Jair Bolsonaro is Brazil's far-right former president who styles himself a tropical Trump. A former army captain, he lost the 2022 presidential election to Lula da Silva by 51% to 49%—the tightest result in Brazilian history. On September 11th 2025 Brazil's Supreme Federal Court convicted him of committing a coup d'état and sentenced him to 27 years and three months in prison. He is barred from holding public office until 2060; he had already been barred from public office for eight years in 2023 for abusing his powers and using state media to spread falsehoods about voting machines. Donald Trump's MAGA movement is closely aligned with Brazil's hard right.
On November 25th 2025 Mr Bolsonaro began serving his sentence. His lawyers had appealed and asked that he serve it under house arrest because of his medical condition, but failed. He is confined to a small room designed for high-ranking officials at the Federal Police headquarters in Brasília, with a TV, air-conditioner, en-suite bathroom and the right to a daily "sun bath".
Mr Bolsonaro has yet to anoint a successor. Tarcísio de Freitas, governor of São Paulo, had been the front-runner for the right, but on September 29th 2025 he announced he would not run in 2026 and would instead seek a second term as governor. His withdrawal was triggered in part by his unpopular son Eduardo's insistence on running for president himself, which split the right, and in part by leaked text messages in which Eduardo bad-mouthed Mr Freitas to his father: "He has stood by with his arms crossed, watching you get screwed while he warms up for 2026." Several centrist governors are now jockeying to take Mr Freitas's place; none seems keen on pardoning Mr Bolsonaro. Romeu Zema, governor of Minas Gerais, is another right-wing presidential hopeful.
Ironically, it was Mr Bolsonaro who turbocharged Bolsa Família, Brazil's flagship welfare programme, as part of a spending splurge in advance of his re-election attempt in 2022. When he was elected in 2018, there were 14m recipient families and the average handout was $48 per month. By the time he left power, 21m families received an average of $115.
Mr Bolsonaro admired the generals of Brazil's military dictatorship, which ruled the country until 1985. He enrolled at Rio de Janeiro's military academy at the age of 18. His army career came to an abrupt end after he told a journalist that he and a colleague were planning to detonate explosives in the academy's bathrooms to protest against their low wages. He moved into politics in 1988. For most of his 27 years in Congress he was dismissed as a rabble-rouser who failed to propose a single important bill.
Fabiano Zettel, Mr Bolsonaro's brother-in-law (through Daniel Vorcaro, the head of the now-defunct Banco Master), was the largest individual donor to Mr Bolsonaro's 2022 presidential campaign. Zettel was also a major donor to Tarcísio de Freitas's campaign for governor of São Paulo.
Mr Bolsonaro won the presidency in 2018, propelled by public fury over "Operation Car Wash", one of the biggest corruption cases ever uncovered, which revealed that hundreds of politicians had been paid bribes by construction firms and the state oil company. The scandal landed Lula da Silva—who had been president from 2003 to 2010—in jail. Mr Bolsonaro's allies, led by his son Carlos, ran what became known as a "hate cabinet" which employed people to spam voters with false or exaggerated claims about opponents. After winning, he held a joint press conference with Trump at the White House.
In June 2025 federal police alleged that Mr Bolsonaro had approved the operation of an illegal surveillance network while in office. Alexandre Ramagem, Mr Bolsonaro's former bodyguard whom he appointed to lead the intelligence services in 2019, stands accused of masterminding the operations alongside Mr Bolsonaro's son Carlos, a councillor in Rio de Janeiro. Police say Mr Ramagem ordered the use of geolocation software to track people critical of Mr Bolsonaro as well as police officers investigating corruption. The police handed their inquiry to the attorney general on June 17th 2025. Mr Ramagem says the police have created a "narrative"; Carlos says the investigations are politically motivated.
On June 10th 2025 Mr Bolsonaro admitted before the Supreme Court that he had called meetings in the presidential palace to discuss the possibility of declaring a state of emergency after losing the 2022 vote. He said he quickly abandoned the idea, which received pushback from generals. Federal police allege that lawyers close to Mr Bolsonaro drew up a decree that would have called a bogus state of emergency to annul the election. His deputy chief of staff, Mario Fernandes, admitted in court on July 24th 2025 that he authored a document which, according to police, outlined a plot to assassinate or kidnap Alexandre de Moraes and Lula da Silva before they could take office. The plan listed rifles, machineguns, grenade launchers, anti-tank rocket launchers and chemical weapons. Mr Fernandes called it a habitual "risk analysis" and claimed he had printed it to avoid straining his eyes.
Bolsonaristas attacked government buildings on January 8th 2023 after their leader falsely claimed that voting machines had been rigged against him. On December 12th 2022, when Lula's victory was certified, Bolsonaro supporters set buses and cars alight in Brasília. On Christmas Eve one man strapped a bomb to a fuel truck near Brasília's airport, but it failed to go off.
After losing the run-off, Mr Bolsonaro retreated to the presidential palace, where he sulked for 40 days. His national-security adviser, General Augusto Heleno, was so concerned about his mental health that he asked "several times" if he could also sleep there. Instead of attending Lula's inauguration on January 1st 2023, Mr Bolsonaro flew to Orlando, Florida, where he moved in with a Brazilian martial-arts fighter and laid low for three months.
