Brazilian court bars 'Trump of the Tropics' Jair Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years

There is a democracy, far away from America, where a court has just ruled that the former president can’t run for office again for eight years. This was after the judges concluded that he had abused his power and made claims that he knew to be false about the integrity of the country’s voting systems.

That country is Brazil, where the top elections court voted Friday to bar 68-year-old Jair Bolsonaro, known as the “Trump of the Tropics,” from running for office again until 2030, which means that he can’t be a candidate in the 2026 presidential election.

The Superior Electoral Court voted 5-2 to impose the ban on Bolsonaro. Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice who heads the electoral court, said the decision represented a rejection of “populism reborn from the flames of hateful, antidemocratic speech that promotes heinous disinformation.”