It's hard to overstate how insane things in Brazil have become after Lula's polling lead over Flavio Bolsonaro -- held most of the year -- has largely vanished. The first round of voting is Sunday. The likely Lula/Bolsonaro runoff would be Oct. 25. Look at this: Last night, Brazil's largest media outlet, Globo, was to hold the only presidential debate thus far. Lula refused to go. Globo's rules (which Lula's party agreed to) are that any candidate who refuses to debate will have an empty podium with their name on it -- to highlight their refusal to debate for the voting public -- and the other candidates will be given time to state the questions they would have posed to the missing candidate. This is common. But at the very last minute (just moments before it was to begin), a left-wing, Lula-aligned election judge issued a censorship order barring Globo from showing Lula's empty podium, and also banned Globo from allowing the other candidates to state the questions they had for Lula. So Bolsonaro pulled out over the censorship, and Globo canceled the debate in anger. As Lula's campaign gets more desperate, the election (like the country itself) has come to be ruled by his allies on the Supreme Court and judiciary more broadly, using blunt, daily censorship (as they did when Lula barely beat Jair Bolsonaro in 2022) to ensure Lula's victory. Kind of amazing to watch how deeply into full-on lawlessness and tyranny they're plunging.