WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior State Department official said Tuesday that Flávio Bolsonaro and his family will be granted U.S. visas after his weekend loss to incumbent Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a hotly contested race that bucked a trend of conservative electoral results in Latin America.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to visa privacy laws, said “the State Department will issue visas to Flávio Bolsonaro and his family and allow them entry into the United States.”
Bolsonaro, who had President Donald Trump’s tacit support, had been under investigation for corruption, money laundering and tax evasion in Brazil and had been ordered to surrender his passport.
The State Department official did not say if Bolsonaro had already left Brazil or if he and his family were en route to the U.S.
Bolsonaro's campaign manager, Rogério Marinho, said he hadn't spoken to the defeated candidate since early Tuesday morning.
"We had no news from Flávio or his lawyers about what happened,” Marinho said. “I received a text message from him, he said he wanted to take a break and then he would talk to us. That’s the only message I had from him.”
Bolsonaro’s brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro, who lives in Texas, had publicly encouraged him to leave Brazil if he lost the election.
Bolsonaro has touted his relationship with Trump and visited the White House in May. The family connections go deeper: Brother Eduardo Bolsonaro was convicted in absentia in June of illegally lobbying the Trump administration and sentenced to four years in prison. A warrant was recently issued for his arrest.
Trump did not offer a full-throated endorsement of Bolsonaro in the runoff against Lula, as he has with some other right-of-center candidates in Latin America. But he suggested on Monday, without providing evidence, that Brazil’s election was “rigged.”
Bolsonaro's decision to leave Brazil came as a deadline for him to surrender his regular and diplomatic passports expired at noon Tuesday. It remained unclear whether he had complied.
Bolsonaro was served with the order to surrender his passports Monday, a day after his stunning loss. Bolsonaro said he received it outside the home where his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, is serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest for attempting a coup following his 2022 election loss to Lula. After that defeat, Jair Bolsonaro fled Brazil for Florida. He returned three months later.
The sealed Supreme Court order, viewed by The Associated Press, was issued Sunday. Bolsonaro has refused to concede defeat and has made unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud.
Bolsonaro initially asked for the election results to be annulled after an evening of chaos at some polling places that prompted authorities to extend voting by two hours.
On Monday, he urged the electoral court to investigate alleged election fraud and nullify Lula's and Vice President Geraldo Alckmin's candidacies, which the electoral court has never done before.
“I never thought about leaving the country,” Bolsonaro said in a video published on his social media channels. "I will hand over my passports and I will defend myself from this aberration. It is a clear attempt to intimidate me. But I will not be silenced."
To overturn the result, Bolsonaro would have to present evidence of fraud affecting Lula's 4.4 million-vote margin and convince the eight-member electoral court before the results are certified on Dec. 18.
Lula, who turned 81 on Tuesday, received more than 64 million votes, compared with fewer than 60 million for Bolsonaro, a margin of nearly 4%.
A Brazilian diplomat who was not authorized to speak on the matter said his country’s government was aware that Bolsonaro had left the country.
Outside the presidential residence in Brasilia, Lula told a few dozen supporters he did not have precise information of Bolsonaro's whereabouts, but said he had left Brazil.
Brazil is “the second country” of the Bolsonaro family, Lula added.
“The first is licking American boots,” the reelected president said. “Those who are not liable do not fear. A fellow that secretly leaves his country, that's because he is liable for something."
Bolsonaro said in a video posted Monday on his social media channels that he was attempting to organize opposition among his congressional colleagues to the election results. His eight-year term as a senator expires Jan. 31, 2027, which will also cause him to lose special jurisdiction at the country's Supreme Court.
Bolsonaro is under investigation by Brazil's Supreme Court for alleged corruption, money laundering and tax evasion in two cases. In one, he's accused of using a sports betting company to launder fraudulent deductions from government pensions paid to senior citizens. In the other, he is accused of accepting millions of dollars from a disgraced banker.
He has denied any wrongdoing in both cases, and has claimed Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is heading one of the investigations, is a Lula ally. Prosecutors suspect the funds from the banker were used to pay his brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro’s, expenses and to promote Flávio Bolsonaro’s political agenda with the Trump administration, documents show.
