Our Q&A discussions are a lot of fun, and we’re grateful to everyone who submits their questions. If you missed any of our live shows, the full streams are available here on Substack.

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In a case with serious repercussions for U.S. national security and for Brazil, a Clinton-appointed U.S. federal judge concluded that an immigration record entered in the Customs and Border Protection system during the Biden administration was fraudulent. The fraudulent record reflected a non-existent entry into the U.S. by the national security advisor to former President Jair Bolsonaro. The fabricated entry was then somehow obtained and used by a controversial Brazilian Supreme Court judge to imprison that national security official.

Beyond concluding that the C.B.P. document was fake, the federal judge, Gregory A. Presnell of the Middle District of Florida, berated U.S. government lawyers for their refusal to produce all documents in the government’s possession concerning who was responsible for this fraudulent record and how it ended up being used in Brazil to imprison one of Bolsonaro’s closest advisors. I obtained a copy of the transcript from that U.S. judicial hearing and first reported the developments in Folha de S.Paulo, Brazil’s largest newspaper, on Friday.

The judge’s orders were issued as part of a lawsuit brought in U.S. federal court late last year by Filipe Martins, the top Bolsonaro advisor on international relations who was preventively imprisoned for six months in 2024 based on this false C.B.P. immigration entry. At the time, Martins was awaiting trial on charges that he had participated with Bolsonaro in plotting a coup after Lula’s narrow victory over Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential election.

The judge overseeing the cases involving the alleged coup is Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has become a political lightning rod not just in his own country but also around the world. He has overseen a censorship scheme so severe that even The New York Times cited internet freedom experts calling it “a potentially dangerous, authoritarian expansion of power.” On other occasions, the Times — obviously hostile to Bolsonaro — raised serious questions about whether Moraes has become a grave threat to Brazilian democracy in the name of saving it.

This is the same judge who ordered both Rumble and Twitter be blocked across Brazil for refusing to comply with all of his censorship orders. When he was unable to collect a massive fine he had imposed on Twitter due to its lack of bank accounts in the country, he simply ordered the funds removed from Starlink's accounts, a completely different Musk-linked company. Last year, the Trump administration imposed personal financial sanctions on Moraes, alleging that Moraes carried out tyrannical attacks on the free speech rights of U.S. companies and has corrupted Brazilian justice for nakedly partisan ends. The Trump administration appears poised to impose sanctions on him once again.

Moraes has repeatedly demonstrated a particular obsession with punishing Martins, who was appointed by Bolsonaro to be his national security advisor at the age of 31. Brazilian law is similar to American law when it comes to a defendant’s rights regarding pre-trial imprisonment: defendants are typically allowed to remain free prior to trial, absent very narrow circumstances (such as proof of witness tampering or a plan to flee the country). Moraes somehow obtained the false C.B.P. entry showing Martins left Brazil for the U.S. and never returned, and then used that false evidence to order his preemptive imprisonment before trial by claiming it proved Martins sought to flee justice. Moraes had Martins placed in a particularly harsh prison, clearly hoping to induce “confessions” that would implicate Bolsonaro and other political enemies of the judge.

One of the many questions that have never been answered — beyond the key question of who fabricated this document — is how this false C.B.P. entry fell into the hands of Brazilians attempting to imprison Martins. The first time this false C.B.P. record emerged publicly was when a Brazilian reporter known to be very close to Moraes, Guilherme Amado, published a news report full of falsehoods, clearly designed to implicate Martins, starting with the highly accusatory (and false) headline: “Under investigation, former Bolsonaro aide went to Orlando in 2022 and evaporated.”

Just two weeks later, the same reporter announced that Moraes himself had begun using this allegation, speaking off the record to various journalists and politicians to tell them that Martins had gone to the U.S. and “disappeared,” clearly laying the groundwork to order his arrest. Weeks later, Moraes did exactly that, issuing an order that relied upon a police report featuring the fraudulent C.B.P. record to claim that Martins had gone to the U.S. and never returned to Brazil (i.e., “evaporating”).

