Brazil election shows impact of USAID funding cuts to progressives

(LifeSiteNews) — On September 11, 2025, Brazil’s Supreme Court convicted former president Jair Bolsonaro of attempting to overthrow the 2022 election and of conducting a conspiracy to remain in power. He was sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison and has been in custody (currently under house arrest) for just over 10 months. His conviction was widely celebrated as a defeat not just for the disgraced politician but for right-wing populism.

That all changed on Sunday. His son, Flávio Bolsonaro, beat the (also very corrupt) leftist President Lula Da Silva in the first round of the presidential vote and advanced to the runoff. If history is any indication, he will win. His son, Carlos, also from his first marriage, was elected senator for Santa Catarina. Jair Renan Bolsonaro, his son from his second marriage, was elected federal deputy for Santa Catarino. His younger brother, Renato, was federal deputy for São Paulo.

Even his wife — former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro — was elected senator for the Federal District.

Flávio Bolsonaro met with President Donald Trump in May and committed to joining the Shield of Americas if elected president. He is also a staunch social conservative. His campaign platform emphasized his opposition to abortion on the basis that life begins at conception, and he committed to appointing pro-life Supreme Court judges. He also repeatedly highlighted his support for religion and his opposition to the LGBT agenda, especially gender ideology and the indoctrination of children. His pro-life position in particular is popular with voters.

How did he win? According to Alexander Munguía writing in The Spectator, it is because progressives in South and Latin America have lost their American patrons — for the moment:

Much of this is down to the dismantling of USAID. American tax dollars underpinned Brazil’s left-wing establishment, with funding for progressive media, universities, Supreme Court staffers and pro-LGBT activists. Now that money is gone, and Bolsonaro Jr., who had trailed in the polls for much of the campaign, is on the brink of winning. The candidate who leads the first round has won every Brazilian presidential election since the end of military rule in 1985.

Few Americans, I suspect, are aware of the extent to which their taxpayer dollars were bankrolling the international LGBT movement. From the LGBT outlet The Washington Blade last month, noting that 90% of the world’s LGBT groups have lost funding since 2025:

A new report that Outright International released on Thursday notes 90 percent of LGBTQ and intersex rights groups around the world have lost funding since January 2025. The New York-based global advocacy group surveyed 229 LGBTQ and intersex rights groups in 94 countries. Forty-nine percent of the organizations that responded said they have lost more than half of their total budget since January 2025 — 75 percent of the groups said they lost more than a quarter of their total funding.

“For nearly half of the respondents, the cuts removed most of the resources that sustained the organization,” the report reads. Asked which funders “had reduced, suspended, or withdrawn support,” more than half of the responding groups “pointed to a source tied to the United States government, including USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and the Department of State.”

“No other funder came close,” notes the report.

There’s more. “The Outright International report notes the State Department under the Trump-Vance administration ‘terminated the programs of the Global Equality Fund, the public-private partnership it launched in 2011 with allied governments, companies, and foundations, which distributed more than $100 million in its first decade to LGBTIQ organizations and human rights defenders in over 100 countries,’” the Blade reported.

“The Trump-Vance administration, among other things, has withdrawn the U.S. from the U.N. LGBTI Core Group, a group of U.N. member states that have pledged to support LGBTQ and intersex rights.”

The report details LGBT groups in Iraq (IraQueer), West Africa, Ecuador, Uganda, Ukraine, and Tonga that have had to curtail their efforts or shut down; between 2025 and 2026, the international LGBT movement lost about 30% of its funding. Much of that funding, it turns out, was coming from American taxpayers, who were bankrolling sexual revolutionaries around the world. The international LGBT movement functions as on-the-ground missionaries for progressive Western ideological colonialism.

What will the effect around the world of turning off the tap of taxpayer cash? If Brazil’s elections are any indication, they could be seismic.