Mauricio Marcon, a lawmaker of Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party, also questioned de Moraes’ objectivity on Tuesday. “Seven minutes after the election, Alexandre de Moraes ordered his passports to be seized,” Marcon said. Bolsonaro "will represent us in a free country. He will continue to be our leader."
Brazilians had earlier taken to social media to ask where Bolsonaro was. Reporters gathered outside his home in the capital, Brasilia, but he did not appear.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Security of Argentina denied reports the Brazilian senator had entered the country. Brazilian media outlets reported that many Bolsonaro allies had been unable to reach him.
Paulo Figueiredo, a close ally of Bolsonaro's who lives in the United States, was asked about the senator's whereabouts and did not answer directly.
“At this moment — following months of intense work that were unfairly thwarted — I have no desire to speak with the press. I kindly ask that you do not persist. Should I have a statement to make on any matter, I will reach out,” Figueiredo said.
Savarese reported from Sao Paulo.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
Opposition presidential candidate Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro arrives at his election night event after the presidential runoff in Brasilia, Brazil, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026.(AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
President Donald Trump took his midterm campaign blitz to Texas, where Senate candidate Ken Paxton is locked in a tight race against Democrat James Talarico. Secretary of State Marco Rubio joined Trump to show off a newly arrived oil tanker filled with Venezuelan crude to be processed in Texas refineries, according to a congressional aide and two U.S. officials.
Meanwhile, the Iran war, which Trump often describes as a “little detour,” has emerged as an unforced liability for a president who promised to keep the U.S. out of foreign wars. Republican strategists privately acknowledge it’s severely damaging party efforts to retain control of Congress as gasoline price hikes drive up costs across the economy and new hostilities emerge.
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He’d also been ordered to surrender his passport.
A senior State Department official made the visa announcement, speaking on condition of anonymity due to visa privacy laws.
The official did not say if Bolsonaro had already left Brazil or if he and his family were en route to the U.S.
—-By Matthew Lee and Mauricio Savarese
▶ Read more
He also visited the White House in May.
The family connections go deeper: Eduardo Bolsonaro was convicted in absentia in June of illegally lobbying the Trump administration and sentenced to four years in prison.
A warrant was recently issued for his arrest.
Trump did not offer a full-throated endorsement of Bolsonaro in Sunday’s runoff election against Lula, as he has with some other right-of-center candidates in Latin America. But he suggested on Monday, without providing evidence, that Brazil’s election was “rigged.”
Bolsonaro suffered a stunning loss to incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Sunday’s election.
A spokesperson for Bolsonaro did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
His campaign manager, Rogério Marinho, also refused to comment.
Bolsonaro’s brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro, who lives in Texas, had publicly encouraged him to leave Brazil if he lost the election.
A senior State Department official says that Flavio Bolsonaro and his family will be granted U.S. visas after his weekend loss to incumbent Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a hotly contested race that bucked a trend of conservative electoral results in Latin America.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to visa privacy laws.
—By Matthew Lee
The Federal Election Commission website that accepts electronic campaign finance filings is offline.
The system went down on Monday.
“We are continuing to investigate this issue,” the FEC website said on Tuesday.
The website for searching already-filed reports remains online, a spokesperson said. He declined to elaborate on the outage.
The secretary of state and potential 2028 presidential candidate made his debut on the campaign trail after Trump goaded him to come to the microphone.
Rubio paused as he took the stage, taking in cheers from the crowd and putting his hand on his heart.
“It’s an honor to work for the greatest country in the world for the greatest president in the history of the United States of America. We love Texas,” Rubio said, keeping his remarks brief.
Trump had repeatedly prodded Rubio to join him at the microphone after mentioning his name, which drew cheers from the crowd.
“Marco! Marco! Come up,” Trump said.
The president took the stage at a venue in Corpus Christi and said to the crowd, “See that little ship out there? It’s got 1 million barrels of oil on it from Venezuela.”
He recounted to the crowd the U.S. operation in Venezuela earlier this year that captured former leader Nicolás Maduro and said, “To the victor belongs the spoils.”
Trump then suggested Venezuela could become part of the U.S. and said, “Let’s make it the 51st state.”
The Nashville Scene reports that state Sen. Brent Taylor sent unsolicited nude photos as recently as 2021. Taylor, who is in his 50s and married, characterized his behavior as “youthful indiscretions,” the alternative newspaper reported.
