WSJ What’s News - Brazil’s Bolsonaros Are Back

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

A.M. Edition for Oct. 5. Flávio Bolsonaro deals President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva a bruising first-round defeat, finishing ahead of the leftist leader and putting Brazil’s right within reach of taking back power. Plus, as renewed Iranian attacks in the Strait of Hormuz once again threaten oil flows, the International Chamber of Commerce warns of a looming global food security crisis. And WSJ correspondent Benoit Faucon details the multiple security failures that allowed a FlyDubai pilot to nearly bring down an Israel-bound plane last week. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The son of Brazil's imprisoned former president tease up a potential comeback for the Bolsonaro's. Plus, we'll look at the multiple security failures that allowed a fly Dubai pilot to nearly bring down an Israeli-bound plane last week. Why did he never appear in any regional database when he was banned from flying because it's considered a risk? And the euro slips as Spain heads for snap elections amid nationwide affordability protests. It's Monday, October 5th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. Get ready to hear the names Bolsonaro and Lula again in the coming weeks. Brazil held a first round of elections yesterday with Flavio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of imprisoned former president, Jair Bolsonaro, netting the most votes. Trailing him, 80-year-old incumbent Luis Sinasio Lula de Silva,

Both will now head to an October 25th runoff. Our Brazil correspondent, Samantha Pearson, says that surprise result and major victories by conservatives in congressional and state elections yesterday show the strength of right-wing sentiment in Brazil that no major pre-election polls had captured. Conservatives scored victories across the country. Jayre Bolsonaro himself is bad from running. He was convicted of plotting a coup after the 2022 election and is under house arrest serving a 27-year prison sentence.

But his political movement is quite literally breeding. His son Carlos was elected to the Senate on Sunday. His youngest son, 28-year-old Jaya Hinan, he also won a seat in the lower house. Bolsonaro's wife, Micheli, was also elected to the Senate, and his brother, Hinato, won a seat in the lower house too. Now, the race is not over. There are three weeks of campaigning left. A lot could happen.

but history is not on Lula's side here. So every time the Brazil has had a presidential runoff, the candidate who came first in the first round has gone on to win the election. So Lula faces a very difficult fight from here. And a loss now for Lula would be devastating for him the end of his political career, but it would also be devastating for the left,

more generally, given that his workers' party still has no obvious successor. And Samantha added that the White House is likely to be watching the president runoff with great interest. Trump has not officially endorsed a candidate, but he has close ties to the Bolsonaro family. They're aligned on issues such as public security on other world issues. South America as a whole has shifted sharply to the right over recent years with

conservative candidates winning a string of presidential elections in Argentina, Colombia, Peru. But Brazil is Latin America's biggest country, its biggest economy. So if the right wins here on October the 25th, it would perhaps be the most significant victory yet in the region's rightward shift and bring its biggest remaining holdout much closer into alignment with President Trump. The U.S. has removed all of its B-1 bombers from the U.K. military base that had been a hub for launching airstrikes in Iran. American officials said the planes were sent back to the U.S. over security concerns following the arrest of six men on suspicion of plotting a terror attack against the facility. U.S. officials have said they were aware of an Iran-linked plot to recruit UK citizens

to attack the bomber aircraft and kill personnel at the base. The suspects were released on bail, a decision that President Trump has criticized. Some British officials have questioned the level of sophistication of the planned attack. The UK Ministry of Defense declined to comment. And we've learned that security failures in three countries enabled a fly Dubai pilot to overcome a flying ban imposed by Oman and re-enter the cockpit before nearly bringing down an Israel-bound flight last week after stabbing his co-pilot. Our Middle East correspondent Benoit Foucahn has the latest.

Failure number one is he was training, you know, to be a pilot in Oman, the authorities discovers he was browsing streaming his websites, putting him on the desk job, banned him to fly. And then that wasn't shared when he got hired at Fly Dubai a few years later. Second failure is he got hired in flight Dubai because they only do criminal checks and the issue was not criminal in nature. So he got the job. And the third failure is that he was allowed to fly to Israel. Israel doesn't allow pilots from countries who don't recognize Israel to fly into his territory. The manifest for every of these flights and the list of crew is shared with Israel by the UAE and other countries. And yet, as a no money from one of these countries that is banned, he was allowed to fly. fly this time, but also last week and several times. Israel's tax authority maintains a database of flyer information, but the country's Ministry of Transportation, which oversees foreign carriers, said it didn't believe it had the authority

to vet flight crews and had never asked for a passenger or crew list since the database was set up in 2023. The UAE declined to comment while an investigation is ongoing, and a spokeswoman for the Omani government didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The euro is slipping, and stocks in France and Spain have sold off amid concerns over budgets and political unrest in both countries. This morning, Spain's socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called snap elections amidst nationwide protests over high housing costs. Last week, opposition parties joined forces to block two emergency measures in Parliament aimed at reducing evictions and real estate speculation. Polls suggest that the conservative popular party would win the most votes in an election

