Brazil’s election is a chilling warning for America

Flávio Bolsonaro has fled Brazil after losing a presidential election he entered as the favorite. He finished ahead of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the first round, then — if the reporting is accurate — lost Sunday’s runoff by more than 4 million votes.

Within days, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice ordered Flávio to surrender his passports in connection with a money-laundering investigation. He denies wrongdoing. He instead reached Miami, where the Trump administration has agreed to admit him and his family. His father, Jair Bolsonaro, is serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest. The Brazilian right has lost an election and watched its most prominent family come under the power of a judiciary it rightly regards as openly hostile.

Republicans should prepare to defend the constitutional order while they still have the power to do so. Nobody is coming to save us.

The election itself was hardly free of controversy. As voting was supposed to end, Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin — who previously represented Lula — ordered polling times extended by two hours after complaints about “transportation problems.” Some polling places had already shut down. The order was then narrowed to those still open. Flávio challenged the result. The final margin was far larger than the number of votes cast after the ordinary closing time, so that extension alone cannot explain Lula’s victory. It does not follow that every concern about how Brazil conducted the election has been settled.

Jair Bolsonaro was a controversial president who openly rejected the fashionable positions of the global elite on abortion, affirmative action, drugs, and religion. He sought closer ties with America and Israel. After losing to Lula in 2022, he questioned the integrity of the electronic voting system, claiming voting machines had been hacked. Brazil’s Supreme Court subsequently convicted him of attempting a coup and sentenced him to 27 years and three months. Bolsonaro denies the charges. His supporters see the prosecution as political punishment; his opponents see it as the defense of constitutional order. The sentence carries the force of law. It does not oblige anyone to surrender his judgment about the court.

Without a thorough review of both elections by independent organizations, it is impossible to know whether the Brazilian races were fraudulent. Given the progressive political leanings of most of the organizations that conduct such reviews, it is unlikely they would declare the elections legitimate if blatant evidence was uncovered.

Even if an independent agency did claim that one or both Bolsonaros had been cheated out of a victory, it is unlikely that there is a government or international body willing to take action to pressure Brazil into removing Lula and installing Flávio. The results of the elections may appear highly suspect, but Lula remains in office and will be allowed to further consolidate power and punish his enemies. Without an outside authority to which they can appeal, Brazilian conservatives appear trapped in an increasingly dangerous political situation.

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American conservatives should recognize the danger. Donald Trump lost a bitterly contested election in 2020, fought the result in court, faced criminal prosecutions connected to efforts to overturn it, and eventually returned to the White House. The parallels are hard to miss. When judges and prosecutors become participants in an all-or-nothing political struggle, appeals to their neutrality will satisfy fewer and fewer Americans.

Meanwhile, American progressives are making plans for a new institutional crisis of their own.

Recordings released by DataRepublican show figures associated with the United Democracy Alliance discussing “red lines” for treating the federal government as illegitimate, an options memo for governors, and the possibility of a constitutional “refounding moment” — i.e., replacing the Constitution. One participant described the crisis as “a real window of opportunity”; another spoke of an “extra constitutional process.”

Contingency planning is one thing. Treating a breakdown as the opportunity to replace the constitutional order is quite another. Why are these people developing criteria for when elected national institutions may be discarded, and who authorized them to decide?

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Republicans respond as if the next constitutional crisis can be resolved with speeches. They have failed to turn much of Trump’s agenda into durable law. The House passed the SAVE America Act, but Republicans have failed to get it through the Senate. Party leaders who warn of election disorder have been unable to enact one of their own signature election bills.

To call congressional Republicans a total failure may be too generous. Failure assumes they were trying. Too many seem content to run out the clock on Trump and wait for MAGA to loosen its hold on the party. They would rather preserve their place in a failing political arrangement and throw the country into chaos than confront the possibility that the establishment itself needs to be replaced.

Conservatives had better understand what time it is. A stern lecture about civic responsibility will not stop a riot. Brilliant arguments about separation of powers will not restrain officials determined to bend the rules. A court’s seal does not make every political judgment impartial. If a constitutional crisis arrives, the right will need more than faith that its opponents will play fair.

The Bolsonaros can come to America. Americans have nowhere else to go. There will be no neutral power waiting offshore to repair our institutions, no foreign president to return the country to us. Republicans should prepare to defend the constitutional order while they still have the power to do so. Nobody is coming to save us.