“I’m willing to acknowledge my past indiscretion,” Taylor said in a statement to The Associated Press. “The frustrating part is that my wife now has to relive this nonsense we’ve already worked through years ago together and moved on from.”
Taylor is running with Trump’s endorsement to represent Tennessee’s 9th District. The district was a longtime Democratic stronghold anchored in Memphis with a majority of Black voters until state lawmakers broke it apart to create an additional Republican district in the state.
Taylor faces Democratic state Rep. Justin Pearson, who gained national prominence when he was expelled from the Tennessee House for protesting in support of gun control measures and then reelected by voters.
The Department of Energy is loaning up to $5 billion to help modernize nuclear plants in Illinois, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
The department announced a conditional loan commitment for Constellation Energy’s nuclear fleet. Earlier this month, it announced a loan of up to $4.2 billion for Vistra’s nuclear fleet.
Trump has set a goal of quadrupling domestic production of nuclear power within 25 years.
Constellation’s planned investments will produce more electricity from existing nuclear plants, adding nearly 1.1 gigawatts to power more than 930,000 homes.
The Energy Department says these projects will lower costs and strengthen grid reliability in the three states and across the regional power grids.
Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, challenged Iran at the start of a U.N. Security Council meeting to “seize the opportunity” to answer questions about its nuclear safeguards program raised more than five years ago — and give the IAEA access to all nuclear sites, including those damaged in U.S.-Israeli military attacks in 2025 and 2026.
Iran’s U.N. Deputy Ambassador Gholamhossein Darzi responded with an attack on the council for its silence after the attacks, and on the U.S. and Israel for their “wars of aggression against Iran.” He kept repeating that Iran’s nuclear program and facilities are peaceful.
Darzi accused the council of blaming the victim, not the aggressor, saying: “Israel possesses nuclear weapons, yet your concern is the absence of inspectors in Iran.” Israel has never confirmed that it possesses nuclear weapons.
U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz called Iran a “brutal dictatorship” that “shamelessly massacred 40,000 of its own citizens just this year.”
“We’ve heard tireless allegations against the United States,” he said. “What we have not heard today is an explanation for Iran’s continued failure to satisfy its safeguard obligations.”
Josh Turek, a Democratic state representative seeking Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat, recently released a television advertisement outlining his positions on transgender issues that has drawn swift backlash from LGBTQ+ advocates.
In the video, Turek is talking directly to the camera and says he opposes “males competing in female sports” and “taxpayers paying for sex changes.”
“It’s time to stop the nonsense from both extremes and focus on lowering costs for Iowans,” Turek says.
Turek is up against Republican Ashley Hinson. The new advertisement is among several his campaign is running in the final week and follows Republican attacks on the issue, including from a political group backed by billionaire Elon Musk.
Turek is among a set of Democratic midterm candidates who are demonstrating the party’s evolution on policies targeting transgender people, including other Iowa Democrats such as Rob Sand and Sarah Trone Garriott. It’s an approach that’s frustrating progressive groups.
An Iowa-based LGBTQ+ rights group denounced Turek’s ad on Monday. Max Mowitz, executive director of One Iowa Action, said in a statement that it buys into the “harmful and immoral” characterization of transgender women “as dangerous or unworthy of medically necessary care.”
The effort will support voters who historically have faced obstacles to casting their ballot.
The roughly 250 volunteers will watch for delays in opening polling stations or early closures, internet outages or malfunctioning voting equipment. They will be in eight states, including Alaska and Michigan, both of which have competitive U.S. House and Senate races.
“Native Americans are poised to be incredibly powerful this upcoming election,” said Jacqueline De León, the senior staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, which has filed several lawsuits over the years to increase Native American voter access.
De León also notes that mail ballots from remote areas might take longer to reach election offices, but that doesn’t mean those voters should be suspected of voter fraud.
“Native votes are not suspicious just because they take longer to arrive,” De León said. “Those are systemic failures.”
The U.S. military attacked a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, killing five people, as the Trump administration continues its campaign against alleged traffickers in Latin America.
The latest attack brings the number of people who have been killed in boat strikes by the U.S. military to at least 240 in more than 70 strikes. The Trump administration began targeting those it calls “narcoterrorists” in September 2025.
As with most of the military’s statements on strikes in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, U.S. Southern Command said it targeted the alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes and that “intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking.”