Not only is it now indisputable that the document on which this story was based was fraudulent, as even the C.B.P. admits, but it was so obviously fraudulent from the start. Indeed, within two days of investigating the case back in 2024, I had obtained so much definitive proof that Martins had never left Brazil that not even my meticulous editors at Folha de S.Paulo attempted in any way to dilute the strong language of my reporting — published shortly after Moraes’ original order of imprisonment — stating that Martins had been imprisoned based on clear fraud.

A mountain of evidence proved that Martins was in Brazil the whole time, including domestic flights that Martins took within Brazil on the country’s largest carrier during the period in which he had supposedly “evaporated” in the U.S. Even the federal prosecutor who had originally requested Martins’ imprisonment based on the fraudulent C.B.P. record quickly admitted that Martins had never left Brazil and urged Moraes to release him. But the judge refused, leaving him imprisoned for six more months based on a blatant lie.

Martins’ lawsuit in the U.S. was brought against the State Department and C.B.P. under the Freedom of Information Act. His F.O.I.A. request sought all internal U.S. government documents showing who was responsible during the Biden years for the fraudulent immigration entry and how it ended up in the hands of Moraes as a pretext for Martins’ imprisonment. When C.B.P. refused to provide those documents, claiming an ongoing investigation, he sued the agency under F.O.I.A. At the last judicial hearing, the Clinton-appointed senior judge ordered C.B.P. officials to provide him with all documents relating to the C.B.P. investigation that reveal who was specifically responsible for this fraud and how it ended up in the hands of Brazilian officials seeking to imprison Martins.

Judge Presnell expressed indignation that the C.B.P. had thus far refused to provide the documents. He began the hearing by making his view of the case very clear, and emphasized that there was little about these events that was unknown or in doubt:

C.B.P. lawyers offered their excuses for why they had not yet produced the illuminating documents for Martins. Martins, they claimed, had failed to specify which C.B.P. officials had participated in the fraud, and the lawyers insisted that they were thus unable to narrow down the searches. The judge, who is now 83 years old and has been on the court for decades, barely tried to hide his contempt for the obvious bad-faith deceit shaping the excuses of the government’s lawyers:

One reason the judge is so adamant about the clarity of the facts here is that the C.B.P. itself, under great political pressure to explain how something so strange and so damaging could have happened, admitted to the fraud months ago. In October of last year, the C.B.P. issued a public statement essentially admitting that the immigration record someone entered into its system under Biden was false but also, simultaneously, perfectly designed to allow Judge Moraes in Brazil to justify Martins’ imprisonment. The C.B.P., now under Trump, said:

Upon completion of the review, it was determined that Mr. Martins did not enter the U.S. on that date.

This finding directly contradicts claims made by Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, an individual who was recently sanctioned by the U.S. for his human rights violations against the Brazilian people.

We recognize that Justice de Moraes cited an erroneous record to justify Mr. Martins’ monthslong imprisonment. The inclusion of this inaccurate record in C.B.P.’s official systems remains under investigation, and C.B.P. will take appropriate steps to prevent future discrepancies from occurring.

C.B.P. strongly condemns any misuse of this false entry to support the conviction or imprisonment of Mr. Martins or any person.

During the hearing, the judge again emphasized not just the simplicity of the facts here but also how troubling they are:

This most recent hearing and these definitive statements by the judge demonstrated why this case has become increasingly suspect and bizarre. The political implications are obvious: did Biden officials — overtly hostile to the Bolsonaro government and strongly supportive of Lula — deliberately manufacture an immigration record to permit Moraes to order this top-level Brazilian official imprisoned unjustly?

But it also has severe national security implications for the U.S. as well: if C.B.P. agents — or the political officials overseeing them — are willing and able to insert fake immigration records into the C.B.P. system regarding who entered the country, or conversely to remove and delete genuine entry records to hide who entered the U.S., then all sorts of national security dangers are manifest.

