Donald Trump’s imperialistic administration and its allies are locked in on Brazil’s election — and Democrats and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva are sounding the alarm.

Lula is facing Flávio Bolsonaro in Sunday’s presidential election. Bolsonaro’s father — former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally — was convicted last year of launching a Jan. 6-style coup attempt. And ever since, Trump’s regime has targeted Lula and Brazil’s government over the prosecution, including threats of potential military action.

Trump, for instance, baselessly claimed the elder Bolsonaro was the victim of a “witch hunt” while justifying a 50% tariff on Brazilian goods. My colleague Steve Benen summed up a bunch of the Trump administration’s related attacks on Brazilian officials in this post for MS NOW.

The authoritarian-loving MAGA movement’s efforts to influence politics in Brazil — the second-largest democracy in the Western Hemisphere after the increasingly illiberal U.S. — have been laid bare over the past year. That’s why dozens of Democrats sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week demanding answers and a commitment that the administration will respect the upcoming election results. The signees included Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and a single senator, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

“Over the course of President Trump’s second term, we have seen U.S. officials engage in a sustained, multifaceted campaign of interference and destabilization in Brazil,” they wrote, citing actions they said amount to an “extraordinary infringement on Brazil’s national sovereignty.”

The letter also cites the Trump administration’s appointment of Darren Beattie — who has openly stated that “[c]ompetent white men must be in charge if you want things to work” — as a senior adviser overseeing Brazil. Beattie has denounced the South American country’s judiciary over the Bolsonaro case and has said Lula represents “the most destructive and corrosive version” of communism.

Meanwhile, Tech Policy Press recently spotlighted how Meta — led by Trump ally Mark Zuckerberg — temporarily restricted political ads on Lula’s campaign pages and briefly took down an Instagram profile that had posted a viral video associating the younger Bolsonaro with various political scandals. The article also mentions efforts by others in MAGA world, such as former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to promote social media posts boosting Bolsonaro.

So it seems the “America First” movement is waging a full-blown foreign influence campaign. And this is part of a trend.

Ever since Trump’s return to office, his administration has been focused on Latin America in its white nationalist-backed push to dominate the Western Hemisphere. The administration has already seized and imprisoned Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and sought to prop up a new government more favorable to the U.S.’ commercial interests. It effectively allocated tens of billions of American tax dollars for Argentina’s MAGA-friendly government in order to help Trump ally Javier Milei win his presidential election there. It has tried to spark regime change in Cuba with embargoes that have effectively deprived the island’s residents of resources they need to survive.

And now, the president and his allies have gotten involved in Brazil’s presidential election. Lula rebuked such efforts at last week’s United Nations General Assembly.

“We will not allow the enemies of democracy, whether domestic or foreign, to undermine popular will,” he said. “Brazilian democracy belongs to Brazilians. Brazil will continue to be a sovereign country. Nobody will turn us away from this path.”

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