The military did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs. A video posted on X showed a small boat in the water before it was enveloped by an explosion.
A federal district judge in Los Angeles will hear arguments Tuesday about whether California officials should count roughly 20,000 ballots that the Department of Justice alleges likely belong to noncitizens illegally registered to vote.
The federal government sued California in mid-October, after the state refused to separate the flagged ballots, saying local officials were knowingly counting potentially illegal votes. The state disputed the accuracy of the federal government’s list and argued that to separate ballots while voting was underway could potentially disenfranchise citizens.
Hundreds of thousands of California’s 23 million voters have already cast mail-in ballots.
“I will if they are honest,” Trump said before departing for Texas to campaign for Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton.
His administration has repeatedly raised concerns about the vote in the run-up to Election Day.
The administration on Monday asked Washington state to set aside any ballots received from more than 400 people it alleges registered to vote without U.S. citizenship, less than two weeks after making a similar demand in California.
Last month, the Supreme Court blocked an administration effort to have the U.S. Postal Service screen mail ballots.
Ahead of the UN’s annual vote condemning the U.S. embargo on Cuba, representatives from Washington and Havana exchanged barbs on the floor of the General Assembly.
In a stunning break from diplomatic decorum, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez walked up to the podium while U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz was speaking about what he called the communist government’s corruption.
“You are a liar!” Rodríguez yelled.
Waltz responded, “You understand who you’re dealing with? This is America. Back up.”
Texans gave Libertarian Ted Brown only 2.3% of the vote in 2024, when Republican Sen. Ted Cruz easily glided to another term. But this year’s Democratic nominee, James Talarico, is in a tight face-off against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Wayne Hamilton, a former executive director of the Texas Republican Party, said Paxton’s history of legal and ethical problems could have some conservatives looking to the Libertarian this time as they cast a protest vote.
With a budget of about $30,000, Brown is under no illusions he can compete with Paxton and Talarico in a race drawing a combined advertising total of roughly $390 million since the May 26 primary, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. But he dismisses the criticism that he’s merely a spoiler.
“They could avoid that problem by nominating a better candidate,” he said.
Republicans are particularly concerned in Texas, Ohio, Kansas and Iowa, where even a few percentage points for a third party could swing the outcome.
Some GOP strategists fear more conservatives could cast protest ballots over the unpopular war with Iran and Trump’s expansion of executive power. Both issues grate on an anti-establishment slice of the American right and could fuel the Libertarian Party’s message of nonintervention and limited centralized authority.
“Libertarians, we believe, could draw enough votes to affect the outcome in a number of these races,” said Republican former Ohio state lawmaker Gene Krebs, who is working on a project to diminish the impact of spoiler candidates.
Diesel prices continue to hover near all-time highs in the U.S., yet Trump has consistently downplayed the conflict’s economic impact. For months, he’s been insisting that the war’s end is near, only to threaten now that a new round of bombing could very well be in the offing once the election passes.
And he dismisses elevated gas prices as a temporary inconvenience, worth paying to defang Iran. At a weekend rally in Michigan, Trump said he has no regrets.
“Somebody said, ‘If you had it to do again ... ,’” Trump told the friendly audience. “I said, ‘Are you kidding?’ I thought gas would be double or triple. And it’s a small price to pay for taking a nuclear weapon away from maniacs.”
With spending on campaign ads now reaching $11.21 billion, the 2025-2026 midterms have become the most expensive ever, according to AdImpact, which tracks media spending.
A week out from Election Day, total spending and reservations have topped the $11.20 billion spent in the 2023-2024 period, which included the presidential contest.
The latest figure has not been adjusted for inflation.
President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, in Corpus Christi, Texas. (AP Photo Eric Vryn)
President Donald Trump speaks with media before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
President Donald Trump waves while boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
A truck drives past a fuel price board for gasoline and diesel at a gas station on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
FILE - Clouds form over pumpjacks and power transmission towers on Lake Maracaibo in Cabimas, Venezuela, Sept. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)
FILE - At left, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks in McKinney, Texas, May 19, 2026, and at right, Texas state Rep. James Talarico, after voting, in Austin, Texas, Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero and Eric Gay,File)
President Donald Trump yells after speaking at a campaign rally at Crossroads Arena, in Corinth, Miss., Monday, Oct. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