Last December, Martins was one of many Bolsonaro aides found guilty by Moraes of conspiring with Bolsonaro to engineer a coup, and was sentenced to 21 years in prison. Bolsonaro was sentenced to almost 30 years. Their appeals are pending. Under Brazilian law, a convict cannot be imprisoned until they have exhausted all appeals (this precedent was set in 2019, ordering Lula's release from prison pending his appeals).

But one month after the conviction, with Martins under house arrest, Moraes claimed that Martins had somehow violated restrictions on social media use when his lawyers accessed a LinkedIn account. Moraes then ordered the Federal Police to arrest Martins and take him back to prison, where he has remained ever since as he awaits his appeal.

Brazil is scheduled to hold a national election on October 4, 2026. It will not only choose between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro’s son, in the presidential race, but also elect a new slate of federal senators. The Senate is already very close to having the votes needed to remove Moraes from the Court through impeachment. There is a good chance the October election will deliver the final votes needed in the Senate to remove him.

In the meantime, it seems obvious that an aggressive and serious Congressional investigation is needed to get to the bottom of how the U.S. immigration system — obviously vital to U.S. national security — could have been so easily defrauded and manipulated for political ends.

Our Q&A discussions are a lot of fun, and we’re grateful to everyone who submits their questions. If you missed any of our live shows, the full streams are available here on Substack.

This week’s Q&A is tonight at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on our Substack and YouTube pages. We recommend dropping your questions in the comments as soon as you have them. (Questions submitted during the live show are less likely to be seen.) We look forward to reading them!

Our Q&A discussions are a lot of fun, and we’re grateful to everyone who submits their questions. If you missed any of our live shows, the full streams are available here on Substack.

This week’s Q&A is tonight at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on our Substack and YouTube pages. We recommend dropping your questions in the comments as soon as you have them. (Questions submitted during the live show are less likely to be seen.) We look forward to reading them!

Many Democratic Party candidates emerging on what one might call the populist left are finding success in primaries across the country. But most of them have a shared liability: they were fully on board with the worst excesses and abuses of the “peak wokeness” that emerged in the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 killing, enduring and contaminating most of our institutions for several years after.

Most of these successful candidates are quite young for elected officials: they are now in their 30s or even late 20s. That means that most of them were indoctrinated and — since they were on the left — essentially forced to spout all the new “woke” jargon and convictions that were manufactured overnight by frenzied mobs.

One such candidate is Francesca Hong, a Democrat with a significant polling lead in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race. It is hard to overstate how much of a woke fanatic she was. Not even the most cringe and manifestly deranged views from that era evaded her advocacy. They are all there.

The one the national media has latched onto was various tweets and Zoom meetings where she seems to have expressed opposition to the beloved American holiday Thanksgiving, because it “makes some folks very uncomfortable.” (Just as a side note, one of the most abominable linguistic aberrations imposed by woke warriors is the seemingly amiable but in fact grating and aggressively ideological use of the word “folks” or “folx” to replace “people.”) That most of these movements were driven by legitimate or at least reasonable policy concerns does not excuse the resulting fanaticism, excesses, and authoritarian posture used to punish those who questioned them.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is one of this populist-left movement’s senior leaders, and she was also a driving force behind some of the worst woke excesses. She’s the one whom most of that movement wants to see run for president, and Kalshi’s predictive market consistently ranks her as a leading candidate:

AOC, on Sunday, went on ABC’s morning news program with Jonathan Karl, where she was asked about some of Hong’s statements, including her call for “abolishing prisons” and “[defunding] the police,” policies and phrases that have proven to be deeply unpopular. AOC, who herself aggressively advocated those policies, sought to laughingly dismiss this all as just some momentary, harmless frenzy of “craziness” that never really meant much and that everyone has all just agreed to move beyond:

It is, I suppose, a net positive that those who imposed extremist woke dogma are now too embarrassed to defend it. When they hear what they were saying and demanding at the time, it now sounds to them as unhinged and insane as it did to many of us back when they were earnestly and angrily spouting it.

