters, but the Brazilian people, that I am the leader,” Bolsonaro declared. “I will be our nation’s voice and its free leadership.”Buy Maps

Although he did not formally establish a government in exile, Bolsonaro explicitly pledged to lead the opposition from abroad.

“Therefore, I will lead the opposition from here. I will say what you cannot say there, and I will take the risks you cannot take.”

Bolsonaro’s arrival followed an extraordinary intervention by the Trump administration, which moved quickly to authorize entry for the defeated presidential candidate, his wife and their two daughters.

A senior State Department official confirmed that Washington would issue visas to the family.

President Donald Trump personally approved Bolsonaro’s entry after administration officials learned he faced a deadline to surrender his passports.

Bolsonaro traveled through Argentina and Ecuador before reaching Miami, according to reports.Read Opinions

The departure came after Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the confiscation of Bolsonaro’s passports amid financial investigations. Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing and maintains the proceedings are politically motivated.

“I did not flee Brazil; I left for Brazil’s sake,” Bolsonaro said.

Bolsonaro lost Sunday’s presidential runoff to Lula, who received more than 64 million votes against Bolsonaro’s nearly 60 million.

The opposition leader disputes the result, alleging judicial interference and improper voting extensions.

Bolsonaro specifically accused a former lawyer for Lula, apparently referring to Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin, of enabling an unlawful extension of voting hours.Read Opinions

He also questioned Lula’s gain of more than 10 million votes between rounds, describing it as a “mathematical impossibility.”

Trump questioned the election, describing it as “very strange,” while Bolsonaro’s supporters demanded further scrutiny.

Bolsonaro Family Faces Targeting

The confrontation follows years of escalating legal battles involving the Bolsonaro family.

Former President Jair Bolsonaro was convicted in 2025 of participating in a plot to overturn Brazil’s 2022 election and sentenced to 27 years in prison.

His supporters characterize the prosecution as political retaliation, while Brazilian authorities maintain the conviction concerns an attempted coup.

Flávio’s brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro, who has lived in Texas, was convicted in absentia over efforts to pressure the Trump administration against Brazilian officials. He also faces arrest if he returns to Brazil.

Flávio now faces separate investigations involving alleged money laundering and financial misconduct. He insists he committed no crime.

Criticism of Brazil’s judiciary has extended beyond Bolsonaro’s conservative political movement.

Glenn Greenwald, the liberal journalist known for his civil-liberties advocacy and reporting on government surveillance, has repeatedly condemned Justice Moraes’s expansive powers.

In 2024, Greenwald described Moraes as “profoundly authoritarian and censorship-crazed,” accusing him of exercising extraordinary influence over Brazilian politics.Buy Maps

Greenwald said Moraes had become “the most powerful person in the country.”

Opposition From Exile

Bolsonaro concluded his declaration by promising regular addresses to Brazilians and a strategy of peaceful political mobilization against Lula’s government.

“This is only the beginning of our struggle for democracy, human rights, and freedom in Brazil,” he said.

Invoking de Gaulle’s wartime leadership from London, Bolsonaro portrayed his departure as the beginning of an international resistance campaign.

“I left Brazil, but I have not abandoned the Brazilian people,” he declared.

“This struggle did not end on October 25. It will end only when Brazil becomes a free country again.”

His announcement sets the stage for a potentially prolonged confrontation between Brazil’s newly reelected government and an opposition leader operating from the United States with the Trump administration’s support.

Newsmax

• On Wednesday, the Justice Department said FBI and ICE agents will not serve as poll monitors during the midterm elections, addressing concerns over federal law enforcement presence at voting sites.
• The NAACP filed suit to bar law enforcement from monitoring, arguing the Trump administration’s plans amount to voter intimidation as it pursues increasingly aggressive election oversight and voter-registration data collection.
• While FBI and ICE agents are excluded, the Justice Department confirmed employees from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, ATF, DEA, and one CBP official will serve as monitors, prohibited from carrying firearms.
• Eric Neff, acting chief of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division Voting Section, filed a declaration in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia confirming monitors will observe polling places and take notes.
• Scrutiny persists following two incidents involving federal agents near early voting sites in Florida; although the Trump administration claims no plans to patrol sites, President Donald Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, and FBI Director Kash Patel declined to rule out presence.

Elon Musk’s shift to the right, support for Trump, and defense of free speech have turned a former liberal darling into a target of the Left’s growing hostility toward billionaires.