As the pre-trial investigations progressed, Mr Bolsonaro sought help from allies abroad. He spent two nights at the Hungarian embassy, fuelling speculation that he might flee the country. On August 20th 2025 police found a draft letter to President Javier Milei of Argentina on his phone in which he requested political asylum; it is unclear whether it was sent.
His trial, alongside seven close associates including Heleno, Walter Braga Netto (his running-mate) and Alexandre Ramagem, began on September 2nd 2025. On September 11th the court voted to convict. Mr Bolsonaro and his subordinates had adopted a technical defence, accepting the individual actions they were accused of but claiming they did not amount to a coup. Justice Luiz Fux was the sole dissenter, voting to acquit on all charges; his dissent facilitates an appeal to the full 11-judge bench. Mr Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison. More than 1,200 Brazilians have already been tried or entered plea bargains for taking part in the January 8th insurrection.
On July 18th 2025 Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice, ordered Mr Bolsonaro to wear an electronic ankle monitor, confined him to house arrest during nights and weekends, and barred him from speaking to foreign officials or giving interviews. The order came after Donald Trump's administration revoked the visas of most Brazilian Supreme Court judges and threatened sanctions against Mr Moraes.
Eduardo Bolsonaro, a congressman and Jair's son, took leave from his job in March 2025 and moved to Texas, where he lobbied Republican congressmen to put sanctions on Justice Alexandre de Moraes. On July 19th 2025 Mr Moraes froze Eduardo's assets as part of an investigation into whether his lobbying efforts constitute an attempt to obstruct the case against his father. Lula da Silva called the Bolsonaros "traitors". Eduardo boasts openly about his access to the White House; after Mr Moraes's visa was revoked he posted on X: "I can't see my father, and now there are Brazilian officials who won't be able to see their families in the US either!" He says of Trump: "Trump is someone I admire, someone I look up to, someone I want to get to know better so that, who knows, maybe in the future, if I have power, I can follow in his footsteps in Brazil."
Polls show 69% of voters say Eduardo is defending his family's interests rather than Brazil's. A majority support Mr Moraes's decision to place Mr Bolsonaro under house arrest and oppose an amnesty for the January 8th rioters.
Mr Bolsonaro remains Brazil's most popular right-wing politician. Evangelicals, some 27% of Brazil's population, have largely stuck with him; they comprise the majority of the 37% who said before the verdict that he should not be convicted, and dominate the 20% who said they would vote for him if they could. His endorsement would all but guarantee a candidate a place in the 2026 run-off against Lula. In exchange, he would seek a presidential pardon. Three of the Supreme Court's 11 justices are due to retire by 2030, meaning the next president could reshape its composition significantly—raising the chances of a re-trial or reprieve.
Flávio has ties to Rio de Janeiro's militia underworld (see his article for details).
In early December 2025 Mr Bolsonaro anointed Flávio, his eldest son and a senator, as his political successor. The response was dismal. Most of Brazil's centre-right parties, which dominate Congress, said they would not back him. The real slumped and São Paulo's stock exchange fell sharply on fears that Lula would crush Flávio and cruise to a fourth term. Bolsonaristas prefer his wife, Michelle, to any of his four sons. As the right wing is so fragmented, Flávio could still make it to the second round if he stays in the race, though he would almost certainly lose to Lula by quite a margin. His other son Eduardo, a congressman, has also spoken of running but his role in bringing American tariffs and sanctions down on Brazil has left him deeply unpopular. Carlos is a councillor in Rio de Janeiro. Michelle, the former first lady, is best liked by the evangelical base and could capture undecided female voters but has never held elected office. The yellow national football jersey became associated with far-right politics during the Bolsonaro era, and many Brazilians have stopped wearing it.
An amnesty bill backed by Mr Bolsonaro's allies and centrists in Congress could reduce the sentences of some 1,600 people charged with invading Brazil's institutions on January 8th 2023—including cases like that of Débora Rodrigues, a young woman given 14 years for writing on a statue with lipstick. The Supreme Court has said it will overturn any law that wipes away the convictions of Mr Bolsonaro and his senior co-conspirators as unconstitutional, but is more open to a law that reduces the sentences of lesser participants.
Mr Bolsonaro's Liberal party had made a deal with the centrão, a bloc of ideologically fluid parties: the centrão would approve faster evaluation of the amnesty in exchange for Liberal support for a "shielding amendment" that would insulate lawmakers from supreme-court investigations. On September 21st 2025 some 100,000 people marched against both bills, one of the largest protests in years. Congress backed down: the upper house hastily rejected the shielding amendment, and the lower house began heavily diluting the amnesty law. Hugo Motta, speaker of the lower house, declined to protect Eduardo Bolsonaro. The attorney-general has charged Eduardo with seeking to improperly influence his father's trial, and the supreme court has authorised the police to investigate Eduardo and his father for alleged crimes committed during the covid-19 pandemic.
Trump's tariff attack on Brazil has backfired on the right: the tariffs fall disproportionately on agriculture in Bolsonaro strongholds, and Brazil's national confederation of farmers, usually a Bolsonaro stalwart, condemned their "political nature". Even Mr Bolsonaro has tried to distance himself, saying the tariffs have "nothing to do with us".
On the subject of C program indentation: "In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."