But when AOC tries to giggle her way out of her behavior and the behavior of her allies, it actually is more offensive and cowardly than anything else. By invoking the lighthearted and playful terminology of the New York City Councilman whom she quotes — “Woke 1 was crazy!” — she seeks to depict this dark period as just a few oddball, zany moments that never really hurt anyone and thus need not be dwelled on or taken seriously.

But the woke extremism that AOC and her friends imposed on everyone else was anything but playful or frivolous. It was deeply authoritarian, mob-driven, sinister, coercive, and bloodthirsty. It sought to destroy anyone and everyone who did not immediately submit to and recite all of its new jargon and dictates. As was true for the similar hive-mind excesses of the #MeToo movement, the woke warriors — without batting an eye — destroyed careers, reputations, and institutions upon even the slightest transgression of their new dictates.

There are far too many examples of this to chronicle comprehensively. I will thus ask you to recall one particularly ugly and venomous event, which I am selecting in part because I had a front-row seat to witness it and thus recall it as if it were yesterday, and also because it so compellingly illustrates why this historical revisionism — dismissing “Woke 1” as if it were some trivial, harmless fun that went a bit awry — is so repellent.

When nationwide protests broke out over the killing of George Floyd, my long-time colleague at The Intercept, Lee Fang, did what journalists are supposed to do: he went to cover his local protests and interview multiple protesters about what motivated them. He then uploaded the interviews he conducted online.

Most of the ones he uploaded were ignored. But one was most definitely not ignored. The interviewee was a young, black protester. He told Lee that while he broadly supported the Black Lives Matter movement and believed that race-based police brutality was real and widespread, he did not understand why there was so little anger or concern when black lives were taken — murdered — by other black people. If, he asked, “black lives matter,” then why are there protests against only one type of killing while there is steadfast silence about the far more common way that black people in the U.S. die: at the hands of other black people?

Note that it was not Lee who was saying any of this. These words came from one of about a dozen people he interviewed who were participating in the protest. Lee offered no editorial comment on them at all. He simply uploaded the interview alongside all the others he conducted.

Because the view expressed by this young man was so off-key to the compelled consensus that had emerged in the wake of Floyd’s death, his mere posting of this interview sparked widespread and indescribably intense rage. And into that rage stepped a young Intercept reporter who — much to the surprise of many of her colleagues — apparently identified as black.

In response to Lee’s crime of posting that interview, she took to Twitter to denounce Lee as the single worst thing someone could be, especially at that moment: “a racist.” Within hours, tens of thousands of people had retweeted and liked her accusation, instantly branding Lee as a racist. Huge numbers of media cowards from the largest newspapers and TV outlets — ones who never knew anything about Lee or his work — quickly jumped on board, signaling to the mob demanding Lee’s head on a spike that they were on their side. That is always how mob justice works.

Virtually nobody with any sizable media platform was brave enough to stand up and even question the merits of these accusations, let alone defend Lee. Perhaps there were others, but the only one I can recall vehemently doing so was Michael Tracey in his characteristically elegant and restrained manner, prompting all sorts of media personalities to line up and denounce Michael for having the gall to question Lee’s black accuser. That included many of Lee’s own journalistic colleagues, who actually joined in the public denunciations against him.

Along with a couple of Lee’s allies, I spent countless hours inside The Intercept trying to save Lee’s job, knowing that if he got fired for “racism,” it would end not only his work there but possibly his career altogether. It is difficult to overstate what a climate of terror was ushered into every workplace, institution, and society in general.

Lee was ultimately forced to apologize. That gave The Intercept’s always-cowardly editors an excuse not to fire him. To this day, I feel a great deal of doubt about the role I played: not publicly defending him so that I would have more weight defending him internally; counseling him that a fake and unjustified apology would, at the very least, prevent him from being fired with a gigantic black mark on his name; not waging a more aggressive war on his behalf, etc.

