🐦 Tweet for tat

Good morning! Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets over the weekend in cities up and down the country for huge pre-Carnival block parties — and the actual celebration isn’t even until the coming weekend, when Brazil kicks off four days of revelry. 

Moraes v. Trump and Rumble

In the latest twist of an international legal battle, video-sharing platform Rumble and Donald Trump’s Trump Media & Technology Group have escalated their dispute with Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Two days after the companies initiated legal action against the judge last week, Moraes ordered Rumble to be blocked in Brazil for failing to comply with court orders — including a requirement that the platform appoints a legal representative in the country.

• In response, the North American firms filed an emergency motion over the weekend to overturn the ruling, contending that the decision “violates American sovereignty, the US Constitution and US laws.”

Context. The feud stems from orders for Rumble to block an account linked to Allan dos Santos, a far-right blogger and supporter of former President Jair Bolsonaro (recently charged with overseeing a coup attempt). Accused of spreading electoral misinformation, Santos is a fugitive of Brazilian justice who has lived in the US since 2020.

Zoom out. Since March 2019, Moraes has also presided over the “Fake News Inquiry,” a probe leveraged to clamp down on online misinformation networks accused of undermining democratic institutions. The inquiry has drawn criticism for its excesses — especially when it was used to censor news reports exposing improprieties among Supreme Court members. 

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