and could command a parliamentary majority alongside the far-right Vox party. The election will be held at the end of November. A similar political standoff in France last week over the country's budget pushed French yields higher with other indebted countries like Spain and the UK also seeing their bonds sell off. A trend that's continuing this morning with Treasury yields ticking lower as a result. Looking to the week ahead, the Fed's September meeting minutes are set to arrive on Wednesday, offering investors clues on whether another interest rate hike is coming. Prospects for an October rate increase fell to just 18 percent. After last month's U.S. job growth came in weaker than expected. An earnings season is kicking into gear with the likes of Levi Strauss, Delta Airlines,

and PepsiCo reporting third quarter numbers this week. But that may soon become a thing of the past as the Securities and Exchange Commission continues to consider cutting quarterly reporting obligations for public companies, instead making them semi-annual. Former SEC enforcement attorney Mark Steinberg spoke to WSJ's Take On the Week podcast about how the controversial proposal could impact U.S. capital markets. The mandatory disclosure framework, with its relatively vigorous enforcement by the SEC, has helped enable the U.S. capital markets to remain the foremost markets. in the world. What the commission is doing here is taking the risk of upsetting the U.S.

prominent stature, a risk that is utterly unnecessary to take. Furthermore, Chairman Atkins, one of his missions is to induce companies to go public. And he thinks that this type of going to semi-annual reporting will help induce companies to do this. He is wrong. First of all, the companies are already engaging in these quarterly financial review activities. The cost savings are minimal, as shown by the commission's own studies. And thirdly, if the commission really wants to encourage and facilitate companies to go public, what they must do is to restrict the private offering rules. President Trump has long been a proponent of the idea and briefly explored it in his first term.

And despite public backlash, the SEC is expected to move forward with a version of its proposal. Coming up, the U.S. says that Iran is getting better at targeting oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, making transits riskier just after oil had started to flow again. That story after the break. A fresh wave of attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz is threatening to derail the recovery in Middle Eastern oil exports. We reported last week that crude shipments are back at pre-war levels, thanks to U.S. naval escorts to U.S. naval escorts to, the waterway. But now, Britain's maritime security agency says there have been at least seven strikes on vessels in the past week. The hit tankers are conducting so-called shuttle runs where they deliver the oil to ships wading off of the coast of the UAE and Oman.

However, analysts say that practice is expensive and with the new attacks may not be sustainable. Meanwhile, dozens of Iranian-linked tankers that have participated in the shadowy trade of getting sanctioned oil to China are stuck in the waters near Sri Lanka and Malaysia. that since the U.S. reimposed its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in July. Journal correspondent John Imont has been tracking Iranian oil tankers since the start of the war, including the oil-laden ships that got through the strait, transferred that oil to other ships at sea, and ultimately delivered Iranian oil to buyers in China. But now that practice of subterfuge is ending.

We went out, we saw lots of empty oil tankers riding high in the water, because they don't have oil to drag them down. And so you see their red holes. So they're just stranded there in the waters waiting. Many of the ships went from the coastal waters near Malaysia to waters near Sri Lanka, where they've traditionally been able to get provisions and get crew changes.

But the U.S. government has borne down in recent weeks. So as part of Operation Outcast, which the U.S. launched in late August, they're really trying to cut off any avenues of revenue for the Iranian regime. And that has included networks that are supplying and provisioning these ships. And Sri Lanka is terrified of getting sanctions. They've got a fairly vulnerable economy that's very reliant on the U.S. dollar.

And so the Sri Lankan government has made it much more difficult. Someone would say impossible to actually provide provisions these Iranian ships. So they're floating there and then without fresh food in many cases, without fuel changes. And as John explains, the floating ships are a sign that the U.S. blockade is working. The lifeblood of the Iranian economy is being cut off. Analysts who track this think that Iran is going to run out of almost any oil to sell in the next few weeks. That means revenues are going to stop not long after. And that's going to be really tough for the Iranian economy.

And of course, you know, the regime has been resilient. So this isn't to say that, you know, things will just collapse overnight or anything. But definitely, this will be tougher. and certainly it will be tougher for the Iranian people. Well, adding to those concerns, is the prospect of a global food crisis, according to the International Chamber of Commerce. While public attention has largely focused on surging oil prices,

shipping disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz are choking off exports of fertilizer, one third of which run through the waterway. Fertilizer stockpiles have fallen by nearly 40% since the Strait was disrupted, forcing farmers to delay purchases or cut back on crop nutrients. If no progress is made, the chamber predicts that prices of food staples like cereal could soar up to 80%.

And Warner Brothers knew $125 million political satire Digger, starring Tom Cruise as a polluting oil tycoon, among other roles, has flopped at the box office with an estimated $8 million domestic opening. Now, do me a favor. Imagine they're one of those people. I think that Digger Rockwell's Satan himself. Now, what are some of the harshest attacks I can expect from those folks who think that I'm still my ears? That dismal debut highlights the growing difficulty of drawing audiences to original non-horror films. That says A24's Erie Back Rooms opened with more than $80 million at the box office.

And Obsession, the horror film written and directed by a 26-year-old film dropout, opened with more than $26 million and only cost around $700,000 to make. Digger marks the final release from Warner Brothers before its acquisition by Paramount closes tomorrow. And that's it for what's news for this Monday morning. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer and Daniel Bach. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff, and I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. And until then, thanks for listening.