But the climate that was created and imposed as a result of what AOC and her allies now want to laughingly wave away as “crazy” was no joke. Jobs, reputations, and careers were at stake. Many people unjustly had all of those things taken away from them — destroyed — based solely on the whims of mob justice. People were genuinely terrified of thought crimes, no matter how trivial or well-intentioned. I watched countless 45- to 55-year-old journalists and editors adopt a completely new way of speaking and thinking overnight, out of fear that they would attract the woke mob and lose their jobs with even one false step. People watched their every word, knowing – correctly – that a bloodthirsty mob was on the hunt for even the most unintentional deviations from the newly imposed norm.

It should be noted that AOC was not some bystander during all of this. As she has done for every similar moral panic of the left — the incalculably deranged Russiagate conspiracy theories, the life-destroying and due-process-free #MeToo persecutions, COVID censorship — AOC supported and participated in the most extreme woke excesses because she does not have an iota of courage to resist social and political pressures.

In June 2020, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio responded to the growing demands of “Defund the Police” by slashing $1 billion, or about one-sixth of its overall resources, from the NYPD budget. AOC was having none of it. “Defunding the police means defunding the police,” she insisted. That does not mean reducing budgets or shifting around resources, she argued. She wanted the NYPD defunded in full, and nothing short of that would be sufficient.

If AOC has now changed her mind about all of the brand-new woke dogma she vehemently defended and sought to impose, that would be welcome. But actual regret for past mistakes means taking responsibility for them and explaining what went wrong: whether it be support for the Iraq War, the policies that caused the 2008 financial crisis, Russiagate, COVID, etc. At the very least, it requires acknowledging the damage done to people and their lives, rather than minimizing it as just a benign and noble quest for justice that went a little too far.

If someone wants to stand up and say that they went along with and advocated a bunch of “crazy” ideas and demands because they simply got swept up in the hysteria of the moment — as AOC and her allies are now attempting to suggest — then that is a rather serious self-indictment. I can hardly think of a worse trait in a political leader, or a human being of any kind, than a lack of internal fortitude or personal courage to resist moral panics and accompanying demands for full submission by a gathered mob.

Just as was true when populist, anti-war sentiments seemed to emerge and find success on the right, I am happy to see those ideas once again being rediscovered by the left and finding success there. I vastly prefer both left- and right-wing populism and an anti-war ethos on the left and right if the alternative is the dreary, sociopathic, and self-serving bipartisan doctrines of the establishment wings of both parties.

But it is nonetheless vital to recall and keep focused on the tyrannical and authoritarian tendencies of all these factions. It is easy and thus unimpressive for AOC and her allies to now renounce all of the “woke” ideas they quite recently sought to impose on everyone else. Those ideas are deeply unpopular — embarrassing even — and renouncing them is just an act of political self-advancement and preservation.

What would take actual courage, and be meaningful, is some introspection about why they fell prey to the ideas they now call “crazy” — not just fell prey to, but ruined other people’s lives over. We are seeing none of that. And the refusal by parts of the American elite and their institutions to look in the mirror and ask why they so frequently have gone so wrong in exactly this manner is one of the worst pathologies plaguing our political and social culture.

Our Q&A discussions are a lot of fun, and we’re grateful to everyone who submits their questions. If you missed any of our live shows, the full streams are available here on Substack. But this week is a little different!

Instead of this week’s Q&A being tonight at 7:00 p.m. Eastern, we will be recording a few videos tomorrow — and we want to know what topics Glenn should cover in depth! We recommend dropping your questions in the comments as soon as you have them. (Questions submitted later are less likely to be seen.) We look forward to reading them!

Our Q&A discussions are a lot of fun, and we’re grateful to everyone who submits their questions. If you missed any of our live shows, the full streams are available here on Substack.

This week’s Q&A is tonight at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on our Substack and YouTube pages. We recommend dropping your questions in the comments as soon as you have them. (Questions submitted during the live show are less likely to be seen.) We look forward to reading them!

Our Q&A discussions are a lot of fun, and we’re grateful to everyone who submits their questions. If you missed any of our live shows, the full streams are available here on Substack.

