Jim Jordan, elected to lead House Republicans in the next Congress, met with Flávio and Eduardo Bolsonaro at the Capitol in January, CNN Brasil reports. The opposition keeps its line to Congress as the Trump administration signals a pragmatic reset with the Lula regime.
WASHINGTON — Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, elected Tuesday to lead House Republicans in the next Congress, has already sat down with Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro and former congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, the two sons of Brazil’s former president who lead the opposition to the Lula regime. CNN Brasil reported on Wednesday that the meeting took place in the U.S. Capitol in January 2026, with commentator Paulo Figueiredo also present, and was documented in a photo Eduardo Bolsonaro posted on X.
Jordan won the closed-door vote 106-73 over House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a week after Republicans lost more than 40 House seats in the Nov. 3 midterms. He will succeed Speaker Mike Johnson, who chose not to run, and will take over as minority leader when the new Congress is sworn in in January 2027. A co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Jordan has spent two decades in the House and is one of President Trump’s most loyal defenders on Capitol Hill.
A record on Brazil before the meeting
Jordan did not meet the Bolsonaros as a stranger to Brazilian politics. In 2024, his Judiciary Committee published a staff report titled “The Attack on Free Speech Abroad and the Biden Administration’s Silence: The Case of Brazil.” The report made public sealed orders from Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes forcing X to block accounts of Brazilian users and described those orders as censorship of online speech. It remains one of the most detailed official documents in Washington on the Brazilian court’s role in policing political speech.
Why it matters
The opposition’s channel to the new House Republican leadership opens just as the Trump administration recalibrates its stance toward Brasília after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s Oct. 25 runoff win over Flávio Bolsonaro, a result Flávio has contested. On Nov. 9, at the G7 meeting in Paris, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington would keep dealing normally with Brazilian authorities, while pressing Brasília to approve Danny Perez as U.S. ambassador and calling the vacancy “an unsustainable imbalance,” according to Veja. At the same time, InfoMoney reports that the new Democratic-controlled Congress and rising U.S. prices open room to cut the 37.5% in tariffs that Brazilian goods still face.
For American readers, the split is the story. The executive branch is signaling a pragmatic reset with the Lula regime. Inside Congress, the man who will lead the Republican minority has a documented record against the Brazilian court’s censorship orders and a personal line to the family the regime’s institutions have pursued. Eduardo Bolsonaro lives in the United States and faces an arrest warrant from Brazil’s Supreme Court after a conviction for “coercion” tied to his political advocacy in Washington, a warrant the court refused to lift this week.
The record
Confirmed: Jordan’s election as House Republican leader by a 106-73 vote on Nov. 10; the 2024 Judiciary Committee report on Brazil; Rubio’s Nov. 9 remarks, as reported by Veja. Reported: the January 2026 meeting with Flávio and Eduardo Bolsonaro, based on CNN Brasil and the photo published by Eduardo. Not known: what was discussed, and whether Jordan, now in the minority, plans any new action on Brazil.
A minority leader cannot pass sanctions or set trade policy. He can, however, keep hearings, letters and reports alive, and Jordan has already shown he is willing to put Brazil’s speech cases on the official record. As the Trump administration trades signals with a government that courts Tehran while Washington fights to reopen Hormuz, and as the opposition takes its case to international forums, the Bolsonaros’ line to the new House Republican leadership means Brazil’s censorship record will still have an advocate in Congress, whatever deal the White House strikes.
The Watch Post Daily will continue to follow this story. Sources: CNN Brasil (Nov. 11, 2026); Associated Press and States Newsroom reporting on the Nov. 10 House Republican leadership vote; Veja via Jornal O Sul (Nov. 11, 2026); InfoMoney; U.S. House Judiciary Committee staff report (2024).
Featured image: House Committee on the Judiciary Hearing (55131359644) by Mikaela McGee/U.S. Department of Homeland Security, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
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