By Victor Davis Hanson

October 29, 2026

As the midterms approach, the Left has gone nearly berserk in its hatred of trillionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. Yet its escalating venom would have been almost inconceivable before 2022, when Musk publicly declared that he would be voting Republican.

Before Musk’s recent political reversal (he voted for both Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020), he was beloved by the Left as the first successful upstart challenger to the century-long dominance of the Big Three fossil-fuel automakers. Liberals once loved his revolutionary, electrically powered Teslas and drove them proudly as a green virtue signal.

Not now. Far-left podcaster Jennifer Welch has run out of Nazi epithets for Musk. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—ironically, given her own limited talents—trashed Musk as “probably one of the most unintelligent billionaires I have ever met or seen or witnessed.”

Fellow multibillionaire Bill Gates smeared Musk for supposedly “killing the world’s poorest children” by promoting cuts to U.S. foreign aid programs.

Just this week, former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich even demanded that Musk’s SpaceX and Starlink be nationalized and run by the government—a move more associated with Cuba or the old Soviet Union than with the United States of America.

Such unhinged venom can contribute to violence. In early 2025, leftists launched more than 80 attacks against Tesla cars and dealerships—and sometimes even individual Tesla drivers. Similar cases of vandalism and arson have continued into 2026.

So why did the Left go from hailing Musk as the next Thomas Edison to treating him as public enemy No. 1 and targeting him with death threats?

The Left once loved all the tech and Wall Street billionaires who ensured that Democrats always had more money than Republicans.

Billionaire George Soros and his various foundations have channeled well over half a billion dollars to left-wing candidates and causes in just the last six years alone. Billionaires like Reid Hoffman, Tom Steyer, and the now-imprisoned Sam Bankman-Fried gave hundreds of millions to the Democratic Party and its candidates.

But Elon Musk now embodies everything the enraged Left hates.

First and most obviously, Musk no longer endorses Democrats. Instead, in 2024 and 2026, he donated hundreds of millions of dollars to help Republican candidates.

Second, Musk gave lavishly to the hated 2024 Trump campaign, especially in critical swing states. Furious Democrats actually blame him for Trump’s victory.

Third, Musk paid billions of dollars to buy the liberal social media company Twitter. He eliminated censorship, renamed it X, and turned it into a free-speech platform that no longer catered to left-wing dogmas.

Fourth, Musk was instrumental in conducting the 2025 DOGE cuts that reduced the federal workforce by some 270,000 employees. DOGE also helped slash USAID programs that had often been involved in politicking abroad to support globalist and left-wing causes.

Fifth, the spurned Left has started hating billionaires as much as it once worshipped them. Its members now talk openly about confiscating wealth, nationalizing private corporations, taxing net worth and unrealized gains, and regulating and suing large companies to drive them out of business.

In 2020, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated some $420 million to help ensure greater Democratic turnout—and they were deified for helping to defeat Trump.

Now Zuckerberg has been talking about fleeing left-wing California if it passes a “billionaire tax” on net worth.

Billionaires like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, and Palantir’s Alex Karp—along with other Silicon Valley magnates such as Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and David Sacks—have drifted rightward, fearing the new agenda of the Islamist-sympathizing socialist Democratic Party.

Sixth, and perhaps most important, Musk—one of the greatest entrepreneurs of the last hundred years—is not shy about his own talents and spectacular successes, ensuring even more left-wing envy and venom.

Musk not only brought stranded U.S. astronauts home but also helped revive the moribund NASA space program.

This year, his company will launch more satellites than all other countries and private corporations combined. Indeed, by June 2026, it had sent into space more satellites than humanity had launched in total since Sputnik. SpaceX’s behemoth Starship, the most powerful rocket in history, dwarfs its Chinese, European, and Russian rivals.

The upstart Tesla has the highest market capitalization ($1.5 trillion) of any car company in the world. Musk’s social media platform X may have nearly 600 million monthly active users.

His artificial intelligence company, SpaceX Super Intelligence, and its Grok model are among the world’s best-known.

Musk’s Neuralink may become the first company that allows the paralyzed and the blind to regain their lost abilities.

His Boring Company has created a subterranean transport service in Las Vegas and is building another in Nashville.

Musk is history’s first trillionaire. He is a mechanical and business genius, and he may well be one of the most brilliant technological entrepreneurs, not just of the last hundred years but of all time.

So is it any wonder that the new democratic socialist Left, with its insistence on equality of results, despises everything that Musk does and represents?

Victor Davis Hanson