This week’s Q&A is tonight at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on our Substack and YouTube pages. We recommend dropping your questions in the comments as soon as you have them. (Questions submitted during the live show are less likely to be seen.) We look forward to reading them!

Our Q&A discussions are a lot of fun, and we’re grateful to everyone who submits their questions. If you missed any of our live shows, the full streams are available here on Substack.

This week’s Q&A is tonight at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on our Substack and YouTube pages. We recommend dropping your questions in the comments as soon as you have them. (Questions submitted during the live show are less likely to be seen.) We look forward to reading them!

Our Q&A discussions are a lot of fun, and we’re grateful to everyone who submits their questions. If you missed any of our live shows, the full streams are available here on Substack. (Last week, the Q&A was postponed due to technical difficulties.)

This week’s Q&A is tonight at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on our Substack and YouTube pages. We recommend dropping your questions in the comments as soon as you have them. (Questions submitted during the live show are less likely to be seen.) We look forward to reading them!

Our Q&A discussions are a lot of fun, and we’re grateful to everyone who submits their questions. If you missed any of our live shows, the full streams are available here on Substack.

This week’s Q&A is tonight at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on our Substack and YouTube pages. We recommend dropping your questions in the comments as soon as you have them. (Questions submitted during the live show are less likely to be seen.) We look forward to reading them!

Our Q&A discussions are a lot of fun, and we’re grateful to everyone who submits their questions. If you missed any of our live shows, the full streams are available here on Substack.

This week’s Q&A is tonight at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on our Substack and YouTube pages. We recommend dropping your questions in the comments as soon as you have them. (Questions submitted during the live show are less likely to be seen.) We look forward to reading them!

Our Q&A discussions are a lot of fun, and we’re grateful to everyone who submits their questions. If you missed any of our live shows, the full streams are available here on Substack.

This week’s Q&A is tonight at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on our Substack and YouTube pages. We recommend dropping your questions in the comments as soon as you have them. (Questions submitted during the live show are less likely to be seen.) We look forward to reading them!

Despite how dark and grim all of this is, their effort had not just a happy ending but also a rather inspirational one. Dramatic footage of these activists being violently attacked by police as well as private security hired by Ridglan went viral, and brought widespread attention to the systematized abuses of dogs by Ridglan. That, in turn, engendered one of the most trans-ideological and bipartisan coalitions – composed of political officials, media figures, and ordinary citizens from every political camp – uniting to demand that Ridglan be shut down and the beagles released. I wrote in detail about this remarkable public reaction last week.

The public pressure and spotlight brought to bear by these activists finally became too much for Ridglan to sustain. They were forced to release the beagles to various dog rescue groups as part of a “sale,” and the internet is now replete with viral videos of Ridglan dogs finding loving homes. Ridglan has agreed to relinquish its operational license on July 1.

There are still roughly 500 beagles left at Ridglan, and legal proceedings are underway to prevent the corporation from killing them before its July 1 closure. And many other facilities continue to engage in similar behavior. But as a result of this Ridglan rescue mission, there is now far more awareness of, and public anger about, this dog experimentation industry and the government funds that enable these hideous but gratuitous experiments.

The activists who produced this stunning victory are not the kind who just show up to a protest one day and stay for a few hours, mulling around with some banal signs. These are among the most dedicated, courageous, and sophisticated devotees to a noble cause one could ever meet. Even though it was Ridglan which systematically violated federal and state law prohibiting animal abuse, it has been these activists who have been repeatedly prosecuted for attempting to shine a light on and to put an end to Ridglan’s crimes of animal abuse. Indeed, several of these leading activists are being prosecuted for multiple felony charges for the April 18 rescue.

My long-time colleague, the documentary filmmaker Leighton Woodhouse, was with one group of these activists as they planned and trained for their rescue operation, and then finally arrived at Ridglan to carry it out. He filmed it all and has produced an exclusive short film that offers an inside look at this very risky yet ultimately wildly successful mission.

Leighton Woodhouse’s work can be found at his Substack page, “Social Studies,” which I highly recommend.