Brazil’s Election Defies a Right-Wing Trend, and Trump’s Midterm Attacks Enter a New Phase

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, October 26th, here's what we're covering. It is a busy time for elections. Last night in Brazil, tomorrow in Israel, next week in the U.S., we're going to start today with Brazil. There, the leftist president Luis Anacio Lula De Silva pulled off a remarkable re-election ending a string of conservative wins across Latin America. Over the last year and a half, seven right-wing presidential candidates have come to power there, including in Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. But Lula narrowly held on to the presidency in Brazil, something few pollsters predicted. He won out over Flavio Bolsonaro, whose father, Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally, was convicted of attempting a coup after losing to Lula himself in the last election. This time, the son Flavio Bolsonaro has also refused to recognize Lula's victory, saying the rules changed, quote, "in the middle of the game" after a judge ordered polls to remain open for an additional two hours yesterday. Extra time was something both parties requested after transportation delays and bad weather disrupted voting, but Flavio Bolsonaro now wants the election to be annulled. Now to the US, where one week out from the midterms, President Trump's attacks on elections have entered a new preemptive phase. The administration has filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to block certification of election results in the Alaska Senate race if the Republican incumbent narrowly loses. It has to do with the fact that there are two Dan Sullivan's running for that seat. One is the current GOP Senator trying for another term, the ballot says incumbent right next to his name. The other Dan Sullivan is not listed with any party affiliation on the ballot, but the administration is arguing that his presence is causing confusion and that he could siphon off enough votes to skew the election toward Democrats. Democrats have claimed he's actually a Democratic plant, which the party denies. Election law specialists say Trump's lawsuit lacks legal basis and will likely fail, but that might not be the point. The suit is just one piece of a blitz of federal actions by the Trump administration to assert more control over the electoral process. The courts have blocked many of those efforts, like the Supreme Court rejecting Trump's plan to have the postal service screened mail-in ballots. But with each claim of election fraud, Trump is sowing more doubt. And some state officials and election experts worry he's continuing to lay the groundwork to challenge the results should his party lose. And last politics update, this one from Venezuela. After nearly a year in exile, the popular opposition leader Maria Karina Machado returned home yesterday as huge crowds gathered across the country in celebration. Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for working to promote democracy in Venezuela in the face of former authoritarian leader Nicholas Maduro. She had hoped to return to try and lead Venezuela after the U.S. seized an arrested Maduro, but the White House didn't back her, and instead, she said she was repeatedly blocked from going home. This time, however, the U.S. did not intervene, and Machado is now back and calling for elections, where she could be a top contender against the current Trump-backed leader, Delsey Rodriguez. Machado's presence could also inject some uncertainty into the alliance between the Venezuelan government and the Trump administration. Machado has criticized a major oil deal that the U.S. and Venezuela struck recently, as the U.S. has been working to extract oil and other natural resources from the country. In the Middle East, the U.S. government has put its staff on high alert because of intelligence showing Iran is in the advanced stages of planning attacks against Americans, according to U.S. officials. Some diplomats and others have already been ordered to leave the region. Analysts have been examining intelligence on the threats for the last few weeks, and officials say the plans also include potential targets in Europe, and one official told the Times the material indicates Iran may have operatives in the United States as well. These are early reports, and we don't know really what the underlying intelligence is. We don't know how strong it is, how specific the plots are, and what's also really important to remember is that the Iranian ambition to strike U.S. officials, that ambition is greater than their capability. My colleague, Julian Barnes, covers intelligence for the Times. He says this is all coming at the same time as officials inside Iran appear convinced that the U.S. and Israel are preparing to unleash another major attack there in a final push to force a surrender. Essentially, things have reached a new level of threat and fear. When you talk to Western officials and even Middle East diplomats, they look at all of this and they say we're an incredibly dangerous situation. When two countries are in this sort of state of heightened awareness, heightened worry, that is when it becomes easy for a mistake to cascade into a larger conflict. A bad piece of intelligence, a miscalculation, a errant missile, a deliberate missile. All of these could touch off a much larger conflagration. They could touch off a return to a very intense war in the coming days. For years, in cities around the world, the defining image of the modern skyline has been soaring glass skyscrapers. But in a warming world where temperatures everywhere are getting hotter and hotter, there's a growing debate about whether those designs really make sense. The Florida ceiling windows obviously let in more light and allow for glamorous sweeping views. But compared to a solid wall, they also let in as much as 10 times more ambient heat. They're truly only habitable with a lot of air conditioning, which is becoming a bigger and bigger drain on energy resources. Powers in some countries that get a lot of sun in particular are trying to adapt. One building in Kuwait, for example, put only small windows on the southern walls. Another one there breaks up walls of glass with vertical fins that provide shade. And a glass hotel in Singapore has a steel mesh skeleton strung with plants. Using multiple layers of glass or treating it with ultra thin, heat-reflective coatings can also help. And architects say we could learn from looking to the past. Tall buildings used to be mainly built out of heavy masonry with only little windows, which made a difference heat-wise. One recent study compared nine high-rises in New York, including one of the city's oldest skyscrapers, the famous Chrysler building from 1929, and found the vintage building was by far the most energy-efficient. And finally, it was an epic clash at the box office this weekend between a comic book villain and Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of Theranos. Ultimately, the movie "Clayface" about a lesser-known Batman bad guy came out on top, but just barely, only $4 million ahead of the documentary about Holmes, you can see everything. It is not often that a nearly three-hour documentary holds its own against a superhero movie. But you can see everything has become the highest-grossing documentary of its kind since Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 more than 20 years ago. The earnings caveat is that other documentaries with musical elements think concert movies have grossed more. Directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, you can see everything has been getting breathlessly positive reviews, as someone who personally sat in the very last seat available in the very front row in a packed theater looking straight up at the screen just to see it. In Hollywood, some Oscars forecasters are talking it up as a contender for a best-picture nomination, which would be a first for a documentary. Today on The Daily, a look at the $10 billion ad war surrounding the midterms and the two very different stories Democratic and Republican candidates are telling in the final days of campaigning. You can find that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're not a time subscriber yet, you can get a full month of free access to everything we publish when you download the Times app now. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow. [Music]